Creating Epic Workshops: The Power of Facilitation and Engagement -11

We feel it is important to make our podcast transcripts available for accessibility. We use quality artificial intelligence tools to make it possible for us to provide this resource to our audience. We do have human eyes reviewing this, but they will rarely be 100% accurate. We appreciate your patience with the occasional errors you will find in our transcriptions. If you find an error in our transcription, or if you would like to use a quote, or verify what was said, please feel free to reach out to us at connect@37by27.com.

Marli Williams [: 00:00:00

Hey, everybody. What is happening? Welcome back to the Marli Williams podcast. I am super stoked because today, I am going to be interviewing the brilliant Kirsty Lewis who is the CEO and founder of the School of Facilitation. She is an incredible facilitator and facilitation mentor. And today, we are going to dive into all things related to facilitation. What it is, and how to take your facilitation and your workshops to the next level. I cannot wait to dive into this powerful conversation with you. Let's go.

Marli Williams [: 00:00:38

Hey, everyone. What's happening? I am super stoked to welcome you to the Marli Williams podcast where we will explore authentic leadership, transformational facilitation, and how to create epic experiences for your audiences every single time. I am your host, Marli Williams, bringing you thought provoking insights, expert interviews, and actionable strategies to unlock your potential as a leader, facilitator, and speaker. Thank you for joining me on this journey of growth, transformation, and impact. Let's Lead Together. The Marli Williams podcast begins now. Let's dive in.

Marli Williams [: 00:01:20

Alright, everybody. I would love to welcome you back to the Marli Williams podcast where today, I'm hanging out with my friend from cross the ocean, Kirsty Lewis, who is the owner of the School of Facilitation. She is a masterful facilitator and entrepreneur. And I'm just so stoked to have you with us today.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:01:41

Hey, Marli. Hey, everyone. Thank you for having me here.

Marli Williams [: 00:01:45

Oh my gosh. It's so good to see you. It's so good to have you here. Before we dive in, I would love for you to share a little bit more with our audience, like, what your work is in the world and what you do? And maybe just, like, what's your favorite thing about it?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:02:02

What is my work? I geek out over how to design and deliver amazing workshops and learning. That has always been a thing. Even when I was in the corporate space, I would, I think, do people still have like a daybook and they write in the back of the write notes when they're in meetings? I used to have my day book and forever be writing at the back. How can we improve this workshop? How can we make it even better? How do we lay the room out? What questions should we be asking? How do we create better activities? So, I finally plucked up the courage in 2007 to lead the world of Diageo, McGinnis, Manoff, Baileys and yes, set up on my own, worked as an associate in sales training and then 2017, 2014, I set up School of Facilitation. So, I work with both corporate and other freelance facilitators and trainers and really help them, everyone, just be really good at creating great workshops because I think we can all agree there is nothing worse than being in a workshop that you're being spoken at. You're being told what to do. We're adults and we're of an age where we can use our own brains. And that's how I approach the learning, and the workshops.

Marli Williams [: 00:03:14

I love that so much. And I think that that's why we jam so well together is because I think we are both really passionate about not just creating like an okay workshop or a good workshop, but, you know, I'm all about creating an epic workshop. Like, how and I love this, like, the question of how could we do it better. Right? And the distinction I love to use is this MEH. It's an acronym MEH, which stands for mediocre experience hangover. Where you go to a workshop and you're like, meh, maybe that was like a kind of a waste of my time.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:03:52

Oh, God. Yeah.

Marli Williams [: 00:03:53

So, we've all been to workshops like that. Monotone. People aren't engaging. They're just talking at you, which is a training, not a workshop. Training can be interactive.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:04:03

Training definitely can be interactive.

Marli Williams [: 00:04:04

It can be, but sometimes it can be very one-sided.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:04:08

Push rather than pull.

Marli Williams [: 00:04:10

Exactly. Oh. Push rather than pull. I like that. And then on the other side of the spectrum, we have, you know, an EPIC workshop where people are engaged, they're playing, they're inspired, and they're connected. So, that's the acronym that I like to use. Engage, play, inspire, connect.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:04:26

I get it now.

Marli Williams [: 00:04:27

Yeah.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:04:28

You love an acronym, don't you?

Marli Williams [: 00:04:29

I love an acronym. So, today, we're going to, like, we're going to super geek out.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:04:33

Okay. Cool.

Marli Williams [: 00:04:34

On facilitation. I mean, what would you say? We'll just go right there. Like, what does make a great workshop to you, in your opinion?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:04:45

So, I think the foundations of a great workshop is in the design because you can be the most charismatic individual on your feet. You can sweet talk the queen to come to tea with you. You can ask the best questions. You can lay out a room and make it look beautiful. But if what is designed in your delivery is still what we just talked about, that I'm in a push mode or the contents dry or I've not created engagement. So, I use a model called POSE. Let's do a model off.

Marli Williams [: 00:05:19

I love it. I love it. All the models. We're just dropping them.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:05:22

This isn't mine, though. This is a man called Tim Andrews. I'll always honor him. He was one of my first teachers, but he talks about you've got any workshop needs to create purpose, ownership, safety, and engagement. And therefore, just because you're clear in as the designer or the creator of the workshop, why are we here today? Or the outcomes that we're going to achieve. Unless you explicitly tell the group and get their engagement to it, they will sit there with questions in their head. So, that's first thing. Next thing you're working with adults, we need to get them to own their learning or their participation in the workshop.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:06:00

That is not you or I going, you need to learn this, you need to know this. Like adults come with all this experience and knowledge. So, we need to be creating those experiences where they can draw, draw their own thoughts. Where they're encouraged to go, oh, I want to write this down or a basic, the simplest level of ownership is finding 2 other people to go and work with. Like, give them the ownership to find others. Not like the classic, I'm going to label you ABC, ABC, ABC. It's like, they're not kids. Give them the ownership of time. So, again, you often see in workshops, whether it's facilitation or training, okay. So, we're going to break out into 3s now. If you can come back and I versus me, I need you back in the room in 15 minutes, which on my watch is 10:35. They don't have your watch. They may have come across state lines. They might be on a different time zone, but not change their watch. So, it's things like that.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:07:03

So, how do you create ownership? Safety is another thing. So, we all know the big buzzword of psychological safety, but how do you actually create that in a workshop? You can't just go, don't worry everybody, this is a safe environment. You can say whatever you want. So, there's many ways to create safety. And then the final one that I know is as important for you as well is engagement. So, how are we creating those experiences? How do we create the engagement for the group with you as the facilitator? How do you create the engagement with the content? How do you create engagement with each other, like with the participants themselves, especially in the virtual world because they need us to be a bit more of a conductor in that instance to help them because they can't just, they're not sitting next to someone. They can't just sort of turn to their left or their right or stand up in your seats.

Marli Williams [: 00:07:55

I love that. Alright. We're going to go do a review so that I am learning too. This is gold. For anyone who's leading workshops, making sure that your purpose of why you are doing what you're doing is clear to you and to the people that are in the room. Like, why are we here? What is this for?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:08:16

And you can do that by saying it. You could have it written on a flip chart.

Marli Williams [: 00:08:21

Mm-hmm.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:08:22

I'm a flip chart versus a PowerPointer, by the way.

Marli Williams [: 00:08:25

Same. I love a flip chart. It's just more, dynamic. PowerPoint feels so static.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:08:32

PowerPoint as well disappears.

Marli Williams [: 00:08:34

Right. Versus you can have the flip charts all around on the room, and it's like you're really creating a unique experience. Like, this particular flip chart thing will never ever happen again. The way that it has with this, you know, this unique group. So, purpose, ownership. I've even learned some things like, okay. Well, where do I say, where is it about what I want versus what we want? Or how much time do you think that you need for this particular activity, right? Who wants to keep track?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:09:08

Yes. Like, give them permission to keeping track.

Marli Williams [: 00:09:11

Right? So, like, really providing opportunities. And, you know, to me, that reminds me of just adult learning theory of honoring the knowledge and wisdom in the room. Like you said, these are adults. They have life experience to offer and to share, and let's give them the credit of, like, being someone who can manage time and give them that opportunity. Creating safety, super important. I'm curious. Do you have any go to's or, like, your favorite ways of creating psychological safety in a workshop?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:09:44

Building psychological safety takes time. As I facetiously said, it's not just a sentence of, you're safe in this room. So, I think there is things that we can be doing. So, it's how are we showing up in ourselves. How do we share stories that come from our perspective first? How are we inviting people into conversation versus telling them, oh, and even like this, Marli, what do you think? So, even the point of me pointing at you and being quite direct, shaming is another surefire way of creating disconnection and making people feel unsafe. And so, old world, you would come in late back from a break, and you would be shamed. And even just the comment on, where have you been? Oh, you're back. Nice to see you. You know, just things like that doesn't create safety. Leaders speaking first doesn't create safety. So, if you have a team, a complete team, and you've got the leaders there encouraging the leaders to speak last because as soon as a leader shares their thoughts, their opinions, everybody will just more often than not go, oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Or follow and copy or somehow sort of go in cahoots with them versus share their real thinking.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:11:07

Myriam Hadnes, who's a really good friend, and you may have come across Myriam in the Never Done Before community in Europe. So, one of the things she's great at doing and when you're doing an exercise to create safety is give everybody the opportunity to write down, say a question they want to ask. So, everybody at the same time writes a post it notes with their question or write their thoughts down before sharing.

Marli Williams [: 00:11:29

Yeah. I love that. And that's a key part of engagement too is how are we engaging people in different ways? Kinesthetic, auditory, visual, and, you know, introverts, extroverts, allowing people more time to reflect that aren't going to be like you ask a question. And I think one of the challenges I see a lot for a lot of newer facilitators is the fear of, if I ask a question that, like, crickets’ moment, the silence. But it's like I'm going to give everybody 1 minute to write down your biggest takeaway from today or your biggest question that you have right now. And then just again different ways to engage people where sometimes we think about engagement is always in a large group conversation versus, great. You've written it down. Turn to a neighbor. Share your thoughts. You know, 2 minutes per person or ready, set, go. All of these, like, different ways to engage.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:12:31

And top tip for people, especially if you're in person work doing an in-person event. What you just described there, I call it pair and share. It's classic. It more if not people sit next to somebody they already know. And as adults, there is definitely a higher percentage that don't want to speak up for fear of making themselves look silly or I've got the question, the answer wrong. So, by saying turn to the person sitting next to you and discuss this question, you validate and you check like, what do you think? What are you thinking? So that when you get off to 2 minutes, you then go, great. There's lots of conversations going on. I'm really curious to hear what are you thinking about this question? And, again, you'll suddenly get people talking and flowing more.

Marli Williams [: 00:13:16

Yeah. And I think it, like, raises. Anytime I do, like, a pair and share, the energy is just like,

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:13:22

it buzzes up.

Marli Williams [: 00:13:24

Right? Like, people do want to connect. You just need to give them a reason to. Alright? And that's the power of a prompt. That's the power of asking a good question. Right? If you ask a question and there's crickets, it's a good thing to look at, like, was my question clear?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:13:42

Or was my question open?

Marli Williams [: 00:13:44

Or was it open? Right? Because sometimes I've seen people ask a question and they're like, is that a question? I'm not like, what do you mean? And there's like a lot of questions about the question. I think the fascinating thing about good facilitation is when it's done well, it's almost invisible. And it's like a magic trick because it's like, I just think there's so many nuances. What you're tuning into the energy, you're tuning into the space and the people and the temperature of the room and, like, where are people at? What time of day is it? Like, there's just so many factors in order to know what question to ask in this moment. And I would love to know from your perspective because I appreciate what you said that good workshops, it's all about the design and bringing in what I call, like, emergent facilitation, intuitive facilitation where you're like, okay. Well, I have a plan, but I'm also going to meet the moment. And how to hold both of those dualities of, like, I'm going to do the best design or plan that I can based on the information that I have. And then sometimes you walk into a room and you're like, oh.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:14:55

I need to change.

Marli Williams [: 00:14:56

Versus like, oh, it doesn't matter what's happening in the room. I am sticking to my plan and we are going to make sure that we are on time and on track and without really addressing what's actually happening in the space. And so, how do you navigate that dance as a facilitator?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:15:13

Actually, what I was just thinking was how I probably did it when I was starting out versus how I do it now. And I think often what happens what I've noticed having worked with lots of facilitators and trainers and can I just put another thing in to have a conversation about?

Marli Williams [: 00:15:26

Yeah.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:15:27

Can we talk about the difference between a facilitator and a trainer, please?

Marli Williams [: 00:15:30

Let's do it.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:15:31

But when I'm in a workshop situation, when I first started out, it was all about the content that I just got hooked on content and timing and having the room set up correctly. That was superbly important. Over time though, what I've learned, I've learned to trust myself, is my mindset. And that's happened through supervision, my own coaching, getting out of my own way, also learning to recognize my intuition and like, how it's talking to me when I'm in a space. And I could never have done some of that when I was first starting out. So, I think that's quite important if people are listening here and they're like, oh, but I've only been facilitating or training for a year. Like, oh my goodness. What? You want me to manage suddenly shifting and changing? Well, I've done all my prep.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:16:20

Don't worry. People just started out. I'm not asking you to do that. But for those of you who've been and I guess another thing is tenure and length of delivery is not length of doing this work is not a sign of a good facilitator or trainer, by the way. I'm very clear about that. I think what I started to notice, I was doing some work with some good coaches, and we started talking about, like, how do I read the room? Like, how do I use my body as an instrument to notice and, like, when my intuition is talking to me? And so, for me, my read when people are actually speaking their truth or something is happening around the room, I get goosebumps. Like, on my forearm here. Or the tops of my thighs go sort of cold. And so, the way I then would test it.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:17:06

What I'm noticing is, this language I'm sensing in the room… or I am noticing ABC and ask the group a question to just see where they were at. So that would be the 1st start, and also sometimes just the inner voice is talking to you going, Oh my god. This is shit. Like, what are you doing, Kirsty? It's more a case of something feels off here. I think we need to do something different. Like we're not moving in the direction that we had intended with the outcomes that we had originally created. So, sometimes you get those inner voices as well and you also get the voices of, oh my god, this is going brilliantly. This is really working. Let's keep going with this. And you find that flow state. And you just know you're in the groove and in the sweet spot.

Marli Williams [: 00:17:50

Yeah. It is a dance. And I think at the beginning, it is okay to stick with the design and the plan. And I appreciate what you're saying is we both been doing this for a really long time, and I think I have developed this muscle of, like, really trusting myself, really tuning into what the group needs. I think one of my big opportunities for growth is sometimes I lean too hard on that. Like, I'm just like, we're going to meet the moment and see what comes up. And so, it is for me been this dance of how do I find the sweet spot between having enough of a plan that gives me, as a facilitator, confidence in what we're doing and even I think about this like the true north. Where do we want to be by the end of today? How do I want them to feel? What do I want them to do, right? And so, this is kind of like begin with the end in mind, backwards by design.

Marli Williams [: 00:18:48

We start at the end of, like, where do we want this group to be and then work backwards from there. Because sometimes we art from the beginning and can feel kind of stuck in what we're doing, what we want to create, or, like, well, again, coming back to the purpose, why are we doing this? Where do we want to be at the end of the day? Everything that we do is in service of that. And so, I think that for anyone who's, like, wanting to design an event, a retreat, a workshop, again, what's the purpose? And then how do you want people to feel, think? What do you want them to do at the end? And then creating that experience from that place. And really, like, have it been participant, like, what is in it for them? What are their goals? What are their needs?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:19:34

I think you need all of that, Marli, as well when you're working with your stakeholders because that is what you need to sell to the stakeholders as you're working with them to give them confidence that because they're commissioning the work with you that they know what they're going to get and also by being clear and getting their sign off on the purpose and that think, feel, do piece, when you are in the moment and you're like, oh, we need to do a bit of a shift here, when you go to the stakeholder and go, look. This is what I'm noticing. I think if we continue in this vein, we're not going to get to where we want to. I have a plan, and then you put it to them. It's more likely you're going to get it. Yeah. Okay. I trust you to make that shift.

Marli Williams [: 00:20:19

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that it's okay to pause. Like, alright. We're going to take a 10-minute break.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:20:25

Yep.

Marli Williams [: 00:20:26

And give yourself permission to, like, let things land and knowing, like, how much to deliver, taking breaks. Again, finding that pace, finding that flow, finding that rhythm. And I mean, I think I would love to talk with you about, like, the difference between, you know, what's a facilitator versus a trainer and yeah. Just helping people really understand this idea because I think people hear the word and they're like, oh, facilitator. Someone who, like, runs a boring staff meeting at work. But they don't really understand what, like, what do we mean when we think about facilitation and being a facilitator versus being a trainer.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:21:06

Yeah. So, for me, there's a distinct difference. So, a trainer is someone who is imparting knowledge, skills, behaviors. They can do it in a facilitative way, but they are often a content. They're an SME, a subject matter expert. They have content and knowledge that they want to impart. And, yes, they can still do it in an EPIC way. Yes. They can still use POSE, and they can be facilitative, so they can pull in their style. There are also trainers who would also push so that they'll just be in more of a tell mode, and those are the moments that we remember.

Marli Williams [: 00:21:41

Can you, like, really break down this push-pull idea? Because I really, really like it, and I think it's powerful.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:21:49

So, push would be when someone is telling you about a topic and they are saying, let's take our models. So, you would be saying, so what epic actually means is… This is how you do it. This is how it shows up in a workshop. These are my recommendations. These are the processes you should use. Versus pull could be okay. So, there's a model here that I use and, on this flip chart, what you can see is there 4 words. It spells out epic, but what I've also put some dashes and I've part filled in these words. What do you think these words could be? So immediately the group are like, oh, I wonder what those words could be.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:22:34

So, they work that out for themselves. Then it might be, okay, there's 8 of you. There's 4 words get in to pairs. You guys have got e, you've got p, you've got i, you've got c. Go have a brainstorm. What do you think that would look like in the context of a of a workshop? What would you be doing saying? So, they go away and do some thinking. They come back and go, let's start with e. We're going to spell the word. So, what did you guys talk about? Okay. Great. And what does that mean to you? What's an example? What do the rest of you think? They're telling you and you're asking questions and you've created an engaging activity for them to experience so that they can put their thinking and feeling into it. And so, they're making that meaning. The really top tip though is when you're in that pull mode is when you're doing an activity, you have to debrief it. And I think it's really important for us as the trainer, the facilitative trainer to anchor any key points. So, you might know within your model of epic, there are some key messages that you want people to take away, and it might be you let the group do the debrief, and then you do a mini summary, as I call it. It's an anchor. And you might go, look. There are 3 things to remember about EPIC.

Marli Williams [: 00:23:54

Yeah. Making sure that you land the learning. And I love this idea for anyone who's out there listening. MI is my tendency to push the content. And I think the reason that people do that is because there's some narrative that's like the value of this workshop is in the content versus the value is in the connection to the content with the people that are engaged in the experience and that the value is in how you facilitate it. Oh my gosh. Tell me more.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:24:28

And then you also think the value is in what you have to say because, hey, you've brought me in. I'm the subject matter expert. I need to be telling people this stuff. Yeah. There is absolute truth in that, but we don't want to hear your voice all the time. Your expertise is getting people to find and understand, especially if we're talking about new behaviors, new knowledge, mindset shifts, they need to work out for themselves. They are adults, not children. Please. You are working with adults.

Marli Williams [: 00:25:00

What's the biggest difference between facilitating adults versus children.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:25:06

I don't think you facilitate children. I think you teach children. So, there is more of a tell and second task because their brains are still learning. They need the direction. Whereas adults are coming into this conversation with loads of knowledge, life experience, a perception of how you're going to be because of the teachers they have had in the past. They might be coming in, going, okay, ready? Here we go. Back. Bloody hell. I've been and all your group, especially if it's learning, have they come willingly or are they there because they've been told to come? So that will be their whole mindset piece, so you need to work through that first.

Marli Williams [: 00:25:45

Yeah. What's the difference in how you facilitate or show up when it's like people are required to be there versus, they're opting in and choosing on their own volition?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:25:59

I think how you do the setup and the setting period is super important. And in our days’ workshop for me that will last an hour, an hour and a half. So, how are we teeing up? Why are we here? What do you want from this time together today? What do you know about this topic already? So, this is the agenda. This is the flow. These are the basics that you're going to get access to. But how you do that? And I take a good hour, hour and a half, sometimes to do all of that. But it's all experience and conversation.

Marli Williams [: 00:26:31

Yeah. And, I mean, having them feel a sense of ownership even if they do “have to be there” or they're required to be there.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:26:39

And also noticing who is engaging and if you have got anyone who's, like, not participating and starting to be quite belligerent. I have no qualms now in taking those people to one side and having a little chat and, like, do you want to be here? Don't you want to be here? If you don't want to be here and they're being and you're seeing it to the detriment of the group because the way they speak up, the way they're behaving, if you're able to, you need to agree this upfront with your stakeholders, but you might invite them to leave.

Marli Williams [: 00:27:13

Yeah. That's it. That's one of the questions I probably get asked the most is like how do you handle difficult or challenging clients or participants because I think, actually, this is one of the reasons why people don't pull or engage or ask is because I think they're worried about crickets, potentially. Or there's I feel like people have the story of like, oh, people don't want to. I don't want to put people on the spot. I don't want to make people uncomfortable.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:27:43

This is the individual saying it to you. That is their shit that they haven't worked through. Sorry. So, I have a course phrase I use, you need to sort your shit out. I said that to a lot of the team who come and work with me. You need to sort your shit out because that mindset that you're describing there is the mindset of a trainer or a facilitator. But that's not the truth for their group necessarily, but that's the truth for you. Meg Bolger, who I also recommend to some of your listeners go find.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:28:09

She created facilitator cards, but Meg and I have had the conversation and she's like, are there such things as difficult delegates and difficult participants, or is that just in our imagination, in our mind they're difficult? Because what's difficult to you, Marli, may be really easy for me to handle and vice versa. So, that question of how do you handle someone who's difficult, I now smile. I've done a bit of a change on how I answer it, and I'm like, so what is difficult for you?

Marli Williams [: 00:28:38

Right. I think that the big one that people say is like the person who the talker. Someone who is dominating the conversation.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:28:47

So, then we need to restructure the activities because if all you're doing is throwing out question after question and allowing that person and that person then can grab the airtime. So, a 1-2-4-all activity gets us over that.

Marli Williams [: 00:29:01

Yep. I love that. The 1-2-4-all is one of my favorite ones. Is that from Liberating Structures, I think?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:29:06

Yeah. Liberation Structures, everybody. Go find them. They've got a free app, great website, good book you can buy. But, basically, the structure of the activity is, on your own for 1 minute answer question A, like we talked about earlier. Now go and find someone to talk about that. Blend your ideas together. Come up with 3 or 4. You've got 2 minutes to do that. Now go and find another pair. Bring your thoughts together. You've got 4 minutes, and then you bring the group back together. So, then each, you've narrowed down the number of groups to feedback, which also really helps if you're doing lots of big ideas.

Marli Williams [: 00:29:41

Yeah. I love that one. That mean, that's gold right there. The 1-2-4-all is a great tool to use to change the engagement.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:29:49

I've got another one on the value piece and why people don't always ask questions and they feel they need to talk is, a nervousness of what's the answer going to be? Are they going to get it right or wrong? That's one thing. It doesn't matter if they get it wrong. Just let them go with it and just ask more questions. What if we open up dialogue and then they ask me a question and I don't know the answer? So, again, I'm like, when I'm coaching other facilitators and trainers, I'm like, but that's okay. So, you don't need to know all the answers. You're not there to know all the answers because guess what? There's 13 of you in the room. It's not just Kirsty who has to know everything. There's 12 other people here who, again, this is creating the ownership. This is creating the engagement. They probably got some answers as well. So, if I get a question that I don't know the answer to, even if I did know the answer, I turn it around quite quickly and I go, oh, great question. What did the rest of us think? But put it back out to the room. Like, what? Yeah. Great question. What are we thinking? And then if between us, we don't know the answer and we literally all looking at something. Oh, yes. Great. Oh, I don't know. The next question is, so how do we find out the answer and get them to get go, oh, actually, we could do x, y, zed. Okay. Great. And who's going to do that? Okay. Thank you, Marli.

Marli Williams [: 00:31:07

One of my favorite things about, you know, the art of facilitation is it really does take that pressure off of you to be the subject matter expert or the sage on the stage or have all the answers. It's like it's really how am I facilitating, like, that everyone has so much innate knowledge, wisdom, value to offer. And I'm, again, I am pulling that out and I'm holding people capable. Right? And I think that when we talk about engagement, when we talk about powerful facilitation, how you introduce an exercise or an activity is the direct result of how people engage with it.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:31:50

Absolutely.

Marli Williams [: 00:31:51

If that makes sense like, alright. And now we're going to do this. Right? And your tone, your energy, your confidence because I see people kind of like tiptoe. There's hesitation. You can feel that they're uncomfortable. Right? Like, oh, we're going to do this thing. And there's this energy of you're not actually trusting that we can handle this. Right? So, are you holding yourself and your group capable and able to navigate that? And, again, you are cocreating this experience with people.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:32:26

Top tip on briefing activities. 1, write the steps down on a poster. Break down the briefing into steps. And then one of the mantras we coach is, one step at a time. So, what I mean by that is imagine we've got an activity. You're going to go into breakout groups. You've got a question to answer, and then when you come back, you need to present via flip chart. Potentially, you might hear someone go, so what I want you to do is break into groups of 4. You need to grab a marker pen and I go to the nearest flip chart. There's going to be a question on the flip chart. If you answer that, that would be great, and also if you could write your thoughts on the flip chart, and then when you come back, you're all going to have 5 minutes to present, and then what we'll do is we'll decide on the best idea. Now, what it is, you see, like, confused faces. I mean, like, oh, gosh. And then you got any questions? I'm like, yeah. What do you want me to do? I'm like, who am I working with? How long have I got? So, you break it down. Okay.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:33:28

So, the first thing is it might be the first thing you need to do is split into 4 groups of 4. So, stand up. Split yourselves up. Now, you'll see 4 clip charts around the room. Go grab a clip chart per group. Brilliant. Okay. You're all there. Turn the page over. There's a question on there. Can you see it? Okay. You have got 10 minutes as a team to answer that question and capture your thoughts on a flip chart. You're good? What questions do you have? And then off they go. They do not need to know how long they're going to be debriefing for. They don't need to know that at that point in time, but they do need to know how many people, where to go, how long, and what they need to do, but break it down, and don't be afraid to also model. I often say people listen with their eyes, so they're watching you as much as they're listening to you. So, the other thing I would probably do is I'll be like, stand up. And then I would walk to the flip chart. I turn it over. I'd have a marker pen in my hand. The act of writing on and be like, you've got 10 minutes on your watches. So, you model the behavior that you wish to see them do.

Marli Williams [: 00:34:49

Yeah. People don't do what you say. They do what you do. Right? So, do it. And I think that breaking things down and having those instructions be really clear. For anyone, again, if you are new, that takes time but it's so important. I think we try to rush and it's like this, like, kind of slow down to speed up of can I slow this down, make sure there's clarity. Because I have seen people, like, recently just give all of these instructions and then 8 hands go up and they're like, what are we doing? And the energy drops. It creates all this confusion. And so, I think that that is just another just like hot tip, golden nugget of slow it down so that you are creating clarity, and how you're delivering those instructions is so, so important.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:35:45

Absolutely. I'm also very conscious. We started talking about the difference between a facilitator and a trainer. And in Kirsty and Marli's style, we haven't quite answered that question because we've gone on a detour of a few littles over this way.

Marli Williams [: 00:35:58

Side road, you know.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:35:59

Trainer is subject matter expert on they have probably got clear content. They have topics that they're there to deliver, and there's lots of exercises and they can do it in a facilitated break. Now a facilitator is someone who is enabling a group to navigate a piece of thinking or design like strategy or ideation, or they're helping them in a conflict situation. They're helping them navigate from point A to B to C through a series of maybe activities or exercises. The facilitator that is not a content matter expert. They are content free. So, they are there to hold space. They’re almost like a conductor, and they allow the group, the space and the time to noodle things through, and we often talk about that people will converge first. You come in, there'll be the messy middle. It'll all be like utter chaos, and then it's your job to help them like, come back out the other side and converge onto an idea.

Marli Williams [: 00:37:15

Yeah. I love that distinction. Right? Because, again, it's like sometimes people think that they need to be the content matter expert. And I'm like, I could pretty much facilitate a workshop on pretty much anything. Right? Let's say and I've given this example before. Alright. I want to give a workshop on helping women be more confident. Right? I could go in and say, raise your hand if you want to be more confident. Great. That's what we're going to do today. Purpose is you're going to walk away at least 1% more confident. What is confidence? I might have a thing on the flip chart or everyone's going to get a post it notes. You're going to write, what's confidence? Or I've done that thing where it's, like, write down the name of a person who you look up to, who you think is, like, the most confident person you know. Like, someone in your real life or a famous person. Alright. Well, what about them makes them confident? What are the characteristics? What do you notice? What do you hear? What do you see? Right? I'm pulling.

Marli Williams [: 00:38:14

I'm asking questions because I'm trusting that they've heard this word before. They have their own interpretation or definition of it. You know? And then they might say, well, okay. This is what we want. What gets in the way? What gets in the way of you feeling confident? Self-doubt, judgment, all these things. Right? What do you think would be possible if you had all the confidence in the world? What would you do, who would you be, right? That's an hour. And I think that that is the power of facilitation and the gift of facilitation. And, again, I just think it's an art. It's a skill. It's a science. So, if someone wants to be a better facilitator, they're coming to you because, you know, you have the School of Facilitation. And without going into your, like, entire curriculum, I know that we talked about what makes a great workshop. What do you think makes a great facilitator?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:39:10

The first one that came into my head is mindset and being able to be open and get out of your own way. There is absolutely knowing what makes a great question and being comfortable asking questions, being comfortable listening and silence. I mean, that took me a long while. I'm a classic expert, Marli, so for me to stand in silence, I was like, oh, my God. They don't understand. No. And then I had to also get taught by my introvert friends. Kirsty, we’re thinking or we're feeling. We're processing in here, and every time you open your bloody mouth, it's very noisy. And that was great. So, questions, listening, silence. And also, you won't find a bloody good structure that you can use of an activity or series of activities to help you create those spaces for people to do their thinking. So, we've mentioned Liberating Structures, Hyper Island have some great things. Gamestorming is another good group from Canada that I really rate. We've got Meg's facilitation cards. We've got Pip’s Decks here in the UK.

Marli Williams [: 00:40:26

Yep. Mark Collard has a great model. Sirius Play. He's from Australia, I believe.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:40:32

Is that the same as Lego Serious Play, or is that different again?

Marli Williams [: 00:40:35

Different. His book is called Serious Fun by Mark Collard. Yep. And he has a great structure in there.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:40:40

And so, I just say don't think you've got to try and work something out on your own because there is so much out there already. Please just go and steal with pride is a phrase I've used before. Another tool I would recommend whether you're training or facilitating at SessionLab. So, I don't know if you've spoken about that with your friends before, but SessionLab is an online agenda creating tool, workshop creating tool. Oh my god. It's amazing. And I'll share a link if that's okay with you that you can, if you're, obviously, I'm an affiliate. I'll be really honest straight up, but if that helps people, you can get a free account, but you just create.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:41:20

If you're currently creating your agendas in a spreadsheet and every time someone says, can we make a change here? You've got to go back and work out all the times. If you only get SessionLab for this, you can drag and drop your different sessions and it then automatically shifts the time because you lock your start time, you lock your finish time, and it does all the calculations in between.

Marli Williams [: 00:41:43

That's brilliant. SessionLab. Yep. We'll definitely put that in the show notes for sure.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:41:47

And there's a big library of activities in there that you can go and search.

Marli Williams [: 00:41:53

I love that. Beautiful. Amazing resources. And one of the things that I'll add to your list that I think is, again, one of the ninja skills of facilitation is synthesizing and summarizing and, like, being the connector of the dots. Right? Like, so and so said this and so and so said that and we're here talking about this. And so, here, you know and again, that's why it's a little bit of, like, you are the conductor of this orchestra. And you're really weaving all of these elements together. You're, again, the stakeholders, the vision, the purpose, the engagement, the energy. And you are just, like, playing with that.

Marli Williams [: 00:42:37

And again, I think the more that we do it, the more confident and comfortable we get. And again, at the beginning of learning any new skill, it might feel a little bit clunky. But one of the things that we haven't necessarily said yet today is around, like, what is a facilitator? And one of the things that I always teach when I'm training is that the root word of facilitate is facile which means to make easy.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:43:02

I say exactly the same thing, Marli. Exactly. Oh my God. Word for epic word. I say that. You speak French. It means make easy.

Marli Williams [: 00:43:12

Yeah. And so, you know, you as a facilitator is, like, what are you wanting to make it easier for people to do? What is the process that I'm facilitating? If I weren't here, you know, it might be chaos and there's this disorganization and people aren't feeling heard. So, I'm making it easier for everyone's voice to be heard. I'm making it easier for us to get where we want to go. I'm making it easier for people to connect. Right? So, again, one of the things leading workshops or events and, like, just because people are in the room, it doesn't mean they're going to connect. You have to give them a reason to. And, like, that's, again, the power of a good question, the power of a prompt.

Marli Williams [: 00:43:57

I really, I love good questions and I'm really, I'm playing with sentence stems or kind of a prompt like, something I'm really excited about right now is or my biggest takeaway today was blank. Instead of like what was your biggest takeaway? It's like, I'm going to give you the first 5 words of your sentence and you're just going to fill in the rest. Right? And so, a facilitator is someone who makes an action or process easy or easier. And so, you know, today, I think our goal was to help you all see, like, maybe what are the golden nuggets for you. If you're just at the beginning of your facilitation journey, if you've been doing this for a long time, one of my favorite things about facilitation is I'm always learning something new. I've never heard the POSE framework before. And now I'm like, oh, like, how can I create, you know, maybe my learning edge is, helping people feel more ownership. Or, you know, like, what am I doing to make sure that, you know, the purpose, the ownership, the safety, the engagement piece. Like, again, there's great models. There are great frameworks. We don't have to create this stuff from scratch. And there's amazing, you know, people, books, tools, resources out there, and it's like, use it. Don't make it up.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:45:12

My God. So many resources are out there. Like, I'm a put some in the show notes. Can we like, we can share some of those resources because there's so many good ones. I'm just like, you don't have to spend your days thinking, how am I going to do this? It's already there. You just need to know where to look.

Marli Williams [: 00:45:26

Yeah. That's so true. So, where could people find you, learn more about you, your work in the world?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:45:34

LinkedIn. I'm quite the best on LinkedIn. Kirsty Lewis. Come find me. Come connect. I'd love to meet you. And then schooloffacilitation.com. There are events. We do quite a lot of stuff online. So, again, I would love to tell you what, if your community is more in America and Canada, I'd love to be doing some more work with your lovely peeps who might be listening because I have a big European team, people that we hang out with, but, you know, there's more people in the world. I know. And, like, the fact that you've just gone, oh, I didn't know POSE. I'd love to share more.

Marli Williams [: 00:46:09

Yeah. So many, so many incredible resources. Well, I would love for you to share given our conversation today about what facilitation is, what it's not. What are your final thoughts you would want to leave the audience with today as they go out in the world? They want to lead great workshops. They want to be more powerful, epic facilitators. What's your final thought, hot tip, something that you want to leave them with today?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:46:37

So, I would say, have your first 10 seconds and your first 10 words lined up in your head before you speak. Take a very deep breath, a big smile on your face, and then speak. And then the final bit is really trust yourself because you wouldn't be at the front of the room if the commissioning stakeholder didn't believe in you already.

Marli Williams [: 00:47:02

It's gold. What are your first 10 words when you open a training, do you have them?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:47:08

I don't know, but I always have a big grin on my face. Oh, welcome. It's like, welcome to this workshop. Great to see you here today. What do you say?

Marli Williams [: 00:47:17

That's a great question. It always, yeah. I just feel into the energy. I don't have, like, my first 10 words always, like, figured out until I'm, like, in the moment.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:47:26

Well, not do I really.

Marli Williams [: 00:47:28

But I want you to thank yourself for, if people are choosing to be there, thank you for showing up for you today. You know? And my mission is to, in the next hour, the next hour, if it's an hour-long workshop, or today, has the power to change your life if you're open to it. So, one of the things that I really like to say is like, I'm a stan for transformation. I am a stan for people walking away different than when they came in the room, and I'm holding that energy of people capable and able of making some sort of shift in their energy, in their mindset, in the how they approach the world. And, again, it's not maybe a 180-degree shift, but I use the metaphor of the 1-degree shift of when you leave here, like, what's the smallest change that you can make that's going to make the biggest difference in your life, in your organization?

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:48:23

A one-degree shift, a one step forward is so much easier than 180.

Marli Williams [: 00:48:28

Yeah. One of my favorites, favorite. We'll leave you with, a really, really fun activity that I like to do at the end. I call it the snowball fight. So, if you can imagine people writing down their one action, they're going to take, the 1-degree shift that they're going to do and you get a blank piece of paper. You have them write it down, and then you have them write their name and some way to contact them, up to them. They can put phone number or email.

Marli Williams [: 00:48:57

So, you give them, you know, couple minutes, 2 minutes to maybe write down this one-degree shift. They crumple it up into a snowball. And then you just have, like, this giant snowball fight. And then you walk away with someone else's snowball and your job is to connect with them. And you can give them a time frame. 1 week, 30 days. And you're going to put a timer in your phone from 30 days from now on, you know, Monday, January 18th, da-da-da-da-da, I’m going to message this person and say, did you do the thing? And we’re going to do this collective accountability. And we're so much more likely to do something when we feel like there's someone else holding us accountable. So, we've thought about it. We've written it down. We've said it out loud, and now we have someone to,

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:49:44

permission to steal that, please, and share that with,

Marli Williams [: 00:49:47

share it. Spread the snowball fight.

Kirsty Lewis [: 00:49:49

I love it.

Marli Williams [: 00:49:50

I love giving people on this podcast actionable, like, tools and exercises and things that you could apply right away. So, you can use it. Anyone out there who's listening can use the snowball fight. If you do, let me know how it goes. And, again, we hope that you got the golden nugget that you need to help take your leadership, your speaking, and your facilitation to the next level. Thank you, Kirsty, for joining us today. Thank you everybody out there for listening, and we're sending you lots of love. Until next time. Take care.

Marli Williams [: 00:50:22

Thank you for joining us on another inspiring episode of the Marli Williams podcast. We hope you're leaving here with renewed energy and valuable insights to fuel your leadership, coaching, and speaking endeavors. I'd love to invite you to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast to help us reach more aspiring leaders and speakers like you. We have more exciting episodes and remarkable guests lined up, so make sure to tune in next time. Until then, keep leading with purpose, coaching with heart, and speaking with conviction. This is Marli Williams signing off. See you next week.