Episode 304: Fertile Ground – Facilitation + Leadership with Andres Marquez-Lara

As a long-time facilitator, improv actor, therapist and social entrepreneur, Andres Marquez-Lara, is in the business of healing. He channels this passion as Founder and CEO of UFacilitate where he helps purpose-driven leaders create spaces for deep connection, collaboration and transformation. In this episode, Andres and Tyler explore some of the key points of effective facilitation and how those translate to critical leadership skills. Andres shares the story of how one of his greatest failures as a facilitator led to some of his deepest learning: that when we can recognize our own actions and reactions, keep curiosity at the center and step out of our own way, we leave room for deep insights to emerge.

Listen on Apple PodcastsSpotify or virtually anywhere podcasts are found!

Download the 8 Points of Effective Facilitation guide at UFacilitate.com.

Andres highlights a few other key resources you won’t want to miss: East Side Institute’s Social Therapeutics, Liberating Structures, and Books by Peter Block.

This show is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton Jr. with theme music by Una Walkenhorst.

 

Read transcripts for the episode below.


MEG

[INTRO MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast, where we talk about the revolutionary power of a learning-centered approach. Through this podcast, we hope to inspire creative thinking and provide practical tools and techniques to deepen learning through dialogue.

 

TYLER 

I’m your host Tyler Phillips and today I’m joined by Andres Marquez-Lara, Founder and CEO of UFacilitate to talk about key facilitation skills and how we can use facilitation to drive inclusion and collaboration. Welcome, Andres.

 

ANDRES

Hey, thanks so much, Tyler, for having me here.

 

TYLER 

It is a pleasure to have you indeed. So to start off, can you just tell us a bit about yourself and your organization?

 

ANDRES 

Sure. So I am originally from Caracas, Venezuela, I’ve been in the US now for a long time. I’m a trained therapist, I’m an improv actor, a community organizer, and a social entrepreneur. And really kind of what I’ve done over the past 10 years, as I’ve built different companies, UFacilitate being the most recent one, is I’ve tried to weave together these passions of mine into a business that can, you know, help a lot of people and be profitable. And so UFacilitate, what we do is we make collaboration work. We work with a community of facilitators from around the world, we’re currently around 60+ in 15 different countries. And what we do is we basically offer purpose-driven leaders that want to improve collaboration in their teams, we offer them this amazing community of facilitators to either help them by coaching them to become better facilitators, by modeling being- skilled facilitation by then hiring us directly, or by us supporting them and kind of coming on their team as a consultant – as a change management consultant or something – where we actually are able to coach and model the behavior. So that’s kind of, in a nutshell, what we’ve been doing now for the past two years.

 

TYLER 

That is great. And thank you so much for that background. And just to get into it, at UFacilitate, it seems clear that there’s a focus on facilitation, and you use and teach the 8 Points of Effective Facilitation. So I was wondering if you could just share with our listeners what those eight points are, and why you see them as key for effective facilitation?

 

ANDRES 

Sure, maybe I’ll start with the first few and maybe kind of riff on that. I’m happy to share with your listeners this 8 Point PDF. But you know, when we were thinking about this particular document, you know, we found ourselves repeating over and over again, in various workshops, these kind of the same eight things over and over again. And I thought, you know, what, why don’t we make a nice document that we can kind of share for free, because our goal in many ways is to democratize facilitation. Right now, people think that facilitators have to be this like, magic unicorn creature that’s super skilled in doing that. And while yes, like anything in life, the more you do something, the better you get at it, facilitation has a range of skill sets that you can always be doing, something to help you start thinking in that mindset. So these are just some of the kind of low hanging fruits that we thought, you know, could help people think about “how can I become a better facilitator?” Because what we do really is when you think about facilitation, and we think of leadership and facilitation as one and the same, facilitation is the embodiment of leadership. Right? Leadership can be a concept, but how do you actually bring that into your day-to-day interactions, into the relationships you have? That’s facilitation. And so that’s kind of- when we talk about facilitation, we talk about leadership development. So with all that kind of background framing, you know, we’ll start with the first one we talked about is, “you start with who,” who is your audience. You know, for anybody there, that’s an instructional designer, facilitator, experienced facilitator, you know, you always start with, like, who’s your audience. Because if you’re designing a workshop for a group of, you know, a board of directors for a nonprofit, is very different than if you’re doing it for a group of, you know, community leaders working in Colombia. Right? Like, depending on your audience, you’re going to have to modify a lot of different things. So we always start with start with “who.” And in that process, by the way, you’re also going to discover what is your goal and objective. Right? So you got to start with like, what is the- who’s the audience? And what are you trying to achieve? These are the kinds like this the very first foundational element, I would say.  Then we talk about “design for structure and improv.” Now we were deeply inspired by the concept by Dee- Dee Hock, one of the founders of VISA called “chaordic structures.” And chaordic, you know, imagine a Venn diagram where on one hand, you have chaos and in the other, you have order, right? This is, you know, in the middle, there’s this chaordic element. And so the thing is, when you’re too much to one side, let’s say you’re too much orderly side, things are too rigid. There’s too much control. And think of this anytime you’ve been in a workshop where there’s too much formality, where you’re afraid to speak up, because the protocol says you can’t speak up, right? That would be under the kind of “order” situation, and we don’t want to be there. And the reason for that is because when you’re trying to create inclusive collaborative environments, you have to leave room for spontaneity, you have to leave room for people to feel comfortable failing and trying things out. If I’m so afraid to speak up, because people are going to be breaking protocol, the group is going to miss out on my gifts and what I have to offer. So we don’t want to be on the order side, right? On the opposite end, we have chaos. And we don’t want that either. We’ve all perhaps been in meetings where it’s a free-for-all, people are shouting past each other, usually the loudest person gets heard, right, which is not always the best thing for the group. So we also don’t want that. So what you’re trying to find is this- this sweet spot in the middle, where you can have a structure some parameters, where you know, it’s not not anything goes. But you leave in a room of spaciousness for things to emerge. And so when you’re designing for- when you’re facilitating, in the agenda, you can begin to think about it that way. Now, obviously, the more skilled you are, the more you can actually bring this in the moment with people and can improvise. But the thing about facilitation too is that, I would say, and I don’t know if Tyler given that you’re also an experienced facilitator, you’d agree but that I would say 70 to 80% of the success of an event comes from the design of an agenda. Because if you do an agenda well, if you co-create the agenda well with the clients, with the end user in mind, you’re going to be able to incorporate a lot of these elements right from the get-go. So all this stuff you can kind of be thinking about from the beginning. And again, going back to step number one, that’s all going to be determined by who’s your audience and your objectives.

 

Tyler Phillips 

I love it. I love it, Andres. Thank you for saying that facilitators aren’t unicorns, and we’re not perfect. And even though you know, being on stage, the figurative stage being upfront leading, might feel like you have to be perfect – just yeah, you don’t. And well I’ve found just being able to stay calm in those moments, allows you to think and recover if there’s a misstep, or if something is going maybe more in the chaotic realm than you would have hoped. So thank you for saying that. Also, that chaordic word is new to me. So I’m already learning much, and I like that – finding the balance. You said something around helping participants or learners or the audience feel comfortable failing. It reminds me of one of the core principles that we hold close at GLP, which is the principle of safety. And safety is interesting now, because it’s becoming a little bit challenged, I feel like, with the concept of brave spaces, and you know, can a space ever truly be 100% safe? But what you talk about in creating that feeling of comfort in speaking up and being willing to make a mistake in a group that yeah, that’s just that’s lovely and right on with our beliefs for sure. And the design and facilitation piece, absolutely. They’re are two sides of the same coin. And you may have found in your work that people come for facilitation help. And oftentimes, it’s yes, they need that facilitation help, but there’s also the design side to it, as well. So yeah, I find that, I find that interesting too that you brought that up, so so thanks for that. You know, I’m wondering, maybe you could just share a story or two, about a few key facilitation moments where you’ve seen these eight points come alive, and really make a difference or create a feeling in a room or in an event that, yeah, you can just put your finger on them like “that is that is what we’re hoping to achieve.” Anything come to mind?

 

ANDRES 

Sure, let me try. I mean, it’s, I’ve been facilitators mean activities, not as a company, but like, as a person, you know, since like, you know, almost 20 years, right? So I’ve done hundreds of events with thousands of people. And I definitely have some that that kind of resonate and come to mind. Two, in particular. And I would say that both are in some ways, lessons learned for me as a facilitator that things, you know, I could have done much better, but also, I think, speak to some of the spaces that we’re talking about. Because I think this speaks also mean and kind of jump around the eight points. But one of the things that I think metaphor could be quite helpful for facilitation to think about is seeing the facilitator as a midwife, right? And this actually comes from a dear friend and colleague, Carrie Caldwell, who was, was the one who inspired this kind of metaphor. But you know, as facilitators, yes, we may be leading, you know, a process, but we’re facilitating something else. And we don’t know what the outcome is going to be. You know, for those of you that have been fortunate to actually seen a live birth and have the better fortune to be with a midwife in the process, like the midwife was, like, a lot of it’s just like holding space and checking in and just being like, intervening when they need to, but just backing up when they don’t. And so there’s this beautiful art that’s so centered on the relationships. As facilitators, that I think is really key to what we’re doing. We are facilitating a process. And I would say, you know, we’re leading from the back. We’re not, you know, we may be standing in the room, but I would say that a skilled facilitator, as Otto Scharmar talks about we don’t it’s not about the egos from ego to eco, right, we really want to focus on the group.  There’s a school of thought and an institute has really shaped my, my thinking about this a lot. And I’m an associate with them. I’ve been studying with them since 2010. It’s called the East Side Institute in New York City. And they’ve coined and created this type of therapeutic approach called Social Therapy. And that in itself requires its own podcast. And you know, we’ll share the link so you can check it out. There’s some just amazing things, but, but one of the tenets and the aspect that really spoke to me when I first came across this is that they see life as an improvisational performance. And they see group as an activity, not a thing. So when it comes to facilitating and building the safety you’re talking about, they talk about it as, as an activity that the group is responsible for co-creating a safe space, the group responsible for co-creating whatever it is they want to create. But oftentimes, we’ve been socialized to look for the leader, the sole person, to then make decisions on our behalf. And so the role of a skilled facilitator, I would say, depending again, on the objectives of the audience, would be to not be seduced by that, not to be seduced by saying, Oh, you want me to answer. I have, I have knowledge, I have things to give. Because it’s so easy. Of course, we do. We want to, we want to be of help. But it can be so seductive for us to shine and share what we know. And like, I think that that’s very hard for especially in your beginning, as a facilitator, when you feel all this power differential, you’re in the front of the room, or you have this, you’re the host on Zoom, or whatever it is – all eyes are on you. And you hear the awkward silence, and you’re like, oh – so this is part of the anxiety that kind of comes up for us. And that’s the moment we have to kind of get grounded, and really step into a “who am I in service of, what am I here for?” And really remember that. And let me tell you a story about that. I teach facilitation at different programs, including one in Georgetown. And we were doing a one day program for facilitators on how to have difficult conversations. And I recall that, you know, we had built this really cool agenda, I had a co facilitator that was doing it with me, who was one of the kind of the lead persons in the facilitation program in general. But what happened though, a series of events, right, so my friend, the co-facilitator, brought in a guest person to observe. So which wasn’t in the plans, but hey, you know, I felt like, well, she brought me in, that’s okay. It’s her friend, you know, and she’s still a facilitator. So we’ll be okay. And so then we began the process, and we began talking. And in this group, it was about 12 people, most were women, most were white, there was one black woman, but it was very not diverse group. So we’re having this conversation. And at one point, we had one white woman from Midwest that began to challenge and she said, “Well, I’m colorblind, I don’t care about race, you know, like, I don’t care if you’re, you know, from, from American, or Asian American, or whatever. Like, I just don’t see color.” Obviously, you know, some of the people that have done a lot more work in racial justice, like kind of a little like, “no, like, okay, you don’t see it, but doesn’t mean that society doesn’t have an impact on that.” So what happened was, this is a triggering comment to the guest facilitator, somebody who had no- who supposedly had not had anything to say, because she’s out there to observe, she began responding to her. Not as a participant, but it was like this weird role, right? She wasn’t a participant, she was brought in as a kind of guest of the co-facilitator. And then we had this African American woman speaking about her experience. And the guest facilitator was supporting the African American woman and kind of challenging this other woman from the Midwest. And here I am, I’m leading this facilitation activity. The thoughts are going through, you’re like, “Okay, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” Like, there’s so many choices, and you have to respond? And you’re like, “Ah,” right. So I’m feeling my anxiety peak. People paid to be here. They’re expecting for me to go through this agenda. Right? What I did was, I jumped on the bandwagon and really shut down, the white woman from the Midwest. Really tried to educate her on why her view, blah, blah. What I should have done, and what I wish it would have done is recognized my anxiety, because obviously, I was like, “Well, if I don’t do this, I’m gonna be seen as racist.” I mean, there’s all this fear on white fragility and things that I’ve now learned many years later, right, that I was too nervous to. So I jumped on the bandwagon supporting and just shutting that down, saying, “Well, you just this is why what your point of view is not appropriate,” right? Or it’s not helpful or doesn’t recognize that the pain and suffering of a whole group of people in society.  And what I’m grateful for is that in the break, obviously, I recognize that I shut it down. So I wanted to check in with her to say “hey, I’m sorry about that. How are you feeling?” and like trying to damage control in the midst of this thing. She says, “first of all, you’re failing at this,” right? Like you are doing a workshop on how to have civil conversations and you’re sucking at it. Like I mean, she didn’t say those words directly, but it was like, like, you’re right, like, this is a great place to model how to have a difficult conversation and I didn’t do that. And two, she’s like, “had you known, I would have told you the reason I say that is because I have a kid with disabilities and nobody sees their pain.” And so like that moment, I was like, oh crap, like, I missed the opportunity to be curious about why she saw the world colorblind. Not to justify that’s good or bad or the impact, but the curiosity, instead of reacting, “what is it about your story that makes you say that? And could you also be curious about how your comment could also impact other people in this room?” And so for me, like that was one of the biggest failures I’ve had in my career as a facilitator. I recognize that it was organized by my fear, that anxiety – which is mine, I carry that – prevented me from making a different choice in that moment, so I could be curious about this person. And who knows, what would have happened, had we made that shift, had we stepped into the fire. So that’s a story I think, speaks to some of the minor lessons about like, again, why it’s so important as facilitators, to really go to therapy, go to coaching, be able to distinguish between like, what’s this raising for you, given your history as a unique human being, and what’s happening in the group. Because you can sense the tension, you can sense the feelings, but you want to be able to tease apart like, okay, is this like my thing? Or is that something here? And now I learn oftentimes, just to name that, right? Like, hey, I’m noticing this, I’m sensing this.

 

TYLER 

Yeah, it’s great. And it’s bringing up for me this question about leadership, because that’s also really at the heart of the work that it sounds like that you’re, you’re doing and that UFacilitate is focused on. And there’s actually a recent social media post, by UFacilitate caught my attention, I was hoping that I could just just read it for a minute–  –and hear hear your reaction. So I thought it was great. It says, “by facilitating, you force yourself to grow, you strengthen your ability to recognize your inner blind spots, and bolster your self awareness. And in doing so, you can lead others more effectively and more compassionately.” So you’re developing leaders through developing them as facilitators. And I was wondering if maybe you could just speak a little bit more into- into that, like the leadership overlay of all of those key traits that you mentioned, moving out of the way, don’t let your ego you know, dictate decisions, don’t let your inner ideals or anxieties get in the way of the work or get in the way of the group collaboration? Yeah, yeah. I’d love to hear more about that.

 

ANDRES 

Yeah Sure. And I love speaking about this. I actually, I have a, I teach leadership development and other programs. And we often talk about many concepts and frameworks that I think are, you know, heart- hand in hand with facilitation, right. Because I think, to be a leader in the 21st century, you know, it’s not about knowing. In fact, it has it has very little to do with knowledge per se. You know, we- I often talking about that in the age of VUCA – you know, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – you know, knowledge actually loses value. And what gains value are questions, because the unknowns are exponential, right? Who could have predicted the pandemic? I’m sure there’s a small group of experts that could have said, yeah, it’s gonna happen, but most people were caught off guard by it, you know. And so like, you may be a great leader that has a great plan, a great strategy and vision for your business and sector. But then life happens, and VUCA happens. And now what do you do with all that knowledge? So it’s actually now more about how do you, how are you creative? How do you collaborate? How do you ask powerful questions? How do you adapt and pivot? How do you improvise? How do you- and all these are things that are part of the facilitator. You can, again, plan the best agenda in the world that you think that’d be great, but then somebody gets triggered in that event, or the lights go out, or something happens. And now what do you do? But if something goes completely off track, and you choose to stick to your agenda, because that’s what you think is the best thing to do. That’s one thing, if you stick to your agenda, because you’re anxious and afraid of what just happened, that’s a growing edge for you. And that’s what I mean that when you put yourself in a position to facilitate, you are going to have emotional experiences that are going to point you in different directions, you’re going to feel things that are gonna make you anxious, uncomfortable, etc. And if you allow yourself to learn from that, you’re going to grow as a person and as a leader, because again, the leader in 21st century needs to be able to stand in the fire of the unknown. They need to be able to co-create with others quickly to respond to situations.  Because and again, in a VUCA world is not about command and control. It’s about engaging and aligning – and who’s an expert at engaging and aligning people? Facilitators. I mean, and they talk about this, if you look at the core competencies of the 21st century leadership, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication – all the four C’s. All these are skills that you need to master and practice every time you facilitate. So that’s why again, there’s such a big overlap with that. But I will go a step further. And we also talk about that at UFacilitate, that we’re in the business of healing, right, because the leaders of 21st century need to be systemic thinkers too. And as facilitators we are, because when you’re facilitating, you are looking at all the different layers. So I call I think, when I, when I teach about this, I have a slide of a three dimensional chess board, right? Because when you’re facilitating you have what you’re feeling, then you have what you think people are feeling, you know. And then you have like the group and this can meta cognition, right, and you have the context, the global context, we have all these things happening at the same time. And you have to be aware of the connections in the moment in an instant. So leaders in the 21st century have to be aware of systemic- they have to be systems thinkers. And if you’re a systems thinker, you can’t help but see the systemic oppression of black people and indigenous people, right, and people of color. Like and so this is kind of where we need to start thinking about, how do I create spaces as a facilitator and a leader, that will be healing for, for our society for a community? Because the thing is, every meeting, every activity is a fractal of what we see out there. What we don’t like in society is happening in our meetings. It looks different, it may not be overt racism, it may not be overt sexism, or whatever, but it’s there. So as facilitators, what do we do about that, when you see a microaggression take place? When you see somebody, you know, the white guy always speaks first? When you see like- I mean, these are small things that reinforce a systemic system. And again, as we become better facilitators, we become better leaders and be more aware of that, we will make different choices in those moments, you know. Peter Block talks about, imagine that in the meeting, you’re able to create the future you want right now? How would you facilitate a meeting where you’re able to actually live the values that you want to see in the future, but in the moment, as a facilitator, you can invite the group to co-create that with you? And that’s quite powerful.

 

TYLER 

Absolutely. And, you know, you have me thinking about meetings for a moment. And you mentioned the word healing. And I often wonder about those managers out in the world working hard and running meetings, leaders too, but maybe not, you know, decision makers in the organization, per se. But how do you articulate or how do you relate to those folks, these concepts of healing – which if I’m the manager in a meeting, here, that word probably doesn’t enter my mind, because we have things that we need to get done and we have accomplishments that we need to focus on – But yeah, what would you say to those folks who might be skeptical or wondering about this approach? And why it would be important to them, and what impact it might have in the every day work of organizations?

 

ANDRES 

Yeah, I mean, it’s, this is, in many ways, kind of where like, we don’t like, this is what I say we do, doesn’t mean that’s what people think we do. Like, at the end of the day, we will help you have more effective, efficient, better meetings, right? Like, we are going to help you do that. But along the way, we’re going to teach you and hopefully ask you questions to start thinking about this in different ways. You know, this, in many ways, kind of like, again, part of my background is as an improv actor, right? Is you do a yes and. You build with the offer that you have. You know, when I approach an organization, I’m gonna meet them where they’re at, like, you know, help us have better meetings. Of course, we can do that. Yes, and, and let me help you think about this in different ways. And let’s help you have better effective meetings. But also, let me teach about some of the principles and why this has helped better. So it’s about meeting people where they’re at helping them achieve the objectives they want to achieve. And along the way, share some knowledge that hopefully will, will provoke – will provoke them to think differently to ask questions. But it’s not something that can be forced. And this goes back to what Peter Block said: get them into the room no matter what. Like, get them in the space, but once you have them, you have an experience, where they feel seen, where they feel heard, there’s gonna- they’re gonna have a different way of experiencing meetings – like, oh, wow, meetings can be like this. So now when you go to your other meetings, like “oh, that’s crap. I don’t want that.” Right. And so I think there’s- so our role is to be provocateurs in many ways, right? Professional, effective provocateurs that help you accomplish your goals. Yeah, yeah I love it. I love it good as the new tagline! Yeah!

 

TYLER 

And doing that in a- in a meeting or in a convening or in a gathering, creating that space, holding that space – that’s really you know, where the art comes in also, you know, I’ve found. There was one more thing I wanted to just ask you about – this- this idea of isms, anti-racism, for example, that is something that seems to come in, in the certainly in one of the examples that you shared from many years back. And I think as a good thing that’s becoming more clearly in focus for many organizations, their DEI work, also having difficult conversations, as you referenced too. So there’s many, and I’m just wondering how, you know, you approach, I guess those difficult conversations, but how you really center equity, even if that isn’t maybe the focus of the contract, or the work that you’re doing with the client, but you know is important, because not only is it right, but it will help invite who people truly are into their work and into the dialogue and into the conversation, tapping into their existing experiences. Any thoughts come to mind?

 

ANDRES 

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, and this is where I’m very grateful for the work of you know, whenever anybody does work, you know, actually, what is it, we’re not going back to the eight points, so I can kind of keep talking about them as well. One of them is Everything, Everything is a Remix. Right. And like, you know, everything from the point of view of an artist, you’re always kind of taking from the past and iterating. And as long as you give attribution, you know, like, that’s, that’s the most important thing, of course, assuming it’s, you know, it’s open to Creative Commons, etc. But the idea is that, you know, oftentimes you’re always thinking about, “Oh, who have I seen does something really cool?” And like, “How can I imitate that in a way that’s more unique to my style of facilitation?” We recognize that every facilitator has unique gifts, you may have the same agenda, but if you and I do it, it’ll be different. Because we’re different people, we have different histories. And we want to embrace, at UFacilitate, embrace your weird, embrace who you are, as a person, bring your skills to the table, you know, and I think part of this is that when you’re re-mixing things, you’ll bring different things from different people, but your style, your way. So one of the things that we’re building on is an amazing practice and book and actually community called Liberating Structures. It is an amazing social technology, it’s an amazing resource it’s where basically, the authors designed 33 different liberating structures. That is to say, they identified that whenever humans engage, there were microstructures at play. You know, the fact, if we were in a room together sitting in a round table, our interaction is gonna be different than if we were sitting on the floor, versus we’re sitting face-to-face versus we’re sitting, you know, back-to-back. You know, how are people invited into the space? What is the sequence of events? So there’s like five different micro-structures that actually determine every human interaction. And some of these interactions actually reinforce an oppressive system, where you have “the speaker,” you have “the teacher,” the professor that facil- like, where you have one person speaking, and the rest are quiet, right? So these are oppressive structures. So what they did is like, what if we were to create 33 different structures that were liberating where everyone could participate, and everyone could determine the outcome of what happens? And so, I’ll give you a quick sample, one of the theory ones I like to use is called 1-2-4-All. So imagine we have a, you know, I’m working with a client, they’ve asked us to improve their meetings, and I’m hearing some of their meetings and in their agenda, they have, you know, 20 minutes for the Q&A. And they say, “Hey, Andres, you know, like, one of the issues we have with the Q&A is that we always have Mike, Mike always speaks up, he’s the first to go. And he takes over the microphone and just nobody else can speak.” So again, what’s happening there is the symptom, if you will, is meetings are not affected people not being listened to Mike is hogging the mic. Right? Well, what’s not being said, but what we see is that y’know – what about people that usually are not invited to speak up first, that you know, perhaps more introverts, you know, perhaps people of color, perhaps a women? Like whatever it is, but usually, you know, in this example, you know, the white guy, always speaking their mind. So, what we’re doing is – I mean, we’re not going to talk about that necessarily, because that’s not what they’re asking us for – but look, I wanted to show you how in this very simple example, we can address some of that by using the structure. So the 20 minutes what you could do is you could do 1-2-4-All. Now this- there’s you could do as in-person or you can do it in virtual, if we were to do it virtually, because we’re still mostly meeting in virtual so, for those listening, you can try this at home. Again, check out the website it has the reason also I love it is because it gives you exactly the steps 1-2-3-4 as to why you should be doing what you should be saying. It’s amazing. So what you do is you have one minute to help people think about the question they want to ask based on the presentation. Then you tell people “okay, I’m gonna put you in random groups of four. And I want you to share your question and then see if there any similarities or synergies in your questions and see if you can come up with a super question as a group. And then we come back as a group, and I’m going to check in with different groups. And we’re going to answer those questions.” Now what you did is you took the power from Mike, and you gave it to everybody. Now, everybody has the same amount of time to think of the question. Now granted, in the group of four, Mike still may want to just talk about his thing there. But it’s harder when you got four people because then there- they may say, “hey!” you know, like, they may push back a little more if it’s if it’s in a smaller group, because it feel safer. People are not going to call Mike out in a meeting with 30 people, because they’re that will be socially impolite and rude or whatever. But in a group of four, especially if they know Mike  – “come on, Mike, honestly, we heard you” – like, they might have more of that banter. Right?

 

TYLER 

Right, right.

 

ANDRES 

But then when we come back as a group, everybody has had a chance to think and share, and now we’re listening. So we just helped a group have a more effective meeting that was more inclusive, that addressed some of the -isms that we see out there, without actually talking about that explicitly. Because again, that wasn’t something that was necessarily, like, asked of us. But this is kind of, again, our subversive way of trying to bring healing, inclusion in the space, under the name of efficiency. And I’ll take it, you know, if people want to us help us have better efficient meetings, we will help you do that. And in the process, you’re going to, we’re going to tell you how the, under the name of efficiency, actually, we’re leaving people out, and let’s help this help you restructure this, so you can have better meetings, accomplish the results, but also make space for the emergent. So anyway, so this is kind of why a lot of the work that we do is just so… it ties so many things together: leadership development, innovation, creativity, DEI work, lead- leadership, everything, you know?

 

TYLER 

Pointing to you know, this liberating structures concept is also making me think of just the many techniques that facilitators have available to them that they can use and rely on to help get them out of the way. So you can set the task, you can set the structure, and then you can move yourself out of the way and let the dialogue, let the work unfold. Well, great. Andres, thank you so much. I was you know, we have time for just one, one more bit of wisdom that you’d like to offer to our facilitators, learning designers, those who are really trying to center inclusion in their facilitation, trying to develop as leaders. What would you offer in our in our closing moments?

 

ANDRES 

I would say that, that one of the things I like to always, like the first two questions I asked, besides who’s the audience and the objective is: what are the parameters, what are the constraints? Oftentimes, you know, that’s so important to ask. And we often don’t ask that, because we may have this vision for doing this amazing thing. But you only have an hour to do some work. Like, what can you really accomplish an hour or two, or a half-day workshop or a two day workshop? I mean, like, so you have to really understand your parameters. And within those parameters, then be as creative as possible, to find ways to ground that activity in a deeply human way. But you have to first identify what what’s, where’s my sandbox where we’re gonna be playing with? And once you have that, then be creative. Think about that. And really kind of do that. And the other thing I’ll just add as a kind of a signer, and also as a plug is that you know, this is the thing about UFacilitate that I love is that liberating structures is free, is out there for you, you can go and get it right. But if you start playing around, like, “Oh, my God, I have questions.” And actually, none of this is going to be 100% to what you’re trying to do, you’ll need to tweak it and adjust it. And that’s what I discovered when I created this business like, “oh, wow, like, they’re actually people that would really like to have somebody like me or my team to coach you and say, ‘Hey, let’s think about the one, two, four, all but try it this way,’ or ‘how about you try eco cycle’,” and things like that. This small adjustments, you become a better facilitator, and you feel less alone. Because that’s your thing, when you’re facilitating by yourself, it’s quite angst provoking. I mean, yes, anxiety want to become- want to embrace it, but it’s not necessarily a nice feeling, especially if you feel alone. But when you do it with people, as I’m sure you know, with your team, like when you have co-facilitators, or support staff, right – it just makes it so much better. So what we do is we can when we coach people is you know we have somebody who has your back from the beginning till the end. And I think that’s again, also a way that we’re trying to also model and- and give the facilitator a sense, like, this is what you want to get- model for your group, that you got their back, that you want to support them, that you’re going to be there for them as these new things are happening. So it’s about kind of how do we pass forward that sense of connection, accountability and support?

 

TYLER 

Love it. Well, Andres, thank you so much. Thank you for your words of wisdom here and the time today, but also for the work and the difference that it’s clear that you’re making out in the world. So thanks for joining us, and we hope to have you again sometime soon.

 

ANDRES 

Hey, thank you, Tyler – a pleasure.

 

MEG

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for tuning into another episode of Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast. This podcast is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton with music by Una Walkenhorst. To find out more about Global Learning Partners, whether it be our course offerings, consulting services, free resources or blogs, go to www.globallearningpartners.com. We invite you to sign up for our mailing list, subscribe to our podcast and find us on social media to continue the dialogue. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast player. [OUTRO MUSIC FADES]

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