Facilitation - The Catalyst for Change

"A facilitator lights the spark of collaboration, then steps back to let the fire grow" - Stephan Neck

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Mark Richards, Niko Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck delve into the art and science of facilitation—a skill often confused with coaching yet distinct in its purpose and impact.

Mark kicks off with a surprise question, challenging Niko and Stephan to identify the greatest difference between coaching and facilitation. Stephan's response lays the foundation for a rich discussion: facilitation, he suggests, is about sparking action and empowering others to take the lead.

Key Highlights:

• Facilitation as a Catalyst: Stephan describes facilitation as a role that ignites movement and fosters collaboration without imposing control.
• Contrasting Coaching and Facilitation: Niko shares how facilitation emphasizes creating the space for others to solve problems, while coaching often involves guiding individuals to personal insights.
• Practical Techniques: The hosts explore tools and methods for effective facilitation, from structured workshops to adaptive approaches tailored to group dynamics.
• Challenges of Facilitation: Addressing common obstacles, such as resistance or lack of clarity, they offer strategies to maintain focus and drive outcomes.

Insights for SPCs

The episode provides actionable advice for SPCs (SAFe Program Consultants) and other leaders:

• Create Psychological Safety: A safe environment encourages participation and innovation.
• Embrace Neutrality: Effective facilitators prioritize the group's goals over personal opinions.
• Adapt to Context: Every team and challenge is unique; flexibility is key to success.

Conclusion

Facilitation is more than guiding discussions—it's about empowering teams to take ownership of their outcomes. The hosts highlight that the best facilitators enable others to shine, stepping back once momentum is achieved.

References

• Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making: Sam Kaner
• "The Art of Facilitation" by Dale Hunter
• "Facilitation at a Glance!" by Ingrid Bens

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:33

G'day and welcome to another episode of SPCS Unleashed. I'm Mark Richards. I'm joined by my buddies from Switzerland, Nico and Stefan. Last week, Nico took us deep into the heart of coaching. This week we moved to a very closely related discipline, which is facilitation. And Nico inspired us in the first season by constantly throwing us curveballs and making us feel a little bit uncomfortable and sometimes spin in circles on the spot. So I'm going to throw a surprise question to Nico and Stefan before we get anywhere. Here's a surprise question in your head. What's the greatest difference between coaching and facilitation?

Niko Kaintantzis: 1:14

Oh, that's great.

Stephan Neck: 1:17

I like the curveball in a way that let me use the curveball as analogy. Right. Facilitation is for me an ability to be a catalyst that people start something. And if they start something, then I probably switch into coaching mode. How to swing my bat, how to perceive the curveball, how to hit the curveball, will I hit, and if I hit, how do I do that? Right. That's probably my answer to your question.

Niko Kaintantzis: 1:52

Each time I had an idea, it just found out that it doesn't work because first I thought so. Yeah, coaching is a one one thing. Oh, no. It's also team coaching. So. Okay, facilitating. Oh, it's about their goals. Oh, coaching is also about their goals. Okay, what is really the difference? Maybe I would have need more preparation for that. I think coaching is something you bring a person, a people forward to a common goal. And facilitating, you have a group of people and you let them work together not solving something, maybe that's a difference, but I'm really not sure. What have you done, Mark? What is your explanation?

Mark Richards: 2:34

Look, it's an interesting one because last week we talked about coaching and actually we talked about a lot of stuff that I think is important in facilitation. And when I started thinking about facilitation, it's like, what really is the difference in my head? And I think for me, I think of coaching and you've obviously thought about definitions, but for me, coaching is more a one one and facilitation is more a group setting. That's my personal mental driver between the two things that might be happening. Beyond that, maybe it gets a little bit subtle, but. And why I thought about it as a really interesting question is if you talk about coaching stances, if you talk about what mode am I in at the moment, and if you think about how do I become a great facilitator? Well, actually everything we said last week about becoming a great coach will also help you become a great facilitator. And everything you learn in wanting to be a better facilitator will probably help you be a better coach. So I have heard a lot of definitions about what facilitation is over the years. A lot of buzz phrases. One of my favorite definitions comes from Roger Schwartz in his book the Skilled Facilitator. And he says facilitation is a process in which a person who is acceptable to all members of a group, substantively neutral and has no decision making authority intervenes to help a group improve the way it identifies and solves problems and makes decisions. And I just thought that was a beautiful one. That sums up so much of the heart of facilitation. But anyway, let's keep moving with being a little bit kind of out of the box. And you know, this season we said each week we'd have our little segment called Nico's Jiggles, which is, you know, what's your crazy question of the week? And I actually stole it this week. So maybe it's Mark's crazy moments. But the question that came to my head was, which Star wars character best. Best represents a facilitator? And apparently I created a great deal of discussion in Stefan's household about this. So why don't we throw to you, Stefan?

Stephan Neck: 4:41

Yeah, that's true. I'm not a big fan of Star Wars. I have to admit. I'm not into the details. I know some of the characters and I had discussions with family members and interesting discussions popped up. My wife also asked, what are you looking for? There's so many characters. And I said, I'm looking for a facilitator. And that triggered the question, what is a facilitator? And the obvious one was Obi Wan Kenobi. Right. He reminds us of a character that, what's the mission? Stay focused, people, stay aligned. I like that. But then the discussion went into, okay, what about other characters like Luke? If you look at this person from an evolutionary point of view, first he was someone who was more into self discovery and then becoming a facilitator in a group or in a bunch of people. So these are the two characters I will throw in based on your question.

Mark Richards: 5:47

Okay, so Obi Wan, then maybe Luke. And I have to be honest, after I thought of the question, I went, everybody's going to say Obi Wan Kenobi. Therefore we've all got to stretch a little bit. So Nico, you took it in a very strange direction.

Niko Kaintantzis: 6:03

Yes. And maybe now when you ask. You asked us a difference between facilitator and a good coach. A man I think will not be a good coach, but I think he's a great facilitator. Darth Vader. Why? He fills the room. He has a plan, and he's emotional, too. And also he controls the room a little bit. So going back to your first question, I think that's one of the main differences. You're a little bit more under control as a facilitator than as a coach. So you need plans of plans. And Darth Vader is strong. He has a plan. He feels the room, which is really one attribute you need to have as a coach. Maybe feel the force. In this case, feel the room. So, yeah, I think a lousy coach, but a great facilitator.

Mark Richards: 6:54

I can certainly think of a few moments facilitating where I would have loved to strangle one of the people in the group, but.

Stephan Neck: 7:03

Oh, that's looking back to my week mark.

Mark Richards: 7:10

So after I said I can't go for the obvious, I wound up on Princess Leia. And for me, I went to Princess Leia because of really two things, and one is courage, and the other is belief. It's like if you. If you look at her, she can't fight. She can't use the Force. Well, you know, unless they resurrect it for another reboot, there's nothing obvious she brings, but she always huge courage and huge belief in what's possible. And I think when you're facilitating, you've got to believe in the group. You gotta believe that together they can do something magical. So. And of course, plenty of moments when you need courage. And I'm sure we'll hit those as we start to work through some stories. But let's kick off, and our first question to throw out there is, what do you think the most important attributes are of a facilitator? Nico, why don't you take us first?

Niko Kaintantzis: 8:05

Yeah, it's something already explained with Darth Vader is feeling the room. So having a paraphernalic view and be able to see what's happening a little bit outside of your blinders or outside of your vision. I think this is one of the most important skills you need because it's another one one setting. And, yeah, you have to feel to have engaged somebody more. Is somebody working against you? Is there a group building up who have a other plan? It's really. Yeah. Reading the room is really the most important one. And the other one is being able to React. So just reading the room doesn't help you. So you have to know, okay, how to continue. And for that you need a lot of planning skills. So you really have, in my opinion at least you need ideas. What can I exchange? Which exercises could I exchange? Which questions can I exchange? Maybe if they are tired, realizing, okay, I need an activity. So if I do a one day workshop as a facilitator, and that's also, I think I've never planned in my life more than as an agile facilitator, having backup plans of backup plans. And then yeah, it really needs a lot that the thing looks spontaneous. So it's really about the planning. And the only thing you can gain these skills is really exercising. So starting it, starting with an experience, one to a workshop together. It also helps when you have around 12, 15 people not doing it alone. So just go with somebody who's experienced and gain this experience because that's something you can learn in my opinion.

Stephan Neck: 9:49

I really can second that. Nico. And it's based on a story or an experience from this week. I was in a training with a large group and I had one person ostentatively turning his back towards me. They were sitting on table islands, right? And the whole course, the first hour, he didn't look at me. My first reaction was like, next break I'll address this guy, right? I want to clarify what it is. And then I said to myself, no, don't do that. Just observe, right? Observe what happens after the break. And luckily during the break, an apprentice came to me and said, hey, some of the people are not attentive in this room. I'm listening, others don't. And then I had a discussion with this guy and he picked up the discussion we had and he went to those guys during the break and in the next break and obviously his discussion triggered something. These guys started churning towards me being attentive, following the course, starting to collaborate. So I fully agree. Observing Nico and then not jumping to conclusion or doing the normal stuff, try to be a catalyst that the behavior changes, that people act in a different way. So and for me is this, and I still struggle with that a little bit. Creating this space for learning and different behavior, right? And that's for me a big part of facilitation. And as you said, if you don't observe, you don't understand what's happening. And if you don't jump to conclusions, you probably will do the wrong stuff. As a facilitator, you go into action without knowing what to do. And that was a big lesson for me this week. And I would say these are some of the attributes like you mentioned, Nico, that are really important to then become a good coach. Because if I would have jumped in earlier, I probably would have created tension, confrontation, addressing people. Why don't you do what I expect you to do instead of creating this situation? I was lucky. I was really lucky an apprentice helped me this week.

Mark Richards: 12:12

So I think for me it's courage and vulnerability and they very much go hand in hand. And, you know, anytime you talk to a really experienced facilitator, somewhere there they will talk about holding the space right, creating a safe space for new, rich conversations to happen. And generally, if there's not some robustness to the discussion, and obviously there are probably some robust discussions from your apprentice, by the sounds of things, if there's not a little bit of uncomfortable discussion, you're unlikely to achieve something great together as a group. But making it possible for people to feel safe to enter that, and for me, often that's about what you can do as a facilitator. If you think somebody's just said something, it's obvious that they weren't heard or that people didn't quite understand what they said. For you to be courageous enough to go, hey, I'm not sure I understood. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Or I think I heard you say this. Can you tell me what I misunderstood? That ability to get up there and actually make a mistake for the group so that it's not, you know, you're calling them out, it's you're going, hey, there's something in me. Can you give me a little bit more? Because of my failure and that willingness there, I think is huge. But the other one that goes with that is so much the courage to sit in a slightly uncomfortable silence. I see a lot of beginning facilitators, they'll throw a question out and it'll be a really good question and you know, five seconds later there's no answer. So they move on. As opposed to, you know, you throw the question, if it's 20 seconds. You just having the coach to stand there in that moment and wait, it's a tricky thing to learn. But for me it's just massively important.

Stephan Neck: 13:57

May I add to that one, Mark?

Mark Richards: 13:59

Please do.

Stephan Neck: 14:00

One of my co teachers and mates, he is really strong in that he throws a question and he has the grace to wait at least 10 seconds. And a lot happens in the room Even in a remote session, a lot starts happening, right? All of a sudden, videos coming on, or someone doesn't want to talk, but uses the chat, throwing in something. And I really think it's powerful. But it's painful. Even 10 seconds waiting time is so painful. Right? Fully agreed.

Niko Kaintantzis: 14:34

And as a facilitator is for you easier when you count the seconds because the time is for you faster. It's really something I can relate to because for me, I have a different heartbeat than other people. For me, everything has to be fast. You also realize I'm the fastest talker here in the room. It's really difficult to be slow for me. And the change when I start really counting the seconds and knowing I have to wait until eight seconds at least. That's a tape from a principal, a teacher. She said when she was a young teacher, she realized when she asks a question to the parents, she has to wait at least five seconds. That people just volunteer, who just thought, I will wait until others volunteer first. And she waits really for seven, eight seconds. And that seven, eight seconds happened. Something that people who didn't want to volunteer at all just say, okay, I can't. I can't take this silence anymore. I just bring. It's one cake. I just have to bring a cake. Okay, I will do the cake. So it's really one of her questions. Who wants to bring a cake? And just waiting 8 seconds and just waiting. And it's really cool to see what it happens when some teachers have this skill and wait and others who after two seconds say, yeah, but it's just a cake. Come on, please. Come on, it's just a cake. Just one. It's not really a big thing. Come on. And it's just one second in between. Now, for me, it was really two seconds in the breaks, it wasn't. And then really say, who wants to bring a cake for this party we're having? And then wait for eight seconds. It's really hard, but it brings a success. So, yeah, waiting is really cool. Thank you. Stefan and Mark, by the way, what you described, it's also important attributes for leaders.

Stephan Neck: 16:13

Yes, of course.

Mark Richards: 16:17

Go figure. Sorry, guys.

Stephan Neck: 16:22

Stefan, it's probably leading to the next part of this topic. Being a facilitator, right? You're also a leader. And leaders are trained to lead immediately. Leading, having the overall picture, being active. Right? And I would say that was the biggest learning point for me or probably my weakest attribute in my past life and still kind of is this active listening. You mentioned it, Mark. Right? Listening to understand, not to answer. And then the 10 seconds, maybe 20 seconds, something else. Right. Might pop up. So this active listening, I'm still working on it because I like to butt in. I like to talk to people. And learning the example from this week, maybe this person who turned back towards me, it wasn't against me, it was something else. And he was something else because he was sent by his team lead to this course without any purpose, without any context. And we had to clarify that. Right. The other one that I think is, and you also mentioned it, Nico, is how do you seize the situation? How do you change plans? How do you adapt your approach on the fly? If you're not active listening, you have your plan, you might have a few options, but perhaps the third or the fourth option you don't consider would be really the one that kicks off a new opportunity in the room. If it's a one to one coaching, if it's a team coaching, if it's a PI planning. And that's for me, the beauty of being a facilitator. And I also remember Eric Willike in some of our discussions, Mark. Right. Observing is a word he uses quite often. Observe and then go into action. I think active listening, being an observer, one of the biggest skills you can have. And you probably have to. I have to still hone it.

Mark Richards: 18:34

Yeah. I'd love to amplify the observing word. And this was, you know, many years ago I went on the problem solving leadership course. I've mentioned it on a few of these episodes. Jerry Weinberg, Ester Davi, Johanna Rothman. And they really stressed the role of observation and they stressed its usefulness for many things. But one of the things that they really talked about was there are many things you might observe. Because I, of course, I had learned, like everybody learning their first facilitation, it's all about active listening. But that kind of amplified observation is there are many things happening that you might or might not be aware of. And one of the things that I remember most strongly is an activity they took us through that I actually take any group of facilitators I'm teaching through this same activity is they gave us a handout and said, look, here's a list of 20 things that you might be observing in a moment when a group's interacting. And there were obvious ones like body language and tone of voice. There was one, you know, how often are people making eye contact with each other? And who's making eye contact? Are people offering opinions or asking questions? And this list went on and on. It was not just sort of in the words being spoken, but, you know, physical movement was another one. How people orienting themselves physically. And then they split us into two groups and one group had an activity to do. And I think the activity from memory was one of the five most important attributes of a high performing team. Go. And the other group had all been off and they'd taken on a path to each observe and take notes only one thing. So there was one person who was taking notes on literally just who made eye contact with who. There was another who was doing interactions. And they were drawing this little scatter graph of, you know, if there's a group of 10 people, there's a line connecting any two people who have an interaction of some kind. And you see the strengths of the different connections going on and body language, physical movement, you name it. And then what we did was, we did the playback and the playback was like, who's going to share their notes first? And somebody shared their notes and then the next person shared their notes. And it was like you were seeing a completely different activity because there were things that had stood out and a story that was told through the first lens that was a completely different story in the second lens. But actually by the time we had three or four of those lenses put together, it was like, oh, there's a complete story starting to emerge. Because when you put together this thing you see here and that thing you see there and that thing you hear here, there's a moment. And if you hadn't seen all three of those things, you wouldn't have ever seen the moment. And they also worked with us on, just because you observe it doesn't mean you can interpret it. So part of the playback was to say, hey, I saw this, or I observed this. Can you tell me what was happening for you there? And what happened was that the automatic deduction you'd make, you see something happen in somebody and what you mentally say is, oh, this is doing this. Quite often the answer was very different. They would explain, oh, this is what caused me to do that. It's like, oh, so is that pairing of paying attention to many things and then being curious and not just making an assumption? You know, I noticed you just leaned forward. Can you tell me a little bit more about what was happening and that sense and respond or observe and inquire mindset and really diversifying how many things you can take. Nico, I can see you smiling along and you're muted. You have failed your push talk experiment.

Niko Kaintantzis: 22:20

Yeah. Thank you. I was so fascinating. Thank you. I changed the switch to talk for the audience. Exactly. It's what you did also. Now it's not judging. It's just saying, hey, I observe something. And that's really the most important tip on my side. If you continue your journey as a facilitator is not judging. Just because somebody looked disinterested doesn't mean that this person is not that interested. Maybe he has a relative in a hospital, maybe his wife and he is expecting or whatever. It just looked like they are bored, but they have maybe something else. And asking what's happening? It's exactly what it did. I've seen you leaning forward. It's not. Oh, I'm thinking you're. You want to talk now? Yeah, I'm just maybe leaning forward because I'm old and I need this nice chair. I don't know. So what's exactly this thing? Observing, not judging.

Stephan Neck: 23:07

And there's probably another perspective on that one. The longer I'm in the trade, I favorite teaching together, coaching together, being as a group on a purpose. Right. So I was lucky this week as well. I had a change agent who wasn't an spc, who wasn't familiar with lean and agile in the room to observe, and she gave me valuable input over those days. So working in pairs, as you mentioned, Mark, working in groups, having different perspectives kind of do a complementary job to paint this picture, to help the facilitator or the coach or the leader is so valuable. And from a management perspective, it looks like, oh, that's a waste. Right. Three people in the room, one is working, the other ones are just sitting there observing what the heck is going on. A lot is going on. That's probably the secret sauce if you want to be successful in our trade.

Mark Richards: 24:11

The other thing I'd probably double down on in that inquiry is, you know, for a lot of people, you facilitate the same group again and again. If you're the scrum master for a team or a product owner for the team, you'll facilitate session after session with the same people. If you are facilitating strategic workshops, you will facilitate groups of executives again and again. And every time that you see something and you make an inquiry, and maybe sometimes you can't even make it in the room. You check in after the room, right, I saw this. Can you tell me a little bit more about what was happening? You learn that person. So the fifth time, the tenth time that you facilitate them, you can facilitate them far more effectively because you've had that curiosity to go and find out what was happening. And then you know that you can start to read those signals that they give much more clearly in the future. But you know, that's Stefan and me holding the limelight for ages. Nico, what about you? Most important skill is be authentic.

Niko Kaintantzis: 25:16

I've seen so many people trying to fake or trying to be master of everything. It's just being authentic. If you, if you are a person who likes humor, use the humor and don't say, oh, I'm now in a management environment, I have to be very seriously or yeah, just be really authentic. Because what Mark, you explained already is there's a body language. There's also a kind of way, the nonverbal part or transverbal part, the way you're pronouncing things. If you try to be somebody else, then you really are. People will notice on some kind of way and some people will notice it just because they have the skill too. To think it feels awkward. They cannot say it's this problem, but they will say it feels awkward. So be authentic. It's the most important tip from my side.

Mark Richards: 26:05

Okay, so we've been down Courage, authenticity, active listening, observation, all very soft and fluffy. And the longer you facilitate, the more that you'll focus on growing your soft and fluffy skills. But there are also some tools. Usually you've got a standard toolbox you reach to that create the moments for you to be soft and fluffy in. So if we talked about kind of favorite toolboxes for you for facilitation, right. You've got the. You know, I reach in the toolbox in this situation. I know my favorite three tools. What would they be?

Stephan Neck: 26:40

I see Nico taking in some air.

Niko Kaintantzis: 26:45

I'm just really thinking and it will be fluffy again. So. So one of the tools I use a lot is find out who is in the room else or two and think about how can I use them as my help if I need help. So if you're really alone sometimes in small groups you are alone. Not always have the luxury to have a second or a third facilitator or a helper or observer, etc. I try to find out who can I use for what if I need some help or I need some explanation. Sometimes you have people who think they are advanced and know everything. How can I use them? Let them explaining something. So it's really the preparation and it's already a tool. It's really the mindset of preparation and how to include. And when I was younger I also Needed to know who's my supporter. So to whom can I look when I need more energy? Explain it this way. So when you're at school and you give a talk about the topic the teacher asked you to talk about. I remember in those days I really knew to these two friends I have to look when I think something is going wrong, when I feel insecure. And when I was a younger facilitator, I always chosen often the people who hired me because they knew they know me, they know I'm a good guy, they know I'm not stupid because they hired me and they pay me. But also seeing who's in the audience and who can give you energy back when you struggle. Because sometimes you really struggle yourself. Because thinking, am I good enough? Is this good enough? Is this the right method? And then the know to whom to look at to get the energy back is an important thing. But still fluffy. Sorry, Mark.

Mark Richards: 28:28

That's okay. I actually, I just had thoughts running through, you know, prepping this episode. There were so many things I wanted to say. It's like, which ones am I going to say? Which ones I'm going to leave out? But listening to you, that thing of looking to people in the room and obviously one example of it's looking for people in the room for energy and support. I think the other thing for me is there are certain voices you know will have good things to say in any group setting. It's like there are usually those one or two people and if their voice is heard, good things are likely to happen. And it's one of the other things that I'm looking for and learning for is like, who are the people who give wisdom when they speak and how do you create moments for them to speak? And it's a way of also taking a bit of load off you as a facilitator. It's like, I don't have to create a special moment here. I know this person right now is going to give it to me because that's what they do in moments like this.

Stephan Neck: 29:25

And Mark, I think it's those special moments, creating those moments and the environment. And what I've learned from reading Feynman is if there is something you have to explain or something you have to kick off and it's too complicated. How would you boil it down to something simple that a 5 year old would understand? And one of the tools I use is analogies, right? If I can boil it down to analogy, I start creating a simple picture that everyone, or almost everyone can relate to. They Start mapping and they start to be creative. And that's one of the tools I really try to use even in preparation for training coaches, when I go into a session, kind of being prepared to use that analogy to create a special situation. The other one I'm using quite often as well is because I find it hard in discussions or when groups are together if they are talking about constraints in length, which is not useful. Right? Know your limitations, know. Know the area you're in as a facilitator with the group or with the person. Don't try to change the constraint, but try to tackle the problem. Because there's freedom of action, there's freedom of feasibility. And that again then probably combined with analogy would tell us what to do and what to start or kick off. Like if you're playing backyard soccer, it's probably nice to talk about the Champions League, but you're far away from Champions League, you're in your backyard. Right? That's the constraint. If you are in a stadium, it's a totally different story. Right. And facilitation might be or will be a different story at that time. So those special moments, I really like that Mark.

Mark Richards: 31:18

So what about and kind of staying in toolboxes for a second, right? Because you're a young facilitator, you're going, what are the first tools I should master? Surely life is not all just handing post its to people and asking them to write things on them. You know, have either of you guys dug into liberating structures at all?

Stephan Neck: 31:37

A little bit.

Mark Richards: 31:38

So if you think about liberating structures, it's probably the best known facilitation toolbox out there. What would you say when you look at something like liberating structures helpful to you? Do you recommend it to others? What's your response to a tool like that?

Stephan Neck: 31:53

Maybe some general remarks about the deliberating structures. Very helpful. But if you are using them, like, oh, I just want to hammer down some nails, I'm using a hammer. It's probably the wrong approach. It's again the bigger picture, using the right structure. And the question would be, would you like to solve a problem? Is it to initiate something? So knowing the bigger picture, what's the mission in this area? What's the mission we are on is probably the bigger question for me before I jump into the liberating structures because I've seen coaches just picking stuff, oh, that's fancy. That looks nice, let's use it. No, that's probably not the approach I would use. Right.

Niko Kaintantzis: 32:40

It's with every tool set, you have to know which tool to use and also how to adapt the toolset. So with experience, you can just do your own version of it. I love two tools out of this. It's the 1, 2, 4 all tool, which is really cool to bring things together. I don't know if it's the other one. Is the reflecting team. Is it a toolset from Liberating Structure or is it stolen from somewhere else? Because it's a similar one. You ask people just talk about what they have experienced. And the one who has the question, just listen to them to get more ideas. So there are 1, 2, 3 from those I like to use. And the cool thing with Liberating Structure is you can give them a name. So sometimes. Or not sometimes. Usually you have different kind of people and in the room. Yeah. Oh, surprise. And one sort of people usually want to know what you are doing. And now you can name it and say, let's do the one for all exercise. Let's do a technique. It's from sales, but it's called spin. It will help you. And so sales technique or he's doing spin. Oh, okay. Interesting. Some people just need the background to realize, oh, it's serious. It's not somebody who's doing fluffy feeling things. So it's nice to have Liberating Structure because now you can name the exercise. So that also helped me to name things. And when I borrow something from somewhere else, just say, okay, this is the name of the technique I'm using. It's from another domain, but believe me, I had great experience with that. And then you have those people also on board who just need structure and names and the methods that they believe that you are skilled. What we are doing and what I also like Mark, by the way, speaking about tools are things, just how to explain it in English. Oh, gosh. You've seen this episode. The jiggles I introduced before or doing things unexpected. Sometimes I like this as an intervention just to shake a little bit and say, we can also do it a different way. I love metaphors like Stefan's, the football games you brought in. It's really an important thing. But sometimes reading also doing strange things. I remember last time when it was when the discussion was too logical. Really too logical. And I thought, it's some kind of wrong. They're not going deep enough. I just took a piece of paper, made a ball out of it and told them, okay, what do you see now? This is your situation. Explain. What do you see? It's just paper. Yeah. Okay, imagine that this going up is going down. There are hills. Yeah. What do you see here? Explain. And what is the relation to this situation we're having here? And what's a cool moment? Because now the other part of the brain had to kick in. It's not everything logical and say, yeah, we are nice together and the company works this way. And now you have just something, a structure you have to explain. And now you need the other part of the brain too.

Mark Richards: 35:40

It's. I kind of. There was a moment in time where I went, oh, I don't use liberating structures and everybody's just raving about them. So I went and I dug through and I went, oh, it's some cool stuff there. But, you know, there are much more sophisticated things that I do in some other places where I found that were great was for new facilitators. When you've got somebody who's. Who's. They're trying to stretch their. Stretch themselves. And really leaning into facilitation. And a lot of the agile roles need facilitation skills. Leadership needs facilitation skills. When you're leaning into that, having some stuff that goes, here's a way to mix it up. Because there's nothing more boring from a group than always doing the same thing mechanically. If I. One of my facilitation mentors was Jean Tabaker, and we've mentioned her before on the show. And one of the things she would say is, she would say, the hardest thing to facilitate is open discussion. And a huge art of designing your facilitation is to say, how do I. When there is an open discussion, how do I make sure there's some boundaries around it? And what are the tools that help me put boundaries around it so that life is not, you know, 15 minutes of debate, that's just exhausting. And then you see a lot of people go, oh, that means I always hand people post its, ask them to write on post its affinity, map them, and then talk about the clusters. And yes, that's a great technique. But if you do it every time you want to facilitate any discussion, and you do it for six different discussions in a workshop, people get sick of it because it's like when there was this little wave in the safe courses, just after they learned about training from the back of the room where you went to these courses. And this is like, oh, it's the build the poster course. Fifteen minutes ago we built a poster, now build the next poster. Yeah, I remember I went to the alpha of the RTE Course, that's absolutely how it felt. And so you want to have a diverse set of toolboxes to reaching to go. I'm going to take you down different paths. I'm going to build some experience to go. In which situations is this thing a good thing? Like Tiage, have either of you come across Tiagi? Oh, so you'd love him, Nico. He has three books full of what he calls jolts, and they're little facilitation exercises designed to jolt people out of where they're sitting in their comfort zone. But he. There are two of his techniques that I use really regularly. One of them is the hello game. And the hello game, it originated as an icebreaker. And literally you break a group of people into, you know, four groups or whatever, and you give each group a research job. And if you're using it as an icebreaker, it might be. Your job is to find out how many kids each person has and what their names are. Your job is to find out the most popular hobbies in the room. Your job is to find out which parts of the world people come from. You give each group a job, and then to complete the job, they have to survey the room, gather the data, and then find a way to visualize it and tell a story about it. And what unleashes, of course, is mayhem because everybody's trying to survey everybody else and then think creatively about whether to build graphs or pictures or whatever to represent things. There's a great instant energy giver, and I've used it at management problem solving. Right. I think about four questions that people need to pay attention to from what happened on day one of PI planning. Where are our biggest bottlenecks? And you get a group of the people in the management review to work together to survey everybody else, see what we saw during the day, perhaps study the plans on the walls and go. Now let's synthesize what we think our four biggest bottlenecks are. And super engaging. The other one is 35. Have you guys played 35? Wow. Playing in strange games here. So 35 as a great example. I will often use it at the first inspect and adapt for a new train. And you give everybody an index card and you fire them a question. For example, what do you think the biggest challenge we encountered in the last PI was? And everybody has to write their answer down on the back of the index card. And then he gave everybody to a trade index card, so nobody's got their own question anymore. And then you go through five rounds where in each round the two people have to pair up. Like, you've got to find somebody else you haven't talked to yet. Compare the questions or the challenges that you've each got on your index cards, and you've got seven points to allocate. If you think one of them was clearly far more significant than the other, you might go seven points to this one, zero points to the other one. Otherwise you might go four points to one, three points to the other. Right. They're both good ideas. Only one was slightly better. And then second round, new partner. So at the end of five rounds, you've got five sets of answers and a maximum score for any challenge of 35. If you had the best challenge identified from all time, it got seven points from each exchange, it's got 35 points. And then you do a countdown. It's like playing bingo. Has anybody got 35, 34? Usually about 23. Somebody opts in, it's like, oh, okay, there's the biggest challenge. And it creates this amazing energy because all of a sudden, people are madly talking to each other about problems. They're mixing randomly across social divides. And you've very quickly taken input from a lot of people and coalesced it to, you know, here's my top three top four challenges. So finding tools like that, whether it's liberating structures or different techniques, for me, I think is a huge enabler because it takes burden off you as a facilitator.

Stephan Neck: 41:30

I really like that, Marco. And probably that leads us also to the topic of what kind of preparation do I need as a facilitator? Right. Because again, we talked about observing, knowing the context, the environment, what should we achieve? That's probably a topic I should know as a facilitator or as a group of facilitators as well. And one of my hero mentors in my life, she told me, hey, be prepared. It's a lot of blood, sweat and tears. People won't see that you becoming a good facilitator. Right. That all happens in the background. And I think preparation is key. And she said she came up with that quote that is used quite often where it says, look, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And you mentioned that, Nico. Right. How do you deviate from your plan if you're not prepared, if you don't see the option, if you don't see the opportunity arising. Right. So for me, still, the big challenge here is preparation is the basis to enable the stage or the show and being ahead. In my thinking, what could be the next step of Evolution. What's the goal for this scene on the stage? But there's another scene after this scene on the same stage, or the stage might change. And preparation is also, for me, always the question. And what kicks in quite often is imposter syndrome. Right? You're not sure, am I the right person? Am I good enough? But still, preparation helps me to be prepared. What could be my potential contribution? And the key word is potential. Preparation is not being 100% sure that I meet the conditions, that I meet the situation, but it's a huge potential. And that makes me feel at ease going into the situation.

Niko Kaintantzis: 43:32

I can just agree with that. Stefan, with the first words, preparation, it's really important. I think I said at the beginning that if somebody, something has to look spontaneous, it's not spontaneous. It's really a lot of planning and planning and planning. Right. Last week somebody asked me, wow, it's a miracle. Why are you always on time? When does. Why your trainings, your workshops always finish on time. You never need overtime. Yeah, it's because I have so many Lego things I just exchanged. I cut here something, I put also more time there. It's always also backup calculation. So I want to do this exercise at the end. It's really important for me. So I need this half an hour. So I have to end this half an hour earlier so that I finish there. What can I exchange? Which tools can I exchange? Which didn't work and say, okay, what's a cool exercise? Let's do it a different one and do this. And for that, it's really. You're not preparing one workshop, you're preparing 10 workshops. You really have second paths and third paths and fifth paths and so on. It's really the important thing. You need models like legal stones. So preparation, it's really important. That makes you a great facilitator. It's not just a gift you have. It's really hard work before it looks like a gift.

Stephan Neck: 44:48

And you're a facilitator for yourself as well, before you become a facilitator. Right.

Niko Kaintantzis: 44:54

And by the way, the first show I had to moderate here at the second season, I really played it three times in my head. And the one was an hour before we started and I realized, okay, I need more signs on the Miro board, a Miro board, that it's easier for me to change things. So I really played it three times around the evenings before and the day before we had it then. It looks cool. It's just preparation.

Mark Richards: 45:22

Yes. Gene used to Say you need two hours of preparation for every one hour of workshop. And if it's a scale like a lot of people in the workshop, multiply the number of hours. But I think the other thing for me, with preparation, and just couldn't agree with both of you more, is we opened up talking about all the soft and fluffy. Are you paying attention? Are you observing? Are you listening actively? Is your peripheral vision working? Are you connecting with, like, you've got to have space to focus on that. And if you're worried about what's next, that takes away your attention.

Stephan Neck: 45:57

Yeah.

Mark Richards: 45:58

From actually knowing what's happening in the room. But speaking of what's happening in the room, in our other new segment for this season, it's what's happening on copilot. And I messed around and I asked copilot to a few questions about facilitation. I went, I'm surprisingly impressed by some of the common sense in the answers. And I kept hunting around for something that I thought would be fun to talk about. And I wound up asking it. What's the single most popular question people ask about facilitation? And the response I got was, how can I engage participants more effectively?

Stephan Neck: 46:33

That's a very interesting question. And I went into copilot as well, and I did some research. And if you use that in another context, it comes up with engaging people is about conveying a sense of purpose, Right? That's what we do in a training. Okay? You have a curriculum, you give them a purpose. If you go into a workshop, you should have a purpose, right? So the North Star should be clear so people can navigate on the cognitive map, because there's a lot of information going on to inhale. So that's one thing. And the other thing I would answer this question, how can I engage participants more effectively is how do you create a pull effect? And that leads back to preparation. And I've learned from marketing guys, they're using this acronym, aida. Attention, interest, desire, action. Right. If you're not bringing in the full range of aida, you're probably not doing a good job as a facilitator. So how to create attention? Even before a course or a workshop, how do you get the interest? Do I pick up the right needs? And then going into action, leaving the room, people are already engaged and they know what to do. So it's not only. I would even extend that question, how do you engage people? I would say, how do you activate them? Engaging is not enough. Because if you do that in a room, if you do that in a situation that's being engaged, you leave the room, nothing happens. I would like to see some action. So it's for me, engaging is also activating people.

Niko Kaintantzis: 48:24

I just realized some facilitators do eat without Aida. They just forget the last r. Try to eat, but you need Aida to meet the actions.

Mark Richards: 48:33

Yeah, I'd probably go sitting with the action. For me, the biggest trick of engagement is giving them a job to do. And it's why if you think back to all that discussion about the various tools we like to use, right. They're all giving people something to do if they perceive the thing that they're doing. As I'm sitting here watching a conversation, choosing whether to join it or not. And if the conversation gets boring, I'll switch off. You've got an engagement issue if you give them a job to do. And I remember I ran a one day course using Safe City last year and these people came along and they were kind of okay to come to the course, not particularly excited. And we ran the course for the day and then I got feedback. And the feedback from probably half the room was, you should have warned us that it was going to be so engaging because we all had work were planning to do in the background during the day and none of us had time to do it.

Stephan Neck: 49:35

Perfect. Perfect. Goal achieved. Yeah.

Mark Richards: 49:41

So Nico, you wound up. Oh, sorry guy, sorry.

Stephan Neck: 49:44

But isn't that the exciting stuff about being a facilitator? Right. If you achieve this situation. Hey, guys. That always creates a big smirk on my face. Yeah, that's my reward.

Mark Richards: 49:57

Yeah, just.

Stephan Neck: 49:58

Sorry, I interrupted Nico.

Mark Richards: 50:01

I. I'm actually, I've just looked at the clock. I'm going to interrupt him again.

Stephan Neck: 50:06

Oh, sorry, Nico.

Niko Kaintantzis: 50:09

That's okay.

Mark Richards: 50:10

So I learned my facilitation skills physical face to face. And I had a couple of early experience of trying to virtually facilitate and went, this is horrible. And in fact, when Covid came along, I went, I just can't work while we can't see people, so I'll take a holiday until Covid's over. And then of course I realized that would be a very long holiday and I had to figure out virtual facilitation. And it was hard. It was particularly hard because my son worked on a desk next to me at that point in time and he was in theory doing virtual school. And every time I looked at his screen, he was playing a game and I'd say, what subject are you in at the moment? He'd go, maths or English, right. It was always a game. So I kind of had this picture in my head that went, all these people, the ones who even turn their camera on, they could be staring at the screen while they busily play a game or work on their email. And it really messed with me. So, you know, I'm sure you guys went through a similar process, maybe not quite as exaggerated as mine. Let's talk about when you started to learn virtual facilitation as a backup to physical. What stood out to you?

Niko Kaintantzis: 51:24

I think you can make a completely new episode just about this. So, in short, what I did, I started talking with experts because I hate remote. Before COVID I really hated remote work. People weren't there, infrastructure was lousy. So I really start talking with experts. Also a psychologist. What can I do to have people more engaged remotely? I read a book or I went to a training from Lisette, work together anywhere. So the book is there. That's why I have to check if it's the right one. So I really started asking, what do I need? And I also introduced hours of or minutes of let people exercise with the tools they're having, because it's also new for them. By the way, I really once had a town hall where half the people never used remote tools before. Everybody was on site. So it was really cool to give them the time to have a tech supporter. Or in this case, I had three tech supporters in the background helping them dial in and so on. So it was really a lot of work. But at the end it was really fun. And meanwhile a lot of remote settings. And some participants say to me, oh, I'm so happy it's on site. I hate remote. I tell them, you've never been on.

Mark Richards: 52:44

You've let go of push to talk. Oh, so you've never been on.

Niko Kaintantzis: 52:49

Exactly. So you've never been. You're on mute on a remote session with me. So just book one. So it's really cool, but it's different. It's not just same scene. It's really a different experience. And yeah, I really invest a lot of time. Meanwhile, I love this being remote. I still love on site a little bit more just because the breaks and you see more of the people maybe. One funny thing, after I was the first time on site again after a lot of remote sessions. It was so exhausting for me, feeling the whole energy, not only seeing this one and interpreting so much about the face and so on. And other people had a body again. And I remember after half day and it was A four day training. I was really so tired.

Stephan Neck: 53:36

Yes.

Niko Kaintantzis: 53:36

Because so much energy came through the bodies of the people was really strange.

Stephan Neck: 53:42

I must say. I really like virtual facilitation, as in person on site. I vividly remember March 13, 2020, when were at the client in Germany and they closed down the offices. We had to go home. I think crisis or something unexpected helps us a lot as facilitator. To leave the comfort zone, I had to learn new tools. And probably the biggest learning for me was interpreting faces and tonality of speech. I always thought, I'm good at that. Nah, I had to learn it big time. And as you said, Nico, going back to on site experience, yeah, it could have been exhausting and it was, but I benefited from that big time. So I really like virtual facilitation because it kind of sparks and triggers stuff that I can use on site in person as well. And it made me a better facilitator or better coach.

Niko Kaintantzis: 54:51

So I would love to have an episode just about remote things, Mark. So I think we have to do remote facilitation. That's there's another episode at some point.

Mark Richards: 54:58

All right, let's put remote facilitation in the backlog because for me it's a huge topic and if I stay in the comparing virtual and remote for now without opening up all of the things that come with remote facilitation. One of the things for me is how hard can you stretch a group, right? If you're facilitating a workshop, you know, you're looking to help people get somewhere new together and to do that, you're going to prompt them to lead into some discomfort. But part of what you're observing is, you know, is the discomfort. Okay. I remember when I first started working with my personal trainer, she always used to make me talk and like I've been doing some exercise and she's like, talk to me, tell me this, tell me that. What are you doing about this? And I'm like, what am I trying to do is survive this exercise you're making me do. And eventually I actually figured out there was some method to her madness when I discovered that there is a technique that personal trainers are taught, or a lot of fitness people are taught, which is that you can judge somebody's heart rate based on their ability to carry on a conversation. And you can literally, if their speech pattern is like this, then they are sitting around about here in their maximum percentage heart rate. If their speech rate is here, then there's sitting there. And what was Going on was that she was using the conversation to gauge the stress level I was sitting at so that she could work out whether to up the intensity, whether she had it sitting at the intensity she wanted. And I think for me, that's the big gap from physical to virtual. In virtual, yes, with a lot of work. And we'll talk about all the work you can do to get some of that extra data. Because let's face it, you know, you might learn to watch people's body language over a video camera, but when you've got 20 people on a screen and they've got a tiny little square each, there are limits to the data you're getting. And without that data, you have to be more conservative in how hard you stretch people. And that for me, like, boy, I've learned to feel like I can have a great workshop virtually, but when I get into an office, I can push a lot harder. Like, we can go deeper, we can get more real discussion and alignment happening because you've got the data to enable you to lean in a bit harder. So here we go. All right, so what have we done? We've done an hour of conversation. We figured out we need another whole topic just on virtual facilitation. So no doubt we'll see that coming in the new year. But let's close off with just one key takeaway. Nico, why don't you kick us off? What's your one key takeaway for people about facilitation?

Niko Kaintantzis: 57:39

I'm not sure if it's one sentence, but it's really. It's not a spectacle, it's not your show. So please don't use just one technique after the other like a firework. It's not a show.

Stephan Neck: 57:50

And I can add to that one. We talked about it. As a facilitator, always keep in mind, what's the mission that determines your facilitation? Right? It's the context, it's the environment. How do we make sure through our facilitation that we connect the high level plans in our organization, in our value streams, to actionable outcomes? Because in the end, it's outcomes that are beneficial for our customers, whoever our customers are.

Mark Richards: 58:19

I had a thought in my head before this whole conversation. Now it's a new thought. And I'm going to go back to Stefan's talk about activation. Facilitate workshops that reach outcomes that stick. And whatever alignment you reach in the room has to survive leaving the room. Okay, and we have an elaboration on a question just as we're Wrapping the show up. But in honor of actually having a live question, Nico, I watched you reading it while it came in. Do you want to take us away on the live question?

Niko Kaintantzis: 58:50

I can do. It's, I think more something Stefan introduced. Aida. What is exactly? Is it a journey, audience journey map? Not really. It's a kind of way how also you can do elevator pitch, by the way. It's how you try to find a fast way to action items. So attention was the first a of Aida Interest, desire and action. That was the acronym for aida. And it's also great for an elevator pitch, by the way. Also people who do elevate the pitch forget at the end the need and action, not just explain setting the desire and say, okay, great, now here's a desire and now what's the action? So Aida, it's just an acronym. And I will also post everything on the LinkedIn as answers. So we'll have it there.

Mark Richards: 59:38

I'm actually as I listened to you and thought more about the question, I pondered whether the question is really if you were designing the arc for a workshop. Right. And any workshop will have a number of agenda items, planned activities, there'll be some journey you plan to take people on. If you thought about it as an audience journey map, there's maybe an overlay that says when I'm sketching out the sections of my workshop, am I thinking about, you know, an opening that grabs people's attention, a follow up to that generates their interest and engagement, leading to the, to a place of agreeing on a desire and then concluding with an action as the outcome of the workshop? So assuming I'm reading you correctly, Mohammed, I think that's a, it's actually a great way of thinking. Right. What is the journey that I'm going to take this group of people on and what are some of the things that I should do that will, you know, form the right steps on that journey? So anyway, we've taken a stab at it. Thank you very much for jumping in and firing us a question. And next week Ali is back. He has been traveling the world and busy on weekends, but when were putting together the backlog, we said, let's talk a little bit more about creating great PI plannings. And Ali put his hand up. So we'll be back next week to talk about getting to a better PI planning, which of course, if you've got good facilitation skills and some good coaching skills, they're going to be a pretty good input to getting a better PI. Planning. So until then, sayonara.

Niko Kaintantzis: 1:01:16

See you.