workshops work 164 - Facilitating the Emergence of Possibilities & Breakthroughs with Kimberly Wiefling
We all hope to facilitate breakthroughs - those “a-ha” moments when participants have a lightbulb over their heads, ideas synthesise, and new ideas emerge.
But we can’t legislate and plan for them, can we?
Of course, there are no guarantees... but Kimberly Wiefling (and her approach to facilitation) is as close to a guarantee as you can get!
Join us in this episode as we discuss failure, emergence, workshop design, behavioural economics, language, and many more topics by way of some deeply personal reflections and storytelling. It’s a wondrous episode!
Find out about:
- How to facilitate for breakthroughs to occur, rather than leaving it to chance
- Where physics and facilitation intersect
- What a workshop of breakthroughs looks like - before, during, and after
- Why sharing a space and experience is critical to a workshop’s success
- How to use clothing to influence your creativity (and mindset in general)
- How using contracts (signed by employee and manager) can codify workshop outcomes
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Questions and Answers
Part one
[01:13] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator - if you do?
[02:00] When was the moment that you realised you are a facilitator, not a trainer?
[05:05] What have you learned from physics about facilitation?#
[09:55] How can we detach our own expectations and open our minds up to new possibilities and different realities within a group?
[11:13] Can you tell us the story of the Chinese horse farmer?
[14:10] Can we re-engineer confirmation bias to help us find silver linings?
[16:25] Using first-person narrativisation to reframe our experiences as positive.
[19:07] How can we use negatives as fuel to change the narrative?
[22:40] Kimberly shares a perspective-shifting exercise.
[25:38] What makes a workshop fail?
[28:53] How can a facilitator turn up, do nothing, and still make things happen?
[36:35] What is the one step we can take to make the impossible possible in organisations plagued by 'learned helplessness?
Links
Kimberly’s website
Kimberly’s team
Kimberly’s business
Share your thoughts about our conversation!
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