workshops work Podcast
This is a podcast about facilitation: the practice of creating conditions for people to think better together.
Whether you’re leading strategy, navigating change or developing leaders, the quality of your conversations shapes the quality of your decisions.
Hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes, behavioural economist, facilitator and founder of workshops.work, each episode explores the human dynamics of working together: how psychological safety is built, why some conversations lead to action while others stall, how leaders foster genuine participation, and what behavioural science can teach us about collaboration. Alongside these conversations, Dr Hadnes shares reflections from her own client work, offering practical insights from the realities of designing and facilitating workshops in organisations.
Recognised as the facilitation community’s most-recommended podcast in SessionLab’s State of Facilitation reports from 2024 to 2026, the show has grown into an archive of more than 350 conversations spanning the craft, the inner work, and the unexpected edges of facilitation. Whether you’re a facilitator, leader, consultant or L&D professional, you'll come away with sharper questions and a few ideas worth borrowing.
workshops work Podcast
123 - The Inner Work of Facilitation - with Quanita Roberson
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
It took me nearly one year to arrange this interview, due to just how popular, committed, and focused Quanita Roberson is.
But I would have happily waited a decade for the value, kindness, and wonder she imparts in conversation. Quanita is the founder of Nzuzu Consulting and focuses on the deep, fun, and easy flow of energy to address embedded trauma.
Her insights into the human condition, our experiences, and the role we play as facilitators are genuinely groundbreaking.
We talk about grief, faith, community, privilege, slowing down, divine order, and lots of things that aren’t technically to do with facilitation but, really, are fundamental to our work.
This is a special episode and one I hope will stay with you for a long time.
Find out about:
● Getting out of our own way so we can get out of our participants’ way
● Why we need to ‘clear the decks’ in the room before we begin a session
● How we can see fear as in invitation, not a warning
● Why grief underlies a lot of the ‘bad’ things we feel (e.g. shame or guilt)
● Learning to grieve – alone and together – and how we can facilitate this
● Understanding ourselves and our communities as part of nature and the divine
● Why, in the Information Age, embodiment is more important than ever
Don’t miss the next show: Subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.
Click here to download the free 1-page summary.
And if the idea of NeverDoneBefore 2021, the community of facilitators, caught your attention; click here to explore it in more detail!
Questions and Answers
[01:28] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?
[03:47] What makes someone a facilitator and what makes someone a trainer?
[04:47] How can one be present and absent at the same time?
[06:13] Do you and Tenneson Woolf have a routine for ‘clearing the decks’ when you work together?
[09:39] What has your journey of inner work looked like?
[13:25] How do you translate and transfer the lessons from your own inner journey into a group setting, to help the participants in their own journey?
[15:59] What is the role of the group when you are guiding them through their journeys?
[18:55] To help a group through feelings of shame or guilt, then, do we first need to help them realise they’re actually dealing with grief?
[22:20] How do you open the space to discuss grief in a ‘professional’ environment?
[23:49] How can we learn to grieve?
[26:54] How do you think the pandemic affected us and our relationship with grief?
[35:00] What does it take to create a community for grieving in a professional space?
[41:22] What does the Circle practice mean for you and for groups?
[44:43] How do you catch yourself focusing on the methodology rather than the experience?
[47:11] Can we grow into embodiment?
[50:50] If somebody wanted to begin a journey towards the perspectives you’ve shared, how would you advise they start?
[52:15] What keeps you grounded and aware in times of crisis?
[55:11] Was there anything you wanted to discuss that we haven’t spoken about yet?
[57:45] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this conversation?
Links
Nzuzu Consulting, Quanita’s website
Fire and Water Leadership, Quanita’s Rite of Passage course
https://www.facebook.com/groups/527006851373739
Any thoughts? Share them with us!
👉 What happens when being “professional” gets in the way of being human? My new podcast Unprofessionalism explores the rules we’re taught to follow at work, and what happens when we break them. Listen here: https://unprofessionalism.buzzsprout.com/ 👈
What does it take to make workshops work? And how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Miriam Hapnus, and with the Workshops Work Podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today with me on the show is Granita Waberson, and we speak about life, facilitation, and grief, how to facilitate grief and what it means. So stay tuned. By the way, if you don't have pen and paper at hand to take your own notes, scroll down to the show notes and download my free one-page summary. And now lean back and enjoy.
SPEAKER_01I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me and also working with our, you know, like it's taken a while for us to connect, but I just believe in divine timing and order. So I'm just blessed and grateful to be here today with you.
SPEAKER_04Yes, me too. I think I've been waiting for this moment for a year now. I've been practicing patience. And I'm just curious to see what will emerge from this conversation and your wisdom. And before we are getting there, I always like to start with the same question. When did you start calling yourself a facilitator?
SPEAKER_01Probably years ago, over 20 years ago, when I was working with Red Cross, I used to say I taught everything that wasn't water. So first aid, CPR, babysitting course, I taught HIV and AIDS education. I was an instructor trainer for all of those things. CPR for the professional rescuer. Like, you know, like, and so one of the things that I think they did really well though is they trained facilitators well. Like, you know, with classes like CPR or first aid, you know, and when you're administering them to the public, you have to learn certain things. Like what happens if someone shows up who can't read but is required to have the certificate for their work? You know, how do you host them and learning for the test in a way that isn't embarrassing and in a way that allows them to step in? Or like equipment would always break, like you go and the video wouldn't work, or you know, your mannequin wouldn't work, or like so having to adjust on the fly of what do you do when those unexpected things happen. And then I think with the HIV and AIDS education courses and instructor-trainer course for that, it was a little bit different of a flavor because it wasn't the technical do this kind of work, but it was more of the holding a space where people can discover themselves. And it was the first time that I think that I really fell in love with this idea of not with an intention of how people would change, but holding a space where it was possible.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for sharing that. It's I found it intriguing that when you refer to what you learned from these trainings about facilitation, it's basically dealing with challenges. So someone who has to get a certificate but who cannot read. Someone who doesn't feel confident. So is the combination of being nimble and able to adjust in combination with the ability to hold that space what makes a facilitator for you, also in comparison to a trainer?
SPEAKER_01I think it's knowing that the moment already has in it what it wants to be. And I think so often as a trainer, we have particular outcomes that we, you know, want people to be able to leave with. And that's fine. And there's a space where you can hold both. You can hold some particular outcomes that you want to have happen, and you can hold space for the unexpected, space for what the moment already holds. You know, it's like, how do I find how do I get out of the way enough to not um my own way as well? Yes, exactly. I always I often say my job is to show up and get out of the way, you know. Um, and so it's hard to kind of explain to people what that is, right? But it's that each moment already has a life of its own.
SPEAKER_04So how can you be present and absence at the same time?
SPEAKER_01Well, one of the things that I found as I've moved more, I think, from or holding space in um from facilitation to hosting is the first thing that I started to notice is I would get sick every time before I did a big retreat. And yeah. And and um part of it was because to be able to show up and get out of the way, I had to be empty. But then I've learned now I don't have to get sick to do that. Like, you know, it's not necessary to have to, you know, have to lay my butt down to get sick to do it, right? But but to be still and have some what um I think one of my teachers would call some temple time before. So that you can connect and listen, empty out what needs to be emptied out. I do a lot of work with Tennyson Wolf, and one of the things that I often say with him before we go into circle together is we have to clear the decks. So anything that like needs to be tended to between us has to be tended to before we go in, or that's the mess that'll show up in the room. Interesting. Because the outer reflects the inner. And so if we're like this, then when we show up in the room, then the people who show up, that's what'll show up in that space.
SPEAKER_04Do you have a routine for that?
SPEAKER_01So is it something that you would well usually it is that we're fighting, but I have to work out, you know, that just whatever's not been dealt with or said, or I think we've gotten more skilled at it, you know, and I think it's just like what needs to be tended to so we can be present. So we're not, you know, because so much of the work, especially if you're co-hosting something, is to be able to really hold it, not like two solos, but as a duet, you have to be able to lean in. And so part of what that requires is that first of all, that you want to lean into each other for that time, right? So, like whatever hasn't been tended to allow the space for us to lean in to be able to show up in a clean way with each other.
SPEAKER_04And it almost sounds like um improvised pair dance, couple dance, because what you also mentioned is this ability to be nimble and to embrace everything that happens. Yes. And if you so it's not scripted, but then you're doing this together with someone.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_04So what kind of presence does this then need?
SPEAKER_01So one of the things it takes is I think our deep friendship because it requires trust. You know, um, it's like each of us at any point can go off of what we've said we were gonna be in, right? And um actually those are probably some of the most exciting times for for me because I know if he goes off into some his own direction, that he knows where he's going, even if I don't know. And then I get really curious and excited about what's gonna show up, like what's coming through him, right? And I think the same is um when I go off script a bit. And I think the other thing that it requires is it is the friendship. Like one of the things I've said to him before is that if I have to choose between colleagueship and friendship, I'll choose friendship every time. Because for me, the only reason that that holding of that space works is because of our deep friendship. It's the energetic that comes with being able to lean in together. Um, someone described it once as because we lean into each other, it made it easier for them to come in and join us, you know, as opposed to trying to bring people along, which isn't my job. Yeah, you know, it's us leaning in together with the invitation, and then people can come along if they wish.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's more of an invitation. And I would be curious to learn more about your own inner work regarding presence, because the way how I perceive you're so present, and that's also what you described beforehand, that you first you need to empty your baggage in order to come to a session to hold that space. So, what has been your journey of this inner work to go from being a trainer and deliver results to realize what it actually takes to get the best out of the people because they hold the wisdom inside of them to now hosting?
SPEAKER_01Well, I first believe that you can't take anybody any place you haven't been to yourself. I think that we betray people all the time because we think it's about teaching methodology. We have people who teach methodology but who don't haven't been there themselves. And so I think you can feel the difference when you're in. And so for me, it's I am really committed to my own journey. And I started my healing journey at 15. I'm an incest survivor, and at 15 went to court and pressed charges against my stepfather and stood on one side of the courtroom by myself, and he on the other with my mother. And he was sentenced 90 days to be served on weekends. And so I lived with him during the week and he went to jail on the weekends and signed my first lease to my first apartment on my 18th birthday. And so I've been doing my healing work since I was 15. I just turned 50 this year. So that means that, you know, for 35 years, I've been asking this question around what does it mean to really be alive? You know, not like so many of us, I think, mistake the drama for living. And I'll well, I'll recorrect that, the unhealthy drama. There is healthy drama, you know, but what does it really mean to be alive? How much life can I allow to show up in me?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And thank you for sharing that. I um really appreciate that. And I think what I observe also in myself is sometimes the fear of living.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So to running through life with the handbrake on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think of course. I mean, I always say I think that the ego wants to, the shadow ego wants to stay in control. And so fear shows up, but I I often come to this place of reminding myself. Maybe fear is an invitation and not a warning. You know, I think the fear shows up for me in places where it's like my soul knows it means change. And so it's that, will I allow it? You know, well, am I gonna be brave enough? I often say, you know, little shit don't scare me anymore. And so if it's if I'm feeling fear, it's because there's something really trying to be stretched and grown in me.
SPEAKER_04Something you care about.
SPEAKER_01Yes, or that I don't know I care about yet, or that wants to be introduced to me, you know, it's uh it's a growth, so I might not even know the space yet, right?
SPEAKER_04And how do you then translate this in a journey which is so personal and vulnerable, authentic? How can you then make the step to transfer it to a group or to help the individuals in their own journey without becoming too much? I mean, you know what I mean? I think it's a very thin line. We don't want to put our own baggage. Well, it would contradict what you earlier said that you need to be empty, but still you're coming with all your experiences in order to share and allow them their own journey.
SPEAKER_01How do you disentangle that? I don't know. I mean, I think I think part of that is that oftentimes I'll tell Tennyson he likes people more than I do. I don't like, I think that I love people, but I don't always like people. And, you know, and so what that I think allows, though, in me is I'm really clear that their journey is theirs and isn't mine. And even though I may love them and I may, it may be sad to me in some of the choices that I see them making, I'm still really clear that that's their choice to make, that I'm not their God. I don't get to decide when they grow, when they need to, when they, you know. So my job is always just to show up and listen for the moment and what it wants to be and follow my own divine guidance because I know we're connected. So if I'm honoring me, I am honoring you. And for all I know, you're supposed to have a crappy time in our workshop at that time because that's part of your growth and development. You know, your experience really is none of my business.
SPEAKER_04Tell me more about this crappy time. What role does this maybe struggle or crappy time play in your workshops?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think if you think about, like, you know, most people have heard the story about the butterfly and the cocoon. And it's like struggling, you know, it's beating its wings up against the cocoon to get out, and then someone comes and helps it and opens up the cocoon and it starts, it tries to fly and it can't. Its wings aren't strong enough to fly and it dies. So I think sometimes we try to help people out of their struggle, but that's not for us to know. You know, I don't know what journey you need to be on to get to where you're going. And so much of my growth has happened through the struggle. Like me trying to rescue you from yours isn't in service, you know, because I don't know that that's your path. That's between you and your whatever divine order that you lean into, you know.
SPEAKER_04There's just so much to unpack, and you make me more and more curious. And I would like to dig deeper into the concept of the group as opposed to the individual. Because what you're explaining is a very individual journey, which I guess many would go to a coach for, so on a one-on-one. So I would be curious what is the role of the group when you're guiding through this journey?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, one of the things I think is before I really leaned into doing more and more of my organizational development work, I did basically coach. I just coached for years. And actually, I think that helps inform my group work in a unique way, because I know that the whole is made up of all these individual journeys. You know, I think that we misunderstand what culture is for. We think culture is to tell us what to do, but culture really is to inform our way of being together. And the thing is, when you really understand what community does, community's job is to keep us safe. It's number one job. So what happens when people try to step out of the agreed upon norms, guidelines, whatever, is that the community gets nervous and because it thinks you're not going to be safe and it wants to it wants to pull you back in, you know? And so I think some of it is knowing how the individual journey works, it helps me hold the hole. Because it helps me see, you know, if we're in community together and I start to stretch, it's stretching your boundaries too, because our boundaries butt up against each other. And you may not have decided that you were ready to move, even though I've decided, okay, it's time to go, right? And so, how do you hold the space for all of that that's happening?
SPEAKER_02You know?
SPEAKER_01So, how do you? I think it's part of it is I have to continue to do my own work, you know, because again, if you can't take anybody someplace that you haven't been, then even understanding that dynamic. Okay, you know, this person is uh is afraid. And sometimes that fear or that grief shows up as shame, blame, and guilt. You know? But and and I think that shame, blame, and guilt we mistake as emotions, but they're not. They're actually where we go to hide from emotions. And you know, we because we think taking the shame, blame, or guilt is taking responsibility, but actually we usually hide there so we don't have to take responsibility. And the emotion underneath it is usually just deep grief. And so, like recognizing when that comes up, you know, one of the questions I ask is what are you trying not to feel? And to take us into that place with each other.
SPEAKER_04So basically, then in order to overcome these air quotes feelings of shame, guilt, and fear, you would uh, if I understand you correctly, first guide the individual, the group through the grief, or make them ex realize that it is grief?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think again, when those things show up show up to me, they signal grief in the room. They signal if there was shame, blame, and guilt, there's something that you wanted to have happen that didn't. And so it's an opportunity to release that. And until we release, there's no room for the new to show up. You know, I think one of the questions I've been asking is what better gift? Well, statement, not really a question, I guess. What better gift to give a culture that has forgotten how to grieve than a pandemic? Because if you don't know how to grieve, you don't know how to live.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, true. And it um one concept that I heard from Alain de Bouton came to my mind who says that angry people, so those who practice shame and guilt, are actually the real optimists because they can see what could have how the world could be otherwise. And that's why they get angry.
SPEAKER_01And so I don't know if I agree with that. I think I think anger is unfelt grief, and rage is unfelt communal grief. And so to me, if you're willing to grieve the anger, those for me are really the optimists. It's not that so many people hold on to the anger, and that to me isn't optimistic at all. You know, because it's not until we release that, till we move the anger to the grief, that there's an opportunity for something new to show up.
SPEAKER_04Interesting. Because it's um when I think of anger, I would think of how can I use this energy and transform it into something positive to kind of channel it into new ways. But grief sounds like calming, it's kind of the energy of the anger evaporates.
SPEAKER_01It's the water, it's the cleansing, it's the cleaning, it's the purifying, it's the you know, to tend to it, to move it from anger to grief. You know, that's the release of the anger. And especially because, you know, the anger, if we're caught into what should have been or wasn't, or whatever, there's a piece of fear in that. You know, and fear cannot transform fear into love. Only love can transform fear. And so this peace around when we grieve and when we're released, there's a space then for the love. There's room for it. You can't have anger and love occupying the same space.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and anger and curiosity cannot coexist either. Yeah. And you mentioned that you worked in organizational development before. Or maybe still do. Yeah. So luckily because I think in these in a lot of corporate contexts. We find a lot of those air quotes feelings of shame, blame, hidden grief. So how can you open the space for conversation about grief in a air quotes professional corporate environment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, one of the biggest myths, I think, in the corporate environment is that we are compartmentalized people and we can bring our corporate self to work and we leave our personal self at home. It's just not true. We're whole human beings, so we bring all of us. So these corporations are made up of all these human beings. You know, I just a couple of weeks ago hosted a conversation, mainly directed at corporations in India, about organizational grief and about when there's a loss that happens, even if it's a good kind of move, someone changes because they got a better promotion or they got a new job someplace else and they leave. There's grief in that, you know, and when we're not tending to it, what happens is we see it reflected in the community. So a new person comes in, there's not real room for them. People are like, well, this isn't how the old person did it, you know, because we're still holding on to what was there. But because we're people and grief happens on an individual level and on a communal level, and then on a global level as well, there's grief there. And again, if we don't know how to grieve, we don't know how to live. And so the business gets all caught up in this organizational grief, which lowers productivity too.
SPEAKER_04And how can we learn how to grieve? Because I can imagine that in many cultures it's almost a to boo. Oh, don't look behind, don't be sad, look ahead, continue. How can we learn that?
SPEAKER_01First thing I think is grief requires community. Because we'll never go to the bottom of our grief if we're doing it alone, because we're all afraid we'll drown in it. And so what happens is we keep having this experience of doing something over and over and over and over again. I feel like, you know, it it never goes away, right? Because we're never going to the bottom of it. And it's only when you're held in community that you can go all the way to the depths of the grief that then gives you access to come out on the other side and get access to the gift of the wound of the experience. Because every wound has a gift. And the other thing I think is one of the biggest misconceptions that we have around grief is we think that grief requires suffering. And grief isn't suffering. They're two different things. The suffering is the resistance to the grief, it's not the grief itself. The grief itself is just sad. And then the third thing I'd say about it is that we so have this story that we all grieve differently. I don't think it's true. I think we all avoid grief differently, and that story gives us permission to avoid it. But the grief itself is just feeling your feelings and letting them flow through you. It's a release. Matter of fact, Martin Prechtel of My End Descent, one of the things he says is that when you're grieving the thing that you've lost, we call it grief. But when you're grieving the thing that you've got, we call it praise. Because to really know how to praise something, you need to know what would be lost if it was gone. The thought.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. And now I understand. Now I also found another aspect to my previous question of uh where the group comes in regarding your alms coaching approach when you say we need community and the communal space in order to grieve.
SPEAKER_01Yes, because the grief is set up to support the individual and the individual is to support the group. It's a reciprocal relationship, right? And you know, you also asked about that corporate and grief and where it fits. There's also these pieces about, you know, people have worked on projects for long periods of time and put their, you know, blood, sweat, and tears in it, right? And then all of a sudden it goes away. Are we tending to that grief? You know, or people have maybe it's gone away because they've, you know, completed it successfully. If grief is praise too, are we doing that? You know, do we know how to really hold a celebration of it? There was a person who I know who does a lot of ritual stuff, and there was an organization, a restaurant, who was moving out of their old building into a new one. Well, she went in and had ritual with them, had a party or a celebration in the old building to say goodbye, you know, so that then the new, then it's a clean slate for the new one to come up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And you mentioned the pandemic. The grief, I think this might have been one of the biggest challenges actually that we didn't have or take the time to really transition from air quotes, normal life in the office to working from home because everything went so far, so fast.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, because we're afraid, right? And so instead of being slow, we sped up. And I think it's so interesting because I think part of the lesson with the pandemic was to slow down. And so many people didn't. They just went fast online, right? And so this piece for me in the pandemic gave us an opportunity to look at our relationship to grief, our relationship to faith, our relationship to community, our relationship to self, our relationship to lots of things to being still, you know? And I was so struck by people who are so afraid of dying, our relationship to death. You know, when so many of them were already the walking dead to me, you know? And because again, if you go back to that question that I said, what does it really mean to live? I was much more concerned about how I was living than when I was going to die. We're all gonna die. We're not getting out of here alive. Let's be clear, you know. And was this news to people? Like, you know, there's stuff out every day that can kill us, even now, and like whether you have the vaccine or not, right? That's not that's just one thing in the world that can happen. People walk out and get hit by a car. That could happen today. Like, tomorrow isn't promised to any of us, and we keep living as if we have control over nature in that way. And I think also, you know, I think that one of the things I said in this country is that I think a lot of women came to terms with tomorrow isn't promised when Trump was elected. I think people of color have always been kind of tomorrow isn't promised. And I think the group that it affected most or in a different way than ever was white men. Because they have been taught that they can do anything, be anything, go anywhere. And all of a sudden they were stopped in their tracks. They couldn't bend nature to their will. And so that that piece of getting us all to really get that nature and the divine is part of the equation.
SPEAKER_04Wouldn't this then mean that these middle-aged white men would also be in need to grieve?
SPEAKER_01Of course. They actually probably have less opportunities to grieve than the rest of us.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. How can you facilitate how can you facilitate that?
SPEAKER_01I actually find, you know, and uh if we go back to what how my coaching informs my holding of the hole, what I found in coaching space with white men is that it tends to take them a bit. I said it's like fishing and coaching. It takes them a bit to really let you in and let go. And but once they do, they're there. But the other piece I will say is because they don't tend to have as much practice and tapping into that part of their emotional selves, if we take them in too quickly, they experience another trauma.
SPEAKER_04And I again I come back to what you said earlier about community. That I think if you're if you're privileged, you're less in need of community, or you perceive it less needed. So maybe this community space, I think man's groups, man support groups have only only grown in the last years. And I think in US they're kind of mushrooming, whereas in Europe it's still quite rare for men to come together to be vulnerable with each other. So this community, this communal space might also be needed then to facilitate this transition.
SPEAKER_01And I want yes, no, I was just gonna say that one of the things that I want to acknowledge is that I think we're all swimming in the water of what's right, real, and true is white and male. And so we use that as our yardstick to gauge everything. But if if that's not our yardstick, then what we hold as privilege isn't privileged. So to me, it's not privilege to be disconnected from your heart. You know? And so I think we have a need to create new yardsticks because so much of what we're creating to tend to the issues and problems that we see is still under that yardstick, which takes nature and God out of the equation. And so I think we need to stop talking about white men as privileged. You know, when you create the yardstick, then of course you can make your pathology not seem like a pathology because it's your yardstick where we're measuring everything by. And I think actually that's one of the things that's most wounding for white men is because they don't even know that they're wounded. And if you don't know that you're sick or wounded, you're not readily able to heal it.
SPEAKER_04And words create worlds.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And so this idea that they're the privileged one actually keeps them from healing. You know, imagine if we said they were the wounded ones instead of the privileged ones. How that would change the whole landscape.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because the let's call it the illusion of privilege or the it was a reality. I mean, for a long time, that's what they felt.
SPEAKER_01Well, but it still wasn't privileged. I mean, like one of the things that, you know, I love in Tallahisi Colt's book, The Water Dancer, he talks about one of the things that slavery did to white people is it made infants of them because everything they needed to survive was tended to by the slaves. And so it may have looked privileged, but they couldn't even take care of themselves.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Great example.
SPEAKER_01Um and you can't enslave another without being enslaved yourself.
SPEAKER_04Reminds me of conversations I had in South Africa with white South Africans who admitted that they grew up in a world that now they don't know how they would be able to raise children and keep up a household by themselves. Um and this hasn't been so long ago. So yeah, don't have to go back all the way to slavery, it's still there. No.
SPEAKER_01Well, and my grandfather's grandmother was born a slave and she raised him. So it's not that many generations, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so the chains of the illusion of privilege. Yes.
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SPEAKER_04I'm still fascinated by the concept of community to allow the grief and the healing and hence to really facilitate a transition into a new way of seeing the world and defining privileges or just eliminating them. What does it take to create a community or the sense of community where everyone can grieve and where an organization can also grieve as a whole within this professional space?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think in the professional space, it's the leaders. Because an organization as an organism can't grow any more than the person who's leading it. So whenever I'm doing work with organizations, I always want to know who's like who's in charge and are they on board? Because if they're not, even unconsciously, they'll sabotage the growth. So, you know, that's why one of the things that Tennis and I are doing is this leadership rights a passage program. And it's it's designed to take people through a journey. And so we said we don't have a lack of leaders. We spend tons of money globally in developing leadership skills. But leaders just means people are following you. It doesn't say nothing anything about where you're taking them. And we spend very little money on developing wise, soulful leaders. So this piece about how do you create wise, soulful leaders, we decided it's through rites of passage. You have to go on a journey, you have to find yourself. You have to, you know, rites of passage is about your soul meeting itself. And then it changes everything.
SPEAKER_04It reminds me what you said before that you can only guide a group to places where you've been yourself. Yes. So leaders can only bring an organization or a group to places where they've been themselves. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Because if you're a leader, what you're saying is, I'll go first. That's what leadership means. You're gonna go first.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. From your experience, what makes a workshop fail?
SPEAKER_01I think a part of it is control drama. You know, like when we're so attached to what we think is supposed to happen. Because there's no room for air, there's no room for breath, there's no room for magic, there's no room for the spaces in between that make up community. There's, you know, no room for surprise. Then it just becomes dry and there's not room for life.
SPEAKER_02You know?
SPEAKER_01And I will, even though I say that, I will also say, and I believe that, you know, with this piece that I spoke of around your experience is none of my business, that even that can be in service. Because I do believe there's a divine order of things. So if I do a workshop that's just a complete flop, like it just it still can be in service to the people who are there. You know, there's always learning available to us. There's always the question of moving from why did this happen to me to why did this happen for me? That can create learning and growth.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a so it's a mindset shift.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And it's and I think part of it is this piece around if we believe that we're spiritual beings that's are having a human experience, or that we're human beings that sometimes have spiritual ones, depending on what lens you look through, changes everything. If I believe I'm a spiritual being that's having a human experience, then some of the things that happen really aren't that important. They're part of a much bigger story than I'm a human being that sometimes has spiritual ones.
SPEAKER_04Interesting. Would you invite groups to these kind of thought experiments to switch their perspective and help them a bit towards humility?
SPEAKER_01Well, yes. I mean, I think we do. And I think that, you know, I love the word humility when it comes up, you know, uh, because it always makes me think of Maya Angelou and her comment about humility. She says, you know, I think we mistake modesty with humility. And she says, modesty will fall off quicker than a G string on a stripper. But humility is really knowing that someone else has gone and paved the way for you. Now it's your responsible to go and pave the way for someone else. That's humility. It's not about like not claiming who we are in the world or what we can do. It's about really being, it's about knowing your job is to take this the next leg so that you're setting space for those coming after you.
SPEAKER_04Which then sounds as if gratitude is the brother of humility. Because you have to be grateful for someone who has paved the world for you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, definitely. Definitely. Gratitude. There's a a friend of mine, Claire Du Bois of Tree Sisters. And one of the things that I love, we were in a panel conversation, and she said her advice was three things. One is be grateful for everything. Be grateful for everything. Things that look like they're tragic, things that look like all of it is in service. Be grateful for everything. Go outside at least once a day. Put your feet on the earth. There's something that rebalances us just by standing on the earth. And the third one was dance. Dance literally moves things through your body. It can't be stuck if you're dancing and you're moving. And so she says her basic advice is go outside, be grateful, and shake your ass, which I love.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I think that's definitely something that all of us can practice more.
SPEAKER_01And there's definitely on our way to enlightenment, do those three things.
SPEAKER_04And there's no excuse not to do it now that the lockdown is gone.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_04I when I talked to Tennyson on the podcast, I did not ask about the circle. And I would like to take the opportunity with you. And you mentioned the circle practice a couple of times. And I think most of the audience are kind of familiar with the circle practice. But I would like to hear from you what is it about the circle and what does it actually mean to you and for groups?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so one of the things I think I want to speak around the circle practice, because Tennyson's lineage is much more of the circle way than mine is in the circle practice. Even though we use the circle way, it also is infused for me with all kinds of places for circle. So I talk about how I first was introduced to circle in my grandfather's church as a little girl, with, you know, the pastors and deacons raising putting their hands and praying on me, you know, circle as a way to spirit. And then, you know, in my elementary school, I went to a Montessori school and we'd sit in circle and we would share, you know, even on our birthdays, we'd do the trips around the sun. We'd have a candle in the center and you walk around and how many, how old you are, right? And so circle is a way of education and learning and connection. And then, you know, a bit later, I worked for an organization called Public Allies, nonprofit organization, AmeriCorps funded. And we sat in circle every Friday as a whole group to, you know, do circle as a way of learning and connection and activists and learning about yourself, right? And then after that, I was introduced to my mentors and teachers and the DAGRA medicine wheel and that work and you know, circle again as personal connection and growth to our greater consciousness and learning. And then the circle way, which was circle for me as methodology and how to communicate it and help people learn and lean into it. But for me, the methodology is the doing. And I think there's a piece that you can introduce and get and lean people in. And I think sometimes we do it backwards, though. We start with the methodology, which I think is really hard then to move from the doing to the being. I think what we do is we end up doing a lot more imitation instead of integration of circle. So what one of the things we've been doing, which I love in our holding of circle with groups, is starting from a place of saying, we all know circle. We've all sat at the kitchen table and have decided as a family where we're going to go for vacation or something like that, that you already know it. You're already, you know, being it. And so we start off with the beingness of circle. Because then I think teaching methodology then of what you already know, what you've already done, embeds it in you in a different way. Then to be a practitioner of circle. And I would say the main point of circle is connection. So any of the methodology that wherever you are in that moment is getting in the way of connection, pitch it, get rid of it. Because the main purpose is connection, not that we do the methodology right. And so, you know, I think that's one of the things that's unique about the way Tennyson and I hold circle together.
SPEAKER_04So how do you, maybe as an advice or food for thought for other facilitators, how do you catch yourself just implementing a methodology which might get in the way of being?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I think part of it is how do we keep it as simple as possible? You know, if you start adding all this kind of stuff, and you know, to me, then it's like, okay, is it do we really need all that? We don't have a lack of information. We have a lack of embodiment. And we keep gobbling up all these different methodologies as if we have a lack of information. We have more information at our fingertips on our phones than ever before. And so what helps the embodiment? That's why, like even in our leadership rights of passage program that we do, journey that we take people on. I actually lean more on the rights of passage and less on the leadership. Because for me, if you do the rights of passage, your leadership grows. It's how it's where we create balance. We have the leadership stuff. We know. I, you know, I will say we all know how to sell donuts, right? Like, I mean, there's not like like there's things you can do. We've been taught the leadership. You know, you you price it outright, you know those things. But when you're asking for something more, when you're asking for growth and development and not just more information, then what you're talking about is going on a journey. Then it's not just about information, it's about embodiment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And when I hear embodiment and not only information, also integration. Comes to my mind a word that you mentioned before.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So instead of the imitation, the integration.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And instead of just more information, just integrating the information you have into your Yeah, we love imitating.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we like I I I think we have people, I know people who like go to yoga all the time and still freaking mean. So, like, why, you know, like why? It's like that's not an integration of you know, of it. It's it's the imitation, it's the doing. And we get we've gotten stuck in the doing.
SPEAKER_04And isn't it just a maybe a stage in the journey? I mean, they're the advice that they okay, fake it until you make it, which means okay, imitate as long as possible until I can become it. And maybe the imitation is also driven by insecurity and fear of failure or rejection or doing it wrong. Can we actually grow into this embodiment without the imitation steps?
SPEAKER_01Yes, you can. I think there's a I mean, I think that because the being, if you start with the being and focus on the being and what who you are, the doing grows. You know, we can smile all we want, but that doesn't make us happy. But if you're happy, you smile, you know?
SPEAKER_04Although there's actually research that shows if we do smile, it makes us happy. Maybe not substantially deeply happy, but it makes us uh a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Well, it can make you feel better. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, I don't negate that the doing can support you in your journey. I just think we've been out of balance with it. And so if you're looking for balance, you know, then where we're out of balance is the being and not the doing.
SPEAKER_04I guess because the the doing. So the okay, put a smile on my face and know that I will feel better doing that is a we easy way out, is a quick fix. So I think for doing, we can cover up for a lot of things.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I think a lot of like that happens a lot, you know. I I was at a wedding this past weekend, and uh it was actually pretty sad to me because there was so much conversation about this person is perfect and this person is perfect and they're perfect together. And I thought if there's no room for our mess, then we can't really be present, you know, then we don't matter, like we can't be, and that was just really sad to me. And I think we think, you know, well, in this culture that we've set up, we've told certain people they're supposed to be perfect and others they never will be. And they both are traps.
SPEAKER_04I once read this um quote that in our qualities we're all the same, but we're unique and different and beautiful in our flaws.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And usually when we when we think of the person we deeply love, we don't love them before because of their perfection, we love them of their flaws that make them human and unique. So I think praising someone that they're perfect is basically negating them being human. Yeah. And then how to create space for that and understanding that it's something positive to hold and to grow and to and again we get to choose our journeys because I think that I believe that we're spiritual beings having a human experience.
SPEAKER_01So you really can't screw it up. Because if the purpose is to grow your spirit through whatever lessons you have on this earth plane, then I can do that by you know, choosing to forgive everybody or by choosing never to forgive anybody. Like at the end of the day, I leave and I grow my spirit. It's just what, you know, we have free will, we get to make choices for ourselves.
SPEAKER_04I like that question. What if I was a spiritual being with a human experience, um, and we'll sit on it. And I was still asked the question if someone would like to go on this journey, which question would you give to them to start?
SPEAKER_01So one of the questions Tennyson asked me eight years ago, I think it was, was what question if you knew it would change your life forever? And I said, Oh God, I have no clue. I said, I don't know. And he goes, Okay, so what question could you live into for two to three years? And my question that I came up with was, what if I really did believe in divine order? How would I treat people differently? What questions would I ask differently? How would I move through the world differently? And so I've been living into that question for about six or seven years now. And, you know, it brings me back to myself time and time again. If I get out of balance and I'm like being crazy or whatever, that's the question they asked me. What if you really did believe that things were in divine order? That brings me back to, oh, I don't, I don't have to be, maybe it's not messed up, maybe it's just as it's supposed to be in this moment to bring us to ourselves.
SPEAKER_04Would this then also be your coping strategy with these crazy days? So what keeps you sane, happy, thriving, inspiring, wise in times of global craziness?
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I think that, you know, again, as you do, I believe, as we do more and more of our own conscious development, we get access to more information. And at the end of 2019, I could feel something coming. And I remember I was like getting rid of books and going through my stuff. And I remember telling Tennyson, something's coming. Well, actually, what I said to him was, I'm like, it's I'm not just cleaning to organize, it's like I'm compelled to do it. Like I can feel something. And so I could feel it coming. So then when COVID showed up, it was actually a relief to me. Because I didn't like I didn't know what it was gonna be. And to me, I wasn't like I wasn't afraid. I'm you know, I've known that tomorrow's not promised to any of us. That wasn't new information for me. I know that that people die every day. That's not new information for me. You know, some of what made me sad was that people were running from it still online. And I believe that the divine isn't punishing, the divine is just exact. So whatever it is, you know, and and we don't get to choose whether or not we want to grow, or whether we grow. We get to choose whether we do it the easy way or the hard way. And we get signs all along, and if you don't if you don't pay attention, it just it squeezes more and more and more until you do. And so I just saw us not paying attention, and so of course this is what happens, and then we have another chance because if we don't pay attention, it'll have to come again, you know, because I think the divine's trying to get us to grow the hell up.
SPEAKER_04Your words and ways of seeing the world. I find this very empowering. And um I'm sure that the audience feels the same.
SPEAKER_01I think what gives us agency, you know. For me, it's like it really for my choices in my journey is always between me and the divine and doesn't really have anything to do with everybody else. I want to sometimes make it about other people, you know, that's why I'm fighting with Tennyson at times, right? Because I want to make it about him, but that's not like it's not really about him. You know, I only make it about him when I'm handing over my power.
SPEAKER_04Is there anything that you that we haven't covered in our conversation that you would like to share with the audience?
SPEAKER_01I think actually two things. One is that I mentioned fire and water, it's a leadership rites of passage cohort. It's a 16-month journey for adults. And the question was, how do we grow up adults? We have such adolescent adult culture. And if you don't have initiated adults, you can't have initiated elders. And if you don't have initiated elders, you can't initiate the youth. So, what does it mean to initiate adults? We have a cohort that's starting in August. Um, we have one that that we're in that started in February, and so we're gonna be running two at the same time. And part of that decision was because we've been in a conversation about what it would be to do a fire and water Europe. And I said to Tennyson, well, maybe we should try to hold two in the same country first, and then and then see. So we're doing two right now here, one coming up. And so if people are interested, they can reach out to me or Tennyson. And then the other piece I would say is sometime this year, I'm co-authoring a book with a woman, Amy Houghton, called The Inner Ground Railroad: A 40-day Journey to Remembering Soul and Spirit. And it's designed to heal the ancestor legacy of slavery for all of us. We all have carry a legacy of slavery. And it shares our stories, my story and her story about finding our own freedom. And one of the things I like about it, it's not reconciliation between us, it's reconciliation within each of us. And I'm a black woman who lives on this side of the Ohio River, and she's a white woman who lives on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. And so the place where, you know, so many slaves crossed for freedom, and we share our stories, and then we walk you through your own 40-day journey. And so at some point, that'll that'll be available this year.
SPEAKER_04And I would definitely share it with the audience and put all the links in the show notes. So even though someone might listen to this later, they can find you and see what's up and coming, emerging in your end. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. If someone zoned out throughout the conversation, I usually ask if someone fell asleep after a minute two of our conversation, and I cannot imagine how this could ever happen. Anyway, if they just woke up and they don't have time to listen to all of it again, what do you would you like them to walk away with?
SPEAKER_01I think even just the question when things happen, whether we think they're good or whether we think they're bad or terrible or whatever, to shift your question from why is this happening to me to why is this happening for me? Just that will change everything.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. It's been a bliss to spend this time with you. Thank you for making it unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01I hope I was worth the wait.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. I will already sign up for this for the next episode. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Thank you again for inviting me.
SPEAKER_03Thank 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.
