007 - Mindset Management with Jeremy Akers

In this episode, I talk to Jeremy Akers, an agnostic agile coach, trainer and public speaker. He accompanies businesses through their agile transformation with Wemanity and is associated with Instituut Core, an institute for management training programs. 

Jeremy and I speak about the facilitator’s mindset and what it means to be fully present in a workshop. He shares how he deals with his own discomfort and why it is important to share feelings of discomfort with the group. Tune in to hear about deep-democracy and techniques we can apply to decision-making processes that include everyone’s perspective without derailing into unproductive discussions. 

Don’t miss the part when Jeremy explains why he prefers hand-voting over dot-voting. This conversation will surely inspire you to explore your own areas of discomfort and will help you design workshops that work. 

Questions and Answers:

[1:23] What does “agnostic agile” mean?

[3:12] How did you become an agile coach?

[7:19] How would you apply your concept of awareness to a group context?

[7:35] How do you teach awareness?

[12:40] What is the mindset according to you that you need as a facilitator?

[15:30] How did you train for being able to be fully present with the group?

[18:50] Would you apply a different method to provide a safe space when you work with individuals or with a group?

[20:10] How can you become better in being fully present?

[22:33] What reaction do you get when you share your discomfort with the participants?

[27:11] What makes workshops fail?

[28:44] How do you snap the group out of an unproductive back and forth of arguments?

[34:26] How do you walk the thin line between providing safe space by agreeing and being the sparring partner who challenges the ideas of the group?

[37:56] How can we get to a clear decision while “yes ending” each other?

[40:43] How do you make sure that you get all concerns on the table?

[43:35] When it comes to voting, what are the pros and cons of different techniques?

[46:00] If our listeners fell asleep and just woke up, what shall they take away? 

Links we mentioned during the conversation:

• Instituut Core Management Training: https://www.instituutcore.nl/en/
• Vipassana meditation: www.dhamma.org
• Ray Dalio’s “Principles”: Episode 7 on Youtube
• Chris Voss book “Never split the difference” and the concept of tactical empathy
• Systems centred therapy: Functional subgrouping (Youtube)
• Deep democracy, Lewis method: https://deep-democracy.net/
• Liberating structures: http://www.liberatingstructures.com

Reach out to Jeremy via LinkedIn

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

What if your next team workshop delivered the results you hoped for? And what if you can keep the momentum of the workshop and get everyone to follow up even weeks after? My name is Miriam Hapness, and it's my mission to help you deliver workshops that work. Today with me on the show is Jeremy Akers. We met a while ago when he facilitated a meetup. And since then, I would go to his meetups, not for the topic, but just for his fantastic facilitation skills and the atmosphere he's able to create. He calls himself an agile coach, he's agnostic agile, and he's a life hacker. So stay tuned to learn more about mindset management, the facilitator's mindset, and what the heck agnostic agile actually means. Jeremy, I'm so happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Good morning, Miriam. Miriam.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Good morning, and thank you for your flexibility to not only jump in very last minute. So we scheduled this podcast episode yesterday, literally, and we had to do a last-minute change of location. So now I welcome you in my kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, it's a nice kitchen, uh bright yellow, uh to give some context.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yes. First question is what is an agnostic agile coach? I read this on your LinkedIn profile and have no idea what it means.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, um, so Agile has um you know Agile is a means to an end, right? It's not a specific destination in and of itself. It's uh it's just a a tool that you use to get to wherever you're going. And there's a lot of ways that have been sort of packaged, different recipes of combinations of these um behaviors, these actions that have sort of been packaged and get delivered, right? Scrum is probably the most popular everybody has heard of and has an opinion about scrum. Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, safe is another one. There are uh, you know, Kanban. Uh there's just tons of different uh ingredients uh for these recipes that have been already pre-packaged. And my from my perspective, it's less about um executing one of the recipes, and it's much more about uh being freestyle and uh responding to the context rather than just saying, all right, cool, you guys are gonna use Scrum, let's implement Scrum. What is your conditions and which behaviors and which actions in Scrum are supportive for your environment? Um, and let's not try and force all of those behaviors into a situation where they're non-supportive, and maybe let's find some behaviors, some actions, some tooling uh that exists from another methodology that is actually more supportive of your context. So it's really this mix and match. Uh agnosticism is uh, you know, I'm not uh particularly sold and convinced of any specific uh methodology. I try and use as much as I can whenever it's appropriate.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

The mix and match and the adjustment along the way sounds pretty much like you, right? Yeah. So how did you end up becoming a coach anyway?

SPEAKER_01 3:10

How did I be end up becoming a coach anyway? That's a that's a that's a long story. As you know, I have a tendency to tell stories from the beginning of the universe. Um how did I end up in coaching? Yeah, that's probably very similarly related to how I ended up in Agile, actually. I was in a team, a small interdisciplinary team at a startup, you know, trying to change the world, of course. And one of our developers uh went to a conference and came back and said, Hey, we're gonna start doing this stuff, didn't really give it a name, give it a title. He said, And I and Jeremy, I need your help trying to do WXYZ. And I said, All right, cool, awesome. Um, you know, and I looked at it through the framework that I had previously as, you know, oh, I get to be a manager, and uh, oh, but we get to use data to to drive our decisions. And uh, me being the the sales and commercial guy on the team, uh, I thought that gave me more uh privileges uh than it was appropriate. And uh I I didn't really find the way to nuance and cooperate in a way that was actually supportive. It basically turned me into a real big jerk.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Um I cannot imagine that.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, well, you know, uh uh you you you say something, I'm gonna steal your line and and give it back to you. You say something all the time, is that when you're really convinced of how uh uh passionate about a uh a point, you know, you reduce your cognitive ability to hear other perspectives. And that definitely happened to me. I I thought I had the data that supported a uh a pivot or a specific direction, and I wasn't very open to anybody's uh uh other uh perspectives about where we should go and why we should do it. And I made a big mess out of the situation, actually. And I I to is one of my greatest professional failings. I I damaged a relationship beyond uh my ability to repair it. And uh from that point I was like, wait, what the F is going on here? This is crazy. I've been in sales for 15 years. Sales training is all about communication and and being of service to other people. How did I go so wrong as to damage this relationship, which caused a huge amount of introspection and which bumped me into institute course, core management training. And once I saw that uh as a as a way that was available, I was like, no, no, I I definitely need to figure out how to give this message to the world, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

And now I better also understand where you're coming from regarding the meetup that I joined a couple of weeks ago that you um facilitate about mindset management. Because you really had to manage your mindset in order to bring this pivot to life, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:07

From yeah, yeah. It's uh right the so the first step I think in in the process of managing mindset is also is always to always has something to do with awareness, right? Um awareness is the the first step on the the path towards the or the the torch, so to speak, of enlightenment, right? You you start with awareness and then you can do something about your behavior. So uh that awareness uh led to a lot of introspection, basically the process of making space for an experience, right? Which is the second step, right? I I open myself to receive the experience, and uh then I make a choice about what to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And I wonder whether so how I hear you, it was rather a mindset management of your own mindset. And I can perfectly imagine that you can apply the same method to also change a mindset of a group through facilitation. So to create awareness as a first step. So not awareness about yourself, but maybe awareness of the group or your peers or the topic.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah, that's the the first step of the intervention, right? Uh I notice. I notice this happening in the room, right? Uh you know, do is it something that we want to do something about? Is it something we need to do something about? Do you guys notice it too? Am I alone in this uh in this observation?

SPEAKER_00 7:33

How do you teach awareness?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Well, awareness is a recipe in and of itself, right? Uh so awareness um to me and the method that I teach people starts with the ability to direct your attention and to differentiate, right? So the the first step in teaching awareness is to direct your attention. So a super simple exercise that I offer a lot of people is take an object that you have with you all the time, right? Um post-it note. Yeah, post-it note, uh, my my pen, I have this with me every day. Um, and look at it as if you see it for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Right? Begin this mindset.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, exactly. And try and notice something that you've never noticed before, right? To really zoom in and focus your attention completely uh to discover something, right? Engaging curiosity. Right. And then what you notice is there's always this sort of sense, I don't have a better term to describe it, other than shit this sort of zooming in, this focusing that happens when you really direct your attention, your full attention towards something with this beginner's mindset, with this focus on curiosity and discovery. Um, and then from there, once you sort of recognize that, oh yeah, it's really this action of focusing and directing my attention that is so important, then we sort of teach people how to use it and how to redirect it, how to differentiate, how to differentiate one object from another object, right? Look at it as if I see it for the first time, um, look at the form, see what shape it has, how much space does it take up, and sort of where does it begin and the rest of the world sort of end, so to speak. Um, and this differentiation applies to physical objects, but it applies just as well to the emotional space within yourself as well, right? Once you know how to direct your attention and to differentiate one thing from another, we can start to sort of label things and recognize them as they come up.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Reminds me a lot of the meditation technique I use. I um follow the vipassana meditation, where basically you spend hours just observing yourself and feeling your body. And every day it feels different. Right. Every day there's something else that kind of is tickles or itches or hurts. Um, and it's quite difficult to apply this beginner's mindset on something that is so familiar to yourself that you tend to ignore it.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

For sure, especially when you've got really strong feelings about it as well, right?

SPEAKER_04 9:58

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

I I tend to work outside in, um, so to speak, right? A lot of people are focused on uh the results, right? The results are the sexy, awesome, very attractive thing, right? Ooh, I love this the the the Steve Jobs of the world. We you know everybody loves Michael Jordan and uh and uh you know uh Scottie Pippen, right? Uh championship teams that have exceptional results that we all sort of deeply uh aspire to, that type of achievement. Um and then we sort of work backwards. Like the logical step is okay, if I want those results, what are the behaviors that that lend uh to those results? What are the things that they do that um have led them to achieve these results, right? Behavior is a leading indicator to results. I think everybody makes it makes sense to everybody. Um, you know, uh Tim Ferris has made a great career of sort of extracting the behaviors that lead to exceptional results. And I think that's that's very awesome, it's interesting. Uh but for the many of us who have tried the behaviors, uh, I think there is some form of awareness that is um that's really tricky to just change the behavior without changing the underlying perspective, the mindset, as it were, that relates to and created that behavior. Yeah, so if uh behavior is a leading indicator of results, um then what's the leading indicator of behavior? And from my perspective, that is perspective. Uh that is mindset, that is the beliefs, the underlying assumptions, the way you look at the world uh that sort of frames all available opportunity and all available action. So uh if we start from that perspective, we start managing that mindset, then the behaviors more or less sort themselves out, right? They sort of unfold automatically, and the the results uh have a tendency to improve just because the way we look at the world has changed. It's the super old cliche. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yes. And it's so interesting again, applying this to facilitation where we read a lot about the behavior of a facilitator. So the A to Z of what you have to do as a facilitator. First, you welcome every participant in the room, and the workshop starts with the first and not with the last entering the room. What is the mindset, according to you, that you need as a facilitator in order to achieve this behavior in this natural way that you just described?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, so I I look at mindsets kind of like orientations, perspectives, uh ways in which to sort of direct the attention and look at the world. Um the orientations, the mindsets that I think are really supportive for a facilitator are um to devolve into another cliche. Uh, your presence is the process, right? The most fundamental thing is just the ability to be present with a group in their moment of struggle, in their moment of discovery, in their moment of whatever, but the ability to just be present with, which is a huge distinction from what we usually want, which is to be present uh without, right? Um uh you know, we want to be we want freedom from, not freedom with. Like we want freedom from uh struggle, we want freedom from uh discomfort, we want freedom from tension. And no, I want to be free with struggle, with tension, with discovery, uh right? So to just be the space in which uh contains all of the all of the the the behavior, all of the experience, right? To sit with it. Yeah, to to yeah, yeah, basically, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:53

And to accept it as it is.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Right? Well the well, this is where the things get interesting, right? So first step is notice, right? Um I I see something happening, whether that's inside myself or outside myself in the group context, right? Um I I create space, I open, I I become the container, I make space for that experience, right? Cognitively, don't try and push it away, but to just allow it to be there. Um then I make a choice, right? So with this information, what do I want to do, right? What do I want to do now? And how do I bring that choice that I've now made into the context in respect for myself as the one with the sensation, with the experience, and for the group's context, uh, you know, with respect and appreciation for what is this is the reality, this is where we are. How do I bring a choice in to influence that circumstance in a way in which is respectful to the circumstance's ability and right to exist?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

So I have the impression that you need, first of all, a lot of sensitivity for the group and for the atmosphere in the room to really feel what they need. And from what you say, I hear that you also need this self-confident in order to be present. Because to be fully present and aware you cannot hide anything, you have to be present with your full self, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah, and that's scary.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

This was exactly the right question. I wonder did you train for that? Did it come naturally? Was it a conscious process you went through?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I mean, yeah, after the fact, right? In hindsight, there is a sort of red thread, there is a sort of logic to the unfolding, to the emergence of a capacity, right? Um, for me, I think it really stems from um having had a lot of discomfort in my life, in my experience, right? I've experienced discomfort and I've tried to deal with it in every which way that a human being does try and deal with discomfort. I've done my absolute, uh, absolute best to uh ignore it, right? To just push it out of my cognitive space and not pay any attention to most of us do. Oh, I'm uh if if there was a uh a master, master's degree in it, I would be double doctorate, you know, completely certified, and just trying to ignore the problem, right? Um I've tried to um to uh wrestle with it, right? To grapple with it, to overcome uh one perspective, one mindset, one belief with another belief, right? To to sort of create this, yeah, exactly, to just counteract it. Um you know, I've tried everything in the human recipe to deal with this discomfort and the the revelation that liberated me, so to speak, if that's a if that's a possibility, from uh having to do everything about it, is the recognition that um regardless of how big the discomfort is, I continue to exist. You know, I have survived these things, right? It's uh um the second Matrix movie, um, this dude says to Neo, I have survived your predecessors and I will survive you. That's the way I deal with discomfort, right? I have survived everything, and I will survive this discomfort as well. So you know what do I need to do? Nothing. It will not obliterate me.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

And I guess once you accepted this discomfort for yourself as a facilitator in charge of the atmosphere of the room and with the responsibility to take care of the participants, they will also feel that. And then it kind of they feel safe that if you can sit with the discomfort, then they feel immediately more comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

It has a network effect, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah. And I can feel this in the workshops that you facilitate, and that would I think this is the essence of what creates this very safe atmosphere. Is it a safe atmosphere? A safe space?

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, it's a sort of underlying fundamental that is required for you know um the the flower is a great metaphor, right? For the the opening, the unemploying, the blossoming uh to occur for things to unfold.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Would you use a different because you worked as a coach before, so more on one-on-one with uh executives and managers, and now you work as an agile coach in transformation processes, so you work more with the teams. Would you employ, would you apply a different method in creating this space? Whereas if you work with an individual or with a group?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

I mean, I think there's always space for nuance and there's always space for refinement, but I think at the most basic level to come back to it, right? And to repetition is a good thing. Uh my presence is the process, right? So start with presence and my availability and use myself as the instrument. Um whether that's in one-on-one space, whether that's in the group space, uh, from an organizational perspective, it's the same basic recipe. My senses and my ability to um to be aware and notice what's going on within me is what uh allows all the other steps to sort of unfold.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah. So I assume that many of the listeners, they are not professional facilitators yet. And it can be very scary to be fully present or to force yourself to be fully present. I have to be present, I have to be present. I think pure repetition doesn't work. Um I think of this train in Dumbu. Whatever. Um how can they train that? What would be the first step, or what can be a hack to get better at that?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

I would uh first thing that pops into my mind that everybody should probably should's a dangerous word, but uh if if you want to get better at at being a human being, meditate. Right? And you know I I approve that. Yeah, and so yeah, meditation is a there's a lot of different ways to meditate, number one, right? And uh there is a huge palette of traditions that support meditation, and some people call that prayer. Um in the practice that I teach people, I I tend to reframe them as attention exercises, right? So this is an attention exercise, uh, so that we're going to practice the exercising the muscle of how to direct and how to focus and uh zoom out, so to speak, how to uh redirect our attention. Um that would be the first uh the the low-hanging fruit that is available to everybody, right? To just sit with your experience and to practice the the art of noticing what goes on within the the framework of your experience. And then in the group context, if you really want to take it up and scale it up to the next level, what can you do? Um you can bring yourself into the shared context, right? So if I notice, what can I do? I I can then say this is what I notice, right? Um and I can start with my own state, and that has a sort of ripple effect, a liberating aspect for the whole group, right? So I notice I'm really nervous, right? I I just notice that I'm really nervous right now. There's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of excitement. I really want to make this successful, and I just want to share that with you all. So it that state of being ha is now a shared experience. We all have awareness that this is going on in the room.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yes, and I think what One important thing that I learned through meditation is the noticing without judgment. So, okay, I do notice that I'm nervous or I do notice that I fucked up and I don't judge myself for it. So I so I turn off the monkey mind that kind of repeats and beats up myself, but I just notice it. So and you would even go a step further to then share it with the group in the workshop space? What is usually the reaction you receive?

SPEAKER_01 22:33

So we're so there's um a fractality, right? There's there's not a separation between uh myself and the group, right? Uh if I am embedded in the group, I am part of the group and the group is part of me, there's not really a separation. So by bringing in an observation of what plays in the group, I don't think uh I've rarely seen that that surprises people, right? The yeah, the information in is available for people in the system.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Because you sense it already. Yeah. And then you just make the obvious.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Exactly. Then we're just saying, hey, there's a bottle sitting right there. Does anybody else see that bottle? Oh, yes, there is a bottle. Oh, thanks for mentioning it. That'll that will help me. Uh I I noticed that there was something, but I didn't have a frame or a reference of a bottle. That will prevent me from running into it and spilling it all over the table. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

It's like when you have maybe this subtle fight with your partner. And so this, I think often we would call it passive aggressiveness. So you can just sense it in the in the room in the air that something is wrong, and then suddenly you speak it out, and it changes the entire automatically.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

There's a reorganization that takes place to accommodate that thing that is now in the has gone from the collective unconscious, right? That's that exists in the group that nobody qu has spoken of, right? It's maybe not shared information. There's some asymmetry of information. Maybe I notice it, but you're less sensitive and you don't. Uh, and then when I speak on it, it goes instantly from the unconscious, boom, to everybody knows it. We all have uniform access to that information, and then the system can reorganize as a result of that.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

And this even opens the opportunity to everyone to also share about their own anxieties or discomforts with the group.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

I I set the I I set the tone, right? Uh I say it's okay to have a state and to bring that into the group's context, right? And it's okay that that that my state of being uh uh takes space and influences the state of being of other people's, right? It's going to, whether we like it or not. Yeah. Um so let's let's let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Let's make it explicit right away.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Exactly. Let's bring it into the light of the day so it can live and move and change.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

This thought is fascinating and super scary at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah, yeah. Right? And and this is the thing, right? Scary, right? Fear is a part of the human experience, right? There's there's no way to insulate ourselves and to eliminate fear from the game, from the playing field.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

And it's actually it's funny. Um last week I interviewed um Steph Kinch, who is an executive coach and a clown, and he compared a person in a workshop speaking up with an guest of a circus invited to come on stage and to speak up.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

And as a facilitator, he always tries to imagine or to remind himself of the similarity of this feeling. So he sees himself as a facilitator or his job it's to make sure that for each participant in it in his workshop it's easy to speak up.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

So he's the sort of master of ceremony, right? Exactly. Ah, you know, welcome to the stage, my friend. Give him a round of applause, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah, give positive feedback, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

And that is why at the improv class that I'm taking, we get on stage and before we even open our mouth or say something, we get a round of applause from everyone. Yeah. And this is so uplifting that everything else then falls into pieces. For sure. You have the right to exist.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

You know, welcome. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

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SPEAKER_01 27:10

What makes workshops fail? So the one thing that sort of that grinds my gears that I have an allergy uh towards is the intolerance of differences, so to speak. It's that way in which um what makes a meeting really, really, really unproductive is when I bring something into the group, I bring an idea, some information, some insight into the group, and someone else says um that idea, information, insight has no value and has no right to exist. And then they uh I think attacking is fine uh in actuality. Attacking is okay. Emotional. Well, it I mean it happens. Uh I I should put my ideas, information, and insight well, you know, up for you know discussion and uh reproach. There's nothing wrong with that. And uh as uh defense comes into play, right? If we start doing this, yeah, but my ideas, in front, insight and information do have a right to exist, and then we keep going back and forth, back and forth on yes, it has the right to exist and it has value, and no, it doesn't have the right to exist, no, it has no value, um, then we can spend a lot of time sort of debating whether or not uh it does or does not have value, and we don't progress into all right, so what's the what what insights, what information collecting more and more and more of these perspectives.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

How do you snap them out if this happens in a meeting that you facilitate?

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, so uh I notice, right? I notice, I say, hey, I I notice that we're spending a lot of time uh you know uh debating whether or not the these perspectives can exist. Um can we move on and collect more information? I start usually with a ground rule of uh of all information has value, right? So I start with that frame of look, everybody's perspective, all information has value. And then I always put a you know a small print on the little asterisk. Yes, of course, some information, some insights, some per some uh uh ideas have more value than others, for sure, but they are all valuable, and we're gonna make the best decisions possible when we have as much of that information in the visible light of day and we can talk about it, right? So I really want to create an atmosphere where, all right, you bring in your your thing, and if I can add to add to it, great. Um if I have a difference, uh also great. Um, but bring that difference in uh in an additive way so that we're just adding to the the collective information, right? Uh we're just bringing more and more cards on the table rather than saying, oh no, that card uh over there, no, no, no, no, it's not welcome. We we don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

And it reminds me of the exercise you described in the beginning with a pen. So bring in an object that everyone sees and knows, and try to find nuances, perspectives, things that maybe not everyone sees, and it all adds to the reality of the pen. Although it might be more subtle or maybe irrelevant for a certain angle that we are now using.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

It may be old information for me. I've already noticed that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

And then it might be I can imagine that is a nice technique then to link the discussion. So once the group is maybe stuck in this back and forth between, oh no, I'm right, you are right, I'm right.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah, but, yeah, but exactly.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

And then to just remind them of the beginning exercise with a pen. Say, okay, there's no such thing as it doesn't make sense. A friend of mine once said that. Um he argued there's no such thing as it doesn't make sense because as soon as someone thinks it and sees the sense, there must be sense for at least one person.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Right, for a minority of the subgroup. Yeah, exactly. For sure. Yeah. Uh another frame that I'd like to take uh from ground rules is that no one has a monopoly on the truth, right? Yes. Nobody has a monopoly on uh on the the right for information to exist. So you know let's just bring the stuff in.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yes, and this uh reminds me again, I'd love to cite that, um, Ray Darlio's principles. And he made YouTube videos out of that. And in episode seven, he describes how he would invite into his team a group of extremely smart people who disagree with him just to see the world through their eyes. So he doesn't want to get convinced by them or he doesn't want necessarily know what decision they would take, but he just wants to learn to see the world through their eyes because he he's conscious about the fact that reality has so many nuances that he cannot capture them all through his own pair.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

For sure, for sure. And then when we talk about this is the sort of like ultimate state from the what I consider the coach's perspective, right? So as a coach, I'm doing really good work, I'm doing the best work possible. Um when I say, when I can get someone else to say, that's right. That's exactly how I see the situation. You understand what is important to me, uh what I value, and how the context affects me, uh, right? When somebody says, that's right, right? Chris Voss talks about this, he wrote an awesome book, which I think is uh a Bible for coaching, uh, but is not about coaching at all. It's called Never Split the Difference, right? He talks about this idea of tactical empathy and that uh as a negotiator he's he's looking to get that moment of uh yes, that's right uh from people. So that everybody has an agreement that we in relation uh agree that I understand you and that we're on the same team, right? Because if I feel if you feel felt uh right and heard from uh and contained, then automatically uh your boundaries uh open up, right? You become much more open for the energy and information that I bring. Um and I can then also nuance that that my perspective in such a way that um that attaches or uh connects to your own perspective in such a way that also supports that openness. Rather than the thing I'm most terrified for is that moment of you're right, right? When uh when we're adversaries and I have I have successfully uh convinced you the superiority of my perspective, but in actuality you don't give two shits because you're still gonna do the thing that's still most important and resonates with your own uh beliefs and values.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

And I'm going through an inner conflict now. Because on the one hand, I want to say, yes, you're so right. As a coach or as a facilitator, we want to be the mirror and produce the safe space of okay, I hear you, I feel you. On the other hand, I have the impression that very often we also want to be a sparring partner and to challenge the idea in order to get the best out of the participant or to get the best out of our peers opposite. How do you walk this very thin line?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

So I will challenge your perspective uh with a perspective of non-duality and say that these things are not separate, right? So I can challenge your perspective the mo in the most functional manner possible when you're open to my challenge, right? When I can present my challenge in a way in which uh feels logical for you, or a way in which uh is well connected uh from your own perspective, right? So it's it's the management of the relationship. If you come in with some information, you go, you go blue, and I go, uh no red, right? That's a challenge as well, but it's completely dysfunctional, right? It it doesn't actually help us get anything accomplished. So um so there's a really radical uh practice called uh system-centered therapy, and they have a practice called functional subgrouping. Um super simple and very complex work form. Uh it's too big to unpack in a moment and almost impossible to master. Um but it really starts from this first connect, just just always, always connect, always connect from the perspective of the other of the the group or the other party, and then um add some form of nuance, right? And that nuance can be more challenging or it can be more additive. But first start with the connection. Um, if I want to really challenge, right? Um, and this sort of relates to a bigger concept of feedback. If I want to really challenge, I I first connect and then I go, all right, is there room for a difference? Right? Do you have the cognitive space to have uh your perspective challenged? Um and you know, no is also an acceptable answer, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:18

But first we need to hear the no and to respect the no, or we need to respect the challenge. And if we feel attacked, immediately we go into defense mode, our instinctive brain goes on, and then we wouldn't even hear the objections or the challenge from the coach. So the connection is actually this okay, you first need to feel heard, you need to feel safe, and then you also listen to the challenge. That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Yeah. Yeah. Long story short. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when I'm when I'm sort of really in the a good space, when my energy levels high, and I'm really on top of my game, I I I I never even have to ask if there's room for a difference. Uh, because I can always bring a difference in as a nuance to that existing perspective, right? It's the improv exercise of yes and, right? So first yes. So, ah, you say red, and and I say yes to red and blue, and then we can add more information and more complexity, more contradiction.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

This raises one point that I'm always curious about. Um how to bring yes and so this we are building on top of each other's ideas, and good ideas come from bad ideas as long as there are enough of them, with really boiling down a dis a discussion to get a decision out of it. How can we yes and and exclude at the same time ideas that we actually don't agree with or that we don't want to follow through with?

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Yeah, so decision making uh is kind of I guess that's my most recent obsession because this is the the thing that also tends to really kill uh uh workshops and meetings when nobody sort of makes a choice, when we circle around debating the validity of each perspective, right? So um I'm I'm really uh inspired by the process of deep democracy and the Lewis method. Um and from that perspective, it's really about collecting all the information, get it on the table, right? And then when I notice repetition, when you know they're the popcorn is sort of slowed down, all right, these are all the ideas we've got, right? Yeah, yeah. Anyone else got anything else that's totally left field? I always want to make space for a radical difference, right? Anyone got something that completely challenges the status quo, the entire paradigm of the choice that we're making? Please bring that in. Uh, let's bring this up for debate. And then uh we can keep it super simple and and and just vote, right? You can literally just hand up? Yeah, with your hand up, make your vote explicit, you know, which proposal is the the most appealing to you to you, right? And then deep democracy adds this additional layer of of uh of making proposals living, as I like to describe it, uh, by asking the people in the minority, okay, look, sorry guys, you know, the group has chosen A, and we know you were really attached to C. You think C is the way to go, and you're really fired up and passionate about C. But uh if we're gonna go with A, you know, what what do you need? Uh what do you need in order to think, all right, I can get on board with A. This is okay, right? And it's not an issue of reopening the topic for debate, but because A is the choice, period. Majority rules. And we we still want people that were in the C subgroup in uh our process of executing A and delivering A and to bring their information into the proposal of A. So what are the C elements that you think are really important that need to be protected? What are the things that we need to make sure that we don't keep uh that we don't lose attention from so that we can make A the best proposal possible? And when you get that moment of everybody in the minority sort of brings in what they require in order to make A the best proposal possible, uh then we can revote. All right, hands up. Who is everybody agree that you know if we if we proceed in this direction, we can go? Yeah, all right. A it is, cool, everybody's on board, let's go crush it.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Would you how would you make sure that you really get all the objections and all the concerns on the table? Do you start with a silent brainstorm writes down or in smaller groups?

SPEAKER_01 40:42

There's a lot of really good ways to sort of collect and capture information. Silent writing is probably one of my favorite because it's introvert-friendly, right? Uh I'm an extrovert and I will just talk louder than everybody else in the room and get my perspective heard. No need to worry about that. But there's a lot of people that sort of need some help, right? That need an explicit invitation to bring their information into the system. Um, silent writing is one of them. Liberating structures offers a lot of really good uh sort of uh blocks of uh almost an emergent process of super simple steps to design to delivering some form of output, um, of processing information and coming to a decision.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Um what process is that?

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Uh liberating structures. Okay, okay. Liberating structures, I'm also a big fan of.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Um, you know, allowing all these links in the show notes, dearlessness. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Um, yeah, uh they offer a lot of superb exercises. Um one of my favorite is what, so what, now what? Right. So what did we hear um in response to the presentation? New input, uh, what does that mean? Uh what are the conclusions that we can draw from this factual observation and now what? So, what are the actions that we can take based on uh based on this new put input of information, right? And it's really just an issue of collecting these things in a way in which they're sort of distinct. Once more we get back to this differentiation, right? Paying enough attention to recognize where one proposal starts and one proposal finishes, and hopefully to make those uh explicitly distinct things that we can then go, all right. So we've got uh this was your idea, A, uh we've got your idea, B, right? You brought in this thing, which is C, which is kind of related to uh to to B, but still distinct and different, um, and then to have our our uh our our palette of choices. Um as long as you can sort of collect and capture that information in an explicit way, you know, you're in good shape. And that can happen in a free for free-for-all, that can happen in a very structured conversation, that can happen in silent writing.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Yeah, depending on the group and maybe also the decision that has to be taken. We are a little bit running out of time, and I still want to ask one question before asking the final question. When it comes to voting, you just mentioned a few times that you just raise your arm, and there are many facilitators who are obsessed almost with dot mocracy, so with using dot voting techniques. I can imagine that there are others who would just prefer a um secret voting system. What would be the pros and cons of rising the arm compared to dot mocracy compared to secret voting, according to you?

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Yeah, that the relationship with the underlying vote becomes explicit, right? Uh I I'm a huge fan of transparency and making relationships explicit, right? So, my support for this proposal, I want to let everybody know that this is where I stand. There's also a really awesome exercise uh called uh in Dutch it's called gespeck of footer, right? Which is a way in which of having a conversation. Where you show your agreement or disagreement in physical space, right? Which just makes the relationship with things super concrete, super explicit.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

I never heard about that.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Ah, it's that's awesome. I'll show you. It's in a deep democracy. So if somebody brings in a perspective, right? I say, A, if I agree with that perspective, I align myself in physical space to stand next to the person who brings in that perspective. If I disagree, I take some separation, right? So agreement and disagreement, instead of becoming this sort of vague and amorphous thing, becomes uh broken down and concrete. And then we go to somebody who's in the disagreement subgroup and we go, all right, bring in that information. Tell us what, tell us uh what your perspective is and why, what are your criteria for that? And then we can structure the conversation in a super concrete way in which knows it in which everyone knows where agreement is and where disagreement is.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

And this actually brings the idea to my mind that if you raise your hand, you take the stand for one option. And with the dot voting, you usually get three dots, and then there are multiple choices. You don't have to show it in front of the group, it's less transparent, it's less explicit.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Yeah, you you do develop uh some oversight of where support is. Yeah. Sure, great. Um, and I also want to be able to uh extract uh the criteria, the reasons that people have made that decision, right? Um and that's more difficult to do with dog voting. You have to basically say, okay, so one of you who who was really for this one, you know, explain your explain your perspective.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Yeah. We're running out of time, and your alarm just uh told uh reminded us that we're running out of time. If our dear listeners, uh if one dear listener just woke up um because he fell asleep after one minute, what do you want this listener to hear or to remember?

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Yeah, I'll double down on repetition. Your presence is the process, right? In anything you want to accomplish, your your uh ability to be available with all of your senses is the thing that will have the most impact on the the behavior and the results. So uh begin with your presence, uh begin with the the ability to sort of manage your mindset and uh to be a clear and open channel for everything that sort of happens in the group context, and uh everything should sort itself out from there.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

Great. And before we finish the show, if someone wants to reach out to you, wants to learn more, wants to book you as a speaker, how can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Uh LinkedIn's probably the best bet. I'm really happy to become internet friends. Uh Jeremy Acres, I'm also associated with several systems uh that I think are awesome and very interesting, one of which is Institutecore.nl, and the other one is uh We Manity, uh super awesome system designed to change the way the world works.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Yes. I will put all these links and everything that you mentioned along the way in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, your wisdom, your experience, and the good spirit. I wish you a happy Tuesday.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

My pleasure, Miriam.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Bye-bye. 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 into the next episode. And I wish you a fruitful day.