061 - What Facilitation Without Agenda Really Means and How to Make It Work with Nadja Petranovskaja Artwork

Unprofessionalism

Professional performance is exhausting. Maintaining the mask. Editing ourselves. Pretending we know when we don't.

This podcast is about people who dropped the performance. And what happened next.

Each episode features someone who broke professional conventions and found something better on the other side: the executive who disclosed grief in a corporate setting and found it opened new ways of relating; the coach who realised her authority came from integrity, not compliance; the designer who ignored the 'approved tools' and saved thousands of hours.

Conversations circle around three questions:

What does it cost us to perform professionalism instead of showing up as ourselves?
How do we create spaces where people can bring their full attention and humanity to work?
When is the “unprofessional” move actually the most responsible one?

If you feel the tension between who you are and who you're expected to be at work, this podcast shows you what happens when people stop managing that tension and just stop performing.

Hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes—behavioural economist and founder of workshops.work. New episode every week.

All Episodes

Unprofessionalism

061 - What Facilitation Without Agenda Really Means and How to Make It Work with Nadja Petranovskaja

May 20, 2020 • Dr Myriam Hadnes • Season 2 • Episode 61

0:00 | 48:02

Imagine turning up to a workshop to find there is no agenda.

You haven’t walked into a nightmare – quite the opposite, in fact! No Agenda is an innovative approach that Nadja champions to great success.

If you want to know how to encourage groups to own their own responsibility to connect, create, and change, then you’ll want to hear more about running workshops with no agendas from Nadja.

Find out about:

Nadja’s journey to facilitation and the experiences that have shaped her practice
Why identifying the group’s “why” is the starting point of a meaningful workshop
How to effectively run a workshop with no agenda
How Nadja is navigating the shift to virtual workshops
How to take the BarCamp structure and apply it in corporate settings

Don’t miss the next show: Subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.

A huge thank you must go to SessionLab, the sponsor of Workshops Work. Claim your free two months of SessionLab Pro now – this deal is exclusive to Workshops Work listeners!

Questions and Answers

[00:52] What’s on your mind right now?

[02:36] What helps facilitators cope in a pandemic?

[04:39] What have you consciously unlearned from your early facilitation training?

[07:13] How do you structure outputs in a workshop with no agenda?

[11:47] Do you prepare groups for this?

[13:23] How do you make sure every voice is heard?

[18:03] What is your favourite exercise to help bring structure to complexity?

[21:39] What would your advice be to facilitators who are interested in running workshops with no agenda?

[24:38] What makes a workshop fail?

[28:10] How have No Agenda workshops coped with moving online during the pandemic?

[31:35] Can you explain what a BarCamp is?

[34:41] What is the difference between a BarCamp and a world café in corporate settings?

[38:29] How do your clients react if you tell them there is no agenda?

[40:44] Is there anything else you want to bring up?

[42:46] Would you create another version of your WonderCards for virtual facilitation?

[46:46] What is one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

Links to check

Connect with Nadja

Any thoughts? Share them with us!

Support the show

✨✨✨

If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/

Dr Myriam Hadnes

Host