001 - Getting it Right by Starting it Right. The Power of Connection - with Patrick Cowden

In this episode, I talk to Patrick Cowden, founder of Beyond Leadership, an agency that helps organizations to unleash their full potential. By introducing a new way of leadership, Patrick empowers organizations to master future challenges. 

Patrick is a book author, TEDx speaker and enhancer of collaboration. In this episode, we talk about the importance of human connection in workshops. Patricks shares how facilitators can change the game and deal with egos and politics by kicking off working sessions with a simple check-in exercise.  

Don’t miss the hands-on advice, tips and tricks and Patrick’s energy that will spill over and inspire you to deliver workshops that work.

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Subscribe to our newsletter for a free 1-page summary of each upcoming episode directly to your inbox, or explore our eBooks featuring 50-episode compilations for even more facilitation insights. Find out more: https://workshops.work/podcast

 

Questions and Answers

[1:38]     What is wrong with the way we gather professionally at work?

[4:08]     What can we do to combine joy and results in meetings and workshops?

[8:06]     Can we achieve the same results when we meet remotely?

[14:45] How can we create human connection in workshops?

[17:20] Can you explain how the “connect exercise” works? 

[23:19] To what extend do you explain why you are doing specific exercises? Do you achieve the same results when you do the connect exercise in 3 minutes versus 30 seconds?

[28:11] How do you shift from the connection exercise to the “real” business-related topic of the meeting?

[33:45] How can you assure sustainable results of your intervention?

[35:13] Can you adjust the “connect exercise” to other topics without compromising the effect? 

[38:19] What is your advice to facilitators to achieve results, foster connection and fight egos?    

Related links you may want to check out:

• Patrick’s organisation: http://www.thebeyond.company 
• Patrick’s Book “Neustart”
• Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and Nobel laureate
• From my desk on the value of check-ins: “You need one key to make meetings successful”
• Our sponsor Session Lab

Connect to Patrick:

• LinkedIn 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:02

Do your team workshops deliver the results you hope for? What if you could keep momentum of your meetings and get everyone to follow up even weeks later? My name is Miriam Hattness, and it's my mission to help you deliver workshops that drive sustainable results. My guests are professional facilitators, trainers, and coaches with whom I discuss best practices and explore why workshops work. Today with me on the show is Patrick Cowden. And we will talk about the importance of human connection connections for achieving results in workshops. Patrick is an award-winning book author. He's a keynote and TEDx speaker and the founder of Beyond Leadership. Hello, Patrick. Thank you for being here today with me. How are you today?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Hey Maryam, I'm glad to be here and always happy to hear your voice and get into topics that can change the course of human history.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Absolutely. That's why we're here together. So I have the impression sometimes that I chose the worst business niche ever because nobody seems to be interested in workshops. Everyone hates them. And most of business people think that they're wasting their time sitting in workshops. Is it just me? Or what is wrong with the work with the way we gather professionally at work?

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Well, you know, that's a big question, right? I think that in the course of the last uh 50 years, um how we gather and um discuss and decide has gone through uh dramatic uh changes. Okay, so in many places uh we don't come together at all anymore. It's turned working, right? In many places um we've sliced the jobs into tiny little pieces so um we no longer can come together and interact and cooperate in the bigger picture. We've got to add little pieces of slices together, and that starts to become very complicated. So as things become complicated, uh our meetings become complicated, and as the meetings become complicated, um we lose the joy of being with them, right? And when we lose the joy, then there's no reason to put in anymore into what we're trying to achieve because the meetings we do achieve almost nothing anymore at all. Nothing that we can sense, nothing we can see. And it actually rarely ever achieves anything in the meeting or in the workshop. So the quality has deteriorated in the last 10 years, five years, two years, two months, two weeks, two days to a level that gives no one satisfaction, gives no one results, uh, and gives no one progress anymore. So that you don't even check into meetings anymore. You know, you just play with your phone and Facebook, Twitter, and you don't pay attention, and it just goes nowhere. And on the other side, we've got all these crazy new ideas of crazy new formats getting thrown on top of the existing format that make it even more confusing and more um non-productive and delivers even less more results. This we play with Lego and Play-Doh and all kinds of other funky stuff. So we think we're having fun because we feel like children, but we get nowhere with that either. So I think it had nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with that the current reality has gotten really, really bad.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

So am I understanding you right? That it's either they're so funky and only focused on fun, but then they don't achieve results, or they're so focused on results that they forget the fun and are too businesslike and borrowing. So, what are what can we do about it? What are you doing to combine the joy and the results?

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yeah, totally. Share with us. So, you know, first of all, I spent 35 years in those meetings, you know. So you know what you're talking about. I tell you 20 different jobs. I watched uh American companies, European companies, Asian companies, and for some reason they're all doing the same thing, they're just doing it faster. So it's bad getting better, you know, like wow, how crazy is that, right? How crazy is that? And uh I met Mohammed Yunus not too long ago. We had dinner, and he said, Patrick, you know, if we uh stay on the same roads and just make them broader and more modern, uh, we just move faster to the same destinations. And those destinations are bad because it's killing the planet, right? So uh it all doesn't work, and if you just try to take something that doesn't work and improve it, you just make it not work faster and better. So we decided years ago that you can't improve something that's broken. Sounds so true, so simple, but it's not simple, right? But people don't, they forget, they think they don't step out of the box and go, wait a minute, if we were going to redesign this new and make it right, you know, what would we how would we design it fresh so that the joy is in, the results are in, the impact is in, the power is in the room, the energy gets there in seconds, and you do things with it, and you go out, you come back and go, Wow, this is amazing. This feels like a world champion something team, right? So uh so we had to, you know, so basically you can't improve or add onto existing ways of meeting and existing ways of cooperating, which is what those meetings are there for. You have to go to the foundational source of the problem. In software engineering, we call it, you need to know the root cause. And then when you know the root cause, then you fix that, and then you you can fix it. So that's what we did. We asked what was the root cause, and then we went and fixed it, and now we have a format that works better than anything ever, ever done before, except maybe you know, before 50 years ago when we used to be normal human beings, we used to do this all the time.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Yeah, and I have the impression that with more and more technology and overwhelm, we always try to, or we have the impression that we need to use the most modern state-of-the-art technology and apps, although there might be much easier ways to connect to people or to find the joy again in meetings. So, what is your offline strategy?

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Well, I think uh if the foundation isn't uh in right order, right, then the technology just is not going to help you at all, right? So uh what you want to do is get the foundational elements of interaction and cooperation uh into high quality quickly, and then you can use technology to do all kinds of great stuff for you. It's just like you and me. We're good friends, we've had great times together, we get a little Sky call going, it feels like it was yesterday that I was in Amsterdam with you having a good time, but it was not yesterday, it was like a year and a half ago, I don't know, right? So um, yeah, so you get the foundations in place and then technology serves you. If you don't have the tech uh the foundations in place and you serve technology, it just makes the same thing faster worse. So it's it's really radical what we see.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

And actually, that's a nice example with you and me sitting in Amsterdam having a great time chatting over a cup of coffee or a Vietnamese coffee, even better. Um, and now we're sitting here being recorded on Skype, and it doesn't feel the same. So there's something of this natural connection that is getting lost. Do you think that it is possible to replace this um human connection that is one-to-one in at the same place, the physical part by technology?

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Uh well, I hope not. I mean, I don't think so. I think uh uh the non-verbal uh body language, uh presence, warmth, all those things you cannot transport with technology today, you know. Um and I think it's the most value part of valuable part of being a human being is this uh these moments of closeness um and connectedness um and all the emotions associated with that level of respect and appreciation and trust for others, especially for more than one other person. You know, one-on-one is an element, but when you get a group of eight, ten, twelve people together in that quality, uh the walls of the room resonate and vibrate with the energy that can ensue, right? So I think that element of personal interaction uh is key. And nowadays we can fly just about anywhere in Europe in an hour and a little bit. So we can be anywhere we want, whenever we want, and it's cheaper than driving a car. So the cost production programs are bull, right? So screw that. Get on an airplane, get to your people, get them in a room, get them excited, go outside, walk around the lake, jump in naked, have fun.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Yes, I like that attitude. Yeah. So, okay, so once we have all these people then in the room, how are we getting them excited? And how are we getting them excited in a way that they're willing to play together and achieve results in a fun way?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Well, what you what you what you do is you do what's most natural uh for people when they come together to want to play together, right? So when we when when I was a kid and went out to the basketball courts, uh there were five, six, seven, eight guys hanging out, and it took about you know 32 seconds to get two teams set up and then play and have fun. We didn't need to have a coordination meeting and a planning meeting and a detail meeting and a checklist meeting and a uh you know uh dashboard meeting to go out and do our job, you know, because we knew what we had to do. We just wanted to get it done, right? And that that that's a natural instinct. That's a natural human instinct. And there's a natural flow in how people cooperate together that we've been using as groups of human beings for 200,000 plus years since we tamed fire. So the anthropologists, uh friends of mine, they'll argue, was it 200,000 years ago, 250,000 years ago, you know, when exactly did we tame fire? And which is like that's when organized humanity really began, right, with fire. Um, and that flow of uh how we would connect with each other and align with each other on the task at hand and commits to go out in quality and execute as a group for the good of the community, for the good of the village, for survival. Uh, that process we embedded in our human nature uh for 200,000 years. When we went from hunter-gatherer to farmers, we still kept that natural flow of how people cooperated and worked together. And um in most meetings don't follow that natural flow anymore, which is why they feel so bad. You know, that somebody forgot that you got there's a process, there's a flow, there's an order of attack. For individuals, we call it flow, but there's also group flow. When people get into that natural element of their body and their mind and their emotions uh activated at the highest possible state, um time goes by, you don't drink, you don't eat, you get into flow, and groups can get into that state. When groups are in that in that state, they're in a higher quality of ability to cooperate, to interact, to create, to be creative, uh, to do things, to commit to things. The willpower is activated for them to want to do something of their own free will in the court. And that natural flow uh was the first thing we discovered in the 10 years of research that we had, is that is uh step one of the foundation, of the fundamentals. And if you go to managers and leaders today or project managers and ask them, hey man, do you know what the natural flow of human cooperation is? Nine of ten will go, no, I don't know. So if your job is to get people to cooperate together, don't you think you should know what the natural flow of human cooperation is? So that's a key factor, and it was the first uh big discovery we had um years ago. Um and then two or three other big discoveries came that were needed in order to be able to apply that in normal workshop uh or meeting settings. But that was the first foundational piece.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

So, you as a facilitator in such a workshop, what can you do then to initiate such a flow?

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Um, yeah, well, you just gotta get all the other stuff out of the way that hinders the natural flow, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:54

So it's easier said than done, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Yeah, well, you just you just gotta, you know, you gotta take everything that normally is done for a meeting and throw it out the window. Okay. Um again, Mohammed Yunis, this very inspirational guy for me a couple weeks ago. He said, uh, whatever the other guys do, so whatever the status quo is, he he competed with banks and invented a new type of bank in Bangladesh, right? So he said, what you do is you do 180 degrees the opposite of what they do. Nice. Right? So these these banks went to men, right? And men were their clients. So I went to women, right? 97% of my clients are women. Uh, you know, we got everybody, the the other banks they put everybody in in the branch offices, and we we got no branch offices, we go to the client, right? And you won the Nobel Prize with it. Yeah, there you go. And the banks they all use contracts and paperwork and have lawyers, and we have no contracts and no paperwork, and we've got 23,000 employees and not a single lawyer. So the opposite is you gotta throw the agenda out of the window first. So any thoughts of this is how I start, this is the middle, this is the end, forget it, throw it away. First thing. Second thing, throw the desks out the windows, throw the chairs out. Uh basically, best thing, leave the room. Shut the door, lock it, don't ever go back in the dark room again. Um, you know, go outside. You know, so everything you would normally do, you don't do, right? Don't do that. Don't don't start with an agenda. Don't use PowerPoint slides, don't use Excel, don't use Slipchart, don't use Lego, don't use Play-Doh.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

So, what do you use? What are you? So, for our listeners who might not have the experience that you have, um, how can they approach or how can they then prepare for such a workshop where they want to create human connection but off script?

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Yeah, so the first thing is you gotta know that natural order of events, right? So if you know the flow, then all you gotta know is what's the first step of the flow. Then you do that, and then you do the second step when you finish the first step. And the first at the end of the first step always tells you the next step. That's why it's natural flow. When you finish step one, the audience is screaming for step two. They articulate it in their reflection, right? So we can realize that um what you need is an understanding of the flow. You need to know the trigger points that trigger the flow, right? So as a facilitator, you gotta know how do you how do I trigger flow, which is your question that you just asked me. And the third thing is um, well, what are the trigger points and what are the mechanisms I can use to trigger that quality in these different phases of the flow needed for the high quality uh interaction and connection, right? So um, and that's what we we know. We you know it's up on, you know, we we know the steps and stuff. So what you do as a facilitator is you you start um, we call it a check-in. A lot of processes and formats use check-ins, but a check-in where everybody speaks to how they feel and what their wish is for this meeting, so that you understand that if you have 10 people, it's not the agenda or the owner of the meeting that says we're here today for A. No. Everybody checks in with how do I feel right now and what am I here for? What do I want to achieve when I end this session? What's my personal wish if I had limitless wishes, right? Um yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

I'm so happy that you're mentioning the check-in because once a client of mine stood up in a meeting shouting at me, saying, I hate your check-ins. And then later in the afternoon, he came back to me and said, he apologized basically, saying that he does hate my check-ins, but he knows how important they are and that they change totally the game we're playing inside this meeting afterwards. So, yeah, I'm totally with you. Um, I remember when we were when we met in Vietnam and also in um Berlin, you were doing the connect exercise, um, which had the power to overcome or to create trust between individuals in no time, precisely in 10 minutes. Are you still doing that? And um if so, maybe you can explain our listeners what it's all about, the connection exercise, that I stole from you, by the way, and I call it the Patrick Circle.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

So I love it. I'm still doing it. Yeah, you're allowed. It's okay. Yeah, so we've got like the 10th generation new and improved version of that.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Oh, I'm behind.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

No, you're allowed. It's okay. You've got your version 10 improved. So we change it almost every week based on results of the you know, five to fifty workshops we do each week outside with clients, uh, and we always learn and we always change and adjust. So um every step of the natural flow, uh, we call it connected line commit, um, uses the connect exercise, right? Um and the connect exercise starts with uh with the individual and goes to the group. Uh, then it goes to the topic uh of uh concern for the group, right? And then it goes to back to a commitment of the individual, right? So there's a very there's a very specific flow so that the connect exercise is basically a mechanism to intensify and improve the interaction quality of the group to an extremely high level in a short amount of time and activate uh emotion and connection uh and trust uh in a in a very short period. And uh, because you need that quality in the room in order to uh enhance the ability to cooperate and to create and to innovate, right? Uh sometimes that's referred to as psychological safety, uh, which Amy Edmondson uh from Harvard uh has kind of made to her a main thing. Um and we have found a mechanism that activates psychological safety and that level of trust within uh minutes or seconds almost, right? So it's it's a very intense uh process, it moves very, very quickly, and um and basically what it does is uh applies certain rules to how the group interacts in order to achieve that quality, right? And um by asking a question, getting uh a high level of attention, uh active listening to the question being answered, to uh respond with appreciative feedback and high level of positivity, to then reflect uh as a group on the experience itself and on the insights that were achieved in that interaction on an important question, and then to use that as a baseline for discussion, dialogue, decision, and action, right? So that we call it the Alarda rules, the rules of exercise. Um these rules define the exercise, and teams that apply over and over and over again, they no longer use an exercise, they're just applying the these interaction rules uh with one another in a group setting so that when a question is asked, every single voice is heard and receives the same amount of time to uh to answer that question and then receive appreciative feedback and so forth and so on. So we've kind of mastered that format now to go from being an exercise to being a role of engagement for the workshop to then become an embedded ritual that is used in every single routine of every single team in an organization all the time. So we've kind of gone to that next organizational phase already. But the uh connect exercise is the um right after your check-in, uh changes the energy in the room and gets that level of trust to embed itself in every single individual and every team in the group within you know three, four minutes. You know, so that's very, very fast.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

So maybe if I may, just to explain to the audience who doesn't know the connect exercise, um, just in a nutshell, the rules of the game is basically that a group of three workshop participants, they sit in a circle with nothing in between them and no notepads, no technology, full attention, and then they all answer one after the other the same question. And while a person answers the question, the other two just listen quietly without interrupting and without commenting. And everyone has the same amount of time, and if they prefer to remain quiet during that time, they may, and after the time is over and they answered the question, they receive appreciative feedback from the other two, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:49

So yes, and that is correct, and and after that, they reflect uh together as a group how the exercise actually was. So the reflection piece after the connection. Connection is as important, sometimes even more important, than the connect itself. So we always connect, reflect is the two-step process. And in many instances now in real life environments, we no longer do the triads, the three, we go straight to two, one-on-one, and then reflect in groups of four. It accelerates the process from two to reflecting in four, and the connect and the reflect together. We get a higher effect now in a shorter amount of time in twos and fours than to go into threes and bigger reflecting circles. So it's it's very efficient, very effective. And um and uh I think the the shortest we've done is 20 seconds, 10 seconds. Wow. That's 20, 10, that's 60 seconds, and you're done, right? So yeah, we've got we've gotten a lot of great experience and feedback on that now.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

And two questions regarding that. First, I would be interested um whether you're making the um the rules explicit. So do you explain beforehand why you're doing that and what the rules of the game are? Um and second, do you achieve the exactly the same results with having it in just 60 seconds instead of 10 minutes?

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Yeah, so um we don't explain anything ever. And we do explain the rules, right? We say, okay, one of you starts to answer the question, and the other person you pay attention, you listen quietly, no interruptions, right? So we do explain the rules and then appreciate positive, appreciate feedback, and then you reflect, and the reflection, everyone has one voice, speaks once on how do I feel, how was it, and what would I like to share with the group. So we do explain those rules of the connect and the reflect, but we don't explain the why or the science or the background or any of that. We just we go straight in, we say we start with the check-in, after the check-in, we go straight to the connect and start with the I, right? The I question, uh, and then we go to the we, and then we go to the future, you know, where they want to go, and then how do they want to get there? So the questions we use are actually, again, the natural flow. Who am I? Why am I here? Who are we? Why are we here? Group, what do we want to fucking achieve? Excuse my French on that one, and how do we want to get there, right? And what's my contribution? So those questions are actually what a team should be asking itself all the time. You and we start with identity and purpose. And identity and purpose, research has shown that is totally the thing, uh, the why, but the who comes before the why. You know, you can't go purpose without identity, right? So, identity of my I is important, but also the team, uh, you know, police SWAT team, their we has to be very strong, but they have to understand my I contribution in the we, and then what's our task today? Where are we going to go? What's the quality we want to achieve, and how are we gonna do it? What's my contribution? They're done. Uh, they do all four steps in a police SWAT team in nine minutes, and then they go out and do their job and save lives, right? Um, so learning from high performance teams. You know, I grew up in the military, my good friend John Foley is an F-18 fighter pilot for the Blue Angels. So we've learned so much from so many places of how the highest performing teams in the world have done this forever, that we've been able to take that and put it into this extremely simple template. And uh, and it has that impact every single time it's been applied. And we've got a lot of professor friends that have been trying to destroy this model for the last five years and break it because that's what they do. They say, Well, I don't care why it works, I want to see when it doesn't work, right? And you know, Matthias and Sabil from the University of Applied Sciences in uh Zurich, they've been unsuccessful in breaking the model. It works 100% of the time. It doesn't mean you're always happy when you use it because it will do things to you that your human nature is gonna scream at you loudly not to do. Um but you need that real deal in the room. People need to cooperate on the truth and open, honest reality of who they are and why they're there and where they want to go and why the hell it's not gonna work. And they need to open up on that, and that's trust, right? And uh that mechanism does it. And uh and we've got teams now that are faster than SWAT teams. So we've got teams that'll go through all four of those questions as a group with 12 people in the room in uh five minutes and 26 seconds.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Before we continue the show, let me take a brief moment to thank our sponsor, Session Lab. Session Lab.com is an online agenda planning tool that helps me to keep all I need for my workshop planning in one place. The agenda, exercise descriptions, material shopping lists, and all of the templates. No more struggles with Excel for every agenda update or last-minute changes in the schedule. Session Lab offers an easy-to-use drag and drop agenda builder, a color scheme that gives me an immediate feel on the balance of activities, and the option to share a branded document with my clients. And whenever I need inspiration for new exercises or variations, I check the abundant database with hands-on tips and tricks, or I dive into the Session Lab blog for which I have already contributed myself. So if you're looking for a smooth way to prepare a workshop or meeting agenda that not only looks amazing but also professional, sign up for Session Lab. I use it myself and I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't believe in its value. From a very organizational pragmatic point of view, how do you then shift to the let's say real topic of the workshop? Because usually these teams they don't come together to have these touchy-feely talks about who they are and where they're going. And when I think of large egos that might sit there in the room who don't feel comfortable at all answering these questions, um, how do you then find the shift to come to the more business-like topics?

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Yeah, that's kind of cool because uh the clients they they they start when they go. This is so crazy. So we've been sustaining now for a year, right? So we go into organizations, we go every week, every week go in, and then we start going to every single meeting, every manager meeting, and then we go into every single team meeting. We do this for you're brainwashing them. Well, in a good sense, of course. But they're discovering things with method, right? We call it a vehicle now. It's a vehicle from current state to future state, right? And usually people come together is because current state's not working the way it should. Okay? That's why you come together, because you got to fix things so that it gets better, so you get the job done better, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:52

Usually there's a purpose for a workshop, yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Exactly. So if we go to the root cause of why projects don't work and why workshops don't work, and why jobs don't work, and why organizations don't work, it's not the business topics that aren't working. It's the people topics that aren't working. It's the human factor that's not working. And they don't communicate, they're not open, they're not honest, they're not real, they don't care, they don't care anymore. So they just sit around and do what they do, right? So what happens is uh in nine out of ten cases, uh this human factor is the problem. So you fix that first, and then you go do the job outside of the room, please. You don't use meetings to do jobs, you don't do jobs in meetings. You know, the the the cockpit of an aircraft doesn't have a meeting at the front of the aircraft with his people and say, what you know what? No, you don't the the job is flying the aircraft safely from point A to point B with us in it, okay? That's the job. That's where the work gets done. The work don't get done in workshops. Even when they try to create something in the workshop, the work don't get done there either. They got to go do the prototype somewhere and build it and design it and put it into play. That happens on the factory floor somewhere else, right? So uh 90% of the problem is what this mechanism fixes. And it does a pretty good job the first time out, right? It doesn't get it all on the table. Um, but we've seen after three, four iterations, it's doing some really crazy things to teams that they knew they were aware of the problems before, but they never addressed it. They never opened up on it. And now for the first time they are because and only because of the vehicle, only because the rules of the interactions have changed and they listen to everybody till they're finished without interrupting. And the first thing they give is appreciation, appreciative feedback. Um, and when people know that no matter what I say, I'm gonna get appreciated for it, the likelihood of being honest or more open goes up. If I know that no matter what I say, I'm gonna get kicked in the teeth from everybody else in the room, then I will not open up and be honest about what's going on. And I don't care if it's a design group or a sales group or a finance group or nurses in the intensive care unit group, it's the same real deal happening everywhere. Um, the highest performance teams, they need to have that openness and honesty because otherwise people die, right? So they do need, they have their own rituals of how they get into very quick discussions and qualities that they can apply to the job when they go into the operating room or when they go out to a uh hostage taking as police teams, you know, or a fire as fire teams. They have things that they practice to have that quality, but in business we don't practice anything. We just do good stuff, 10 meetings a day. Yeah, we relate to every meeting. Uh we don't even know who's in the room anymore. We don't remember our own name by the end of the day. You know, we don't know what day of the week it is, you know, so we're all messed up, right? So what we're saying is if you can uh go to the source and um consistently go after it in every single meeting, then your ability to tackle the business issues goes up by a factor of 10. And I don't care what the business issue is, the business issue can be fixed in 10 seconds. If everybody in the room is connected, line, and committed on what needs to happen, they'll fix it in seconds at the end of this meeting. And they'll know who needs to be in the room outside of the meeting to get things fixed. And they've always known it, but no one's ever asked them the question, right? So um, and and and and they they get almost nowhere, or they get somewhere in the workshop, but then they go back into their vortex reality and they lose everything they achieved in the workshop because the daily reality takes them, slams them right back down, you know, reverting to type, the psychologists would probably say, right? They revert to type, they get into the old mechanisms, the old habits, everything flies away, all the goodness of the workshop disappears, and and again, they don't want to be with each other. They don't want to be in the room with each other, they're not having joy and fun being with each other. So, how good do you work in that environment? Zero. Bad, terrible, go.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

So if I um if I understand you correctly, after so you need a certain period of time where you basically train the teams to find a better connection and a better, more effective way of communication, an honest way of communication, so that then once you left the company, they can have workshops and meetings where they go right to the topic, where they solve the problems, and then also work on what they've agreed in the workshops or in the meetings, and not just go back to business and pretend as if nothing ever happened.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Yeah, so we actually go a step further than that. So we don't train them. We we take their real life business meetings and we we apply the vehicle a number of times with them, and then they apply the vehicle themselves to exactly those same daily, weekly, monthly routine meetings, real life. So there's no case study, there's no example. We got that management team, it's their Monday weekly meeting, and now we're using the beyond format. And in that beyond format, we go after the topics that they go after, right? And then they realize the top the root cause of their problems because we use the mechanism to find the root cause are trust, uh, identity, purpose, and fear. Okay, great. Well, uh, what tool do you use to go after fear, right? Yeah. Oh, what we got it tool. Oh, yeah, this does it. The fear is less because we're now more open with each other, right?

SPEAKER_03 34:33

So I realized that um the connect exercise also works with questions that are not going that deep. So even questions that are not about identity, but quite mundane, everyday, ordinary questions already create quite a good connection between the participants, and then it's easy also to then start the workshop to go to the business as usual topics, I would call them. Um, so when you do it in your um in your program, do you always ask these very deep um existential questions or do you very uh yeah, so yeah, yeah, so that's fun, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:18

So yes, we always ask the deep existential questions, right? But see, they're in the context of the topic. Okay. So when the quality control people come together and they check in, right, the leader will say, Listen, today the topic is zero fault, zero errors, is our topic. And my desired outcome is that we all have an understanding of our individual but our team contributions to exactly what it's going to take to achieve uh zero zero uh errors, right, as quality managers. Um, so when they do the who am I, it's who am I, why am I here, and what does zero uh uh uh fault mean to me individually?

unknown 35:59

Right?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Then who are we, why are we here as a group of quality managers? What does that mean to us as a team, right? And then what do we want to achieve as a group in regards to having that zero quality in all our products and all the washing machines and dishwashers and other stuff we produce as a company, right? And then back to what's my contribution.

SPEAKER_03 36:17

So basically, you're making these very existential questions still tangible for every person who's in the room, also for every person in the room to better understand the purpose of them as an individual having a contribution being there in the room at this point in time.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Absolutely, absolutely. So, because what it what it is is every topic in our job has an emotional context and it's just an identity context. It always does. We don't ask the questions there anyway, you know how I feel about this. Uh, and by using the flow, you find as people repeat it, it becomes easier, and they just do, you know, 30 seconds, 15 seconds feedback, a very quick question, but it's put some quality in the room that when they reflect after the connect, who am I, why am I here, what does zero errors mean to me? Maybe something comes up as part of a discussion before they move on because then they realize listen, we get I've got an issue with this topic. I would never articulate it if we would have gone just into the Sach thema. Uh, here's my issue. And the group needs to be aware of that so they don't move on to the next step till that clarity of individual purpose is sufficient to even go into the we team purpose in the next step. So, what's starting to happen is that our clients are realizing that yes, you can use the existential format all the time because it's relevant all the time.

SPEAKER_03 37:41

Um just one last question. If um so the topic or my mission is to um to help facilitators, even if they're not pro, to um have better workshops and better connections in their workshops.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

What would my phone ring? So you'll have to try it.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Yeah, so what would be your um your advice to a newbie facilitator who wants to have similar results than you have? So to get the egos out of the room and to have deep connections to address problems and solve them.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah. So yeah, just uh have fun, enjoy yourself, uh let go, relax, breathe, breathe, please breathe, breathe as much as you can, right? Um, and I think try to go to the simple foundations again. Just uh you know, check it in at the front and check it out at the end, and uh throw a small connect right at the beginning after the check-in to get everybody into a good positive uh state of uh trust and connection. I think that's sufficient. The whole flow that we do, uh I don't think you can master it by listening on a phone or a Skype or something. You gotta you gotta go apply this in a whole lot of settings to get to the level we've got. But I think uh most of our clients, when they start to embed and sustain themselves, the connect, excuse me, the check-in checkout is the easiest to do, and you can do it all the time, even on phone, telephone conferences. Uh, and the first connect, you know, just to get the energy focused and and always use the connect with the reflect before you move on to the PowerPoint slides, the Excel sheets, and the topics. And if you uh at the end do another little connect before the checkout of what did all that mean to me today and what am I gonna do with it? Uh a short connect on the commit question, um, that's sufficient. I think you've got to check in with the connect at the front to get warmed up, and you've got to connect at the end to understand what all this stuff meant to me, what am I gonna do with it, and then you check it out. So, those four little steps for any facilitator, they're so simple to do, they're so powerful. Um, and when you utilize those and all the other stuff is in the middle. So between those two connects in the middle, do all the content, do all the stuff, use the Legos, use the Play-Doh, do whatever you want to do. Um, it will be in a significantly higher quality uh than it ever would have been without the check-in connect at the front and the connect checkout at the back. So that would be my advice.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

Perfect. Thank you so, so much for sharing your wisdom. I don't find any other word. Your wisdom with us today. Thank you, Patrick, for being here. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

Thank you, Miriam. And I tell you, you're on the right purpose and on the right path. Get this to as many people as you can, and you'll make your debt in the world. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Thank you. Cheers. Thank you for staying tuned and listening to the show. I appreciate your attention as I know how busy you are. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and engage by sharing your comments and thoughts, and visit workshops.org to download the one page summary. I'm looking forward to seeing you back at the next episode, and I wish you a fruitful day.