workshops work

Send us a textIt’s the talk of the internet and business circles, the culmination of many years of research and training, and an amazing step forward into the next stage of technology enabled and enhanced life.ChatGPT, I’m amazed and amused to say, is this week’s guest.I put a series of questions, taken directly and adapted from previous episodes, to the conversational AI. What emerged was sometimes fascinating and sometimes mundane, sometimes enlightening and sometimes misguided. I took every answer as it arrived, not asking follow-up questions and not editing the information it gave me.What is most interesting is to see what the collected knowledge it’s been trained on can tell us about the current state of and view on facilitation.Find out about:Differentiating the skills needed and demands of online, in-person, and hybrid facilitationWhy AI cannot replace a human facilitatorChatGPT's reply on whether facilitation is the 21st century's most crucial leadership skillHow to learn facilitation and what distinguishes a good from a great facilitatorThe facilitators' biggest challenge and how to overcome itWhat the future of facilitation looks like — and how we might include AI in itDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.Support the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Viren Thakrar, founder of In The Game, specializes in using games to enhance team development and collaboration. He discusses how play can revitalize learning and foster genuine connections in the workplace. Viren explains the mechanics behind engaging games and how they can facilitate deeper team dynamics, avoiding 'forced fun.' He also emphasizes the importance of understanding individual personalities and aligning team goals for success. His approach proves that joy and purposeful fun can coexist, creating a thriving team culture.

Send us a textDoes pricing make you prickle with anxiety? Imagine what it would be like to feel confident and calm about valuing your services… and now meet Jenny Millar, who can make that imagination a reality.Learn all about positioning, discounting, strategy, and communication in the context of pricing in this standout episodeJenny’s expertise in pricing will be invaluable to any facilitator or coach, as service businesses are notoriously difficult to price. And, as the founder of Untapped Pricing—a highly regarded pricing strategy consultancy—her advice is certainly of the highest value.Enjoy a free taster of her expertise in this episode!Find out about:Strategies for pricing coaching and facilitation servicesThe relationship between pricing, and positioning and how to get confident with bothJenny’s three rules for discounting and how to discount without devaluing yourselfWhat communication has to do with pricing and why it can make or break your choiceThe three facets to consider to determine what your services are ‘worth’How tiered, rather than bespoke or binary, pricing makes life easier for you and your prospectsDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.LinksWatch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Bitesize pricing tactics - a collection of 2min videos.Downloadable PDF guides - to take you through the fundamentals of pricing strategy that works for your customers and for you.Untapped’s Pricing Scorecard - our free tool to evaluate the health of your pricing in minutes. Learn how to improve it with a personalised 22-page report.Connect to Jenny:On LinkedInBook a call with JennySupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a textThings—found objects, ephemera from the discarded world, are everywhere. A marble, a spoon, a coil of string. They’re forgettable and ignorable and they’re the magic ingredient that makes Jules Gilleland’s workshops work.Jules developed Things as a problem-solving tool, informed by design thinking, to help people connect the dots and capture their problems in a physical form. It’s a context-neutral learning through play, a way to tap into ourselves when we can’t rely on language, and a means of overcoming the challenges that refuse to budge.Learn all about Things, Jules’ story, and how a bit more visual thinking can make your workshops work even better. Find out about:What Jules’ Things are and why they can be so magical in workshop settingsHow the four principles of Collect, Connect, Capture and Communicate appear in Thinking with ThingsWhy participants behaving like children is not such a bad situationHow to get out of your head and improve your hosting by focusing on engaged participantsHow to turn a disparate pile of found objects into a problem-solving powerhouseWhy Jules prioritises a remarkable ending to her workshopsDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.LinksWatch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Think With Things websiteConnect to Jules:On LinkedInOn InstagramOn FacebookSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a textThe latest milestone for the workshops work podcast—200 episodes! 200!To celebrate the occasion, I’ve produced a special episode. Instead of speaking to a guest, I spoke to you.And what better way to source my inspiration for episode 200 than to turn to the community that has grown and flourished around the show? I turned to my community to gather their questions—big and small, serious and silly—about the podcast, what I’ve learned, and my thoughts on facilitation at large.Michelle Howard, previous guest on the show, asked the questions on your behalf.  Find out about:My own misconceptions about facilitation that the podcast has revealed over timeWhat I would say, if I could travel back in time, to the Myriam who was about to record episode oneWhy I’m always, at least partly, pursuing constructive ignorance in my interviewsHow my focus has shifted from what my guests ‘do’ and where it rests nowWhat has changed in my professional facilitate practice since hosting the showLessons and points of interest from building the NDB communityBig thanks to Patrick Cowden, Yvonne Chin Irving,  Lily Gros, Mirjam Leunissen, Vitalij Malahov, Zoha Sharifyazdi and Dov Tsal for contributing questions! Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.Connect to Myriam:On LinkedInSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a textIn May 2022, an academic research paper titled “Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation” was published in Nature (one of the most prestigious scientific publishers). They tested how the transition from in-person to online interaction affected innovation (measured by collective idea generation) and concluded that video calls were bad for brainstorming.The media derived: “Zoom is a creativity killer.”But, as (online) facilitators, we have first-hand experience with remote teams’ creativity and effective collaboration. But, we haven’t had hard evidence proving the study wrong.My guests on today’s bonus episode, Elise Keith (CEO of Lucid Meetings, Author and Meeting Innovator) and Dave Mastronardi (CEO of the Gamestorming Group) have the ambition to test the hypothesis that online work killed creativity through a global mega experiment. As they kick off the project with a Symposium, Elise and Dave joined me to share their vision, drivers and open questions.Listen to this episode to find out about:The definition of creativity and how to measure itHow the project came to beThe bigger vision behind the project: How online collaboration can tackle global challengesHow you can get involved in the experimentDon't miss the New Rules for Work Experiment and SymposiumVisit the New Rules for Work WebsiteAnd, don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.LinksWatch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Read the Article published in ‘Nature’Read about the studyWatch the Youtube video: Why video calls are bad for brainstormingConnect to Elise and Dave:Connect to Elise on LinkedInConnect to Dave on LinkedInSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a textHow do you create a culture of independent and empowered facilitation in a large business? Well, Rod Butcher and Nikesh Patel of Fidelity International posed me that question and, together, we came up with a radical solution.This episode explains the story of how we built Fidelity International’s Facilitation Academy.You can hear about the process we followed and the results we’ve seen, as well as how we interpreted the issues and questions that Rod and Nikesh started with.Implementing facilitation skills at scale can be a daunting thought, but it’s eminently more enticing when it’s achieved through a generative, self-sustaining cycle of talent training talent!Find out about:What the structure and process of the academy is and how it worksHow to look at a problem with a broad view, to find unexpected solutionsThe unique challenges of internal facilitation vs. external facilitationThe unexpected benefits of implementing a facilitation mindset across an organisationWhy an interdepartmental-by-default approach creates more meaningful space for changeHow framing facilitation as problem-solving generated more interestHow to create a virtuous cycle of facilitation, training, and learningDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.Connect to Rod and Nikesh:Rod on LinkedInNikesh on LinkedInSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a text“Keep it simple, stupid” is a popular refrain which might be better translated as “make it harder, stupid”!One of the most common misunderstandings Gabor Bittera encounters in his mission towards simplicity is the belief that simple = easy. Far from it, in fact. Sometimes, creating simplicity is the hardest task in a workshop.Thankfully, Gabor has done the hard miles and has advice that can save you from complicating the process of simplifying your workshops… leaving you just with the fact that it isn’t always easy!We explore what it means to facilitate simplicity, with simplicity, and for simplicity in this episode—jumping from practical advice and templates to deeper questions around purpose and effectiveness. It was a joyful conversation and I hope you will get as much from it as I did.Find out about:Why Gabor prioritises simplicity over ease — no matter how complex it can be to simplifyHow to facilitate using principles from Scrum, linguistics and storytellingWhy simple facilitation requires more of our attention and careWhich part of the workshop process Gabor believes is hardest to simplifyWhy the art of facilitation includes designing constraints and restrictionsWhat the perfect group size is for both subgroup and whole-group workHow to use specific accountability to create more impactful workshopsDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.LinksWatch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Subscribe to Gabor’s Substack — Scrum TimesRead or subscribe to Gabor’s MediumConnect to Gabor:On LinkedInSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a textIn an on-site workshops, breakout groups are a tried and tested way to get the group thinking, communicating, and developing.In online workshops, breakout rooms are a different beast.You press a button and the group disappears — you don’t know what they’re saying, whether they’re collaborating, or anything about their time together!Gwyn Wansbrough is on a mission to take the uncertainty out of breakout rooms and virtual facilitation. Her approach touches all ends of the workshop, helping you and your participants get clear on your shared purpose, rules for engagement, and much more.Gwyn provides a crash course in breaking through the burden of breakout rooms, so you can turn them into a powerful option in your facilitation toolbox!Find out about:Why your setup and warm-up will make or break the success of your breakout roomsWhat Gwyn believes to be the four biggest mistakes we make with breakout roomsHow to use the start of your workshop to prepare the group for breakoutsHow to use a set of shared agreements to generate buy-in and commitmentWhy it’s vital to remain present for the group, even if you are outside of their breakoutsThe three things participants need to feel comfortable in breakout roomsDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.LinksWatch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Check out Gwyn’s website.Gwyn’s free guide: How to Create Engaging Virtual Sessions Your Participants Will Love.Connect to Gwyn:On TwitterOn LinkedInSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Send us a textFacilitation is a system that gives groups space to make sense — it’s not about guiding them towards something, nor is it about leading them.But what is ‘deliberate sensemaking’ all about? To the uninitiated, it may sound a little simplistic — is it just about helping people understand stuff that they’re working on?Michael Hamman, one of the foremost voices in Agile coaching and training, explains all in this episode and reveals the complexity behind seemingly simple sense-making. We discuss the facilitator’s role as a mirror for the group, the work before the work of sensemaking, and how our incessant and instinctive need to categorise is the last great barrier to topple if we want things to make more sense.Find out about:How sensemaking and categorisation help groups make progressWhy, once we understand categorisation, we shall dismantle itHow to create deeper insight by leaving some questions unanswered Why facilitation is about being a mirror, rather than a paintingHow to design workshops that prioritise sensemakingWhat happens when we break ourselves free from the categories we’ve createdThe common theme that emerges when Michael prioritises inner beauty in his workshop designDon’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.LinksWatch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.Centre for Inner Agility website.Connect to Michael:On LinkedInSupport the show✨✨✨You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/