3.21: When You Need a Facilitator

In this episode of The Mindful Academy, I discuss the role of a coach as a facilitator, specifically focusing on how coaches can assist teams and departments in academia. Drawing on a recent Mayo Clinic Proceedings study, I outline how facilitative coaching differs from traditional corporate training, emphasizing collaboration and mutual growth.

The episode explores three key ways coaches can facilitate group progress:

1. Assessments: Tools like DISC, MBTI, and emotional intelligence inventories help individuals and teams understand their working styles and foster shared vocabulary, which can improve collaboration.
   
   
2. Workshops & Strategic Planning: Customized workshops based on team needs, such as vision-building or resilience training, allow groups to align their goals and processes, particularly in response to new leadership or changing mandates.
   
   
3. Professional Development: Offering specialized development opportunities for academic teams, often overlooked in universities, can provide much-needed growth in areas like leadership, resilience, and imposter syndrome.

The episode concludes with a reminder that bringing in an outside facilitator offers fresh perspectives, neutral guidance, and allows academic leaders to be active participants in team development. I encourage listeners to reach out for more information about coaching and facilitation in academic settings.

Episode Details

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to the mindful Academy. And thank you again for lending me your ears this week. Today I'm going to talk about coaching again, but this time coaching a coach as a facilitator. So in Episode 312, I talked about two use case scenarios for coaching, one being sort of the transactional project based quick burst of support and motivation. And the other being transformational coaching, where you and the coach sort of get into your default patterns and, and work on rewiring, how you automatically respond to impulses. Today, I'm going to talk about other work that coaches like myself do that sort of fall into the facilitation bucket. So stay tuned. And I will outline three different ways. Three different ways. A coaches, a facilitator can help you and your unit department team get to where they want to go, and some examples of that. So um, I'll start by sort of outlining the types of facilitative work that came up to me when I was brainstorming, either the things I have done or the things that I know some of my colleagues do. So facilitating, facilitating roundtables, WorldCat Cafe sessions, you know, big get togethers, where you want an outside person to keep the conversation going. team alignment, and team coaching, where you come in, you bring somebody to come in, who is looking at how your team works together and helping you see one another and yourselves in new ways. I put on workshops that are either within an institution or sort of open enrollment on a particular topic like resilience, or mindfulness, or career fulfillment is one of my favorite ones. Maybe you and your unit want some sort of assessment like some people do. MBTI or disc, I do disc I do Belbin team roles. I have a couple different emotional intelligence instruments, a resilience instrument, things like that, where you and your team use an assessment to talk about how you work together. Strategic planning is another place where you might might bring in a facilitator retreats, or simply like, we need some professional development, what's out there. And that is a good place to look at a coach slash facilitator to see what do you have in your bucket of tricks that you might bring to the table. Because again, like with one on one coaching, you and your colleagues are the subject matter experts in your work. The coach and facilitator brings expertise in a model or an assessment or a process that we both you and the facilitator, Coach agree can help you guys get from where you are now here to there where you'd like to be. And I'm talking about myself as a coach facilitator, as something different than a corporate trainer. So I know that most of the people who listen to this are not in the corporate world. But you've all seen at some point in your life mandatory training, right? Whether it's workplace safety training, that's mandatory from your employer. mandatory training, compulsory stuff tends to be sort of run on autopilot. It's one directional, they're just feeding you information that you need to know for compliance. And that's, and corporate trainers frequently are like, okay, the corporation's instituting a new x, let's roll it out to the entire organization across the nation, by sending our trainers out to deliver the content, that even if some of the meetings and workshops I facilitate might be compulsory, the spirit is not one way communication where you are being spoon fed information. So the coaches I know who do facilitative and consulting work, it's a two way street. Right? Because the coach is invested in the growth and development of the people in the room. Additionally, on my for my part, My academic background included language acquisition training, and a ton of attention paid to like student centered classrooms. And so for me any kind of facilitation workshop leading presentations, is rooted in the idea of partnering with the people in the room to co create something that helps them go Bro. And so I bring something you bring something we do something cool together is this simple and easy motto there. So a couple examples of how this happens. And I'm sharing this with you Yes, to let you know the kinds of services I offer, but also to sort of open your eyes to the kinds of professional development learning that you as an academic might hear about, but might not always have access to, because universities, if they offer these things tend to offer them for staff based units, whereas academic departments when they think of professional development for faculty, it tends to be subject matter expertise focused professional development. So are you using your professional development funds to go to conferences and deliver papers, and things like that. And I'm offering a view of a different kinds of professional development that is also super useful for those of you who are engaged in knowledge work and teaching and creative work. So one way that a coach facilitator can come into your unit or organization and do cool things, is assessments. So I've mentioned a few there's a disc which is quite common, it looks like four colors if you've seen it. The Belbin team roles resilience at work, emotional intelligence. MBTI is another the Clifton Strengths Finder is another right all of these assessments that are pretty popular workplace behavior assessments, the MBTI is of course a personality assessment. But these I, I find them fun. I'll just admit, I think assessments are fun. Back in the day, I was a huge sucker for like a Buzzfeed quiz quizzes, love that stuff. What is good about it and useful about it in an academic context, in an organizational context? Is that an assessment and you know, hopefully one that is validated and research based, but an assessment participants to write a piece of paper that's about them. And everybody is sort of looking at the same kind of thing and getting the same kind of information. So what kind of team contributor Are you are you a people focused person or an action focused person or an ideas focused person, right, so we're sharing some vocabulary. And we're looking at results that are both private and shared. So I get to learn a little bit about me as the person if I'm the participant, and in my group, I can choose like, Okay, I'll talk about these things, we'll talk about them together and create kind of a new level playing field for ourselves with new vocabulary. And depending on the degree of trust and psychological safety in your group, a savvy facilitator will suggest a lot of psychological safety, I would not suggest an emotional intelligence inventory, that we sent her a group workshop and development session around. Because if there's not a lot of psychological safety, you don't want to be talking about emotional self awareness and self expression that hits a little bit too close to the bone. If you're looking to build psychological safety, then something that focuses on team roles might be good, or something that focuses on resilience, like how individually resilient are you and how resilient is the team, right where it is less personal, less sort of soft underbelly, and more organizational. But what I like about assessments is that it gives people something to respond to, you can look at your assessment, this doesn't really land for me. And even that gives you something to sort of learn from and focus on. And most of the assessments that I use, that are for individuals or for groups, they illuminate really interesting stuff. I generally find people go, Oh, okay, there's a name for that, or, Oh, I can talk about how to value that part of me in an organizational context. Instead of just thinking of it as like my idiosyncratic thing that I do, right? Being able to attach value and use to different behaviors that come naturally to you. They tend to be pretty useful. And an assessment based workshop or professional development opportunity, builds self awareness in the individual looking at their report, right? They get to think about themselves in sort of a metacognitive way, and it builds team vocabulary and team appreciation.

I like those. Another way that a facilitator can come into your organization is to go go through a process that's unique. So for example, I have sort of a vision and success pyramid that I've put together from other sources and from my own work with faculty over the years, when it comes to, okay, what does the next thing look like? And I haven't quite identified what the next thing is, right? How do I pick my options? So maybe I come in and do a vision and success success pyramid type workshop for a group that is customized to what that group, department unit, whatever needs, like, Oh, we're trying to figure out what our next steps are as a department, or we have a new mandate, and we have to shift some things. What do you have consultant coach that might help us work through that. System engagements that I do quite often, when a new leader comes in, for example, and wants to kind of reconstitute the team or release or level set the team around new goals. Okay, so sometimes, a custom workshop can be in response to an issue. Other times, it's just an opportunity for the team to get together and do something new, as part of a professional development day. So if this isn't part of your practice, like, oh, there's never any budget to do this, or a retreat is basically just a huge department meeting. Here's some instances where I've seen academic organizations, either that I've been a member of or that I've been a facilitator for bring in people to offer something that is an outside work. So are you do you want to have an intentional gathering that is different than your usual staff meeting or council meeting, right? Sometimes getting out of the same old agenda, looking at how the group functions from a new perspective can be super valuable. When you bring in somebody from the outside, it allows you to set a different tone or a different agenda, right? It becomes maybe less about being in the weeds of the work and more about getting up on the balcony and looking down and saying, Okay, how are we doing the work, which I find super valuable. When you bring in somebody from the outside, it allows the leader to be a participant. So it takes a little bit of the pressure off of the leader. It allows people to see the leader as a learner, and for the leader of the department, team, unit, whatever, to learn some of the same things that the that the members of the group are yearning, are learning. It also brings in fresh eyes on old topics. Right, bringing in an outside facilitator to work through x just brings in new perspectives, people who've been at different institutions who've worked across the discipline, that can be super value, valuable. new questions, new solutions, new eyes, bring all sorts of new things. And then what is particularly valuable is that an external facilitator doesn't have a horse in the race, right? So that person can be neutral, can be arm's length. And as I said at the outset, like invested in the growth of the people in the room, invested in a bigger mission, and less burdened by, you know, historical stories about X, Y, Z, attached to well, you know, 15 years ago, these two departments merged, and we're still angry about it. So bringing in somebody who doesn't have that the weight of that history on them is, of course, super valuable. So, a couple examples of how this has worked in my career. I was brought in by a newly appointed Dean, there had been some shuffling, some retirements, some shifts in priorities, and there was a new dean. And so this executive team under the Dean had people who had been there for a while before the Dean arrived had new members who showed up around the same time as the dean. And they wanted to convene, both as a group and sort of create team spirit and get aligned behind what the current agenda was with the arrival of the new team. And so the dean and I spoke, and we came up with a plan to do Belbin team roles. For example, to surface for the group the individual skills and interests and ways of working in the group. The work habits there. We created a team map to identify like how do we clustered do we cluster over here in action? Do we cluster over here and ideas so that the group can see where their collective assets are, but also where the pitfalls are? Right if you're if everybody clusters over in people focused. And you are hired and put together that way, because the leader is a people focused person. And we tend to hire people who look like us, right? Or behave like us or resonate with us. Does that mean that there's a gap, for example, in action, right? And surfacing those things was incredibly valuable. Because when everybody is people focused, there is frequently not a there's not a lot of stomach for hard decisions, right. And so in the interest of not stepping on toes, people delay action, and surfacing that and saying, okay, looking at this, this team map, this might be a danger to watch out for super valuable, right? If you have a lot of people who are action focused, you're surfacing. Okay, like, does everybody think that they're the lead dog in this particular sled race? And how are you going to be conscientious and deliberate about distributing the work so that people get to do what they like people aren't overburdened, and we aren't sort of engaging in power struggles. Another example was a board of trustees where you had experienced subject matter experts who were stepping into a new kind of role. Because as a Board of Trustees, of course, you're being brought in for your experience, but you also need to serve the mission of the organization. So there we did the vision and success pyramid, where we started with the vision of the organization and allowed the board members individually, to sort of work through okay, what's my contribution here? Where am I really aligned with this mission? What does my work on the board look like? And where, where in my expertise, is that not my role right now? Right. So being a trustee is different than being a practitioner. So learn, establishing ways for them to kind of self manage, okay, this is the board stuff, and my other subject matter expertise I deploy here, but I don't need to bring it into the board meeting, those things were important. So what's in scope, what's out of scope, that's another way that you might bring facilitator in. And then a third way you might bring a facilitator in is let's say, you're part of an organization that offers professional development to its members. So women in science, for example, I'm doing something for a professional organization that has a Women in Science Group, and they want to offer their members something on impostor syndrome, for example, I've done a women in business thing where we were talking about emotionally intelligent leadership, right? So what professional organizations are you a part of, that have a little bit of budget to say, Okay, what's going to help our members level up their career? Right? Is it emotional intelligence and leadership? Is it resilience? Is it impostor syndrome? Is it career planning, all of those things are things that you might look at a facilitator for. And a facilitator who is also a coach brings in the investment in the growth in the people in the room. Rather than just I have a show that I put on for you. And your job is to sit and listen and clap. So yeah, this is sort of my assessment that there are a couple of different ways to theatre to have a workshop. And having somebody with a coaching background

is going to lead to the people in the room, more likely than not feeling more seen and engaged than if you have somebody who is primarily a speaker or trainer, where the expectation is more a one way street. So that's a little bit of a plug for coaching as part of your facilitative makeup. But also, I hope that going through the kinds of things where you might bring in an outsider reminds you that Oh, yeah. In the midst of our day to day work, what might my group need to do to kind of get out of the weeds stand up? Look, ticket, a ticket in the bigger picture, not only of the work, but one another, and how we as a group are working together to get the work done well, and to feel good when we come to work? And what is each of our responsibility in doing that? So that's where my investment for you here lies in navigating between the I individually want to feel fulfilled at work, and our group needs to work together and we need to do good work all at the same time. That requires some deliberate attention and I find it incredibly fulfilling to be a part of that deliberate attention. So if you have questions about these sorts of things reach out, right? I'm always interested in talking about coaching and facilitation and assessments. And if I'm not the right person for you, maybe I know somebody who is so reach out and set up an appointment, we can have a chat about it. Or just think about, what are you going to look for the next time you have an opportunity to bring somebody in to your group to lead a process or teach something or talk about something? Thank you so much for being here today. And lending me your ears. I will be back before long with more insights from coaching and academia. Take good care.