050 - What happens when you get 11 facilitators into an organised but unstructured group conversation?

50 episodes of Workshops Work – wow! What a joy every episode has been. Thank you for joining me on this journey – whether this is your first or fiftieth time listening.

To mark this milestone, I brought together ten Workshops Work alumni for a fishbowl discussion about facilitation.

We covered a range of topics in such detail, it’s a struggle to summarise it in these show notes. If you are interested in hearing what a room of facilitators has to say about the complexities, joys, and novelties of our profession, I am very happy to present to you this episode.

Thank you again for helping me on my journey to 50 episodes. Here’s to the next milestone…

In this episode, we discuss:

• The different roles in workshops
• Why it’s so important to give participants and their discussions space
• Whether neutrality should be the facilitator’s goal – and whether it is even possible
• How best to tease out conflict in a safe and healthy manner
• Our experiences of our discussion – from excitement to discomfort

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Feeling inspired by the conversation in this episode? We can have our own - take a seat at my virtual table as part of a Mastermind Group.

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Questions and Answers

 [03:23] How do you ensure everyone in the room has the same understanding? Do you do so before or during a workshop?

 [08:08] How do you make sure everyone has a role?

 [11:51] What is your experience of wanting to act as a facilitator but knowing that you should not?

 [13:10] How do you deal with having assumptions about participants?

 [14:41] Neutrality and conflict

 [21:52] How do you make space for people in a fair and balanced way?

 [25:39] Neutrality, readiness, and being present

 [30:51] Reflecting on the experience of the fishbowl

 [40:54] What brings you the most joy from the transformation in the room of your workshops?

 [41:56] Coming back to discomfort

 [49:21] What do you do to limit yourself and avoid taking too much space when speaking?

 [51:54] Do you have any short lines you use to transfer power in the room?

 [53:11] Checking in on the participant’s experiences of the discussion

Links to Check

007 – Mindset Management – with Jeremy Akers

011 – How to design brainstorming sessions for huge groups – with Frans Scheepens

020 – Create experiences for your audience to achieve results – with Rein Sevenstern