Description

We all hope to facilitate breakthroughs - those “a-ha” moments when participants have a lightbulb over their heads, ideas synthesise, and new ideas emerge.

But we can’t legislate and plan for them, can we?

Of course, there are no guarantees... but Kimberly Wiefling (and her approach to facilitation) is as close to a guarantee as you can get!

Join us in this episode as we discuss failure, emergence, workshop design, behavioural economics, language, and many more topics by way of some deeply personal reflections and storytelling. It’s a wondrous episode!

Find out about:

• How to facilitate for breakthroughs to occur, rather than leaving it to chance
• Where physics and facilitation intersect
• What a workshop of breakthroughs looks like - before, during, and after
• Why sharing a space and experience is critical to a workshop’s success
• How to use clothing to influence your creativity (and mindset in general)
• How using contracts (signed by employee and manager) can codify workshop outcomes

Don’t miss the next episode: 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!

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

Part one
 [01:13] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator - if you do?
 [02:00] When was the moment that you realised you are a facilitator, not a trainer?
[05:05] What have you learned from physics about facilitation?#
 [09:55] How can we detach our own expectations and open our minds up to new possibilities and different realities within a group?
[11:13] Can you tell us the story of the Chinese horse farmer?
[14:10] Can we re-engineer confirmation bias to help us find silver linings?
[16:25] Using first-person narrativisation to reframe our experiences as positive.
[19:07] How can we use negatives as fuel to change the narrative?
[22:40] Kimberly shares a perspective-shifting exercise.
[25:38] What makes a workshop fail?
[28:53] How can a facilitator turn up, do nothing, and still make things happen?
[36:35] What is the one step we can take to make the impossible possible in organisations plagued by 'learned helplessness?

Links

Kimberly’s website

Kimberly’s team

Kimberly’s business

Two pages full of Kimberly’s free videos, articles, and templates

Kimberly’s books

Connect to Kimberly:

On LinkedIn

On Twitter

Share your thoughts about our conversation!

Support the show

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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/