Episode 14: Q&A: Share some of the amazing facilitation tricks you’ve seen, Leanne!
This is the first solo episode I’m recording and it’s come in response to some feedback I received from a listener, Aminata N’Doye from Toronto, Canada. She asked me if I could incorporate listener questions periodically. I think it’s great suggestion, it allows variety for the show and typically, we’ll keep these ones short -they won’t run for longer than 15mins.
Hello fellow first time facilitators and welcome to the show this week.
This is the first solo episode I’m recording and it’s come in response to some feedback I received from a listener, Aminata N’Doye from Toronto, Canada. She asked me if I could incorporate listener questions periodically. I think it’s great suggestion, it allows variety for the show and typically, we’ll keep these ones short -they won’t run for longer than 15mins.
From time to time I’ll incorporate these episodes, either as an add-on feature for the week (I’d originally planned to call this Workshop Weds) ; or a standalone episode, depending on the length of my response!
Would you like your question answered on the show?
You can email me: hello@firsttimefacilitator.com
Send me a tweet @leannehughes
Message me your question on Instagram @firsttimefacilitator
Given Aminata had the idea for this segment, I threw it over to her to ask the first question, and her question is this:
“Along the way, you've seen a number of tricks from fantastic facilitators. What were some of the amazing tricks where you thought, "Wow! I need to add this to my facilitation!"?
Listen to the show to find out the facilitator tricks that have stunned me (in a good way)!
Resources mentioned in this episode
The Air-dropped workshop notes from Sean DeSouza's workshop: Andrew Tarvin's Walk/Stop icebreaker or energiser: Create your own game show using Kahoot.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript (Episode 14)
Hello fellow first time facilitators and welcome to the show this week.
This is the first solo episode I’m recording and it’s come in response to some feedback I received from a listener, Aminata N’Doye from Toronto, Canada. She asked if I could incorporate listener questions periodically. I think it’s great suggestion, it allows variety for the show and typically, we’ll keep these ones short -they won’t run for longer than 15mins.
If you have a question you’d like answered, there are a few ways you can submit it:
You can email me: hello@firsttimefacilitator.com
Send me a tweet @leannehughes
Message me your question on Instagram and that’s @ firsttimefacilitator
Given Aminata had the idea for this segment, I threw it over to her to ask the first question, and her question is this:
“Along the way, you've seen a number of tricks from fantastic facilitators. What were some of the amazing tricks where you thought, "Wow! I need to add this to my facilitation!"?
Aminata, thanks for your terrific question. It’s a good one, as it forces me to really reflect back on all those years of sitting in group workshops and taking the best pieces of what they do, into the training room if it resonates with me.
I have put together my six tricks for now. I’m pretty sure I’ll publish this episode and think ‘Ahh!’ I forgot that one time that a facilitator did x, y, z…so we may need a part 2 to this response sometime down the track.
Trick #1: Airdropping notes
The first trick I’ll start with requires a bit of skill and it’s not something I’ve personally used YET… But I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped when this happened in the workshop, in a good way!
I recently attended a three day course on how to write a website landing page. This course was held in Singapore. It was run by a guy called Sean De’Souza. He has a podcast called the ‘Three Month Vacation’, is an internet marketing legend, teacher, author and a cartoonist.
On the first day, we worked as a group to brainstorm benefits and features related to selling a public speaking course.
There were two groups; and after our brain dump, we shared our ideas - a representative from each group spoke through the points. Nothing new, right?
Sean was listening to each point; and questioning any points he wanted clarified further. Again, nothing new.
After the exercise, he asked if we all had iPhones (which, surprisingly, everyone in class did) and then he asked us to turn on our Bluetooth so he could AirDrop an image to us.
It was the coolest drawing of all the points our group had just brainstormed! It was so cool - we immediately had the notes but they were drawn beautifully and a fantastic souvenir of the conversation.
I will link to a couple of these images in the Show Notes for this episode - at firsttimefacilitator.com/episode14.
So, how did he do this? He was using the latest iPad which you can draw on. Plus he’s an amazing artist.
But let’s just say you aren’t a great artist, it’s still something you can do. Your end product may not look as good as Sean’s, however your participants will have real-time access to your workshop notes.
If you’re like me, you may be thinking, well hang on - I can’t listen to what my participants are saying; and draw at the same time!
Well, maybe you can ask your participants to draw notes on the iPad and share them at the end of each topic.
This also double as an engagement strategy; and everyone has access to the notes. To be inclusive though, each participant will need an iPhone for the airdrop feature and if not, you can share via a Dropbox link or email at worst.
Tip #2: Frequent Breaks
My next tip is also from Sean’s Singapore workshop (I think I’ll have to interview him on an upcoming show). That tip is that we took frequent breaks. Now, this is more relevant if you’re in the training mode for a workshop that runs over a few days and really building a new skill with your group. So, as an example the workshop ran from 9am to 4.30pm, we broke at 10.30am for around 40mins; broke at lunch at 12.30 for 75mins and then had 30mins for afternoon tea.
This was a tactic from Sean. He believes it’s important to have a break, let the information seep into your subconscious, and attack the topic after the break with a fresh head.
I hadn’t seen this as a strategy used before and I liked it, it worked. I was not tired at any stage over the three day program, even though everything I learnt was all new. We also developed a really strong bond within our group, because we were interacting so frequently. Frequent breaks people - it’s the new black!
Trick #3: Explain before standing
What’s another trick? Well, on Episode 3 of the podcast, Nikki McMurray shared an awesome tip that I have starting using… the tips is this: When you’re going to break out into an activity and you need to explain what to do; explain it when your participants are sitting down.
Don’t ever say the words ‘Stand up’ and then try to explain what’s going on, because you’ll lose them. The second they stand up, they’ll be checking their phones, off to the toilet, off to grab a second cup of coffee. She said your instructions should go along the lines of ‘In a moment, I’m going to ask you to stand up for an activity…’ THEN you explain how the activity works. If there are any questions, answer them, and then ask them to get into their groups. It’s such a simple, effective hack.
Trick #4: Walk/Stop
Another facilitator I had on Episode 5, our Humour Engineer Andrew Tarvin also runs an excellent icebreaker or energiser if you’re working with a big group of people. I ran this recently for a group of 80 people as part of a leadership day. It also works well for smaller groups.
We did this after lunch. It’s called ‘Walk/Stop’. The instructions are really simple, so I’ll explain them now and also link to Andrew’s video explanation in the show notes.
So you need to be in a room, everyone is standing up; scattered around the room. The rules are - when you, the facilitator says walk, the participants should walk; when you say ‘Stop’, they stop walking.
Do this a few times. It’s pretty simple.
Then explain the rules are changing - now walk means stop; and stop means walk; try that combination a few more times.
The, add the words ‘Name’ and ‘clap’. Name means you yell your name out; clap means you clap. Then reverse the order. So now, Walk means Stop; Stop means Walk; Name means Clap; Clap means Name.
Experiment with those four words and yell out a combination of words.
Then it’s time to add the final two words - ‘Dance’ and Jump; then you reverse all of them. It’s fun, makes everyone move around, listen in closely and laugh. Like I said, I’ve used it before and it works a treat.
Trick #5: Think, pair, share
When I was working for a TAFE in the Northwest of Australia (for those of you who don’t know what TAFE is, it’s vocational education, similar to Community Colleges in the US). One of our principal lecturers, Carol Howe wanted to encourage our first time facilitators to stop presenting material all the time and create more interaction in their workshops.
And this trick is an oldie but a goodie. It’s the very simple ‘Think. Pair. Share’ exercise. It takes little or no energy from you and it creates excellent engagement.
How simple is it? Well, you may present content, either through a story, powerpoint, diagram, video, news article etc. Then you pause, and ask each person on their top takeaways from that information; or what it means for them. You can ask them to write it down if you like. That’s the ‘Think’ part.
Then you ask them to pair up and discuss your thoughts. That’s the ‘Pair’ part.
The ‘Share’ part is bringing it back as a group and discussing.
By using think-pair-share; you’re giving everyone time to reflect on the question and also the confidence to share their responses to the group, as they’ve had a chance to verify their thoughts with their partner.
It’s simple - quick word of warning, don’t user-use it. You don’t want an entire workshop run on the back of think-pair-share, it could get exhausting for everyone!
Trick #6: Game Show
And finally, a colleague of mine, Phil Woods listens in to the show. Last year he wanted to participate in a welcome day I was hosting. The agenda was full. So I issued him a challenge - I said, ‘Phil, if you can create a fun, amazing, engaging activity that helps pass on information, I’ll let you have 30mins.
Phil was up for the challenge and he delivered. He used an online tool called Kahoot to run a game-show type quiz for the group. And they lapped it up.
How it works, is you create your free quiz on their website at kahoot.it. You write questions with 4 multiple responses, similar to the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ type format. There’s a 20 second time limit.
When you play it, you project the Kahoot website on the big screen; and the answer options simultaneously display on their participants phone; they need to select the right answer within 20 seconds.
It’s super fun, gets that inter-group competition happening and is also a great way to test knowledge.
Great stuff Phil - I did steal this idea for a recent workshop, and the participants loved it, so thank you!
—
So Aminata, those are some neat things I’ve seen quite recently that are cool. There’s a variety of simple techniques, and also ones that rely on technology.
So, just to recap they are:
Writing real time notes on an iPad and airdropping it to your participants
Giving time for your participants to reflect and absorb information by having regular breaks
Explaining activity instructions and then asking your participants to stand up and move (not the other way around)
Think, pair, share
A fun icebreaker for large groups called Walk/Stop
Using technology, like kahoot.it to create an interactive, competitive element.
Catch you next time!
Episode 13: A facilitator is an entertainer (even if you think it’s all about the content) with Greg Mitchell
Greg Mitchell is a bit of a superstar in the education world. He does many things - cartooning, MCing, consulting and of course, facilitating. In this episode, we talk about some band-aid fixes you can use when participants threaten to de-rail your workshop, why you need to treat facilitation like entertainment, why unpredictability can also help hook your audience and to notice and realise that facilitation is an emotional job.
Greg Mitchell is a bit of a superstar in the education world. He does many things - cartooning, MCing, consulting and of course, facilitating. In this episode, we talk about some band-aid fixes you can use when participants threaten to de-rail your workshop, why you need to treat facilitation like entertainment, why unpredictability can also help hook your audience and to notice and realise that facilitation is an emotional job.
In this episode, you’ll learn
Why it’s important to snap your participants out of their constant way of thinking
The lowest common denominator for engagement (hint: It’s our favourite topic)
Some incredible, simple activities you can throw-in to a workshop to create variety
What to do when you have a spare 30mins left at the end of your workshop
What he perceives the error of focus is for first time facilitators and how you can direct your energy to create more engagement
Why you need to keep your participants moving (literally!).
Like this show? Please leave me a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally!
Click here to let Leanne know about your number one takeaway from this episode!
About our guest
Greg Mitchell has been engaged with the world of education since he was four years old. Since them, he has been a student, a parent, a teacher, a writer, a cartoonist, an assistance principal, a university lecturer and a consultant. He has worked for both the Catholic and Government education systems and is currently enjoying being self-employed, having finally found a boss that he really likes.
Greg suffers from enthusiasm, a condition which helps him deal happily with issues such as Stress Management, Positive Intelligence, Multiple Intelligences, Boys’ in Education, Conflict Resolution, Resilience, Values Education and Building Collaborative Communities.
Resources
Episode transcript
Click here to view the episode transcript for Episode 13 with Greg Mitchell.
First Time Facilitator podcast transcript with Greg Mitchell (Episode 13)
This is the show transcript for Episode 13 of the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Leanne : Our guest today suffers from the same affliction that I do and that's enthusiasm. This is a condition which helps him deal happily with issues such as stress management, positive intelligence, conflict resolution, resilience among many others. He's worked with organizations at all levels and is adept at creating entertaining workshops that are practical for people working in high-stress situations. He's enjoying being self-employed having finally found a boss that he really likes, lucky you, Greg. Welcome to the show, Greg Mitchell.
Greg Mitchell: Thank you for having me. It's a joy to be here honestly.
Leanne : It's good to reconnect.
Greg: It's lovely.
Leanne : Yes. You've held many roles from Auto picker and toaster salesman through to cartoonist and education consultant. How did you end up working in the world of training and facilitation?
Greg: This is actually about the 18th year of my 3-month trial of working for myself. I've been in the gig economy a long time. I used to be a consultant for Catholic ed. I looked after science for about 250 schools all over Western Australia. That got me into the training mode where I was working with teachers and also administrators and teacher assistants. Also demonstrating stuff with kids. Even now, I still do work where I hop into a classroom of kindergarten kids. I've got my own theory on child development with a whole range of stuff which ends up in a mindset called the benefit or the global mindset with kids. It's very practical hands-on doing stuff like that.
What organizations are like, politics got the best of me. I had a three-month break for a long service leave. Basically, I said well I wonder if I could earn enough money to keep me going just by being an end consultant. The point of difference always is it's entertaining, it's engaging but you come away learning stuff at the end because I'm still a teacher. I force people to learn in the nicest possible way. You won't learn my workshop unless you've told me what you've learned on the way out, or been engaged with it and things like that. Also, I would do what I said I would do if you gave me your students or your kids or your admin team. I would show you how to do it because I've been around a while.
I started that. Now 18 years later, I still haven't got a plan. The plan is always let's get the next job. I've been doing that for ages at the moment. I'm writing a book. That will give me at least 10 years working organizations and schools on basically behavior management, how to get the best out of the most difficult groups. I'm just writing a book called the Behavior Ambulance for Emergencies. It's got sections on band-aid stitches, operations and defibrillate. I can't even say the word, defibrillating--
Leanne : Defibrillator.
Greg: Yes, including my favorite one is CPPR which is for your crazy, paranoid, psycho, resuscitation. Most people under stress have two voices. You have one really logical voice which tells you what the job is and what I'm going to do next and I can parrot those, but in the background there's this crazy, paranoid, psycho voice who's telling you I'm no good at this, this is stupid, they read politics where there's no politics.
They see problems where there are no problems. It's why 80% of their kids are suffering from anxiety and 40% have got depression. We've never learned how to resuscitate, how to just trying how to do simple stuff like breathe and question whether it's actually real or you can do something about it. It's amazing how just teaching those simple skills to teams and groups of people totally changes the way they do stuff.
I just suffer from enthusiasm. I do all sorts of things like conferences to talking to four-year-old kids. If anybody rings up and says will you craft a message for me, I'll even draw it. I've just got good at doing.
Leanne : Anything you're asked to do.
Greg: You name it. I've done everything from community meetings in large amount with the police constable writing the decisions on the board and taking photos so it's evidence, to corporate boardrooms and stuff like that. I'm not so good at corporate. I tend to be honest and I don't think money ever comes first which is often a problem. Most of the time, I'm just amazed of what will come through the door, on the phone, or from an email. I'd hate to tell you how many new ideas I've got at the head at the moment.
Leanne : That's true. I'd heard about you through recommendation, through someone else, through the TAFE Network. It's all really word-of-mouth. When people, this is a few years ago, were introducing hey Greg is a really great guy. I should take him up to run training for your trades staff because you are entertaining and you can relate to those guys.
Greg: Yes. The interesting thing is because I've had a really diverse background. I come from a really stuffed-up family. When you tell people your parents couldn't look after you from when you were two or all of those sort of things. It's not the typical teaching background. You name it, I've failed at it. I've got a degree in complete failure in everything. I'm dyslexic.
I'm lousy at all sorts of stuff, but I'm persistently positive. I just keep going. I got a degree in education and a post-degree in education being dyslexic. I even managed to win the Literature Prize for the University along the way and I still can't spell. I've never written one sentence that hasn't needed fixing. It takes me four times longer to read than anybody else.
All I do is just think well if I was you sitting there in that workshop, what would I want? How many people have walked out of a workshop thinking I've had bowel movements which are more entertaining than this. I can't even remember what they've ever learned or didn't know how this was going to happen. I see people in meetings constantly who sit there going, "Oh yes terrific, great, walk out, what did you learn?" Nothing. Basically, when I met you, it was through most of my work is wrapped around instructional intelligence.
What do you do to make people learn? It's as simple as that. Because I've had so many learning difficulties, I really understand what it is that when you're working particularly with tough kids and particularly in remote situations and stuff like that, what do you do to get it across? And of each, mining would be exactly the same. These guys have been trained up their wazoo, but none of it sticks. I do that because they've got to tick a box to say I've done that. Now I can go on start but my job is to go make.
I'm going to make you laugh, make you cry. I'm going to change your life. Guess what when you walk out, you're going to know this stuff. If you don't, we're going to have to stay back until you do. I'll do it in the nicest possible way. I make them cheat, ask other people, copy, whatever. I hate it but they come back to you years later and go, I remember you. You taught me these five steps, or you did this to me or you did that to me. You threw a bloody flying monkey at me and made me answer a question. Sure did loved it. I bet you loved it too. I hated it at the time, but it's that sort of stuff.
Leanne : Let's talk about that. I think that is your point of difference is you'll be memorable because he comes across as an entertainer. Is that something that you had to hone over a few years or has that always been the way that Greg's always been? He's always been a guy at a party or in a team?
Greg: No, I don't go to parties, I suffer from enthusiasm. I don't drink, I don't use drugs. I don't even drink coffee. I've got cultural ADHD. The problem is I'm basically a quiet person, but I think that most people really like to engage with the world. It's kind of funny how many people these days are sort of like thought leaders in Australia like stand up comedians. It's because humor breaks people. If you want people to learn, you've got to get them out of their constant way of thinking. When, for example, I work a lot with year 10 to 12 students. Now, year 10 students should be just given a gap year.
They shouldn't be at school for a year. Just go away, find out what the world's like, they know it all. They've already divorced their parents, they know everything they want to learn. But their trouble is that they never pay attention because everybody hates teaching. It's just let's get Scott through the motions. You've got to do this princess, move on. Whereas my point is, if they're not learning anything. Let's have fun teaching them something. Any audience you've got, you've got to wake them up. You've got to get them to pay attention. The easiest way to pay attention I get is dropping something that they're not expecting.
Like humor. I walk into year 10's and 12's, so our tough audience. Never want to pay attention. They've seen every speaker, they're bored out of their brain, why are we doing this is? There's usually no context except this guy's here to tell you how to get through this year. I got them for 50 minutes. You're going, what do I do? Well, first I've got to get their attention. I tell them the story that whenever you turn up in Australia, you can tell how good someone's going to be at learning by whether they smile at you or not.
I show them how I walk in and smile at people and I cracked this really sick smile that I've got. As I look at people and see if they smile back. The great people always smile back. They always go, Oh, good day, how are you? Even kids do that. Great kids do that. There are some people who just go, avoid your eyes and sigh or walking. Big Men do it. They stretch faster and make you try to feel like he's scary. I have to watch out for him. I'll just know that I'm not the big dog here.
I do this in schools all over the place. I can just about tell kids how they're going to succeed this year by how well they smile. They look at me and go, I just give them an example and go, "I walked into a year 10 class once, year 10 girls admittedly. I walked in, I smile at this girl beautifully. I'm all dressed up, got my suit on, got my tie on. She doesn't even look at me. She just turns to the girl next to her and goes. He's got pink on his tie. Must be gay.
I thought, "Gee, she's got a big mess, she must be a bitch." And suddenly, every kid in the room's listening to me. Kids are really impressed by bad role models. If you put somebody at the front who says everything nice and sweet and nice, drop in that little story. Every kid at the time, they're already listening at you. Gee, he swore, oh my God. Stand up if you've ever used that word and every kid stands up. Yes, point made.
The difference is is that they're entertained. They're engaged but I don't stop and go, "Oh, I just said a rude word, it was no funny joke." I just keep talking. That means oh, they're awake and they're listening, then I use visuals. In all of my presentations, I've got big visuals involved, big photos, everything like that, and they're stunning photos. I don't put a photo in unless it's great. Then I make a move. I do things like my job is to make you awesome. Just have a look at the person next to you to see if they're awesome.
Pat him on the back, say it's good to see you today. Shake hands, welcome them to the show. Suddenly, they're moving and instead of doing hands up, if you ever have because hands up so. Stand up if you've ever done this, stand up if-- So now they're physically engaged with it. I can tell you 10 minutes in, they are in a different world. The humor is there, but it's not just there for the humor's sake. You need a hook, you need something when you come in to say to any audience who you are, this is who I am.
I'm not eye candy or anything like that. I'm in my extreme 30's, 66 this year, but no chance of retirement. I got 30 years more work to do easy. Imagine how awesome I'm going to be at this when I'm 95. The key with it is that it doesn't matter what you look like or who you are, it's about the message. The message when I start I've got a pretty good understand of what my KUDOs is. KUDOS, Know, Understand, DO, what I want them to know, understand and do is my KUDOs. It's what gives me meaning and will get me that accolade at the end.
If I know what I want them to know, understand and do at the beginning. My point is I use a lot of fun structures around that. Good visuals, nice connections to what I'm working on. Not a lot of words because I'm dyslexic. Other words, you won't ever get me reading off what's on the screen, because most of the time, I can't read it in the time allotted anyway, but I'll pop it up there. I'll have the picture up there. I can talk from the photo. What I'm looking at is any time I see those eyes switch off, I've got to re-engage. That means physicality so either it's time to move them.
You will know in my workshops, I'm moving people all the time. Boys hide it because men like territory. The two biggest drives, sex and territory. When you get to my age, it's been shit. What they do is you've got to move their bodies. You've got to go, "Okay, stand up and find a new partner. Stand up if you know the answer to this question. Stand up if this has ever happened to you. Stand up. If that's ever happened to you."
Stand up if you've ever gone to your bedroom and slammed the door. Those sorts of questions where you getting them emotionally engaged. But also physically engaged with them. Go and find a partner, tell them this. I'm always going, even if I'm looking at them and I've put a lot of talking, and it's fairly technical or it's got a lot of work in it, then I'll go, oh, they're all just standing. Yes, I'm losing them.
Turn to your partner and tell them what you learned out of that. Then I pick on one of them. You're going. I always pick on the worst ones first. What happens is when you get hands up, you get all the smart ones, the genetic celebrities take over and the other people just back off. In so many cultures, people don't talk out because it's culturally not right. Quite often, I'll be picking on the granny or the artie who I know knows everything, but wouldn't put himself forward.
But because I've asked her, we get out of the shy effect there and that sort of stuff. Then they'll go, "Oh yes, I know this." Because I know they're wise, and I know they've learned it I want to engage them as a thought leader in years. By doing that, they've shared with someone else. Even if they don't know the answer. I go, "I don't know." I celebrate when someone says, I don't know. They just made those steps unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent. Yes, a bit of pain, excellent. Who you're going to find out from.
Find out from someone else because I see this as a collaborative effort that everybody's engaged in learning here, not just the presenter or the facilitator. What I'm trying to do is just to develop that skill of if I'm losing them, how do I engage them. You've got a myriad of things these days to do it. You've got stories, you've got video clips these days, it's just grand because you can just drop in a two-second video of anything awesome that you want.
I got a file of probably 350 clips, but all they are is just somebody sends me something good. I just save it. What was this week's? What's the guy's name? The guy has done the thing on secrets where he asked people, he sent them a postcard and send me a secret that nobody else knows about you. Frank-- Forgot the last name, but he's got all these little postcards.
What I've done, and they're great. There's one of a Starbucks cup, half a Starbucks cup flattened out and written on it is if people are rude to me, I give them decaf. There's one of 20 famous men on this. That's why this is-- One of these people is the father of my child and he pays me a lot of money to be quiet. You got, "They're just brilliant." There was one other side of it was everyone who knew me before September 11 thinks that I'm dead.
They're the sort of things that you can slip into a presentation. I just scan them up and they're just in the pile. If I'm thinking about telling a secret or getting so the secret is try those secrets. You can slip that into almost anything. All it is is one slide, that's all you need, but if you say I got a stack of these. They're going to come later in your presentation.
There's your signal to wake up and really be involved. I muck around a lot. The key thing is inside of there, there could be a training package. I'm still a teacher. I know what I want them to know, understand and do. These things just fit around the outside. If you want me to talk about assertiveness to my notes, there will be strategies that I have, but in the gaps in between like, you've got to figure out how much can they assimilate quickly.
They're going to forget 80% of what they read so keep the reading to a minimum. They're going to forget 90% of what you say unless they have to process that to somebody else. That's why the turn to your partner and-- is really important. I could call it TTYPA because I just use it too often, but TTYPA and shake their hand. Find out if they got a pulse, ask them if they'll marry you.
The other side is just turn to your partner and tell them the five steps that I just went through. Then they can get recap. Those little structures, you can use again and again and again to break up the big chunks, whilst most people remember the fun, there's a point that I'm trying to teach. I'm pretty darn serious about that too. I tell jokes and loosen them up a bit, I also hit really big points about life. It's about how to stay married forever and still be in love.
Leanne : It's beautiful.
Greg: I've been married for 43 years to a beautiful woman. I still love her with all my heart. Kate is the superstar. She works with Anglicare with the people at high risk. She knows everything that I don't know.
Leanne : That's nice and complementary. The title of your book is really impressive, The Behavior Ambulance. Do clients come to you? I'm talking more about adult learners now. Do they come to you and go we've got a situation now where we need more resilient leaders or we've got really disruptive behaviors at the office. They come to you, not for prevention but it's mainly to come for a cure for this behavior ambulance. Is this why you've created this book?
Greg: There's two elements before it, it's really weird. I've been looking around in Australia. I work with a group in Geelong who do a lot of professional development for schools and teachers. They do conferences. They do about six conferences a year. I get to entertainingly and see them and do workshops. I usually fill in the gaps in the conference. They'll say we've got good speakers on this. Is there a gap that you can see and I fill that in. I go off and break my brain and come up with something good. I say that there were not missing stuff. They end up with beautiful conferences out of them, often quite boutique sometimes only about a hundred or so people up to 500 or thousand.
This year, they decided to do something on behavior management. They've always wanted to do a behavior management conference. They've never had the right people in the right place to do it. We went out looking for a guru. There's usually going to be a guru. You need a keynote speaker in which to do it, who's talking about how to get the best out of people.
It wouldn't matter what level it was on, whether it was on the corporate hype. How to get your school functioning well so they can deal with difficult kids, or that sort of stuff or whether it was just the practice of dealing with difficult kids and what can they do, couldn't find anybody. There were academics doing stuff, but they weren't talking at the practical level. There were people who had written books on this, but they hadn't worked with schools for the last however many years.
I said to them, somebody ought to write a book about this because it's really important. When you start doing that-- I do do workshops on working with difficult kids. I do do workshops on middle leadership and I how to get the best which we were talking about before the podcast. Somebody's got to write a book on this and somebody's got to do a good thing so I started writing this book, and I came up with my formula of it called the behavior agenda which was really big.
I started doing workshops with schools in the little bit of spare time I have when I'm away. If I was in Melbourne, I might do a two-hour one with the school who wanted to work with me after I done a workshop that day or that sort of stuff. I said what do you want me to work on? Most of them said we wanted behavior management, have you got anything on behavior management?
When you've only got an hour or two hours with the school, you can't go through the whole freaking behavior agenda, it's boring. It's not boring, but it's not what teachers want. Beginning of this year, I do a conference for beginning teachers. I tested a thing with my beginning teacher daughter called 10 strategies in 15 minutes where I just stood up and went, "Here's 10 things that I know work."
Bonnie, my daughter, helped me. It was a freaking success. The kids were raving about it. No real, this is the theory behind it and this is why it works. This is just the strategies. Then I said to a couple of schools, "We've got two hours, would you like to--" I got 10 strategies in half an hour. You can get 20 strategies or 30 strategies in an hour. I went yes, I would love that. I did it and in both cases, the two of the cases were really difficult ethnic schools.
They were just raving for it so I thought I'm writing this book, it's got all the good stuff, all the theory and stuff like that. I should make it more accessible for teachers. We ended up with the Behavior Ambulance. The Behavior Ambulance has got strategies basically and it's written in a different way. I love doing different stuff. You know how you got two pages left-hand, right-hand page, nobody reads the left-hand page usually.
They usually read the right-hand page because when you look at it, that's the one that's facing you. What I've done is that I've written it two sides. On one side, it's the words, like this is explaining it, but when you turn the left page around, this has got the activity like in basically PowerPoint slides, but not like normal PowerPoint slides. It's got not photos, but they're graphics, they're easy, they're infographics of that strategy so you could read it in two minutes. That's sort of stuff, so you read the book two different ways and then somebody said what about parents?
Now I've tacked a bit on the backlight, the LD catalog. If you turn the book upside down and write the front, there's just 10 strategies on the back for parents. It covers all bases and it's got things in it like band-aids, stuff that you can do just to stop the bleeding, stitches to stitch up the gaping wounds but they involve a bit of pain and a bit of time in healing. Then operations which are really quite simple strategies, but if you really look at them, they would solve a lot of problems but they're a big operation which involves more than just you.
Simple things like the good feedback we were talking about earlier, really should become a whole school or a whole business strategy that everybody learns how to do. You could do it with a bunch of friends, but it would be better if the whole operation was working with it. There's the defibrillation, can't say the word, but the defib thing that they stick on your heart for when there's a crisis. When someone's losing it. How do you handle it, what do you do. Having simple things like having a place where you can go and sit is really important. If you've got people who lose it, you need to have thought in advance of where can they go and sit.
How do you talk about them, what do you physically do particularly if it's in an office or a group of people, and how you don't move away from them, you move towards them not to confront them, but so that you could guide them to that quiet place and deal with it quietly instead of it involving everybody else in the organization and give them a chance to save face. It's really practical stuff like that. The written bit gives me a chance to tell jokes and write stories.
Leanne : Taking every opportunity to weave those jokes in. I'm thinking about listeners who are first-time facilitators. They'd probably be curious in hearing one or maybe two of your band-aid solutions that you have. I think the fear that most people have facilitating isn't in delivering the content or being engaging, it's what do I do if someone in the room isn't engaging or gives me, throws me response that throws the whole room into disarray. It's like one thing that can happen in a workshop that can derail it. There's one little strategy that we can use, that'll be great.
Greg: The turn to your partner and-- is a brilliant strategy. Turn to your partner and what would you do with this problem is great. The no hands up is brilliant, don't have hands up, get people to stand up, ask a question if they don't know it, get a cheat and teach the same thing works. If somebody doesn't know an answer, they're allowed to cheat. You ask the person next to you. If they don't know the answer, they ask the person next to them, but the key with that is they've all got to say it on the chain on the way back.
If one kid goes, Oh Chinese whiskers which is wrong on so many levels, but it's like talk it back, talk it back, talk it back. This person gets three or four different chances at it. Those little things can make a huge difference. The best one that I've ever used though full stop and it's so simple is if you think you're losing a group, just get them to turn to each other.
Put them in pairs, just quickly put them in pairs, you two you two, you two.
Figure out who's going to go first, who's not. Give them 30 seconds, person who's first tells the other person a story of their life in 30 seconds. You don't want to tell them the whole story of your life, you don't need. I was born on the 13th of December 1952 in paren Road Glen Huntly. It's the Star of Bethlehem Hospital, it's on the right-hand side of the railroad. [unintelligible 00:35:54] Mom was in the third bed on the left, dad was drunk. No, you don't need all that stuff, just the biggest chunk. The big chunks in it. You only got 30 seconds, but then you train them to listen so you got to look at the other person.
Don't speak, keep your hand still and remember what was said because I might just pick on you. Then you finished the first one, stop it and say that was pretty interesting, anybody learn anything from each other? Yes, that's good. Okay, swap out the other way, do that and then do things like tell me something about your partner. They say things like oh, typical one, about 200 people in the room.
Tell me about your partners. They've been working together for 20 years. Tell me about your partner, her name's Maria. She was born in Malta, she's got four sisters. Who knew that Maria was born in Malta and about four people, five people put up their hand. Maria, how long you been working with this team? She went 20 years. And I went, What happens? We get so busy doing the busyness, we forget the business. The business is always people.
After you've done that, you bring them, turn back they're with you. Now you've changed the whole dynamic. The whole thing takes five minutes maximum. If I've got a group who's not engaged or when guys are sitting there with their arms folded and they're listening tack are pointed towards you. The how men man spread that, but get them to go and find somebody else and tell them the story of your life, five minutes, they're back with you.
Then you've got something to relate with. This will relate with you or that'll relate with you. Totally changes the dynamic in the room particularly if you move them to find a partner and it puts you back in charge, but you haven't added any content. All you've added is that we're acknowledging everybody in the room. Then you can get back on with what you're doing very simply because we're building a team.
The biggest thing I find with most beginning facilitators is they've got content and they've got a delivery system. The delivery system usually is technology these days, it's going to be variations on PowerPoint, Prezi, whatever thing that you've got. They've got their message, how they're going to deliver it. It's always word based. It's always talking, that sort of stuff, but what they don't realize is that if you sit there and listen to me, you don't learn.
You've got to engage people in it. If they're not engaged, get them engaged in the lowest common denominator which is themselves. What you really want to do is be telling these people the story of your life one-on-one with them. That's what you're saying, this will affect your lives. Now you've owned your life, now you're part of this. I want to be part of your life, I'm going to work it through. The reason why that simple little strategy, that think-pair-share works and it's great band-aid.
It stitches up a whole lot of bleed in any most organizations. We don't do anywhere near as much work as we need to on creating teams and groups of people who have got the third mindset. Most people know about the first and the second mindset, but not the third one. The first mindset is the fixed mindset. I know what I know. Seeing two-thirds of men think they're the smartest person in the room, that's a problem and two-thirds of women know that they're smarter, but are too scared to say it. I want women to be braver. I want men to be vulnerable. Both of them have got to get out of fixed mindset switch, lock them into false beliefs about their capabilities.
The second mindset is the growth mindsets. That's the Carol Dweck one. It's been all over the place. Everybody knows about it that if you overpraise kids, they end up in the fixed mindset because they're either praise junkies. Tell me I'm good, tell me I'm good or else they praise cynics.
Leanne : Because I get it all the time.
Greg: Yes. I'm being manipulated here, I hate it. The third mindset actually comes from a guy called Ash Buchanan from Melbourne who's a designer. He found that they were designing these brilliant open space offices for teams to work in because there's so much pressure on so many organizations to work as teams but they don't know how to do it. They know it in the sense that they've got open spaces because they've seen Google do it.
They've seen Facebook, they've seen Amazon, they've all got open spaces and that should fix up the team bit, no. They're going to learn how to work in that open space. He started using the growth mindset to say to them well if you're in this space, you've got to grow into this space and it's not your area.
This is our area. Then he realized that it wasn't the growth mindset, it was actually another level which was called the benefit mindset. All he did was basically put it on one slide, all right. Then people kept saying, that's really important. Then he started doing benefit mindset strategies. He's got one for the next three weeks in this organization, you've got to do a random act of kindness every day for one other person.
It's weird because for the first week, they do what they're good at, but they're not allowed to repeat it after they've used it. They've got to do a different one each day. By the third week, it's getting really creative. People are starting to plot how they're going to do something totally different which is going to blow somebody else away. The whole place transforms because they get this global mindset.
We teach kids how to share a part. We give them one thing and break it in half and say that's your half and that's my half and sometimes I got the bigger half and you got the smaller half and that sort of stuff, but that doesn't teach sharing. I'd like to get something out of that. What we're sharing is here's my chocolate bar, here's your chocolate bar. We're going to put it together and we're going to make this awesome chocolate bar for everybody else because we live in a world and we keep taking, taking, taking instead of putting, putting, putting.
If we give, most of the problems that you've got in your organization require somebody to give something up, so that the problem will be solved. That's the global mindset. Shall we teach that? That's the benefit mindset. Most of the stuff I do is just looking at how can I get towards that fixed mindset. In fact, I've got a whole bunch of that's the stuff that I do with the four-year-olds, so I can predict kid's academic success at four years old based upon how well they share. I can show it to you with kids and one pencil and a piece of paper.
Leanne : It's incredible.
Greg: Yes. All it needs is between two kids, this is another band-aid, great band-aid, simple band-aid, two on a crayon. You want people to learn something. I've just taught you this I want you to write it down. Get one piece of paper between the two of you, one pen between the two of you. When I say go, start writing down what the five steps were. One person picks it up, then start, they'll start doing, you got to change give it to the other person. Change, give it to the other person so that they got to take turns to do it. They've got to tell each other what they know and work it together.
Leanne : I can see that working really well.
Greg: Suddenly they're flying, they're absolutely flying. And you go, "What's going on?" I use it with kids for telling a story. I even do two on an Elvis impression at some really good conferences, but just those simple little band-aids in a workshop that's struggling, changes everything. You don't need more content, you've got content coming out of everywhere. You don't need better presentation stuff. How can you get much better than a video screen and things that move on there? You need strategies that teach people the global mindset, that we're all in this together. It's not about whether you know, it's about whether we can do it. That's the big point. Those are the things that really works.
Leanne : You got hundreds of strategies.
Greg: I got thousands of them. It comes to the point where I've got to stop. I'm going to have to put in a book. We'll get it printed. The trouble is that I've stolen it from everywhere so anytime I see something good, I knock it off and it kind of becomes mine, but I can never remember where I got it from in the first place. I've got some because great learners always add to what's going on. If you give them a good idea, your learners should take it and improve on it.
Leanne : Yes. Absolutely. I do the same as well. Whenever there's something that's really engaging or fun, I kind of steal it and then I've got this bucket of things that I can rely on as well, not as big as the bucket that you must have.
Greg: That's only because I'm older so what happens is that you put those in. You don't really remember that you know this until you're under pressure, until you're thinking, oh god this isn't working. Oh, yes, I remember I've got that. Simple ones. You've told them everything, they're tired, it's getting towards the end of the workshop but you still got half an hour to go. You're thinking, oh god what am I going to do?
Get a piece of paper, fold it into eight squares. I've got the Greg Mitchell fast food paper folding method which takes an A4 paper folding into a hot dog fold, you'll figure it out and they get it in half and then fold it into a hamburger bun that gets into the half again, fold it into a hash brown, that gets in half again. Unwrap it, you've got eight rectangles on it.
Now, I want you to get eight different people in the room and find out a different thing from each one of them that they learned today, but you're not allowed to write on your piece of paper.
Write your name in big letters on the back and you give it to them, they write on yours, you write on theirs, swap it over, swap it over, swap it over until you've got eight. But every time you write on someone else's, make sure you leave your name on there so they know who they got it from. They go and do that and you try and make it quick like six minutes that's it, go and do it nice and quick, they sit down. Now they've got a summary of the day and you pick on someone. Tell me one thing you learned today. I got this from--
Leanne : Yes, rather than having gone around--
Greg: Whoever they said, it goes to that person.
Leanne : That's cool.
Greg: And then that passes around the corner, it was called popcorn. There's stuff that you pull out of your butt from who knows where, but when you do it, you go, okay that is so cool.
Leanne : Yes. That is so cool.
Greg: They're the sort of things that you can do in meetings and in groups and in facilitations which just make it fun, and also give them for kids. I say fold it up, now put that into your pocket when you go home and mom says what did you learn today, take it out, open it up and say these are the eight things I learned, you get teams that you with that.
Leanne : That's a really good embedding strategy, but I also liked your analogy of just folding the paper and the fast-food because most people say fold it in half, fold it in half again.
Greg: Folding paper is one of God's [unintelligible 00:50:47] to spiritual development, there are some people who just can't do it. Put it in fast-food terms. Everybody knows the food [crosstalk] fast food
Leanne : We do, unfortunately.
Greg: If you want to get down to 16, you can get in into fish fingers, and then if you want to get to 32, you can get a french fries, that's pretty cool to.
Leanne : Yes, that's cool, it just works.
Greg: You can get chicken packets and sausage rolls in there if you wanted to.
Leanne : Or meat pies.
Greg: They all depends on how you fold.
Leanne : Yes. Greg if you had to only give one piece of advice to a first-time facilitator, we've gone through many different strategies and ideas in this interview, but what would be the one piece of advice that you would offer to someone starting out?
Greg: Have fun, have fun. There's nothing so serious that you can't smile and enjoy yourself. If you're not enjoying yourself, they're not enjoying themselves. I usually start out looking fairly seriously, but I don't want to do a job that's serious all the time. Even the toughest groups that I've worked with and I've worked with St. John's ambos, emergency nurses, whole stack of other things.
They've got the best gallows humor in the world because they need that stuff. Prison officers, all of those things. They've all got a sense of gallows humor, they've all got that stuff that loosens up the load and just find ways to have little bits of whimsy in it. You don't have to be a stand-up comic. You don't have to make it all serious though. You've got to just figure out how can I show them that I'm actually enjoying this. When you're a first up presenter, one, you always doubt whether you know enough, or two you think you know a lot. The truth is somewhere in between. You probably know a lot because you're a facilitator because you know this stuff and you want to do it, but you don't know at all.
You've got to know your limits and what do you work on and that sort of stuff. The whole thing is with it is don't let the serious takes over too much because that's where the crazy, paranoid, psycho lives who will tell you constantly, "I didn't get that point covered." Because the other main point I was seeing is that they don't know whoever you're delivering, doesn't know what you don't deliver.
You can be driving home and I always do, because I'm driving, oh, I could have done-- Gee, I wished I had a-- They don't know what I haven't taught them. The other one that I would say is know that it's an emotional job. When you finish, beware in the hour or two afterwards, you will feel bad at some stage. I don't care how awesome that presentation was or how fabulously successful you are, there's usually a sugar dip in your physicality somewhere in the next hour or two.
Leanne : Really? So that's what happens to you?
Greg: Yes, I've been driving home. I've been flying back from the most successful conferences ever where I've got bookings and pats on the back and all of this sort of stuff and I'll be on the plane thinking oh God I wish I was dead. Then I go, let's just eat some.
Leanne : Yes, because it is exhausting.
Greg: Just drink some water, not alcohol. Alcohol doesn't help, although you live in the land of catered lunches when you do this job, but [unintelligible 00:55:19] always wants to give you grog, but just relax yourself all of those things, but know that it takes its emotional toll. I know a lot of people who are burnt out and have had brilliant ideas are much smarter than me and much more talented than I am but who get caught by the voices in their head after a while because they think they're failing when really it's just that physical toll.
Look after yourself, be physically fit but be aware that it's an emotional rollercoaster. If you get highs, you're going to get lows. Be aware of that, and remember that I love you, that's the other thing. There's always someone else who cares for you.
Leanne : There is, yes. That's brilliant advice. We could talk all day, Greg.
Greg: I too. I suffer from enthusiasm, I warned you, this could go for days and days.
Leanne : It's bad when you got someone else that's enthusiastic. It's like, I just want to go more and more.
Greg: Yes, there's always another idea, I'm always thinking about-- Oh there you go, there's the phone. I'm always talking about great things to work on. I'll ignore that one. I can't turn that one off.
Leanne : That's all right. Finally Greg, where can people find you if they want to connect with you or find out more about what you do?
Greg: Simple, just go on the email. I'll give you the email which is mitch@space.net.au. This answering machine.
Leanne : It's all happening at the Mitchell residence.
Greg: Yes, mitch@space.net.au. That email comes through to the business here, and usually, it'll be Kate who follows it up. Kate knows who I am when I don't know where I am and she's really good at making that work, but there's a whole ton of stuff that I'd love to talk with and work with. Many for this audience, it's the instructional intelligence stuff that most people are after. I'm happy to share that with anybody anytime, that's the global mindset. What I've got is yours. I don't have copyright, there won't be copyright on any of my books or anything like that, just simply because I've stolen it from someone else who knows about it too. That's what we do.
Leanne : That's what we do. It's a sharing economy now. That's right. Thank you so much for everything that you've spoken about today and for being so open as well. I can see exactly why your workshops are so entertaining. I've had a really entertaining conversation with you. I'm excited about listening to it again. I've taken notes personally about everything that you've said because those are things that I can put straight into my back pocket for the next time. I deliver a workshop. Thank you so much for your time.
Greg: Terrific, thank you, you have a great day and stay wonderful. I hope we keep in touch. We'll see if we can keep more good things coming.
Leanne : Perfect, thanks, Greg.
Greg: Thank you.
[00:58:38] [END OF AUDIO]
Episode 12: The two hats: Switching your mode between facilitating and presenting with Paul Hellman
On Episode 12 of the First Time Facilitator podcast, I interview Paul Hellman from Express Potential about his secrets for communication in a distracted world.Paul believes presenters only have 8 seconds to grab their audience’s attention.
On Episode 12 of the First Time Facilitator podcast, I interview Paul Hellman from Express Potential about his secrets for communication in a distracted world.Paul believes presenters only have 8 seconds to grab their audience’s attention.
In this show you’ll learn
How you can break through to ensure your message is heard (even in a distracted world)
How he likens facilitation to conducting a job interview
The great advice he received when he started leading workshops about wearing two hats (and why it's dangerous if you mix them up)
Why you need to use stories and analogies in your workshops to add more colour (even if you're just presenting facts)
How to create a stronger, more confident presence (even though most of us think that presence is a mythical beast)
How he has personally developed his communication skills (and how you can do it too
Why there is a performance element in every interaction, including email and why warm-ups help to create a positive mood.
Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider using your Twitter handle so I can thank you personally.
About our guest
Paul Hellman consults and speaks internationally. He has advised thousands of executives and professionals during his career. Companies hire Paul to get faster results from presentations, meetings, emails. His latest book is You've got 8 Seconds: Communication Secrets for a Distracted World. His columns have appeared in leading newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Resources
Episode 10: Keeping workshop content fresh after 25 years (and how I was inspired by a flamenco dancing facilitator) with Scott Amy
In Episode 10 of the First Time Facilitator podcast, Scott Amy from the Pacific Institute shares his secrets on Socratic facilitation and how he was inspired by a faciltator who incorporated flamenco dancing in his workshop.
In Episode 10 of the First Time Facilitator podcast, Scott Amy from the Pacific Institute shares his secrets on Socratic facilitation and how he was inspired by a faciltator who incorporated flamenco dancing in his workshop.
In this episode you’ll learn
Why seeing a strong facilitator (who used a style of flamenco dancing in his workshops) inspired Scott to leave the Defence force
How he’s run the same workshop for 25 years and how he keeps it energised/content fresh
How facilitators need confidence in themselves, ability to grow, desire to grow the org their working with; and their ability to engage people
What Socratic facilitation is all about and how it can help you discover the truth for your participants
Three great questions you can use to implement Socractic facilitation in your next workshop
About our guest
Scott Amy, Manager Client Services with The Pacific Institute has worked extensively in training, facilitating, coaching and project design with clients in many countries around the world, including Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia.Working with The Pacific Institute since 1994, he has been involved in many project roles with clients from a very broad cross section of industry, education and community. Working with leadership and executive management levels through to front line operations staff, professional educators, students and community development resources, has provided him with valuable experience into how people think and behave in situations of change and leadership.With a strong background in training and training design, his skills in communication, allow him to reach all levels of an organisation and teams providing maximum outcomes. Combined with his Socratic approach to facilitation, which encourages participants to find their own solutions by working through options and applying information, Scott is one of The Pacific Institute’s most requested resources.Scott has been a student of leadership, and its effects for many years, and with a Defence Force background in training and education, has used these experiences as a basis for his continuing studies in Effective Leadership.He has played a major role in developing people and organisations with clients such as: Coca Cola, Snowy Hydro Limited, AMP Insurance, Queensland Education Department, Television Corporation of Singapore, Air New Zealand, Fonterra and Rio Tinto
Resources
Video we discussed: Forget big charge, start with a tiny habbit.View the First Time Facilitator episode 10 transcript.
Episode 8: Storytelling works! (Because no one's ever asked to see a Powerpoint presentation twice)
In this First Time Facilitator episode, internationally bestselling author Matthew Dicks shares why storytelling so important, and how telling stories is not simply sharing a series of events; it’s the manipulation of emotions.
In this First Time Facilitator episode, internationally bestselling author Matthew Dicks shares why storytelling so important, and how telling stories is not simply sharing a series of events; it’s the manipulation of emotions.
It’s a skill that can be taught and he shares some of the techniques he uses to engage his audience, whether they're 10 year old kids, or politicians.
In this episode you’ll learn:
What a story is (and what it isn’t)
The details you should leave in your story and more importantly; the details you can leave out
How you can become more memorable by sharing things that are vulnerable, amusing or embarrassing
That it’s important to assume that no one wants to listen to anything you have to say
How to start collecting your own stories by reflecting on everyday moments
About our guest
Matthew Dicks is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Something Missing, Unexpectedly, Milo, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, and the upcoming Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling. His novels have been translated into more than 25 languages worldwide.
When not hunched over a computer screen, Matthew fills his days as an elementary school teacher, a storyteller, a speaking coach, a blogger, a wedding DJ, a minister, a life coach, and a Lord of Sealand.
Matthew is a 35-time Moth StorySLAM champion and 5-time GrandSLAM champion. He has also told stories for This American Life, TED, The Colin McEnroe Show, The Story Collider, The Liar Show, Literary Death Match, The Mouth, and many others.Heis also the co-founder and creative director of Speak Up, a Hartford-based storytelling organization that produces shows throughout New England.Matthew is the creator and co-host of Boy vs. Girl, a podcast about gender and gender stereotypes.
Resources
Grab his new book! Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
Video: Life lessons learned while pole vaulting told by Matthew Dicks
Transcript
Read the full First Time Facilitator transcript with Matthew Dicks.
Thoughts on the episode? Share your comments below!
Episode 5: How to use humour to deliver x-factor presentations (and laughs) with Andrew Tarvin
In this First Time Facilitator episode, we hear from Humor Engineer, Andrew Tarvin on how he crafts and embeds comedy into his presentations and work life. Andrew provides simple, actionable tips on how to do this; and why it's important to brings laughter into the workplace.
In this First Time Facilitator episode, we hear from Humor Engineer, Andrew Tarvin on how he crafts and embeds comedy into his presentations and work life. Andrew provides simple, actionable tips on how to do this; and why it's important to brings laughter into the workplace.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Simple hacks you can use to add humour in your workplace
Why using humour consistently can change behaviours (people start to perceive meetings differently and creates engagement in the long-term)
How to start introducing humour by trying one or two things with your emails
How Andrew developed and rehearsed his TEDx speech
Why he suggests first time facilitators should take improv classes
About our guest
Andrew Tarvin is the world’s first Humor Engineer, teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. He has worked with thousands of people at 200+ organizations, including P&G, GE, and Microsoft. Combining his background as a project manager at Procter & Gamble with his experience as an international comedian, Andrew’s program are engaging, entertaining, and most important, effective. He is a best-selling author, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TEDx, and has delivered programs in 50 states, 18 countries, and 3 continents. He loves the color orange and is obsessed with chocolate.
References
Transcript
Episode 3: Conquering your fear of public speaking with expert trainer and facilitator, Nikki McMurray
Nikki McMurray has over 25 years experience in the adult education industry. Her roles ranged from managing registered training organizations, managing the training function within organizations and facilitating.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL FIND OUT ABOUT:
How she used to throw up before speaking in public and how she overcame that fear
How she manages the participants (and her own) energy levels over a five-day workshop.
Why it’s important to shut the world off (and your phone) when you’re in a learning environment
Why you need a sense of humour when working on the road
Her strategies for ensuring introverts are heard in a group workshop
Her simple hack that ensures participants grasp the instructions of a group activity
The two things she would do differently if she had to start her business again
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Nikki McMurray has over 25 years experience in the adult education industry. Her roles ranged from managing registered training organizations, managing the training function within organizations and facilitating.Her facilitation style is respectful to the adult learner’s past experience and qualifications with a hands-on, highly interactive approach with a focus of connecting theory with practice.Clients comment that programs and personal coaching conducted by Nikki are high quality, very practical and personally challenging.She has a diverse background that includes consulting in a training and on the job coaching capacity to Mining open cut and underground (coal and hard rock), Rail, Water, Gas, Manufacturing, State and Federal Government industries as well as many others.
REFERENCE
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Leanne: I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. She has over 25 years experience in the adult education industry. And as a facilitator, she's terrific at really honing in, and evaluating the dynamics of a group. She ensures that all of her sessions are hands on, and interactive with the focus on connecting theory with practice. Her background expands consulting, training, and coaching for industries for a company called ‘Corporate Learning Partners’. And she's worked in open cut and underground mining, rail, water, gas, manufacturing, and government. Welcome to the podcast, Nikki McMurray.Nikki: Thanks LeanneLeanne: Nikki, 25 years is a long time to be working in education and learning in development. Have you ever had a career outside of that industry?Nikki: Yes, in the very early days, I was in IT and then I went into Marketing. And I happened to get a job in the world of corporate adult education, fell in love with it, and haven't left it since.Leanne: So do you think some of the IT, and marketing skills helped you where you are today?Nikki: I think absolutely, absolutely. And you know even though you're in the industry of adult education, you're actually in everyone else's industry. It's not just adult education in its purest form like a university. You're in and out of different industries, and that's what makes it interesting and exciting.Leanne: How did you actually get into the world of facilitation and education?Nikki: I took on a job as a coordinator of P&O and it was in their training and education area. I really enjoyed the vibe, and the excitement, and the enthusiasm, and the fact that when you partake in skills or knowledge there’s a certain amount of excitement for the participants, and sometimes even nervousness.From there, I went to uni at night, and then studied adult education. And I was actually not a facilitator for a very long time. I stayed in Administration, and I worked my way up to being a site manager for a computer training firm that concentrated only on corporate. And about 12 years ago, I walked away from corporate, and started my own business. And that was the first time I ever facilitated full time. So it was pretty scary, and exciting.Leanne: So you came from an admin background and then to managing client training in organisations, do you think that helped you when you became a facilitator?Nikki: Oh absolutelyLeanne: In what way?Nikki: I think it’s because I focus primarily on leadership workshops and I have been a manager for many years. Therefore I have a really good understanding of a lot of the issues, and the challenges leaders face in the workplace. And most of those challenges don’t vary from industry to industry. So I can relate. I'm very empathetic and compassionate for all the leaders I work with now as a coach and a facilitator in their area of leadership. Because there probably isn't a challenge that they're having that I haven't had myself in real life, where I tripped and stumbled as well.Leanne: I guess it helps because you can talk the language when it comes to feeding back information to clients about what's going on in the training environment too. And then provide feedback on what they can do to continue building on a person’s ability after you’ve left.Nikki: I think that's what good adult education is all about; sustainability, making sure that things are handed over in a manner that is easy for the individual to contextualise back in the workplace. For them to be out and go back and know “I can do this” and “I might probably trip and stumble little bit”. But I was warned I was going to trip and stumble, but I want to do it bad enough that I'm motivated to push through.Leanne: Yeah, that's really good insight into embedding all those learning strategies. Any other tips on doing that? Because I think it's an area where companies struggle. You can go in with approach of…, oh we're going to run this workshop, and then we expect people to change instantly. But we know that's not the case. What do you recommend to a client?Nikki: The number one best way of getting a return on investment when it comes to adult education is ensuring that before the individual goes to whatever the learning is - a meeting occurs between them and their one up. A discussion occurs about the workshop objectives and what do you personally need to get out of this. And then a follow-up meeting. That is the number one way of getting a return on investment.Participants walk into my learning environment with all different expectations. Some purely for lunch. Let's get serious - unfortunately, that is true. A day off work and I should get a really nice lunch here.Others come in with no real idea, but just happy to be there. You know I’m a new people leader, and I just need anything you can give me. The ones that get the most out of it actually come in with very specific challenges. You can't remember everything from a one to even a three day workshop. You're only going to really remember what's relevant, and what you need.So if you come in without anything really in mind, you probably walk out going, “Wow that was really interesting and I met some nice people.” But none of the tools will have really stuck for you because there was nothing in it in the first place, unless a challenge through the workshop comes to mind, and then you start zeroing in on how you can fix that. But it's amazing how many people come into a workshop with no understanding of even what we're going to be covering. That one-on-one meeting with the boss before and after is important.Leanne: Okay, so let's just say that you do have participants in the workshop, and they've got no idea why they're there. As the facilitator, you expect there has been some sort of conversation. How then do you manage that and bring them into the learning journey?Nikki: I think that through activities and discussions you start getting an understanding of where they're at in people leadership, how much experience they've got, and the confidence level. And normally by that confidence level, you can probably guess the areas that they probably find challenging. It’s probably not even on their radar because they're avoiding it.Leanne: So you talked a lot about the participants pre-work. But I just want to talk about your preparation before a workshop. And I know in our work together, we'll have a workshop that starts at 10:00 in the morning and Nikki will show up at 7:00 in the morning to get the room ready. Is it sort of like a ritual that you've had over the course of your time in this environment - that it's really important to prepare?Nikki: I like at least an hour and a half, and if I have more, I’ll take as much as I can get. I think it's really important to be very familiar with your environment, with the technology that's available, and also the way in which you want the room set out. The way in which the room set out, the music that you've got playing all set a tone for when they walk in the door, and that also includes your own preparation. I am a huge prepper. People ay to me all the time, “Oh I just wing it.” That might work for them but I would never ever do that. I just can’t.I do a lot of preparation even if I'm running the same program over and over again. And the room and making sure that it set up the way you need it be, to work the participants is really important. You've got to be thinking ahead of the types of activities you’re doing, type of space that you've got available, and be able to utilise everything that you can; the best way you can. That might be walking in and rearranging the whole room that someone has so kindly set up for you - because we thought there were going to be 16 participants and now we find out that there's going to be 12. It's nice that it's cozy and intimate if we have smaller numbers. But it also it's important that they're comfortable if there are large numbers, and there's always enough space for everybody. A lot of the organisations I work for are very male dominated. Girls/women I find don't find it too hard being a bit more squashed in; where the guys like a little bit more space.Leanne: You did mention earlier that some people are there just for the catering. I find that really interesting. A lot of the feedback sheets we get back, if the workshop has delivered the comments are about the catering. Is there an ultimate menu for workshops?Nikki: It's like air-conditioning. It'll never be perfect for everybody! And most organisations these days don't even do catering. Most people bring their own when it's in-house. So if people are lucky enough to actually get the company to provide the catering it’s normally a nice lunch because it's a free lunch.Leanne: The only feedback I have about that is I made the mistake once of serving cakes and sweet food at morning tea and hot savoury items that afternoon. And I didn't really hear the end of it! So switch those two around they will love the catering.Okay, so let's talk about energy. And a lot of workshop you facilitate run up to five day workshops. I’ve never done anything like that. Even after one day it can be pretty exhausting. How do you keep your participants moving along over the course of five days?Nikki: The course design is really important in regards to energy levels. As you know, I like to have them up and moving around approximately every 20 minutes to 30 minutes because I think that most of the people I work with don't actually sit at desks full-time. So they like sitting down but they're not used to it, and find it really hard to stay focused. If you have them moving around to doing activities or even just standing, it can make a huge, huge difference to the energy levels.For me personally, I'm pretty passionate about what I do. So I think it's important to shut the outside world off. You know everyone has things going on outside the learning environment. And I think it's really important as a facilitator that we're able to just to shut down turn our mobile phones off, as well as participants. Create that environment that's going to be best for them to get something out of the program. I am naturally pretty high energy.Leanne: I agree with that!Nikki: I do know a lot of people that are extreme introverts that do what I do, and they really work themselves up. That might be with coffee or a sugar hit first thing in the morning, a Coca-Cola, or something to just get themselves fired up. I don't need that. I just drink green tea. You don't need me in a learning environment with coffee. I’d be climbing the walls.Leanne: That's a really sort of great lead into a facilitation, and getting up in front of a room. Was that something that came naturally to you; public speaking, presenting in public?Nikki: No, I was petrified of presenting in public. Physically used to throw up.Leanne I think our listeners are grateful that you've said that. Because people that I've spoken to don't really have the confidence, and think that it's something that they can’t overcome. Obviously, you're one example of someone that's overcome it. What were the steps you took - how did you actually work your way up to becoming a facilitator you are today?Nikki: My father was very insistent that all of his children speak in public. He felt that if you had the confidence to speak publicly, you'd have the confidence to do anything you want in life. It wasn’t really about necessarily publicly speaking, and the skills about it. It was about having the confidence. Because if you look at what is the word people's biggest fear in the world, it's public speaking; next to spiders, and heights I believe.I did join the debating team, and I made a complete idiot of myself every single time I got up; that’s if I got up. Most of the time I was down the girl's toilet heaving. And when I did get up, I would go into flight; fight; freeze. I would freeze, and make squeaking noises. So every time I ever decided to join the debating team, there was always this huge sigh. “Oh my goodness she's doing it again. We've got no chance to get to the finals this year.” I left school knowing I would never speak in public. It was absolutely physically impossible.Very soon after I got a job, and I was asked after a few months working there if I could do a presentation to the board - that I was to walk in, there would be some questions, I would answer them, and then hop out.I was really honest with my boss and said, “Look, I can’t do that, and this is the reason why…”. They made it really clear it wasn't negotiable. And dad at times was asking me, “How’s your job going?” I said, “I love it, but I'm leaving.” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “They want me to talk, stand up and talk to board members. We all know what's going to happen.” So I'm just going to resign now. And he said, “Oh look, if you’re going to resign then you might as well give it a red hot go.”I went in with my resignation in my back pocket thinking you know, maybe I could throw it over the mess I might make. I did a lot of nodding and shaking my head trying to answer their questions with yes and no answers. After a while, one of the board members just said, “Look, you're wasting our time. Do you want to leave?” I just shrugged. I was going to resign anyway. I gave it a shot, and I walked out. One of the board members came up to me in the afternoon and said to me, “Are you scared of public speaking?” I said, “Petrified.” And he said, “I can help you with it.” And I said, “All right, it's okay, I’m resigning.”Dad kept saying to me, “You know how long are you going to run from this?” And I was like forever sounds good. There are plenty of jobs around. I'm not worried. I’m really skilled.And the board member talked me out of resigning, and took me under his wing. Over the following months, I got more and more confident. And it's something, even to this day that if I do not get up and do public speaking at least once a month, I go through all the nerves all over again. It's still there. It's now it's about managing it. So when people talk to me about their fears of getting up in front of a group of people oh, I can relate very well. I'm very empathetic.Leanne: So what would be your advice to someone that is a first time facilitator or wants to make that transition from subject matter experts to sharing their knowledge?Nikki: The more you do it, the easier it gets. Everyone that first rides a bike will fall off. Every time anyone gets up to publicly speak, they're going to make mistakes. It’s about motivation. It's about wanting to do it bad enough that you got to put up with the trips, and the stumbles, and the scrapes, and the bruises.If you really want to do it, you just need to practice just like when you rode a bike for the very first time. And public speaking is the same.You do it often enough, you can walk away from it. You come back you might be a little bit wobbly, but you're find your feet a lot faster. So practice makes perfect. I had plenty of people that I used to watch. Either for my own professional development, or watching someone before hiring them. So I know what made a good facilitator.It’s about using every opportunity you get to speak in public. Most people that don't like it when they're offered to do it, will run a mile. I did it myself. So the idea of it is is feeling motivated enough to get good at it to throw yourself in every opportunity you get and jump on board. It's not something you can read about and go, “Okay, it'll be like reading a book on how to ride a bike.” And then thinking, “After I've read the book, I can go and jump on the bike and I'm not going to fall off.”Leanne: You just absolutely have a great presence when you're in a workshop. And you look across participants, and everyone's really listening on your every word. If you had to pick one unique skill or superpower that you bring to the role of facilitator, what do you think that is for you?Nikki: Well I'm going to actually ask you. You've watched me a few times facilitate, so can I ask you what you…What do you think my superpower is?Leanne: Ok this is my observation as a client. When you’ve been running a session for a couple of hours I'll just drop in at lunch; or at the end of the day. I’ll ask you how the course been going with your participants. And very quickly you can go around the room and talk about each participant - pointing out things like ‘That person's not engaged at the moment’; ‘This person's a little bit quiet’; ‘I think the three sitting here is probably not a good idea, I'm going to split them up tomorrow’.You know exactly how each participant in that room is feeling, thinking, and their level of engagement in the workshop. But not only that, you've got solutions on how you're going to fix that, and make it better for them.. I think that's an impressive thing I’ve found about your facilitation style - identifying what’s going on in that room to an amazing level of detail. Would you agree with that?Nikki: It's my responsibility to ensure I have engagement. These people need to walk away with particular skills. And they’re not going to walk away with everything. But they should be walking away with two or three things that they can feel comfortable enough to use back in the workplace tomorrow. It would be very poor of me not to understand where my participants are going. And there's certain activities that I do first up to get a little bit more of an understanding of them, and give them the opportunity to talk about what they want to talk that about. There are certain icebreakers that I like using due to the effect that you get a little bit more of an understanding of why people are here, why they are in front of you and how much experience they have.Leanne: You mentioned a couple of icebreakers that you use to let down their guard, find more information about them, reasons why they're in the room, levels of experience. Is there a particular icebreaker that's your go-to one to find that information out?Nikki: I like to line them up in order of how long they've been a people leader for. Make a little bit of fun, you can’t open your mouth when you do it. Make sure that those hand signals are kept nice and clean also. From that, get them to then go down the line and introduce themselves. Ask them ‘Who are you, what's your role around here, how long have you been doing people leader’? Then I get them to team up, pair up with those that are least experience with those that have got more experience, and talk about what's their number one leadership challenge. And that's where we we find out who came in with something on their mind, and those that are just there not sure even what they're there to learn. But I think all senses are on high alert in that first one hour of the workshop as a facilitator.You’re really watching, and observing, and listening even when you're getting them to do an activity - you're listening to who's being more dominant than somebody else in the activity, who's being supportive of each other in the activity, who's sitting there doing absolutely nothing and looking a little bit concerned. You know because at the end of the day, we're going to have introverts, we're going to have extroverts. And we don't want the introverts walked all over.So in that first the first hour, I use the DISC model and I normally within the first hour will be able to work out who is where on the DISC model. That also allows me then to know what's the best way of communicating with them and where their stretch places would be. So I consider how far I can stretch them before they get us feel a little bit uncomfortable because you want a little bit of a stretch, but we certainly don't want to break anyone. We want them to be supported.Leanne: How do you then manage then bring in people that might be more quiet or reserved? How do you bring them into the workshop, and engage them?Nikki: With Dominance, we normally find they’re quite vocal. Not all the time, but quite often. They also they want to share their experiences and their stories. It's about allowing them the space to. But also making at times drawing the line and at times saying, “You know I think you're working too hard. Jeff I've heard from you for the last four times. I think you might want to have a break now. You’re carrying the load for all these other people. Let's hear from someone that hasn't said anything yet.” And it's about being polite and respectful - but also with a bit of fun. There's a little bit of tongue in cheek in being able to manage those personalities.Leanne: We spoke about earlier, there are certain skills of a facilitator - preparing is really important for you and making sure you use all of your senses, to see what’s going on, and then listening in to create a good dynamic. Is there anything else that a facilitator really needs in their back pocket?Nikki: I was thinking about this on my drive in this afternoon, and there are so many. And for every facilitator you asked that question to, it'll be something different. Now I am extremely high energy, so I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I can be quite overwhelming if you're a real introvert, and it's working out who is who in your zoo. You then moderate yourself of what's appropriate for this learning environment.But by really being prepared with your material you then have the energy, and the headspace when you’re facilitating to change very quickly on a dime.If you have’t prepared and you are facilitating, and things aren’t going well, the energy levels aren’t right, or people are becoming argumentative. It's very hard for you to throw in other strategiesIf you’ve got the content in your head, you can be quite flexible. And you can introduce different strategies all the time because you know your content well enough that it happens no matter what. You can then, in your head, while delivering the content be thinking about other strategies, and things you've got to do. That was probably a really long winded.Leanne: Aha! I love it. Long winded is good. Nikki: Because if you were to get up, and say the same thing. Like for instance an induction. But I can imagine if you ran inductions you would get to the point where you would memorise it. You would actually be able to think about other things while doing it. And you will notice other things because you know the content so well. Your head doesn't have to be all in the content.You'll be noticing people leaning forward, or arms folded, or looking at the window, or having a chat with the person next to... You'll notice all of those things because you know you material so well.Leanne: Yeah that brings me into an interesting story. Nikki kindly asked me to co-facilitate a session last year and it was part of a leadership course. So I studied, and studied, and studied on this model. I'd been working at a TAFE for the last six years, and I walked into Nikki’s workshop, and I delivered this session like it was at a TAFE. And after the workshop, Nikki said to me ‘You’re training them, and you’re not facilitating”. And I didn’t understand what she meant. I thought that was what I was meant to do. I was meant to train them, and teach them in this model. Then you explained that training and facilitating are two different skill sets. Do you want to expand on that a bit more?Nikki: Yes, so when you’re training someone; in something, you can work out their current skill and knowledge and then you feel that gap in a very quite structured manner.When you facilitate, there’s more of an expectation of these people are coming in with this certain amount of experience, and knowledge, and skill already. They’ve already got a fair bit, and it's about really pulling out what they already have in their heads.And so you will have someone that's got a lot of experience. You'll have someone in your learning environment with 20, 30 years experiences, and then you'll have someone with none. It's about managing the dynamics of the group - that those people who have got the experience are able to share it, and give those who have got no experience the opportunity to share how they would use that, and have a feel about it, whether they could see themselves using it, and then filling the gaps.Leanne: All right, so we've spoken a lot about activities, and energy levels. Let's talk about staging an activity. Do you go through a specific process when you do that?Nikki: I'll give you an example. I've been working with a company recently with people who are people leaders that have actually been chosen to co-facilitate with me on a leadership program.We put them through some facilitation skills to prepare them to be shoulder to shoulder with me in a learning environment doing certain sections of the program. And interestingly, they always choose flip chart activities. And they go, “They look like the easiest. I’ll do these.”It never ceases to amaze me how much chaos can be created in the manner in which they set the activity up. I'll give you an example. When I get people to do a flip chart activity, I first off show them each of the flip charts; Then I say to them, “In a moment I'm going to get you to stand up in four groups, and I'm going to give you one of these flip charts each. I'm going to get you to work on it for two minutes, or three minutes. And then after that, I will rotate your group to the next flip chart.”It's amazing that with these kind of facilitators they’ll start the commencement of the activity with, “We’re going to do an activity I'll get you all to stand up.”It never ceases to amaze me that when you get people to stand up, they automatically will start talking to the person next to them, wonder whether they meant to take a pen with them, or… And they don't even know the activity, but chaos has already being created.So it’s really simple things which are one of those things where we trip and stumble a lot. We'll throw at an instruction and everyone will go, “What did that mean, or what did she say about this, or what are we meant to be doing next?” And it will create this chaos, and you've got to bring them all back to the centre of the room, and then explain it again. And sometimes again.Leanne: So I guess you're saying prevention is better than cure here.Nikki: It isLeanne: Say, “Hey we’re going to do an activity. I'm going to explain it now.” Try and prevent them from standing.Nikki: I say that the moment they stand is the moment you will have them disengaged. They will suddenly need to go to the loo, get a cup of coffee, check they’re phone, be on their way to their activity. So it's best while they’re seated to give them as much information as you can. Then before they stand, let them know what's going to happen next. That's why I say “In a moment I'm going to get you to stand up, and I'll get you to work in groups; four groups. And each of the groups will be given a flip chat”… If you start the activity with, “We’re going to an activity I'll get you stand up.” The moment they stand up, it is so much more difficult to get them reengaged in finishing what instructions you need to do.Leanne: How do you manage preparing with flying, again keeping the energy levels, responding to e-mails, running a business on the road for most of the week? How do you do that?Nikki: You can't take yourself too seriously. When you work and live on the road, you've got to have a sense of humour because Murphy’s Law is just sitting there on your shoulder. You can have a whole week of what could ever go wrong, does go wrong. If you don't keep your sense of humour I think and if you take yourself too seriously you could end up being a very stressed, cranky, angry person.Leanne: How long has Corporate Learning Partners been operating?Nikki: About 13 years now.Leanne: Okay, and you mentioned that was the first time that you made into a full time facilitation role.Nikki: Yeah, so I went from managing training organisations, and walked out the door, and went into developing leadership programs, facilitating leadership programs.Leanne: So making that step from I guess full time employment to running your own business is a huge step. You have no idea how it's going to go.Nikki: Massive step.Leanne: Why did you make that step? What propelled you do that? Did you have any clients sort of on the books? Or you just thought you could do things better?Nikki: I actually felt that it was my natural next step. I'd been in the management area for a very long time. For those that are people leaders out there, you will hear know what I mean by you know, you get to a point where you go is this something that I want to continue doing. I got to a point where I was at the level of general management by the time I left. It was getting more and more paper orientated, not people - and I like being around people.So I thought, “Why not give it a go?” And it was a huge risk. I had no clients. I did have a very strong network of colleagues because I had for so many years worked with other facilitators I’d hired as contractors to do work for me. So I had a wonderful network, and an incredibly supportive network. There's a couple there that used to receive phone calls every night after I finish my day going, “I think this is wrong. And what do you would you do about that?” That network was absolutely crucial.Leanne: Looking back at starting a business, would you do anything a bit differently?Nikki: As mentioned before, you can't know everything when you take the leap of faith to do something. You've got a bit of knowledge about what you're doing. At the end of the day, I knew a lot about adult education, and I knew a lot about how to manage clients. I knew a lot about how you know, people would come to the training when I was a manager and say, “Look we think we need these, and this is the reason why”. I was already quite good at being able to interpret concerns, and put them into practical ways of moving forward.So it took a lot to the table from my experience. But you know registering businesses, organising GST etc when I had a mortgage and a kid in a private school. So you’re really juggling that. One moment I'm developing, the next moment I’m presenting, the next moment I’m invoicing then I'm having to follow up; juggling all of it. It was a huge learning curve. Yeah, so having a good accountant would be believe it or not right up there. And if I had to have a second one, it would be have a great network. Sometimes it's just nice to have a sounding board.Leanne: Will definitely put those two recommendations in our show notes for this episode. Where can people find you?Nikki: www.corporatelearningpartners.com.au has all the details. Plus a little bit about what we do, the tops companies we work for, and the work that we've done in the past.Leanne: Absolutely recommend Nikki, and her team. They do a stellar job in delivering anything that you've got.. So Nikki, thank you so much for coming on the ‘First Time Facilitator Podcast’. I've definitely learnt an awful lot to up my facilitation game. And I've already had some great feedback from you over the last year and a half. So thank you for that.Nikki: Thank you Leanne for the opportunity.
Episode 2: It’s not about you: Diversity and Inclusion expert, Teagan Dowler shares why listening is the #1 skill of a facilitator
Teagan Dowler is the Founder of The BCW, Treasurer of the Diversity Practitioners Association, Author of Rules of the Game and Organisational Development and Leadership Coach.Teagan has worked across a range of industries including Civil Construction, Iron Ore, Coal, Financial, and Health in the areas of Organisational Change, Human Resources, Learning and Development and Human Behaviour Coaching and Psychology.
Welcome to the second episode of the First Time Facilitator podcast.
Episode 2 First Time Facilitator podcast with Teagan Dowler
Teagan Dowler is the Founder of The BCW, Treasurer of the Diversity Practitioners Association, Author of Rules of the Game and Organisational Development and Leadership Coach.Teagan has worked across a range of industries including Civil Construction, Iron Ore, Coal, Financial, and Health in the areas of Organisational Change, Human Resources, Learning and Development and Human Behaviour Coaching and Psychology.She is the author of Rules of the Game: Women in the Masculine Industries, which provides recommendations from her own experience and those of over 50 women and men to achieve success in traditionally male-dominated industries.As a leader in the area of diversity, inclusion and leadership, Teagan and is regularly asked to comment on industry developments. She has been quoted in The Australian House of Representatives, featured in a range of magazines (including OK! Magazine, The Collective, CLEO) and interviewed on live breakfast radio for 4BC Brisbane and ABC Radio Gippsland.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL FIND OUT ABOUT:
How an interest in nutrition lead her to a career in psychology and human behaviour
Her strategies for answering questions in your workshop (when you’re unsure of the answer)
Why flexibility and listening are critical strengths of a great facilitator
Why you need to embrace fear and step up in front of a workshop to share your wisdom
The importance of authenticity - particularly when things don't go to plan in the training room
How organisations have changed in their attitude and response to Diversity and Inclusion initiatives and approaches
RESOURCES
Social Media: The Blue Collared Woman (Facebook) and TheBCW (Instagram)
Find Teagan on LinkedIn.
TRANSCRIPT
Leanne: Thanks for tuning into episode two of ‘First Time Facilitator’. I really appreciate your support. I'm also interested in hearing what you think about the show, so shoot me an email any time with your feedback. I'm at firsttimefacilitator@gmail.com, or leave a review in iTunes. Let me know if there are specific aspects of facilitation that you'd like to learn more about, or feel free to recommend guests that I can interview on upcoming shows. I met our next guest through another facilitator, and she focuses in on the diversity, and inclusion space. I have to say I think she is one of the most relatable people I've ever met. She has an effortless, and natural way of making you feel really great after you chat to her. And I think that's her unique facilitator superpower. So, let's hear from her in episode two.Our guest has worked across a range of industries including civil construction, iron ore, coal, financial, and health in the areas of organisational change, human resources, learning and development, and human behaviour, coaching, and psychology. She's the author of Rules of The Game: Women in the Masculine Industries, and this book provides recommendations and how to achieve success in traditionally male dominated industries. She's the founder of the Blue Collared Woman known as the B.C.W; the Treasurer of the ‘Diversity Practitioners Association’ as well as an organisational development, and leadership coach. Welcome to the show, Teagan Dowler.Teagan: Lovely, thank you so much for having me today.Leanne: It’s so great to have you here. Our audience may or may not have heard of you. I'm curious to hear a bit about your career journey, and what brings you here today.Teagan: Yeah, it's a funny one Leanne. I grew up in a really small country town down in Victoria. And I actually originally wanted to be a nutritionist; funnily enough. So when I was going through school, I then realised the reason I was interested in nutrition was actually all around the psychology. Why did people have certain approaches to food? And I was interested in understanding the relationship in the mental aspects around that - then that led into psychology. Loved learning about psychology, but when I went through psych at uni, the new wave of positive psychology was not actually in vogue at that time in university.And as a young 20-year old I just thought that's a heavy industry to go into. You're dealing with the darker side of human nature, and I wanted to have a little bit more a lot of experience before really going into that space. So maybe it's something I'll do later down the track. But I then thought, “Oh well what's another avenue? I'll segue the psychology into business.” And started looking at organisational behaviour which then led to a masters in human resource management. Finished that and thought, “Well what industry do I want to go in to?” At the time my dad had built a very good career in the mining industry. So I've been around the culture, I understood it, I liked it for its frankness and its directness, and thought, “Let's give it a go”.Leanne: Wow! And did you get to travel to mines around Australia?Teagan: I've been to a lot. So WA, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland. I think the only states I haven't worked in is Northern Territory and TassieLeanne: Okay, so your dad had worked in the mining industry.Teagan: CorrectLeanne: Did he prepare you for that first day out on the mine site?Teagan: Prepared is a really interesting word. So it's a very dynamic industry and the sheer experience of circumstances that you can find yourself in are varied. I suppose in terms of the preparation aspect, it was an understanding of the culture, and I'd grown up in that environment. So in essence, I was prepared for what to expect. But in terms of some of the unique experiences and circumstances you find yourself in probably not. Which is hard for him to be able to prepare a young female to handle those scenarios when he himself may not have experienced it.Leanne: Yeah, that's right. That's really interesting, and we’ll talk a bit about diversity later on. So when you're at the mine site you're working in a HR role?Teagan: It's more of a broader strategic pace. So we work mainly with mine leaders in regards to a range of operational discipline aspects. So leadership is one of them. How they look at their planning, their production is another aspect, how they communicate as well. So it's HR/strategy/operational.Leanne: I guess one of the things I notice from you is that you have a very natural way of presenting. And I'm wondering if that was hard over the years and do you sort of reflect back on previous workshops, and from years ago and think, “What was I doing”? Or do you actually just always been that natural and authentic in front of an audience?Teagan: That's lovely of you to say; thank you.You always do a bit of a self-critical reflection to think, “Gosh! Am I coming across the way I'm hoping I am”. I think for me, what has enabled me to be the facilitator I am today is probably watching other facilitators. And from a very young age, I always got involved in public speaking. And the fear that that brings is somewhat addictive in a way, scary upfront, but when you finished, it's really exhilarating. And I quite like that feeling of conquering something that you were nervous about. And it was through watching other facilitators, and other speakers in the techniques that they would display, and how they would talk; that's what's enabled me to take pieces from that and build my style today.Leanne: You talked about having fear. Is that something that you still go through when you deliver workshops?Teagan: Yeah, definitely. I think every group I have a little bit of a nervousness in my stomach because you don't know the people necessarily. It's a new group of people, age or time. And with the variety of people that you have, you've got to be on your toes. So for me personally, there's always the feeling of gosh, will I actually be able to answer their questions, will I be able to manage the group dynamics affectively, will they be interested in the content, or more so, how can I make the content interesting and relevant for them? So yeah, I'm always still nervous.Leanne: So yeah, me too as well. I think it’s easier when you deliver the same workshop a few times but then when there’s a new audience, it throws you back and you really need to prepare again. So what are new strategies when working with groups? Do you have anything in your back pocket for those experiences?Teagan: Yeah, I think what's helped me the most is definitely know your content. And I would suggest knowing your content beyond just what's in your resource guide, or what's on the slides, or the handouts that you're giving. Because the real richness can come through conversations more so than that content. And it's been helpful to be able to tap into external knowledge, or external understandings of research, or stories, or real life application that can help you in the moments where you think, “Oh gosh! Maybe I'm losing them, or maybe they throw a curveball question.” In that moment where someone is asking you a question and you think, “I have no idea what to say or how to respond.”Leanne: Do you have any strategies for working with that one that you can pass on?Teagan: My go to is, “That's a great question. What do you think?” And then I open it up to the group or the individual, yeah. And sometimes saying, “Look I'm not sure.” can be very useful as well because the way I set up my sessions is that I'm not the be all and all. I'm not the Oracle. I don't have all the information. This is very much a collaborative learning approach where I learn from the participants just as much as I hope that they will learn from me.Leanne: Yeah like that it's a two way sort of learning curve. So do you think there is a difference between being a facilitator compared to just being a trainer. Are they two different skills, or are they one in the same?Teagan: That's a good question. It's actually something I probably haven't thought about, and it might come down to semantics in a way. In my perception of a trainer is very much around I give you information. This is the information, and we run through in a very structured way. For me, the concept of a facilitator is a lot more as you said that two way, give and take. We're all here on the learning journey to use a cliché.Leanne: So in your observation, what are the skills of a great facilitator?Teagan: I can probably speak for myself around my perception of great. Because everyone will have a different version of great, and certainly a comfort level of what feels great when you're facilitating, or what you might observe. And certainly energy is something that is important, and body language aspects. So that very simple concept around openness, and engagement, small nuances around how you use your body when you’re facilitating, and engaging in conversation is very powerful. I also think one of the important aspects as a facilitator is listening just as much as it is talking, and giving information.Because we're probably all been in that circumstance where someone's asked a question, or they've made a statement. And you can see the facilitator didn't really get it and move on, and give an answer that might not actually align with the person. And that's a risk of turning someone off when that happens. So I think not only the concept of energy no new content, but also very much listening and observing what you people need. And maybe it's that flexibility aspect as well.You are going with the mindset of this is how it's going to run, this is what I need to say. But there's been times where you need to go off script because you can say there's a need in your audience, and that's going to give them better value than what you had originally anticipated. So that flexibility, tapping into print, your knowledge around what you're talking about is really useful.Leanne: So flexibility, we need to listen, and be adaptable. It sounds like a pretty exhausting profession. How do you feel at the end of a big training day?Teagan: I’m wiped to be honest. I'll be frank about it. It then makes me think around, “Geez, am I an extrovert or an introvert?’ Because they say that when an introvert is being quite energetic it's exhausting and gosh, in some of my hardest workshops which funnily enough have been the diversity and inclusion workshops which we’ll talk about. I've had after a full day of that I’ll go home, and go to bed. Because I'm so tired of just the process, and the mental fatigue around keeping up with a very challenging topic for some participants.I honestly feel shattered after a day, and I think is it just because I'm standing up all day or… But I think it's all about that sort of worry management, and always having a Plan B, C, or D that you could go to.Leanne: What is the best advice that you could give someone? To a technical expert or someone that works in HR who sits in that room and thinks, “I could actually get up and deliver something. But I don't really have that confidence.” What advice could you give to them?Teagan: Embrace the fear. That's a mantra that I try and live by. You just sometimes have to think, “What's the worst thing that can happen?” If you have knowledge that is important and someone else will benefit from you sharing. So have confidence in that, or faith that you can deliver the content, and that you will do it well. And if you walk away, and you think, “Oh I could have done that better”, that's a great learning opportunity. So really I think, what's the worst thing that can happen, and just go for it.Leanne: That's right the sun will still set and rise the next day.Teagan: It’s exactly right. Even as a kid I used to have this weird thing that if I had something scary to do during the day which was usually school sports or school swimming. I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, “Next time I'm in bed tonight, it'll all be over. Time is a finite thing, and in a few hours the scariness will be done.” So it's the same concept as an adult.Leanne: In the lead up to a workshop say it's a speech or workshop with a big client for example. How much work or prep time do you put in? So it's a 2-hour workshop. Do you really have a ratio, or how do you…?Teagan: It really depends on how comfortable I am with the topic, and whether I've done it before, what the client is expecting, very much depends upon the info on delivering.Leanne: Tell us the time where things didn't go so well in a training workshop. What happened, and what did you learn from that?Teagan: Yeah, look it was actually quite recently when I was delivering an inclusive leadership workshop. And as I alluded to before, it can be a topic that's quite confronting for people. Because we start talking about concepts such as self and identity, and how our identities lead to different outcomes such as the identities of others leads to different outcomes for them. And we are in a time at the moment where a lot of organisations are having these conversations which previously have been more social broader conversations, and then they are now coming into the workplace, and putting additional pressures on leaders.And one of the leaders in these workshops was having a difficult time being able to… not understand the concept. But it was misaligning with his existing value set. And what had happened was one of the other participants had said something which had upset the other participants. And it was about lunch time I think when this one participant came to me and said, “Look Teagan, I'm just gonna let you know that I'm gonna leave”. And I thought, “Oh my gosh! Oh no, what have I done?” Initially immediately I went to what have I done, I failed, I haven't been good enough in this. And so there was this little conversation in my head going just be calm, listen, don’t over-react. And so I started asking him questions to understand what was going on.And we talked around his discomfort with what the other person had said. And I didn't challenge him in that moment for his desire to leave. I gently asked him to think about it. Maybe go for a walk around, cool down a little bit, or have a drink, decide if he wants to come back. He did do that and he said, “No, I still want to leave.” And I said, “That's fine, completely understand.” So he went and I thought, “Oh dear, that's terrible. I've never had anyone walk out of a training session before.” And so went back to the group, carried on. They were all fine. I explained that we all need to be respectful about what we're saying in a group forum, and finished the session off.That night, he actually called me back. He sought out my personal number, and he called me at about 7:00 at night. And I thought, “Oh gosh! Oh no! What happened here? Is he completely upset?” And what was really lovely is that he actually said, “I've had a think about it, and I understand now what you were talking about, and I probably didn't need to leave. But I did at the time, and I'm just want to let you know that it wasn't anything you did…” So that was a really interesting experience because as a facilitator, you're always conscious of delivering value to each participant, and value is a different thing for each person. And I felt that I had failed for this individual at the time. And then you're also conscious around your brand as a facilitator as well.And being able to make sure that you’re delivering what an organisation is wanting you to deliver, or a team, or manager; whoever it is. And I guess the thing that I learnt from that experience was in a way, you've got to make sure as a facilitator that you are managing all those different needs of the group as much as you can. But if you find that at the end of the day you can't for whatever reason, that's okay too. And you're not going to please everyone all the time. I suppose if you come from as a position of integrity for yourself, and you know that you've done all that you can do. And if you reflect and realise, “Oh, I could have done that better than that”, that's a learning. That's all you can really do.Leanne: That's yeah really good advice. I had a similar situation, and I mulled over all evening. I was thinking, “What could I have done better?” And I sort of went through the similar process as you, and I asked a few questions, or let's have a break. And yeah it sort of just come down to personal accountability, and being respectful. We’ll move on to the topic of diversity. What compelled you to write your book, ‘The Rules of the Game’, and what's their response been to the book?Teagan: Yeah, ‘Rules of the Game – ‘Women in the Masculine Industries’ was written back - gosh, I think it was about two years ago now. And it came from the desire to share the stories, and share them in a truthful manner. So when I first joined the industry, there was not a huge focus on diversity. There was a few women in mining, women in construction groups, and what not.But they seemed quite external to organisations. Organisations will send women off, but they weren't really integrated into how we do business. I started actually the ‘Blue Collared Woman’ or the BCW as a blog. And it began very much around me just sharing experiences of myself and others and some strategies that we've all used to try and work our way through it. And it started to gain popularity. And I thought, “Well how can we reach more people, and how can we really give a handy resource for people in the industry and women for to learn from other women, but also for men to understand experiences of women in an unfiltered way?”And so I started the writing process, and it took about two years, two and a half years to collate all the interviews, and the research, and many weekends spent on the computer. But I wanted to write it just to really help other women. When I was telling people that I was writing this book, one of my mentors actually said, “Don’t do it”. They told me not to release it because they were very worried that it would isolate me from the industry, and cast me as a troublemaker.Leanne: ...Which is completely unlike you Teagan. Absolutely not your brand; troublemaker! I've really enjoyed reading it. I found the steps very actionable and practical because you tell real stories of people working on site. I found it very useful, especially as I was new to the mining industry, really had no idea. And going through that was just lovely to see I guess in practical solutions, and how to navigate your way through it.Teagan: Oh great!And that's really sort of the focus of the audience was people who were women who were new to the industry, young, coming in perhaps maybe, or those that had changed from one industry to another because they're awesome subtle nuances in the traditionally masculine industries culturally. And coming in with eyes open, and learning from the experiences of other women is really helpful. It puts you on a… I guess a few steps ahead really to be able to be successful.Leanne: It's like I've got this secret book. I know exactly what I need to do. You spoke about diversity ten years ago, and how people in roles were external to companies, and now we see a lot of diversity advisors. It's a real focus. It’s about KPIs, and business strategies. On the ground have you seen much of a change in terms of cultures in those industries?Teagan: I would say yes. The mere fact that we're talking about it in industry is a really big thing. Even numbers, it's different. So being able to walk into a workplace and see a woman out in the workshop, or even driving trucks, and operating machinery now; it's changed. It's no longer the rarity. It's more common to start seeing women in those roles. So a lot has changed very much. And in fact I was just talking with Alina, and she was explaining that she's got two workshops. That one has about 40 percent diversity, one has ten percent different locations. And she said, “It's so evident when you walk in to those workplaces. There's a different vibe, there's a different culture, people are more receptive to different ideas. It's changing, it really is.Leanne: That’s so encouraging to hear. What you think the greatest opportunities are in the diversity space, in the next one to three years. Where do you think we can grow? I'm talking about Australian industries in particular.Teagan: Yeah, I really think it's important that we don’t forget the conversation about everyone in the workplace. So a lot of organisations are really focused on KPI diversity metrics. At the moment we focusing on smaller subsets of characteristics. What I am finding now though is that… and in fact someone this week said to me, by doing that we're actually creating exclusion for the majority of our employees. And when you think about it workplace is the majority of our workplaces are males. And so it's really important that in the conversation around diversity and inclusion that we very much have a conversation around how is inclusion beneficial and incorporates the male population in our workplaces.Leanne: So those conversations that you're talking about; being inclusive. How does BCW help clients, or sites, of projects embrace or is it through workshops coaching variety of mediums?Teagan: All of the above. We do a range of things from helping organisation set strategy through to diversity inclusion audits. We do inclusive leadership workshops we do coaching. There's a range of I guess different services and support that we can offer really depending on where an organisation is at in terms of their maturity along the D&I curve.Leanne: Do you know a lot of companies saying, “Oh we’re not ready for this yet”, and if so what's your response to that?Teagan: Good question. I would say two years ago it might have had a few companies in that space. Now most organisations realise that they have to be in the game. Yeah, because society is changing, the pool; the talent pool that they'll be looking for is also highly competitive as well. So if they're not seen to be an employer who is really open and inclusive in in their workplace, they will get left behind of talent. And there's actually a great organisation called DCC who actually screen employers on their female supportive work environments. But in general those organisations are also very good around the whole inclusive characteristics. So you can actually go onto that website, and see which employers have been endorsed.Leanne: We’ll put those in the show. Interestingly with the increase of technology, we find a lot of companies are relying on online learning and technology to really spread a message. I know that you offer online courses. Do you think it will replace the face to face experience, compliment it? Where do you think it sits in terms of learning, and embedding culture change?Teagan: I may be unpopular on this one perhaps. My answer is I hope not to be honest because of the feedback that I'm currently getting certainly from the industries that I'm working in is that online just does not hit the mark particularly with your operational space. So having the ability to whip out say a smartphone, or a log in via a link on a website; that works for some employees. And so I do think there's a space for online training.But in terms of being able to hit others, you've got to always consider what's the best medium for being able to connect, impart, information, and also create a shift. I think that face to face space is ideal, it's irreplaceable. But there is a space sometimes when you might need to do online training. So it's around understanding what's the outcome that you wanna achieve from that training and that content you wanna impart, and then deciding what medium’s gonna be best.Leanne: And I think the value in running these workshops is not only the delivery, but I guess each participant sharing their information...Teagan: AbsolutelyLeanne: …and their storiesTeagan: YeahLeanne: You wear so many hats. What keeps you driven, and how do you wake up in the morning, and balance all these different roles that you have?Teagan: Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think I'm not balancing these roles very well to be honest. And I have to remind myself to make sure that I'm not spreading myself too thin. But really you've got to find your passion. And for me, diversity and inclusion has been this burning passion deep within me that I want to see change. So it's more than just a job for me. I love it, and I'm motivated intrinsically by what we are trying to achieve. So that helps immensely. But yeah, you got to watch you don't put too much on the load.Leanne: I bet there's so many exciting opportunities waiting for you, and it's hard to say no sometimes.Teagan: Thank you, I'm trying to learn how to in a way that doesn't disappoint anyone, or lead me to run myself down.Leanne: Thank you so much for being on the show. Where can people find you?Teagan: They can jump online. So my website is The BCW, or they can jump on to the social media channesl. I'm on Facebook; the Blue Collared Woman, or Instagram. They can search thebcw.Leanne: Perfect! We'd loved hearing you tips, and tricks, and strategies for becoming a first time facilitator, and thank you so much again.Teagan: It’s been such a pleasure. Thanks for having me Leanne.Thanks very much for tuning into First Time Facilitator. If you like the episode, please share it with your mates, or subscribe to the podcast feed in i-Tunes.
The First Time Facilitator Podcast: Presentations | Workshops | Training Sessions | Speaking | Presence
Whether you’re a first-time facilitator or a seasoned pro, listen in for tips and tricks to make a bigger impact at the next workshop you deliver.Leanne Hughes from the First Time Facilitator blog reveals all of her group facilitation, training and workshop tips and tricks so you can be ahead of the curve the next time you step out in front of a group.Discover how you can tweak elements of your facilitation style, or incorporate new techniques to engage your audience and leave with lasting impact (and 5-star feedback).Icebreakers, leadership, group interaction, preparation, games, conflict, props, flip-charts, delivery, voice, body language, confidence, discussions and everything that works (and doesn’t work) to help you better understand how to deliver and connect with your audience, every single time.Coming soon.
A 45 Minute Workshop Outline on Public Speaking with ImpaCCCT
I met Petra from ImpaCCCT when we presented at the first instalment of Disrupt HR this year. She invited me to share my tips on communication and in particular, public speaking to her Best Talents Meetup Group in the Brisbane CBD last week. And I only had 45 minutes.Phew, such an open topic! There are so many elements to public speaking. I didn’t really know where to start. Upon reflection, I’ve discovered a common pattern to the way I work when I’m asked to deliver a workshop or speech.Download a one-pager checklist that I use to craft any type of presentation.I used this one-pager as a focal point for discussion at the Meetup. This allowed me to give the audience direction, set expectations and also gave them a prompt to ask questions. What was interesting was how the questions that were asked directed the conversation to things I hadn’t even considered discussing that morning.
How the Meetup Started
Yes, we met in a public space (a café), but that was no excuse. It was 8am and we began by warming up our voices. We all stood up, stretched our arms in the air, sighed, rolled our tongues, sang out some ‘la la la’s’ and introduced ourselves. We then shared what had brought us to the Meetup that morning and outlined details of the worst presentation we had ever seen.Warming up your voice is essential before speaking in any defining moment in your life. If you need tips, watch this video from Julian Treasure: How to speak so people want to listen.
Mastering public speaking - it’s all about the ‘ouch’ moments
After warming up our voices, I shared the Ladder of Learning model. This is one of my favourite Learning and Development models that I use in a lot of workshops.
The model demonstrates that the key to any type of Skill Mastery is accepting (and embracing) that you’re going to experience ‘ouch’ moments - times where it’s really uncomfortable. Think back to the time when you were learning how to drive. It was extremely nerve-wracking and frustrating - particularly if you were driving a manual car and navigating a hill-start! It felt like mastering the skill of driving would never happen. Thought, it was worth the perseverance, because the rewards of driving were too great. Driving meant independence and accessibility; graduating to an adult world.It’s the same with public speaking. We can sit back, comfortably stagnant in the ‘Conscious Incompetence’ zone, or we can choose to invest, practice and tackle those ‘ouch’ moments to graduate to the ‘Conscious’, or even ‘Unconscious Competence’ status when we’re at the front of the room.What does the ‘ouch’ moment look like when it comes to public speaking?
- Saying ‘YES!’ to speak when your immediate gut response is ‘NO!’
- The knots in your stomach the night/week before your big presentation (this is a good signal to buckle down and ensure your preparation is spot-on).
- Attending a Meetup about Public Speaking.
New contexts or environments can sometimes slip us down the ladder
I’ve learnt that a change in context or environment can force a slip down the ladder. Again, an example I used was driving. In Australia, I see myself in the ‘Unconscious Competence’ sector - when I drive, I feel like I’m on autopilot. However, when I traveled to Canada earlier this year I slipped back into ‘Conscious Competence’ where I was actively thinking about every action I took when I was in the driver’s seat. I even had a post-it note on my steering wheel reminding me which side of the road to stay on.It’s the same with presentations. Over our career, we can be comfortable presenting in front of the same audiences and in the same room (‘Unconscious Competence’) and suddenly you’re wheeled in front of the Board. The stakes are higher and your nerves are heightened - which may have you slipping back into ‘Conscious Competence’. This isn’t a bad thing - it’s great and gives you more ‘ouch’ moments, which will help you improve over time. To evolve as a public speaker, look for opportunities that are at the next level and continually challenge you.
What about the most high-stakes environment of all time, the dreaded job interview?
An environment where the pressure and stakes are at an all-time high is the job interview.A couple of participants attending the Meetup were in job-hunt mode and were quite early on in their careers. In many job interviews, you’re asked to provide examples of situations where you have demonstrated a particular skill. We have all been asked a question that starts with, ‘So, tell me about a time when…’.My advice is to start collating story examples early in your careers. I would use a simple template like this one:[table id=2 /]If you start collecting your life experiences and transcribing them into a simple Google Sheets table, you can weave them into any presentation - not only the job interview. In future when you’re writing a speech you then have a database of some personal anecdotes you can utilise to demonstrate a point. This is gold. It’s very tricky thinking of those stories off-hand.You can even start a folder in your inbox called ‘Stories’ and drag emails that remind you of a great story to this folder as an even easier way to start.We spent the remainder of time talking through the one-pager handout which included the following information split into three major categories:
- Preparation.
- Crafting your content.
- Presenting with power - for more tips, view my article Disrupt HR: The Creative Process in 7 Simple Steps
[table id=1 /]Download a one-pager checklist that I use to craft any type of presentation.If you’re in Brisbane, join the Best Talents Meetup group and join us for a monthly coffee and 45 minutes of top content!
Disrupt HR: The Creative Process in 7 Simple Steps
Last month I was up in lights at the Disrupt HR event in Brisbane. It’s the first time the event has been brought to sunny Queensland and the HR Community in the river-city came out in their droves, to hear from nine diverse speakers about the Future of Work.The format for the presentations is fast and furious – 20 slides with only 15 seconds spent on each slide. That’s 5 minutes to ignite some interest in the audience, lead them down the road with a story or personal anecdote, throw some stats around and inspire them to take action. Yes, it’s a tough gig.Here’s the video of my presentation ‘How one switch can improve your nine-to-five'’. I spoke about something really simple - office furniture, in particular, the sit-stand desk and its impact on productivity and quality of work life.How One Switch Can Improve Your Nine-to-Five | Leanne Hughes | DisruptHR Talks.When you write for Disrupt HR, you really need to consider your topic. I learnt a lot while preparing for the stage and thought I’d share my tips.But before we start, I want you to put yourself in the ring and:
Back your experience and your public speaking ability - then DO IT. Submit your application.
When I read on LinkedIn that Intelli HR were bringing the event to Brisbane, I thought ‘Geez that event looks interesting! I’ll DEFINITELY grab a ticket and tell my colleagues all about it too’.A few minutes later, my thoughts changed to, ‘Hey…I think I could actually speak at this thing’. I resonated with the tagline of the event: ‘DISRUPT is an information exchange designed to energize, inform and empower people in the HR field.’I love all things disruptive, so I expressed my interest with the event organisers, told them a bit about myself, outlined a couple of topic ideas and then forgot all about it.A few weeks later I received the call up. I was locked in to the program. And I was terrified.
Why did I sign up and why do I recommend you do the same?
I recently listened to this podcast from Pat Flynn – ‘Why you belong on Stage – Pat’s “braindump” of public speaking and presentation tips’. He explains how public speaking changed his life (how it helped to build his personal brand/credibility, led him to new opportunities, and opened his door to meeting other influencers), and other compelling reasons that will have you on the stage in no time. I recommend you plug in those headphones, go for a walk and listen to Pat’s wisdom. But if you don’t have that much time than this image pretty much sums it up:
You may be thinking 'I don’t know what to talk about', 'I don’t have credibility in any particular HR niche', 'I can’t memorise my speech' or 'I’m not creative'.And guess what? That’s completely normal. Most (if not all) speakers up on stage have had these thoughts at some stage in our career. It's whether you choose to ignore them and forge ahead, which makes all of the difference.Through this process working on my speech, I went through all stages of the change cycle. Denial, particularly, which manifested in the form of procrastination. Six weeks out I needed to submit my topic idea and a brief descriptor.Here’s a little wrap-up of the 7 step process I went through to deliver my Disrupt HR speech, from topic generation through to performance.
Step 1. Topic choice
By far, for me this was the trickiest of all the stages. I read a lot of blog posts and article on which topic to choose from and spent a while fleshing out ideas using mind maps.My criteria was that I wanted a topic which was fairly pragmatic, meaning that it was useful for the audience and they could take practical action the minute the speech was over.However, after listening to Michael Port’s podcast, ‘Steal the Show’, I realised that I was going about this all the wrong way...
The real Step 1 is: Profile the audience
The event isn’t about you, it’s about serving your audience and determining what’s in it for them.Think about the type of people that will attend an event like this. The brief attracts a local HR professional type audience. Think of a HR professional, one person in particular and profile their demographics - gender, age, education.Map out their career needs, fears, wants and frustrations.Think about:
- Why they’re attending a HR event after a long day at the office, when they could be spending time with their family.
- Why they’re attending an event that talks about disruption.
The key here is to not think about this criteria too broadly, you really want to target one person. As you work in the HR space, think of a colleague or boss that you could profile.Through this process, I realised that the majority of HR Professionals still work in an office environment and there are common concerns associated with that, such as our lack of movement and collaboration when you sit in the same spot, every day.This linked into something I’m passionate about - which is physical activity and how standing up while working can make you feel great, as well as lift your levels of innovation, collaboration and efficiency.You really don’t want to spend too long in the topic choice stage. Once you’ve made the decision, commit to it and cut off all other options. You still have a lot more work to do.
Step 2: Researching the topic
At this stage you want to use a range of sources, such as:
- Your own personal anecdotes and experiences (start thinking of interesting stories related to the topic)
- Data/research/stats to support your idea - Spend a couple hours on Google- I’d recommend both academic articles and also researching interesting blog perspectives.
- Chatting to other people on their thoughts to validate your topic
- Podcasts related to the area (makes it easier when you’re commuting/walking/don't have time to sit down and read)
I spent a few hours over two days, gathering all my stats, quotes and information together. With all of the information collated, I realised there were three broad themes to address;How sit-stand desks improve:
- Your health
- Your productivity
- Your levels of collaboration in an open-plan office.
Step 3: Drafting the speech
I spent most of my time in this phrase, writing and re-writing content, deleting, adding, tweaking and re-inveting… this is unavoidable.The good news is, that the PowerPoint slide auto-advancing speech format isn’t new. I drew inspiration from blog articles based on the Pecha Kucha format (20 slides x 20 seconds), particularly this one: Your Ultimate guide to giving PechaKucha presentations’.I also drew inspiration from the book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (Business Skills and Development) by Carmine Gallo. In the book, Gallo outlines how Steve Jobs used to sequence his big product talks in ‘rules of three’. He also used simple, visually powerful slides and he used stories to create ‘pain points’. After setting the audience up, he then offered the audience a solution to these problems (eg. the iPhone).As your speech time is limited, you need to use your visual slides to support/amplify your key messages and arguments. To plan this, I drafted my speech in a table with the following column headings:
- Slide number (1-20)
- Topic (eg. How sit-stand desks support Health)
- Content (data, stories to support stories)
- Slide image ideas (visual elements that make the content come to life)
I calculated my speech pace at 900 words over 5 mins (pretty quick) and I had written 1800 words. Cutting back was tough - it’s a balance of giving the audience enough to understand your message; but nothing too prescriptive that you’re spoon-feeding them.I dedicated 40% of my speech to setting the pain point (how our lack of movement is slowly killing us). The remainder of the speech was offering a solution. I also spent two slides opening up the presentation talking about something completely unrelated to the topic, the Wallabies recent form in the rugby league. This was to draw the audience in and to start them thinking 'How on earth does this relate to us?'How to defeat that writer's block? My tip for writing a speech is to pretend you’re writing for the rubbish bin. You just need to get those thoughts down, no matter how ridiculous and lame they sound at the time. From there, you can edit – add, tweak, adjust as needed, but building momentum is important.While drafting the speech I was also open to incorporating other concepts (especially after listening to Michael Port’s interview with Neen James on creating contextual models). I listened to another podcast where Michael Port interviewed author, Jonathan Fields. Jonathan was introducing his Good Life Project. He spoke about all of us having three buckets in our lives - our Contribution, Connection and Vitality buckets. I loved the law of the buckets and realised it was the perfect contextual model to align with my topic.I raced back home that night and read more about from Fields on How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom
Step 4: Create powerful slides
I think slides are an element that speakers don’t prepare enough for/are understated.Remember, each slide flashes only for 15 seconds, so the slide must be strong, less words (or words with impact), bold, large visuals.Limit collages. Limit low-resolution files. Limit the clip-art.Each slide must support your argument and draw your audience in.Another simple tip - keep a simple visual theme weaved throughout the presentation. I chose a theme through Canva to design my slides.
Step 5: Do your first paper reading
Once you’ve drafted the speech, Michael Port suggests you do a ‘paper reading’. This is where you print your draft speech notes out, sit at your dining table and read your script aloud in a normal voice. This is a really useful exercise where you can determine which words/phrases feel comfortable off the tongue and sound authentic to you. You can extend this further and start ‘blocking’ your speech. This means, highlighting words where you’ll pause, increase volume and change tone. You can also block your movement - such as walking at a specific time, where you'll move your arms to emphasise a point, etc.Once you’ve done a couple of these, lock that speech down and move onto…
Step 6: Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse…Then, rehearse again
If you present at one of these gigs, the biggest challenge is that you can't take speech notes on stage.I don’t know any quick memorisation hacks. For me, it was all about practising when I had the chance. One practical tip I recommend is to record your speech into your Voice Memos iPhone app. I did this and would play it back when I was driving, out for a run or walking the dogs - it was an effective way to rehearse along.When I was getting the ‘hang’ of it, I’d start rehearsing from a quarter/half the way through the speech.I also recommend rehearsing in front of a trusted advisor. I’m lucky I work with a fantastic, HR professional (thanks Jordana) who gives excellent and honest feedback. The external validity and advice gives you confidence that a) You’re on the right path or b) Yes you need to tweak some things but you'll be good on delivery day.
Step 7: Showtime
Try to get a good night’s sleep the night before your performance!I didn’t rehearse too hard on the day, as I knew the time I had invested leading up to this moment had served me well. All I was focused on before the speech was staying relaxed, warming up my voice, and reminding myself to enjoy the moment.One of my favourite videos that I show anyone I help prepare speeches with, is this TED Talk from Julian Treasure – I usually start it from the six minute mark.Pat Flynn said that it's important to arrive early and mingle with your audience. He learnt this from Dale Carnegies’ book ‘Stand and deliver’. The purpose of this is two-fold:
- You connect with you a couple of people so it doesn't feel like you're presenting in front of a bunch of strangers (no longer as strangers)
- The audience members think it’s pretty cool that they’re meeting someone who is about to walk on the stage.
Conclusion
Phew! A lot of tips and detail there. Finally, just enjoy the rush of being up in lights. It’s an amazing experience and a mega adrenaline rush.Special thanks again to the team at IntelliHR for a superb evening and I will be plugging the next version when it hits Brisbane next time.