Facilitation Lab Podcast
171 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago -Welcome to the Facilitation Lab Podcast, where Douglas Ferguson, founder of facilitation academy Voltage Control, speaks with Voltage Control Certification Alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. These discussions embrace a method-agnostic approach, so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences.
This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. If you’d like to join a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab Community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab.
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Episodes
Episode 149: How Can Effective Facilitation Transform Team Dynamics and Collaboration?
May 09, 2024 14:59 - 40 minutes - 55.4 MB"Change is inevitable; it's how you adapt to it. It's the tools that you look for, the how do you want to grow so that you can adapt better to these changes that come your way."- Neallie Kani In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson hosts Nelly Carney, a UX Specialist from Hogan Assessments, who shares her facilitation journey and the impact of leadership classes on her career. She discusses the importance of creating a comfortable environment for teams, inspired by Eric Scarborough's cal...
Episode 148: How Can Facilitation Transform Professional Learning in Education?
April 23, 2024 13:56 - 39 minutes - 54.7 MB"I allow myself to be very vulnerable and open because I know I'll grow in it, but I also know it helps others step into being vulnerable alongside me."- Susan Wilson-Golab In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, Douglas Ferguson converses with Susan Wilson Go Lab about her evolution from a K-12 district administrator to an expert in educational leadership and facilitation. Susan delves into her career progression, the significance of adapting to different organizational cultures...
Episode 147: The Impact of Delightful Facilitation
April 01, 2024 16:44 - 41 minutes - 56.6 MB"Delight is actually a combination of multiple emotions; it is joy coupled with surprise. So, I've really been thinking about how I can bring in more of that delight with very small tweaks to our everyday rituals at my company."- JJ Rogers In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson speaks with JJ Rogers, Director of Product Design at Watermark and a facilitation expert. They discuss JJ's facilitation journey, from his early career to his current role, emphasizin...
Episode 146: Embrace Discomfort to Adapt to New Ways of Working
January 09, 2024 15:18 - 44 minutes - 61 MB"I am a poor participant when I am poorly led, but when I'm well led through a process, I'm really willing to play along."- Rebecca Sutherns In this podcast episode of the Facilitation Lab, host Douglas Ferguson talks with Dr. Rebecca Southern about her journey in facilitation and the nuances of group work. Dr. Southern, with 27 years of experience and authorship of three books, including "Elastic Stretch Without Snapping or Snapping Back," shares her early discomfort with group work and h...
Episode 145: Empowering Leaders For Sustainable Change
December 12, 2023 14:04 - 45 minutes - 62.1 MB"We need facilitators to create that room. There are very few and the scientists who are quite enthusiastic as well as the decision leaders, what they know right now is PowerPoint one PowerPoint after another. And which is quite boring but they don't know what to do, how different, what other ways can we do it, can we pass on this information? Any sector that you talk about within Africa, they will need that, they will need facilitators because of the growth trajectory that we are looking at...
Episode 144: Impactful Facilitation Techniques for Building Multicultural Teams
November 28, 2023 16:21 - 33 minutes - 46.4 MB“I think that is my superpower. I do connect. I believe that no one can be successful without the other. We need each other to thrive and we have to realize that we are strong in certain areas and others are strong in other areas. And together, when we do connect, we can do really incredible stuff. So I like connecting people, where people are talking to me and in my mind, I'm already thinking who am I going to introduce this person to so he or she can make his dream a reality. And that sort...
Episode 143: Making Meetings Less Painful and More Productive
November 14, 2023 14:22 - 33 minutes - 45.9 MB"It was a humbling experience because I was the one leading those unproductive meetings or leading the teams astray and just talking about the work and really not having any action items or decisive plan of action afterwards. It was both a humbling experience but also really exciting because I felt like it was that itch that was finally scratched for me. You see it in action and you realize, yep, that's what I'm looking for. That's really cool, I like that.” - Dom Michalec In this episode ...
Episode 142: Transforming Team Dynamics
October 17, 2023 16:52 - 42 minutes - 58.4 MB“"When you just take the time to apply a few of these facilitation techniques, it really can help people focus, help them make better, more efficient decisions, and ultimately feel like they're all bought in on it."” - Phil Canning In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson talks to Phil Canning, leader of the Human Centered Design Studio and Facilitation Practice at Ally Financial. They discuss Phil's journey into facilitation, the importance of design thinking...
Episode 141: From Awkward Silence to Powerful Breakthroughs
October 03, 2023 14:01 - 40 minutes - 55.3 MB“Listening in the silence, observing, seeing what's not being said in that silence, that tells a whole story as well.” - Reshma Khan In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson interviews Reshma Aziz Khan, the CEO and Founder of Kenzo Consulting Limited. They discuss Reshma's background in the nonprofit sector and her interest in facilitation. Reshma shares a story about her first experience working with a facilitator in Zimbabwe and how it sparked her curiosity and excitement about the powe...
Episode 140: The Most Essential Facilitation Skills for Building Trust and Collaboration
September 14, 2023 19:57 - 46 minutes - 63.4 MB"We live in such a polarized world right now, at least in the US, and I'm not going to get into that, but I think it is important that we be able to hear each other, really hear each other. Not necessarily agree, but how do we start to move a little bit closer to each other? And probably that's going to have to be through complicated, messy conversations and real listening." In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, Douglas welcomes Sandra Molinari, a workplace violence prevention s...
Episode 139: Control the Room Is Now Facilitation Lab!
September 06, 2023 14:33 - 40 seconds - 927 KBWe are excited to announce that Control the Room is now the Facilitation Lab podcast!
Episode 138: Product Managers Unlock Flow Through Facilitation
August 28, 2023 18:22 - 25 minutes - 34.7 MB"In today's world, compassion and kindness in the business environment is the most valuable thing that you can bring to your business or any working session." - Eli Wood In this podcast episode, Douglas Ferguson and Eli Wood discuss the importance of facilitation in working with interdisciplinary teams and building successful products and business offerings. They emphasize that facilitation is not limited to design sprints but can be applied to any situation where collaboration and decisio...
Episode 137: Humanizing Change
July 24, 2023 14:24 - 42 minutes - 57.7 MBIn this podcast episode, Douglas welcomes Tim Creasy, the Chief Innovation Officer at Prosci, to discuss the field of change management. Tim shares his origin story and how he became interested in understanding human systems and implementing change at scale. They discuss the intersection of economics and political science, the concept of systems thinking, and the potential impact of generative AI on creativity. They also highlight the importance of understanding both macroeconomics and micro...
Episode 136: Stamp Out Boring Workshops: A Facilitator's Mission
June 27, 2023 17:10 - 37 minutes - 50.8 MB“It's to stamp out boring workshops around the world forever because i think if you do have the opportunity to bring teams together or people together that's kind of sacred time so how do you get and this isn't about getting the biggest roi but how do you make it more meaningful and a once in a lifetime opportunity for them? - Leanne Hughes In this episode of the Control Room podcast, Leanne Hughes, author of "The Two-Hour Workshop Blueprint," shares her secrets to designing and delivering...
Episode 135: Clarity Without Certainty
May 08, 2023 15:03 - 44 minutes - 60.8 MB“I wanted to find a different way to think about the future and specifically wanted to understand the decision making process that leaders go through when they're facing extraordinary amounts of uncertainty. Because frankly, a lot of what I saw was just bad behavior. I was really lucky in finding my way to this extraordinary community of learners, of questioners, of facilitators, of designers. It changed my trajectory in many ways to build on what had been a long history in design to now inc...
Episode 134: Creating Systems That Prompt Behaviors In A Certain Way
February 28, 2023 19:34 - 50 minutes - 69.9 MB“Well, for me, I like to think of ensemble as a behavior rather than a specific group of people. And to think of ensemble behavior as a situation when I'm looking at the group that I'm with and we are working to make something that's different than what any one of us would make on our own, and that this specific ensemble I'm going to work with to support the thing that we are going to make together that's going to be different from what anyone else is going to make.” - Anne Libera In this ...
Episode 133: The Art Of The Possible With AI
February 21, 2023 15:11 - 45 minutes - 62.1 MB“I mean, frankly, in a lot of ways it's kind of a frightening time. So both of my parents are artists and I've grown up surrounded by musicians and artists of all different kinds, and a lot of them are reaching out to me and asking about with things like Dolly or most people know of Mid-Journey, the website that kind of aggregates a lot of these generated images, what's going to happen to their livelihood? This is a very real question that a lot of people have. My father, who's a jazz musici...
Episode 132: Moving From Bricklayer To Architect
February 14, 2023 14:47 - 38 minutes - 52.4 MB“Design systems are the tool that enable us to step out of being individual makers, crafters on particular interfaces. And it elevates our craft to a point where we're able to spend more time focusing on our users, bringing in our stakeholders, collaborating more and less time just kind of grinding through production. That might be scary to some people, but I genuinely think it'll be a better job in the teams that are already doing it. I'm seeing that as well. It helps us just be a more valu...
Episode 131: No Company Thrives Without Good People
January 31, 2023 15:14 - 44 minutes - 60.8 MB“I feel like I'm a unicorn at times because I'm able to speak different languages in the way that I can connect with people, right? So I was a solar entrepreneur. The pain points that I would have as a solo entrepreneur and growing and scaling and leading teams of contractors, I've done that, or working at a large global company and running an employee resource group along with doing a ton of sales and operations like tech. I can have those nuanced conversations where people feel seen and va...
Episode 130: Learn To Change Your Business
January 24, 2023 14:33 - 42 minutes - 58.6 MB“... that ties back to OKRs because it's like what is the one thing that we're going to work on? And that's hard to do, because if you try to focus on 10 things, you're not focusing on anything. But that's what's nice about OKRs and why they can be helpful in meetings or saying no to meetings because well, that's not what my OKR is, that's not what we're focusing on, or we're not hitting this objective because we're failing at these metrics because of these key results one, two, and three. S...
Episode 129: Step Into The Light
January 17, 2023 16:04 - 49 minutes - 68.3 MB“Transitions are scary. Change is scary. So depending on the context, it could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing. And all of that can activate our fear response and our grief response. So there's a lot of neuroscience theory and brain science theory around transitions and change that we can talk about. But I think for me personally, I always feel like I step into the light. I'm very curious. I'm very curious, and I very much try to stay aware of those moments in life that can become l...
Episode 128: Creating The Conditions For Change To Emerge
January 09, 2023 23:09 - 41 minutes - 57.3 MB“It is looking into the narratives that an organization holds about itself, and that people hold about themselves, and understanding if these narratives are helpful or hindering to the change. And then actually from there trying to understand what would be a better narrative for this organization to hold, and what would it take for us to go onto that journey.” - Nicole Brauckmann In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Nicole Brauckmann about her journey le...
Episode 127: Building Innovation Muscles
January 03, 2023 14:50 - 43 minutes - 59.5 MB“That is one of the most difficult things, especially in a corporate environment, I think to get people to have that zone of safety. A lot of times when we talk to people within our organization like a Nelnet and we ask them to come up with a brand new idea, we try to protect them as much as possible from having to present their idea until they have some evidence around it. And have them think differently about that early stage so that they can explore and go in a different direction than th...
Episode 126: Creating Environments For Group Genius
December 12, 2022 14:44 - 1 hour - 121 MB“I think I was lucky to be a teacher of very young children as my first career. They taught me so much about the joy of teaching and learning. Within the first few months of teaching it was clear to me that mutual learning created authenticity and trust. We had wonderful fun together growing with and for each other. Many of my current ways of thinking and acting developed during those few years with these young minds. I left the formal classroom 50 years ago taking with me new ways of workin...
Episode 125: Embracing Emergent Coherence
December 05, 2022 15:49 - 40 minutes - 55.9 MB“I've come to believe that trust is an emergent phenomenon. You do not have to go in trusting the people that you're engaging with. What I do believe you need is a shared question and it acts as a strange attractor. So to get at that, back up a sec and say my entry point for engaging was really a breakthrough kind of insight, which is that all change begins with disruption. And if you think about it, it makes sense because if things are going smoothly, there's no reason for change. And so fo...
Episode 124: Don’t Talk About It, Be About It
November 28, 2022 15:16 - 41 minutes - 56.8 MB“Yeah. And it's crazy because you hear that... Well, we always hear the adages, this generation is soft. I got bullied when I was a kid and it was like, pause for a second. Can we acknowledge that just because it happened to you doesn't mean it was right and that someone else should have a similar experience just because it happened to you? I was in a bad car accident. I don't feel like every driver should have to experience a bad car accident to be considered an efficient driver.” - Dethra ...
Episode 123: Making A Viable Organization
November 22, 2022 18:52 - 47 minutes - 64.8 MB“Teams might be better able to own things if we adjust the boundaries or might find it really tricky because the cognitive load is too high. So suddenly we're talking about stuff which is not just technology, it's about making a viable organization effectively. We're thinking about viability, the ongoing ownership of different streams of change on an ongoing basis. That's a healthy conversation to have for any organization to be honest.” - Matthew Skelton In this episode of Control the Roo...
Episode 122: Power TO The People
November 14, 2022 15:34 - 47 minutes - 65.7 MB“I think this aspect of psychological safety is probably one of the most interesting that I think about in terms of psychological safety. So first of all, most of us learn management from our managers. We learn what management looks like, we learn what management is through our own managers. And because of the way time and careers work, most of the managers that we have, certainly early in our career, are themselves fairly inexperienced, fairly junior managers. So there's this sort of feedba...
Episode 121: Reframing The Future Of Work
November 08, 2022 15:22 - 38 minutes - 52.3 MB“People are so concerned with this innovation piece, this collaboration piece. How are we going to get more products out the door? How are we going to serve more people? How are we going to be CX/UX design premier to make sure we meet people where they're at and our customers are satisfied? But if your workforce can't even speak up, or feel comfortable or don't feel like there's that psychological safety where they can voice concerns or they see a red flag they're able to speak about it, it ...
Episode 120: Fight Like You're Right, Listen Like You're Wrong
October 31, 2022 14:17 - 46 minutes - 63.2 MB“So we know that, that's how we create our shows at Second City. We have a 12 week process, we develop in front of the audience, and we know the first four weeks there's going to be a lot of seemingly garbage, but we allow that seemingly garbage to surface because there might be a gem actually inside there, especially when sort of looked at a different way.” - Kelly Leonard In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly Leonard about his three plus decades m...
Episode 119: An Imagination Deficit
October 24, 2022 13:33 - 37 minutes - 50.9 MB“I think it's really important to understand the difference between safety and trust. So safety is actually a state of our nervous system. It's a neurobiologic process that happens for human beings. Trust on the other hand is how we relate to each other. It's a way to have relationship. So I can trust you maybe to complete your work and say you're going to do what you said you're going to do, and the extend that I trust to you, that's a way to relate to you. Safety is I feel I can have vulne...
Episode 118: Calling People In
October 18, 2022 14:07 - 37 minutes - 50.9 MB“Yeah, he's been doing some amazing things in his organization. One is that he's been talking about personality as a place to welcome diversity, that everyone doesn't have to be nice all the time, that people who are fractious or have personalities that are annoying, that you can be actually radically inclusive of those personalities. I'm not talking about people who are racist or sexist or those kinds of things. I'm actually just talking about people who always are a little sour or who aren...
Episode 117: Change The Way You Change
October 11, 2022 15:30 - 38 minutes - 52.4 MB“Well, I do think the first step is for Managers to understand change management, because everybody's talking about this and it may seem too difficult to apply, so they can be resistant about what is change management, but the first step would be educate them about the whole theme. And we act as coaches, as partners of the leaders on those projects, because of course they will go through the situations and we'll have to best support them. And often I offer myself just to be there with them,...
Episode 116: Flexible, Inclusive, and Connected Work
October 03, 2022 22:23 - 50 minutes - 69 MB“There's this old phrase, 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast.' I'm a firm believer in that one. I learned it the hard way. When I first started my career, I was a consultant. When I jumped off into startups, I honestly really struggled. The first couple years were pretty bad, because I was not a very good manager. It took a while to realize that the needs of people from different backgrounds and different skill sets, even different functions, were vastly different, and that if I wanted my ...
Episode 115: Unlocking Service And Creativity
September 26, 2022 13:58 - 46 minutes - 63.7 MB“We need more people being of service. And it's not just the appointed tech host, it's their responsibility. You could have teams of people where they know all of these skills, they're going to function better as a team because they know how to behave this way. But I think still there aren't enough tech hosts or service-minded people in these meetings to be able to do that.” - Heather Martinez In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Heather Martinez about h...
Episode 114: Creating High Performing Cultural Values
September 19, 2022 13:28 - 47 minutes - 64.9 MB“Winston Environments tell us how to behave. Others in the environment reinforce the messages given by the physical space.” -Rob Evans In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Howard Kincaide about his long career in Product Leadership. He starts with how his nature to always be making things served him throughout his career. Later, Howard discusses his long journey introducing teams to Lean Product Development Methods. We then discuss using cultural valu...
Episode 113: Designing Humane Working Environments
September 12, 2022 13:40 - 39 minutes - 54.6 MB“Winston Churchill said something like, "We create our buildings and then our buildings create us." So we are deeply influenced by our environment. This species didn't evolve except by paying very careful attention to what's going on around us. Because we're not that fast, we don't have good teeth, we had to be pretty attentive to our environment to even survive. Well, we're still those creatures. We're still very attentive to even subtle cues in our environment. Environments tell us how to ...
Episode 112: Learning For Life
September 06, 2022 15:03 - 39 minutes - 53.6 MB“When you look at what's happening with the population, boomers aren't getting any younger and they've got plenty of discretionary income and a lot of the solutions that are out there aren't very friendly feeling to that population. And it's hard to design for a group that you've never been a part of or that you don't know anything about. It became really important to me to be part of teams where there was a wide variety, not just of backgrounds and races and genders and that sort of thing, ...
Episode 111: Who’s In Here?
August 29, 2022 15:00 - 31 minutes - 42.6 MB“Wherever you go, there you are. You're always bringing your family dynamics into it, so you just have to figure out who's who in the dynamic of whatever you're experiencing in the room, and then once you know that, you'll understand what's getting triggered, and you can work together to move through it.” -Patti Dobrowolski In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Patti Dobrowolski about her career helping teams navigate growth and change. She starts with h...
Episode 110: Flourishing In Times Of Transition
August 22, 2022 14:11 - 40 minutes - 55.2 MB“And so the more that I looked at people outside of the ideal, this ideal that we should fail forward, this ideal that we should pivot forward, I became and remained fascinated with the notion of in that moment, when we have some kind of a catalyzing disruption or interruption, how do we get our bearings? How do we understand who we are in that and then how do we determine how we want to move forward? What are the actual steps that we take? What are the approaches that we use? What are the r...
Episode 109: Discerning What’s Needed In The Moment
August 15, 2022 14:38 - 45 minutes - 62.9 MB“But the thing that I hear the most from the students is that they're afraid that they're not going to know how to help. They're going to stand up in front of their peers and say, "I'm here to help you guide you through this, A3 problem solving workout or this kaizen, but at the core of it, I'm really just got this structure that I'm following. I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a robot or I'm going to be like, 'We are in current state. We are in root cause analysis'." Because they're learni...
Episode 108: Change Imposed Is Change Opposed
August 08, 2022 15:42 - 39 minutes - 53.6 MB“But what we don't realize is that it's actually our job to help manage change. And it's our job to give people a vision that helps them get to the other side of change. So, so often we just tell people, you need to change. We never tell them why. And we don't give them a vision for the future. And we don't ask them to come alongside of us and help build that future together. We oftentimes, change feels like it's happening to me and change imposed is changed opposed. So we're going to oppose...
Episode 107: Helping People Flourish
August 01, 2022 16:02 - 34 minutes - 47.9 MB“You know, there are so many different forms of discrimination and prejudice. But I thought, when you write a book about leadership, what is there that hasn't been written yet? And so for me, leadership is about perspective. Finding different ways of looking at things to solve problems. To be creative and to innovate. We need to look at problems from different perspectives. So we don't ask the right question, do we get to the right solution? And so that's some work that Thomas Wedell-Wedells...
Episode 106: Benefits Of A Nonlinear Workday
July 25, 2022 21:00 - 40 minutes - 55.9 MB“It's so interesting because I think in the process of documenting things like asynchronous workflows and some of the really hot ticket items that you hear about remote work, we've gotten to pull out stories from different people's lives and how that plays out. It's really what kind of brings this work to life, because it shows you how something like being able to work a non-linear work day enables someone to spend more time with their kids, or pursue a hobby that they love, or just have tim...
Episode 105: Redefining Leadership
July 18, 2022 15:05 - 38 minutes - 52.6 MB“Absolutely. And that's what's so cool about people. And I think bringing people together is those moments of like, "Oh, I was thinking about it in this way. And oh, your lived experience means you're thinking about it in this totally different way." And how exciting as a facilitator to kind of be in those moments where your assumptions are challenged or where all of a sudden you have this whole new metaphor to view something in the world.” -Elizabeth Weingarten In this episode of Control ...
Episode 104: Giving Up Power In Your Space
July 11, 2022 15:15 - 37 minutes - 51.2 MB“ I did this project at one point when I was a teacher with my students where we built these dual compost in the trees. I came back a year later and one of the families that received a dual compost in the tree, and they helped work on it as well, they were using it as a closet. Another family that had received one and worked on it as well were using it as a bathroom only for very, very important persons. So I was like, "Wow, we built this thing. It was technically correct. It worked. It fun...
Episode 103: The Energy Of Collective Moments
July 05, 2022 13:22 - 38 minutes - 53.1 MB“The main objective is to drive economic impact for our city, for our province, for our country. So, we need to give a platform to entrepreneurs to have their brand shine, but we also need to architect them meeting people. So, how do we source the audience? How do we create moments of connection throughout the experience? How do we hype people before the event to come and discover these talents? That's really kind of what's driving the whole vision. That's how we're thinking about designing ...
Episode 102: Anita Abaisa
June 27, 2022 14:39 - 35 minutes - 48.2 MB“Keep listening. Definitely keep listening, keep trying. But it is what you're saying, it's our goal to help people change their behavior. And if we want to help people change their behavior, we have to show them how and we have to seduce them. If we force people to change, it will be much harder. But what if we seduce people to change, to show them what it's worth for them to change? That's much more interesting. And people are far more willing to do that. Instead of forcing people like, "Y...
Episode 101: Improving Someones Day
June 20, 2022 17:35 - 41 minutes - 56.8 MB“There is a phenomenon in quantum mechanics where vibrations of energy actually have an effect around them, on their environment and the other. You've probably heard that in quantum mechanics, you can actually observe a quantum phenomenon and by observing it you've changed it. It's the strangest weirdest thing. Well, you go out there in the world and you reflect a certain positivity. It's astonishing how it creates momentum of positivity.” -Neal Foard In this episode of Control the Room, I...
Episode 100: Design For Change In Higher Education
June 13, 2022 15:17 - 49 minutes - 67.8 MB“I don't know whether teacher change issues are any more difficult than others. It's just where I have experience. I think any time you're working on... I mean, you know this. People sort of like the idea of change. They just don't want to. And anytime you're working with really talented experts, human beings accustomed to tremendous autonomy, that's a really difficult room. And so the challenge for... In the educational technology version of me, the challenge was people realized that to use...