 Hello everyone. The title of this live training is how to run a sailboat retrospective and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you through the sailboat exercise from start to finish. I'm going to teach you exactly how to run it and I'm going to teach you practical facilitation tips along the way on how to run it too. So I'm going to use some slides as well as we go through the whole training but I'm going to use the whiteboard behind me too. It's going to be a bit janky because this is my second live training. So just bear with me, have patience. It's going to be fun regardless. But yeah, let me show you what we're going to cover. Yeah, I gave you the introduction already. My facilitation journey, I'm going to cover that really briefly. We're going to be interacting with a brief, a hypothetical client brief. We're going to interact with that. I'm going to show you how to do the sailboat activity and then we're going to have a live open Q&A session at the very, very end. So let's begin. Oh yes, I have one ask from you and that is that I would love your engagement. And that just means get some questions into the chat. Actually, there's a Q&A box, isn't there Jakob? There's a Q&A box in the Zoom. So you'll be able to put any questions that come up throughout the session into that and then we'll get to those questions at the very end. But also just throughout the whole session just chat to Jakob and chat to my colleagues here about what's going on. I can't see anyone. Oh, we're doing that now. I can't really see anyone, which makes it a bit weird. I'm literally just talking to a camera lens, but yeah, I'll feel your energy when I hear that Jakob is saying that you're interacting. So please participate. It's going to be really, really nice. People ask, is there going to be a recording? We'll see. We'll see how this goes as you saw at the very beginning. There was a few technical issues. So it depends on how, yeah, more than a few, it depends on how this whole session goes. We'll send it out at the very end if we think it's okay. So yeah, let's just jump right into this. Who am I? I'm Rebecca Courtney. I am a Facilitation Co-Chair at AJ & SMART. I've been working with AJ & SMART for the last year and a bit, but prior to that I used to be a primary school teacher and yeah, it was a big career change. It was probably the best career change that I could have made and also it was an easy transition from being a teacher to a facilitator because it requires you to use a lot of the same skills. So if there are any teachers out there at the moment who are looking to change career or just to add facilitation skills to your teaching skills, then you're in the right place. You're going to learn some tools. Even the exercise that I'm going to show you as well today is going to be really, really helpful to you as a teacher, as an educator, as a trainer, as a coach. It's going to be useful for anybody who works with groups in general. Okay, so the brief. I think Jacob is actually going to pretend to be the client or he's going to read out the brief for me and then I'm going to just respond to it like it's like I've never seen it before. I've never seen it before. You haven't? No. Me neither. So this is the brief. But even prior to this normally what happens before we run a workshop, we speak to the clients and we kind of, we get a brief from them and they let us know exactly what they want from the workshop. They let us know what the outcome they want for the workshop, how many participants you're going to be asking the client all these questions. Is it going to be an in-person workshop? Is it going to be a remote? So you need to get all of these details in and straightened out before you actually run the workshop. So I'm going to hand it over to you, Jacob. Where do I look? Up here? Behind you. Oh yeah, so hi, Jacob. Let's see that slide though. Do you have the slide? No. Can we see the slide? Seriously? I will. Yes, of course. If you don't have the slide I can just read it out. I have it right here. Right. Okay. The brief. Hey, Rebecca. Yes. We've been asked to design and run a one and a half hour problem-solving workshop for a marketing team with seven participants at a company called Big Marketing. Nice name. Okay. Okay. Yeah. You are? I've been charged with the slides. Woops. So we were booked by the manager of the marketing team. She has noticed that general team productivity and happiness seems to be on the decline, but every time she brings the team together to solve the issues, the meetings dissolve into a frustrating open-ended discussion with no resolution. Okay. Well, that does sound familiar, doesn't it? It sounds like every team in the world. A lot of teams actually have this problem where yeah, team productivity and happiness in general happiness and especially after COVID where people and teams were working remotely, this has had a huge effect on team productivity and happiness. So we are actually very used to having this challenge here in AJ & Smart. So if I were to get that brief, I would be thinking, okay, it's a one and a half hour. I have one and a half hours to do this. It's a problem-solving workshop that the client is requiring. And also what they're trying to do is they're trying to improve team productivity and happiness overall. So I feel like the perfect workshop for this would be a retrospective. And a retrospective is just basically a session. I have a little slide and all. It's a session that takes place outside of the day-to-day routine to reflect on past events and behaviors. So it's an opportunity to learn and improve a product, a process, a project, or an initiative. It just is used in so many different situations. And in its simplest form, you answer three of the following questions when you're running a retrospective. So you're thinking about things like what worked well with the process or for this case in this brief, what has worked well in the team before, what didn't work well, and what are we going to try to do differently. So it's all about focusing on looking back on what has happened in the company or in the team and then trying to figure out ways to improve it for the future. So I feel like a retrospective would be the perfect workshop to run for this brief. But what I'm going to take you through is the very first exercise that I like to run in every retrospective. And also all of our team here are obsessed with this exercise. And it's called the sailboat. Some of you might already be familiar with it. It's a sailboat. It's a really, it's a fun exercise. It gets everyone talking. It really teases out all the challenges that people and teams are facing in a really organized and structured way. So the sailboat is one of the best exercises for finding problems and challenges when the problem doesn't have a clear starting point or when the issues are too vague. And going through this exercise is going to help you to collect and prioritize challenges to work on. And a good example of this is, oh my goodness, I'm literally talking too quick. The last time I was talking too quickly. But a good example of this is using this exercise for a retrospective which we're going to do. And also we really like to use this exercise when we are reviewing a product or a process in our team. Or you could use it to improve internal communications in your team, or even something as simple as improving your office space. It's so versatile. It's so, so versatile. I actually used this exercise recently enough when I was trying to figure out where to go on holidays with my friends. So when I say it's versatile, it's absolutely versatile. You can use it in so many different situations. Another really, really great thing about this exercise is that it's a nice metaphor. And you're going to see why now what I mean in a second because I'm going to be drawing it. It's a nice metaphor to use as a team to figure out what's moving us forward, which is the wind in our sails. And also what's holding us back. And there's going to be an anchor as well, which I'm going to draw on a second when it comes to the challenge presented at the beginning of the workshop. So how long does it take to run this exercise? It takes about 30 minutes, depending on how many participants you have in your team. For this brief, we have seven participants, which we say here in Agent Smart is the perfect number of participants to have in a workshop. Any more than that, there's just too many ideas generated. It gets a bit messy. So seven is the perfect number. So yeah, it takes about 30 minutes in total to run this. The materials that you need for this exercise, you need, if you're running it in person, which I'm going to show you how to run in person today, you can also run it remotely if you're using tools like Muro, Muro. Yeah, it's easy to run on remotely as well. I'm just trying to think we have, we have templates as well for the sailboat in Muro, I think in the Muroverse. Anyway, so today we're going to be using the white board. You can also use a flip chart. You need two square blocks of sticky notes, two different colors. So make sure that you're doing that. We're using yellow and blue today. And each participant needs two blocks of sticky notes. Each participant needs one Sharpie and they also need eight voting dots each. So that's all, that's all the materials that you need. Also as the facilitator, it's really good to have a rectangular block of sticky notes as well. A different color to the square ones. So they're just for you as the facilitator. Okay, so I'm going to get drawing and we'll see how this goes. Trips over everything. And I'm also trying to like use the clicker thing while drawing, while thinking, well, yeah, it's chaos, but we'll see how we go. But before I do that, I want to just check in with you guys and ask you, are you all doing okay? Is everyone okay in the chat? Because this is weird, the room is completely empty. Everyone's good. Everyone is doing good. Everyone can hear me. Are we on the vibe? Good, good, good. We're ready. We're ready to go. And we had a little bumpy start. I know that might have affected everyone's energy levels. Kind of did mine at the very beginning. But oh, how many Jacobs are in the house? Oh, that's good. They're trying out a new name today. I kind of like it. That's all right. It's my full name and my surname as well. Oh, wow. Okay. Sorry about that. But yeah, energy levels. I'm vibing now again. As a facilitator, your energy is like, you're constantly trying to manage the group's energy, but also your own. So I'm doing the little tactics here in my head, just trying to boost my own energy. And that's just for me, it's using humor and being like city. So yeah, just bear with me. I might get a bit weird. Okay. So before you run the sailboat exercise, there's a prep step. You can do this before you're running the workshop or you can do it with the team when they're there. I'm going to show you exactly how to draw a sailboat. It's literally drawing a sailboat with an anchor in the water on the whiteboard. Very simple. Let's see how this works out. Also, you don't need to be an artist when you're drawing the sailboat. It can be as simple as this. Just like a masterpiece. Like Picasso just comes out of nowhere. Okay. So what I do is I just draw a line down like that, literally a little triangle to the side over here. Oh, Gina Mac over here. And there we go. So that is, oh, this camera. Oh my God. So that's the sailboat. Okay. We have the sail and the wind. You can put some wind in it just to make it a bit more fancy. Then what we're going to do is we're going to draw the anchor, which is going to represent what's holding the team back. How'd you draw an anchor? Let's try that. Yeah, just literally a line and a little sea. Looks cute. And also a little circle there. You can just make it a bit fancy. And then, yeah, so we have what's moving us forward, what's moving the team forward, and what's holding us back. That's actually everything. Oh, one step I forgot is making sure you're putting in the water line here so that we can separate the positive things from the negative things. So that's it. That's the prep step. Goodbye, everyone. We're done. Oh no. Mariana is in the audience. Can you give Mariana a shout out? Mariana. Hey. Oh my God. My niece is in the audience. Hello, Mariana. I will be home really soon and I can't wait to see you. Oh, I miss her. Okay. So we have, oh, that's very cute. So we have this drawn out and that slide was just explaining exactly what I just said. So this is going to be step one. I'm going to try and make this very easy to follow. Step one up here. Oh, you're not going to see that really, are you? Can people see that? It's okay, is it? Yeah. Yeah. We'll just, they don't really need to know what that is. It just says step one. So it's what's moving us forward. So you can kind of view this step as just like a warm up. So a nice way to kick off the workshop where you're just going to be collecting a lot of positive statements from the team before you focus on the challenges and before you start focusing on all the negative things. So what you really need to do first is you're asking each participant to write down maybe three to six, we always say like three to six things that they feel are driving and moving the team forward when it comes to the challenge that we're working on. So really easy step, but as a facilitator, you need to make sure that you're giving an example at every step along the way. So I would say something like, okay, we're going to do an exercise. The very first step that we're going to do is we're going to write down three ideas or three things that are moving or team forward. For example, I'm here in your office and I can see that the space is really, really nice. So it could be as simple as that. So I as a facilitator show them exactly how to do it. And all I'm doing is writing like, office is pretty. That's all I'm saying. And so you're kind of showing them exactly how to do it. And you want to make sure that you're modeling, writing something down that is really clear and self-explanatory as well. So that when people read it, they'll be able to understand it straight away. So that is one example for my team. So from that, then people should be able to go off on their own. I set the timer for three minutes for this part of the exercise. And we have the timer over here too. We use the time timer. We really like this one. Even though sometimes it just never works. But yeah, setting the time timer for three minutes, and you then encourage your participants to write down three to six positive things that is moving your team forward. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to ask my colleagues, Ellie and Jacob, to write down some positive things that they feel that this team would say about their company and what's moving them forward, what's keeping them going. How are you getting on over there? My lovely participants, you're writing? Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Are these the ones where it's like, here's what I made earlier? No? No, these are the real ones because you just took away the ones that we have prepared. The office is beautiful one. It's the one that I had. That's okay. What I wanted to say here as well, it's really important as the facilitator to let people know that you don't need to waste too much time on this. Just think about things as simple as the team are really great that I work with. This is just really to get the participants thinking about the positive things in their company because people normally, normally just focus on the negative things in work, in work situations. So how are we doing? I'm done. I feel like there was another point. There was another point I needed to say as a facilitator, what you're saying here, to just write clearly and just so people can actually understand what you're saying as well. And that's just another tip as a facilitator. Okay. So wait there now. Yeah. So as a, oh yes, that was the other point. One idea per sticky note. That's really, really important. You're writing one idea on this one and put it to the side while you're writing it and then write another one. That's just for easy or easy to read as well. And so it's nice visually. I don't know what I'm saying. Okay. So the next step from here is you're going to be getting your participants to present their ideas and to literally come up to the board one by one, read out exactly what's on their sticky and place it up at the very top part where the sale is. And that's literally it. You kind of give participants one minute to do this shorter time if they're really, really quick at reading. But yeah, you literally just say one person come up, read out your three sticky notes and place it on the top of the sale. And now I'm just going to get my lovely colleagues to come up and do that. Ellie, come up first. Oh, separately. Yeah, separate. That's another point. You can do it separately just so that people aren't hanging around the board when they're doing it. So we cook together. Nice. Oh, I love that actually. These are our teams ones. Office is beautiful. Great. This is already the example. This is perfect because I need a duplicate. Talented teammates. They kind of overcome problems. Oh, I shouldn't say anything. Revenue was humongous. Great. I like it. Office is very central. And everyone is very funny. Great. Thank you so much, Ellie. Thank you. Jakob, how are we doing? You coming? Right. Okay. Yeah, there's about 100 things to avoid. We have unlimited book budget. Brilliant. Yeah, you can place it anywhere there. We have great snacks. Mm-hmm. We have fantastic and cool clients. And we have good educational budget. Nice. Perfect. Thank you so much. Okay. So yeah, that is the next part of the exercise. It's really, really nice for the participants to, yeah, just to see exactly all the positive things laid out like this. And it really starts the workshop off on a very positive note. And so that's really the very first part of it. The next part now is the negatives. It's the what's holding us back. I'm going to write step two down here in black so people can see. We live and we learn, you know? So what's holding the team back? This is the part of the exercise where the rules actually change for presenting the chat or presenting the ideas. For this thing, we don't actually get participants to present at all. And we do this intentionally because we want it to be completely anonymous so that it's going to allow people to be more honest and for more introverted people as well to have a space to share exactly what they're thinking about the challenges that they're facing within their team. And what's holding them back from keeping them being productive and happy in this case, in this brief's case. Okay, I'm trying to think of another thing. Another thing that I wanted to actually mention that I didn't in the last part there is that we love to use the principle together alone. So any exercise that requires people writing down ideas like this, we encourage them to do this in a silent way. So not discussing with their teammates, just sitting down writing these ideas. And the room can be completely silent. And as a facilitator, when you hear this at the very beginning, it might feel a bit awkward, but it really does help create a space for the best ideas to come out. So this is going to be a together alone exercise again, where people are going to write down their ideas in a very silent way. But what we do first is we're asking the team to write as many sticky notes as they can in eight minutes on what's holding us back. So they have a lot more time to really think about this. Five, six, seven, eight. Matt's isn't my strong point. But yeah, so when you as the facilitator is introducing this part of the exercise, you're going to say something like, when it comes to working in this team, what's holding us back? I'm reading my screen. What's hurting us and what's slowing us down? Just to get people thinking about the challenges that they might be facing in the company. And clearly state to the participants that their stickies will be anonymous this time, so that they should write whatever they like. Again, as the facilitator, you are going to be writing down an example just to get them thinking about what possible challenges could we be writing down? And like, how far can we take this? And you really want to encourage them to write whatever they want. Well, of course, not like crazy things. But anyway, I have some examples here. So you could be saying, as a facilitator, there are no clear roles and responsibilities. Again, you're making sure that you are writing in a clear and concise way that you're not writing essays on the posted notes. So people are, yeah, you want it to be super self explanatory. Also, there is too much overtime is another example that I've used. Once again, I am going to ask my amazing colleagues to come up with some challenges that this team might be facing. And yeah, and then I'll move on to the next step. So, Ellie and Jacob, I would love your help on this to write some challenges. Let's pretend that you're like busy writing out there because I know some of them are. All of them are prepared. It's like a cooking show. Everything is already pre-made. Pre-made. Yeah, I know. I love it. It's like, yeah, a cooking show. Here's what. Or there's a show that I use to watch. I think Jonathan, if you're watching, oh, is it the art and hobby? I can't remember what it was, but it was always this phrase that was used. Here's what I made earlier in a very nice English accent. So that's what I could be using. Here's what I made earlier. Okay, just embarrassing myself at this stage. So my team, are you ready? I. Right. So once the eight minutes are up, ding, pretend that's gone off. You're going to ask everybody to stick their stickies to the bottom part of the sailboat. And you're going to encourage them to do this as quickly as they can and all at once as well. So instead of in the last section, I asked people to come up one by one. You encourage the whole team to come up to the board and all at the same time, in a very kind of like disorganized way, just stick their stickies anywhere they like. So that kind of keeps the Anna, oh, I'm going to try to say a word that I can't say. You know, anonymity. We know the word. We know the word. We want to keep it anonymous. There we go. Learn that one for next week. Okay, so can my beautiful colleagues come up here and get these up on the board? For sure. I can't cope with the fact that I couldn't say that word. I can see a couple of questions about should a different color be used for negatives? Yes. So great question. Whoever asked it, you're so. They're all called Yakub anyway. They're all called Yakub. Yakub, great question. You're definitely going to use two different colors. So make sure you have a different colored block of post-its for your negatives. It doesn't really matter. We like to use yellow and blue. It doesn't matter what colors you use. Brilliant. Look at this. Okay, so we have lots and lots of we have lots of negatives up here. Too many tools. Hard to know who is doing what and when. So the point of this part is that you're not getting people to read them out loud. You're not encouraging participants to present them to the group because that's just going to completely get rid of the whole anonymous vibe. I'm not going to say the word. I'm not going to try to say it. But yeah, so it really, really does tease out all of the challenges and whoever is leading the team, this is probably the part of the exercise where they're thinking, wow, I didn't know all of this was going on. No wonder our team productivity levels and happiness are on the decline. And it's a really, really great way for everyone to have that space, the safe space to voice their opinions. Okay, so it should look something like this. And it does. So now we're going to go on to step three, which is categorize challenges and issues. This is the fun part. It's a step that you can actually skip if you'd like if you don't have time. But the point of this whole part of the exercise is just to really tidy up this whole mess. You're just going to be creating different categories for the challenges so that the participants can really have a visual overview of what's going on. It's a step we always like to add. But if we're very, very tight on time, we tend to skip it. Can you read out loud some of them? Yeah, of course I can. Or read them all? Yeah, I was going to read them. Yeah, but I will read them now. So we have internet is too slow. What I might do is I'm going to, I'm going to read them through in the next section because I'm going to be putting them into categories which requires us to read them all. Okay, so yeah, I've said all the stuff that I need to say there. Yeah, you can skip it if you want. But it is a nice step. And especially if you're visual like me and if you want everything organized, this is a really nice step to do as a facilitator. So what you need for this as a facilitator, you need a block of rectangular sticky notes, a different color, as I said, to the other participants sticky notes and a sharpie. That's literally it. So we're going to be skimming through the challenges. Oh, I missed a step. I need to put all of these over there. Yeah, I need to so skip it or the step before categorizing everything is that you're going to be taking all of the challenges from the bottom of the sailboat and placing them on a blank surface. So I'm going to try put them over here. And just so that they're completely separate from the positives, the positives aren't going to be forgotten about in a way, they're not just going to be like whatever. They were just kind of there to get the team in a positive frame of mind. And it's also going to be really nice for them to look back on these at the end of the workshop. So let me try do this quickly. I don't know how long this is going to take, but we're just going to paste them all over here. Is this okay to do like well, I think it is. We're okay. And can people see this board or do I need to push it if I'm working on it? People can see the whole board. They can see the whole board. Yeah. Okay. It depends like how far do you want to push it? I'm going to be pushing it. How do I want to push it? I want to push it just slightly so I can just stand here. Will I try it? Oh my God. No, that's not working. Yes, please. I'd love a bit of help. What are we doing? Just pushing this board over to the side here so that I can kind of stand where I was because I for some reason I can't careful. Yeah, my foot. Well, if we're rolling over my foot. Ellie, tell us when to stop. Is this okay if I like stand here? Okay. Let's go. This is live. And yeah, you know, we have all these little things. Great. All right. Thank you so much. You're very good. All right. Back to going through these. So what a facilitator does at this part is you read through all of the challenges. So we've come up with no clear roles and responsibilities, bad communication between teams, too much overtime, or brand sucks, and hard to know when to take vacation, no clear vision or direction, too many projects at the same time. Remember, these are all like fictional problems. They're not or problems here at H&M Smart. Slack channels are too chaotic. Website is messy and unclear. Siloed departments, too many tools, offices too loud to get work done. Nobody is responsible for the office space and hard to know who's doing what and when. I think I've gotten them all done. So you as the facilitator, you're trying to encourage your participants to think of different themes during this phase. There's a lot of things here that would go under specific themes. So for this categorization section, you as a facilitator are going to ask your participants, okay, have a look at these challenges. There seems to be some commonalities here. There's one here that we're saying the office is too loud to get work done. There's another one about the office somewhere. I can't really see it right now, but maybe we could have a category called office. So I'm going to do that. So you're just kind of having a discussion, an open discussion with the team during this part of the exercise, just figuring out different categories and themes. Right, so I'm going to put office up here. All right. So then you ask the team to have a look at the challenges again. Are there any other, I'm talking to you now, Jaco Vanelli, are there any other themes or commonalities that you guys see here that we could make another category topic? Is there anything that you see? I see tech related issues. Yes, there's a lot of tech related issues like internet is too slow, website is messy and unclear. So we could just write tech for one of our category headings. Do we see any other commonalities here? Any other themes that are jumping out? There'd be something around teams and company leadership, something around siloed departments and time off. Could that be under? I'm just trying to think here. Too many tasks, it's like management. Jaco, in the comments said roles and responsibilities. Roles and responsibilities. Yes, I like that one. I'm just trying to think. So roles and responsibilities we have here, I'm just trying to think would any other of these challenges go under that heading? I'm just thinking maybe a better topic header could be communication. Because there's a lot of things here that would fall under communication. Like Slack channels are too chaotic. That is related to communication. Siloed departments also communication. No clear vision or direction. So what about communication? Will we try that? Let's go. Let's go. Oh God, this is a huge word. But like as into fit on this. Okay, so communication could be another category header. And then the last one, there's a lot of other random ones that don't really fit under a specific team. And for that, you can just create a category called other. And then you can put all of the other ones in there. Oh, okay. So other, right. So now that you have your category headings, you as the facilitator are going to organize these little challenges and place them underneath with your team. So you'll pick up pick out one offices too loud to get work done. That's an obvious one. So you're going to place that under here. And then you have a look through all of the challenges to see, is there any other one that is office related? Nobody is responsible for the office space. So we can put that underneath. Okay, I don't know are there any more office related ones? Nope, don't think so. So tech, let's have a look. Internet is too slow. Yes, that's definitely going to go under there. Too many tools. We know that one. So we'll put that under there as well. Let's see. Website is messy and unclear. And I just spotted another one as well. Slack channels are too chaotic. So you're going to put that right under there as well. And straight away, you can kind of see already, it's looking a bit better, isn't it? Okay, so communication, we have, let's have a look. No, oh, no clear roles and responsibilities. That would definitely fall under the category of communication. What do I have in my hand? Too many projects at the same time. Do you think that would be communication as well? Because I suppose people aren't communicating what their their capacity. So that would definitely go there. Hard to know what who is doing what and when definitely communication. Oh, bad communication between teams. I wonder where I'll put this. Okay, gone crazy again. No clear vision or direction absolutely in there again. Hard to know when. Okay, I'm just having a look. Silo departments might go there too. And then we have our little stragglers, the ones that don't have a little category. So we could put it here or brand socks. Hard to know when to take vacation, because that I suppose is more of a personal one. And then too much overtime. Okay, that poor person there is feeling a bit overworked. Okay, so that now is much better, I think. Do you think? And it just I suppose gives, as I said, a more a visual overview of all the challenges that they've come up with, rather than having it all piled down here in the sailboat, it's way, way easier to have a look at. So that's that step. Yeah, a couple of questions. Okay, your suggestions actually. A couple of Jacobs say that maybe communication seems more like a project management issue, just as a category. Okay, yeah, that's a question from Janine. Is clustering a group exercise or is it done by the facilitator alone? It is you're facilitating it by standing up here and organizing all of the post-its and also coming up with the writing the categories, but you are doing this with the team. So it's kind of a group exercise. You're going to be asking the team, okay, what do you think the category for this is? There's loads of challenges here. You're just facilitating the discussion in a way and writing down the categories. So it is a bit of both. Hopefully that answered your question, Janine. And so after this, it's much easier as well to see all of the challenges laid out, as I said. So the next, I've already said that. Yeah, here we go. Once you feel that there's enough categories, you can, yeah, I've done all of this. We can see the picture. I'm hoping the slide is up on the screen now so that you can see exactly what it should look like. Right, so the next part of the exercise. The confusing thing is, it's not really confusing, but the sailboat is an exercise. But within the sailboat, there are other exercises as well that really complement it. There are different stages of the exercise. And dot voting would be step four of this exercise. And this is really, really great for narrowing down the challenges and getting people to really focus on one challenge that they want to work on, basically. It's a really simple exercise that you can use in almost any workshop. We say we actually use dot dot dot voting. That would be cute. Dot voting in every workshop that we do. And the idea is to give participants time to consider which challenges they'd like to work on without having to discuss their preferences with each other. So it completely gets rid of all of the circular discussions that happen in normal meetings. This is another silent, anonymous exercise. And the team is working toward a shared goal, but working alone to achieve it. For this section of the exercise, you're going to be giving participants eight. You're going to be giving them a strip of eight voting dots each. You're going to be getting them to silently vote for a challenge or a negative thing that they feel like held them back the most as a team. And then you're going to be telling them the voting rules, which are there are no voting rules in a way. They can vote on their own ideas. They can put as many dots on one idea as they'd like. So yeah, it's just there's not many voting rules, but you also need to make sure that they use all of the voting dots. So that's really it. It's really simple. You get all of your participants to come up to the board again to give them, it's a two minute, did I say two minute? It's not a two minute activity. It's a six minute activity. So you give them six minutes on the timer again. You get them to come up to the board, read through the challenges. It's way easier for them to read it now. And then they can just start voting on the ones that they feel like, is the challenge that they want to work on as a team. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get my colleagues again to come up. I'm also going to be participating in the voting too, just so that we can get loads of votes. The facilitator doesn't normally participate in the voting session. Maybe that will confuse people. Yeah, I'll leave it. I'm not going to vote in this part, but Jacob and Ellie are going to come up and they're going to start voting on the challenge they feel is the most important to them and the one that they want to work on. Okay, come on up and we'll pretend that six minutes are passing. Okay, you have a go. Who's going to win? I don't know. I don't know. Also, I'm like, hello. Also, a very important point to make here as well. And what we like to do when you're dot voting, so to ensure that it's anonymous, give the participants time to read all of the challenges and then tell them, okay, now you can vote. So everyone votes at the exact same time. So you're not looking or while I'm noticing here, maybe they're not doing it, but I just noticed is Jacob put a vote up first, then Ellie kind of looked at what he was voting on. And then that might he's saying, no, I didn't, but I'm just saying in case this happens. This might influence a participant's decision. So you want people voting all at the same time. Yeah, just to avoid that. Okay, I'm actually very interested to see what has come out on top. All the right. Okay, so once everyone is voted, everyone can go back down to their seats. And you then as the facilitator, you're going to be revisualizing, which is step five, all of the, all of the stickies, you're going to be figuring out how, which idea has the most votes, basically. So you're going to be having a look, counting all the voting dots on each one. As you can see, this one, the internet is too slow is the challenge that the team wants to work on. And that's then going to improve their overall productivity and their overall happiness in the, in the company. So what you do as the facilitator, really easy, you take the sticky with the most votes on it, you find a clear space on the board and you place it on the top here. Then what you need to do is you need to find the ones with, let's say this has four dots, you can put the ones that have three dots underneath. We normally ignore, ignore, if Jonathan is watching, he's my Irish accent, I say words in a different way. So you normally ignore the ones that have one to two votes, it depends. So we have too much overtime has come in underneath that. I'm just trying to see, yeah, too many projects. You can put the ones with two votes as well under here. And then these ones, the ones that have the lower amount of votes, you could actually run a workshop, another workshop to solve these challenges in the future with this team. But for now, because we have one and a half hours to run a problem solving workshop, we only have the time to focus on one of these challenges with the team. So this is it, the internet is too slow. That's what we're going to focus on. I'm going to circle it. And as you can see, it's such an effective way to narrow down and to draw out all of the challenges that a team has had, because normally what would happen, this would have been a discussion around a table in a meeting. And people would have been jumping and saying, oh, no, we actually have to work on this. So no, actually, I think we should work on this. And there's people are just not getting anywhere with their with their arguments. So this is a really, really simple, clean, effective way to narrow down and to draw out the challenge that the whole team can have a shared understanding to solve. Yeah. So that's really it. The next part of the exercise it normally follows on with the how might we create an exercise. We're not going to go through that today. But it's basically, in some is turning this problem in and reframing it into a challenge statement or a challenge question. But yeah, we're not really going to go too much into it. But you could say you could rephrase this by saying, instead of it being internet is too slow, you could say, how might we, what would we say? How might we improve or internet so that it doesn't impact or work? So you can reframe it in a different way so that it's easier to solve that problem. But that's really it, everyone. That is, it's a five step exercise. It's really easy to do. It's fun. It gets people thinking. It gets people talking. And also, yeah, it's very versatile. As I said, I'm going to move back over here now. Can I do that? Yay. I'm trying to see, is there, yeah, we have it should look something like this. Exactly like it does. That's actually good, isn't it? And now we have the Q&A. We did it. I feel like that went very quick. That was an hour though, wasn't it? That's one hour. We're okay. We're good. Ten minutes. The sailboat. Some completely glitching. With the ten minutes for Jakob. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we had to make time for some of that. So we now have the open Q&A session. Ask me any question you'd like. Jakob, my colleague, is going to also help me with some of the answers. If there's anything related to community or yeah, any questions that are outside of my area of expertise. But yeah, are there any questions in the Q&A? Yeah, just one thing I'm going to ask you is to post your questions in the Q&A tab. So it's easier for us to get to all your questions. So if you're posting them in the chat, please repost them in the Q&A. So it's easier for us to catch them. Something that I didn't mention as well is this exercise is the first of many exercises and especially if you're running a retrospective. You have the sailboat that follows on. There's another exercise called 10 for 10. And then you have the effort impact scale. But it's a really, really effective retrospective exercise. And we go through it in detail in one of our courses called facilitation fundamentals. So if you want to learn more about this particular workshop recipe, you can find out more information through there. And I think there's a link or something in the chat that you can have a look at. And another thing I wanted to mention too was to make sure you join our facilitator club. It's free. This is where all the conversations are happening around facilitation and workshopping, where people are sharing workshop recipes like this, and all of these events as well are happening in there. And you get to be around like-minded people who have the same crazy passion for facilitation and workshopping like you. So be sure to join it. I think there's a link in the chat somewhere. A lot of you have joined us from there, so thank you so much. But if you're new and you haven't, get in there. What? Please join. Okay. Q and A. Very clear. That was the weirdest CTA I've ever done. You clearly know I'm not used to it. Okay. Any questions for me? Yes. What is the skill learnings you took when you took with you from your teaching career that is making a difference in your current job as a facilitator? Number one, patience. I think patience is something that I took from my teaching role into facilitation. When you're facilitating a big group or if you're facilitating, yeah, facilitating a larger numbers, it does require a lot of patience. I've learned that. Another skill that I've learned is dealing with group dynamics and dealing with conflict and troublemakers within a group. And that is a skill a facilitator really, really requires to have because it's always going to happen. You're always going to have a challenging participant within your, not always, but it happens in your group or session that you're running. And you just need to be aware of the different techniques and tools that you can use to deal with these situations. So, yeah, that's definitely another skill that I've taken with me from teaching. I'm trying to think of other skills. I think just communication skills and being able to listen actively to my participants when I'm working with them and leading them. Really, really important skill that's a lot of the times overlooked. Just being able to listen to understand what the participant is actually saying rather than thinking about what your next response is going to be. So, that has really, really been a good skill that I've brought with me. And questioning is another skill that I'm continuously working on. When I was a teacher, I was always working on it, but also as a facilitator, you need to get good at and practice asking good questions so that you can draw out what the participants actually are, what they're trying to say and what they're trying to achieve. Asking good clarifying questions, probing questions, all of these different types of questions are really important to know as a facilitator. Yeah, they would be the core skills that I've taken with me. Oh, another one. I'm just thinking of another one. And now maybe this isn't a good depiction of the skill that I'm just about to share with you because I feel like I might have been a bit chaotic with this. Maybe not. But giving clear instructions is a really important skill to have as a facilitator. And it's something that I worked on as a teacher when I was trying to teach children different lessons. Lessons being, it sounds like I'm trying to teach the lesson, but no, no, no, like as if we were going through an actual lesson plan. But yeah, being able to break down an exercise and explain it to the participants so that they know exactly what to do throughout that exercise. Yeah, that's another skill that I've taken with me. But I'm constantly developing all of these skills. As a facilitator, you're just learning every single day, as you know. Great. There are quite a few questions about running this exercise as a virtual exercise. Oh. And thank you, Rebecca, for being so honest with us. No problem, no problem. Yeah, running this virtually. Are there any differences? And what are your tips for running it as a virtual workshop? I'm trying to think of the differences. Well, when we're running this virtually, we would always use the tool Miro. We have a template in Miro, which goes through the whole LDJ or retrospective workshop that I'm talking about. And it has the whole sailboat template there so that you can use it. So that's really, really nice. I think there's a link as well somewhere that we could actually drop into the chat for that template. But it's okay. I prefer running this exercise in person. I prefer running all of my exercises in person. But it is very, very doable to do it virtually. It's easy to do it because this tool Miro in particular is very easy to use. The interface is really easy to use. You have the post-its there. You just get your participants to do the exact same thing. You have the digital timer there. So you have everything at your fingertips with these whiteboarding tools. But it's just making sure that, yeah, you need to use all the same skills I've just actually explained to when you're virtually facilitating, making sure that you're giving clear instructions when you're running this exercise, making sure that you're giving clear examples before you get the participants to run the activity, making sure that you're asking good questions so that everyone, yeah, so that you're getting at the best of people, getting the best out of people, we'll say. I'm trying to think, are there any other tips? Do you guys have any other tips for virtually facilitating a sailboat exercise? There's actually another question about that. How do you keep anonymity? That works. Anonymity. In a virtual setting, the names typically pop up in a Miro or Jambo. There's an option to do that. There's an option to keep it anonymous or in Miro. I haven't used it yet, but Ellie is saying yes. Apart from that, you can also have a space on your Miro board for each participant. And while everyone is working on writing these issues or challenges, the decider, the leader in the group, the alpha in the group, whatever you want to call them, won't really have a time to look at who's writing what. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because they're also participating in the workshop. Yeah, no, that's a really, really good point that Jakob made. But also there is, I know there is an option in Miro to make it anonymous. So that's something that you could do for this exercise to make sure that it's anonymous. Oh my god, I'm really struggling with that word today. Wow. But yeah, great question though. Thank you for that question, Jakob. Bye, Zoom. Your number one tip you would give when dealing with difficult group. For example, a group where there is an alpha individual or individuals that are not participating at all, clearly doing something else or just too shy. How would you deal with difficult participants? That's a bit of a net. Okay, so there's a number of things that I would do. We also go through all of the sounds that I'm not trying to like sell anything on this call, but it's all of the questions that are coming up are all actually in our facilitation fundamentals program. And all in this workbook that we have to we have like a whole section around how to deal with difficult participants, and the different tools and techniques that or tips that you could use with them. But for me, I think first and foremost, what you need to do as a facilitator is you need to set the expectations right from the beginning. Actually, even before you run the workshop, you're setting expectations and making sure that everyone knows what you expect from them. And also you're getting expectations from the participants too. And what we like to do, even before let's let's go way back before we run the workshop, we're having conversations with participants and just kind of getting to know them, building trust and building rapport with these participants. And that really actually helps with people who are like workshop skeptics or more alpha characters. That helps you get them on your side and you're creating more allies when you're doing these kind of pre calls. That would be the number one. Then when you're actually running the workshop, when you go into the room, the very first thing that you do when you have everyone around you, you're setting expectations and creating ground rules with your participants. And what I mean by that is that you decide together with the participants what kind of rules you want to set in place. So for instance, you could have a no device rule, or you can come up with a rule where you're asking participants to trust the process of the workshop. And because a lot of the times, a lot of the time there are workshop skeptics that come into a workshop and they're like, Oh, this isn't going to work. Oh, that or even if they hit the middle of a workshop where it feels like it might be not working and things are spinning out of control and everyone's talking over each other. You need to remind them to trust the process and that it's going to work if everyone works together and if everyone is listening and on the same page. So yeah, creating ground rules together with your participants right from the beginning is a really, really good way to even just mitigate the problem of difficult participants within your workshop. And we did a really great thing with a group that are a workshop that we had run last year, as we made a social contract. And that was just basically the same thing that I've just explained, coming up with ground rules that everyone agrees upon and then getting someone like the decider or even the workshop skeptic who's in your group to come up and sign the contract. It's kind of a silly thing, but it does hold the person accountable for the rules. And then if throughout the workshop, this person or somebody is being challenging or taking over the conversation or discussion, you can always just be like gently remind them about the rules that they agreed upon. So that's a really good one. I'm trying to think of another really great tip or tool that you can use to deal with participants in a workshop who tend to try to take over or dominate the discussion. We like to use the parking lot method. Really, really simple. It's literally you draw a pea on a piece of magic paper or on a space on a wall on a whiteboard somewhere in the room, if you're doing it in person, or you can do this as well on Miro or these whiteboarding tools, you can just have a space within your workshop for people to place ideas or topics or themes that they want to discuss that are completely unrelated to what we're discussing in the workshop now. You get them to basically, okay, I'm going to start that again. If you notice as the facilitator that there's somebody in your group who's not listening to you, disengaged, talking about things that are completely unrelated to the outcome or the objective of the workshop, you can ask them really nicely. You can go over to them and actually just say, I think what you're talking about is incredibly important, but unfortunately it doesn't have anything got to do with what we're trying to achieve here in the workshop, and we've only a short amount of time to do this. Would you mind writing down what you're talking about because I really do want to listen to it. I want to talk about it later because it's a really great point. Would you mind writing it down and placing it in the parking lot? That way then, the person who's disrupting the workshop in a way feels heard, feels like you're listening to them and also knows that you care about what they're saying, but a tip here as well, if you're using the parking lot method, you need to make space in your agenda to address all of the things that had come out of the workshop, whether that be at the very end of the workshop or you could put time or arrange another time to talk about these challenges or topics with the group that you're working with. Am I still talking? Whoa, whoa, I'm sorry. Oh my goodness. So yeah, that's what I would do. Sorry, I actually, I'm looking at the timer here, I'm like, seven hours, it took me to say that. Okay, next question. Sorry about that. You started talking and someone in the chat was thinking that you were actually going to park the participant in the parking lot as in you were going to put that person in like, like a corner in the time out. Oh no, no, no, no. The parking lot, let's clarify this one. The parking lot isn't a time out. It's a time out. Actually, ooh, I like that kind of, I like that. A time out for ideas or a time out for topics. Taking that one. When someone is placing time on the child is because they're being. They're being bold. Yeah. Yeah, actually, you're right. Okay, we won't use it. Nice idea though. But okay, is there another question? Okay, we'll take them. Is there a way of conducting this exercise in 20 to 25 minutes for executives, founders who have very little patience and are frequently distracted? Absolutely. I think if you are setting up like doing all the things that I had just said about setting the expectations, letting them know why you're doing this exercise, basically talking about if this was a normal meeting or what normally happens in meetings is that people are just talking at each other. They're not visualizing the discussion in the same way as the sailboat requires them to do. So ideas are being lost. Ideas, the more introverted people's ideas are being sabotaged. Yeah, it's just complete and utter chaos. So if you kind of approach it in that way and let them know this is what normally happens in meetings and normal meetings don't really work because there's a problem of collaboration chaos. But this way actually works. And I'll show you, you can kind of demonstrate the activity really quickly even before a workshop or whatever, and show them exactly the power of visualizing discussions and the power of this exercise. Yeah, I think that's what I would do. Just making sure that you show them the value of it can be very powerful. I have a question and this is kind of about be the guide not the hero. Okay, we love that. Yeah, can I do the sailboat for my team as a team leader? Or is it a bad idea because it could get in a way of them speaking their minds? And also, is it more important that I participate as well? I would say if you're running this exercise with your team, it's very doable, but I would make sure that you stay just as the facilitator and facilitate the exercise rather than getting too involved in it. A lot of people actually ask this question, can you be the facilitator, but also be the participant? You can, but we advise against it because the point of being the facilitator and the point of facilitating these workshops is that you kind of come at it with a very unbiased point of view. You want to be very neutral in the workshop. You don't want to be taking anyone's sides. So what I would advise is you try to run this exercise with your team, but be just the facilitator. Just guide the session if you can. Yeah, it's a very tricky one. A lot of people who have to be put in these positions where they're like, I have to be the facilitator and also the consultant. We always recommend that when they're doing that, or if you are put in a position where you have to play both roles, you need to clearly state at the very, very beginning of the workshop the two different roles that you're going to be playing. So you're going to let your participants or your teammates know, okay, during this session, I'm going to be helping facilitate the session. I'm going to be running us all through exercises. I'm going to be making sure that the discussion stays on track. I'm going to be doing all of these things, but also I need to be part of the decision-making process too. So I'll step out of my facilitator role and into a more consultative role. And we actually, if that happens, if you're put into that position, you can physically wear two different hats as silly as that sounds. You can be wearing two different hats, the facilitator hat, consult the consultant hat, and you can just make sure that you're telling your participants, okay, I'm now stepping out of the facilitator role and I'm going to be involved in the decisions now, just letting you all know. So I think just being very clear with your communication, if you do end up in a situation where you have to play the both roles, just let your participants know when you're stepping in and out of them. That's a way around it really. I wish the people were here so I wasn't just looking deadly, blankly into a camera. I'm like, I want everyone to just be in this whole room. We're in the black mirror. We're in the office in Berlin. It's beautiful outside at the moment. The sun is like shining through the window. I just wish we were all here just talking and having the chats. But look, you are all here. You are all here, but yeah, in person. We need to do this in person sometime. Okay, next question. Now, question about numbers of participants and an amount of sticky notes. If we are getting seven participants that might produce 40 plus sticky notes, how do you handle that as a facilitator? So for, we always try, as I said, we always try to run workshops with seven participants. So when they're doing the top part of the exercise, they're going to be producing three each. So like 21. Oh, that was fast maths for me. 21 yellow stickies. But then yeah, there are normally a lot of stickies in the blue zone. So we always try when we're working with clients to keep that number down small. However, and that can't, there's a bird trying to fly in. That can't always happen. Like for instance, I am literally going to be running a workshop in two weeks time with 1600 people where I'm going to be running this. We're going to be splitting it up into I think rooms of 200 people. It's something like each, I think there's going to be 10 tables of 20 people in one of the rooms, which is crazy. And I'm going to be facilitating it on my own. Scary. But in that case, we kind of split up the tables. So we'll have like 20 people at one table. There are just going to be a lot of ideas generated. The sailboat things are going to look wild. And it is just going to take a bit longer. It's going to take more time to read through the challenges as a group. But you just kind of fill in or add on that time and make sure you bring that into your agenda and think about it. I don't really know the answer to that because I haven't run a workshop of this size ever. I've like, I think the most people in one of my workshops was like 15 to 20. No, actually, sorry. 60. And it is just that case you have loads and loads of sticky notes, but you're, you just add in more time to cater for that. I'm just trying to think what I would do. I would probably as well put a number on it. I'm just trying to think like for the this, the top part, I would make sure if there's like 20 participants, I'd say, be sure to write just two to three ideas. And for the challenges, you don't want to put a number on it. You don't want to restrict them because you want to get all the ideas out. Jacob, you had an idea. Actually, it's not mine. It's Brenda's and Erica's Brenda. And they say, maybe select a volunteer from the team volunteers to categorize, help you categorize. Yeah, that's actually a very good idea. That's actually select one of the troublemakers in the group to yes, another tip is if you are like building on Erica and Brenda, is this? Yes. Erica and Brenda's point. Thank you so much. And also what Jacob has just mentioned there too is if you, yeah, you can select somebody at the table to help you with the categorization section of the of the exercise. And that's also going to give the person if they're a skeptic or a troublemaker a responsibility and a task. And that usually also helps to get them on your side and have them as an ally rather than an enemy. I'm trying to think as well. I'm like thinking about like the preparation for the upcoming workshop. We have in the tables of 20, we are training up. It's going to be crazy. And I'm actually very excited to share the experience with everyone after I run this workshop. But we are training up one person from each table, which is going to be crazy, to run these exercises as well. So we'll have facilitators or co-facilitators at each table to make sure that the exercise is running smoothly. Yeah, looking forward to that one. Does anybody have even people in the group who are on right now, do they have any other ideas on how they would deal with the challenge of all the stickies? Are any additional information? No? I think one of the most important things is to think about the time. Yeah, the time exactly. That's the main thing. Like depending on the amount of participants that you're working with, you have to think that you have to include more buffer time for each exercise, especially for this type of exercise. Buffer time is really, really important if you have larger groups. Yeah, normally our retrospectives take about 90 minutes to run, 90. But yeah, if you have a larger, larger group, you're trying to give in, maybe do it like in an hour and a half, or like, or maybe two hours if you can, if your client will give you that much time. Okay, hopefully that answered, that was a wishy washy answer, I'm sorry. But the power of the facilitator club is that we can ask that question in the facilitator club and we can get some really, really great answers because I can guarantee the pool of answers that you'll get from there will be much better than what I just gave you when I'm like half tired and like out of it right now. My brain is working and it's like slowed down a tiny bit now. Okay, I'm ready though, I'm still, I'm managing my own energy, I'm ready for the next question. Okay, ready? I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready. How could we encourage people to be honest and candid when people can guess already who said what? And especially when there is a sharp power imbalance in the team, so there's a little bit of peer pressure. So how do we encourage people to be honest in the challenges that they face? Okay, yeah, I know it can be challenging if you're working in a team and there's somebody on the team who like the CEO of the company, let's say, and you're afraid to express your honest opinions about the challenges that the company is facing. But I suppose like the power of this exercise is that it is anonymous. And I think even if you're thinking in your head, oh, but they're going to see that it's my one and they're going to be watching me, I think everyone is so focused on what they're writing themselves that nobody else has the time to be looking and checking. And also the CEO is more than likely going to be involved in this exercise too. So that person is going to be working on their own challenges too. I'm trying to think also a way to mitigate this problem or to solve this problem is that you could instead of just making it very like everyone is coming up now to the board and we're all going to place our challenges under the whatever and everyone just kind of does it at the same time, you could implement like a countdown which actually forces people to do it in a really quick way so nobody is looking. It is anonymous. It is an anonymous activity and you could make it even more anonymous by putting in a little countdown like three, two, one, everyone go. And that kind of gets rid of that kind of fear. I'm trying to think if I would do anything else in that situation. Maybe setting clear expectations at the very beginning, just asking people and ensuring them that it is a safe space and you're just expected to be honest. Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's a really, really good point and like creating this inclusive safe environment right from the beginning is going to encourage people to be more honest and they're also going to feel like they can just say whatever they want and it's also you modeling that too as a facilitator and modeling okay literally you can talk about this giving your examples by you giving kind of examples that are just a you know even the one I gave was no clear vision or direction you're kind of setting the expectation oh we can kind of talk about that sort of thing and so making sure right from the beginning that you're letting the group know this can be any challenge that you're experiencing and it has to be important to you and saying that very clearly at the beginning kind of helps get rid of that that fear that people have. How important is the clustering part? What if all the sticky notes fall under the same category? It's as I said earlier you can absolutely skip that step and it's it's more just there just for yeah making sure that people have a clearer visual overview of all the problems but if you're there and you have literally 90 minutes to run this whole workshop you can absolutely skip it and or if you as the facilitator are looking at all the challenges here you're going to be reading them yourself you know while people are working you can kind of see already okay they all are falling under the collaboration category so there you can kind of just say look I was going to go into a categorization section of the of the workshop right now but everything falls under the one theme so I don't need to categorize them and it's a step that is a nice to have but you don't need to do it yeah it's more so if there's just loads at the it's there for if you as the facilitator see there's loads of different categories or themes coming out it would be way better to have these visualized in an organized way you kind of make that decision yourself as the facilitator a couple of questions on dot voting what do you do if someone sticks all of their eight dots on one posted note they can that that is the rule you can absolutely do that that just means that they feel incredibly passionate about this challenge and they want they want it to come out on top that has never happened to me before where one person just put all of their dots on the one challenge has it ever happened to you guys no I've never seen it but you do it's how you kind of set up the the activity as well or the exercise you do let them know to make sure to take their time it's six you you can do six to eight minutes on the timer encourage the group to look at every challenge and and not just to be like okay I know my challenge is the most important so I'm going to put all my dots on mine and that's the that's the winner and I'm not going to bother looking at everything else encourage them to spend the time to look at all the other challenges to make sure that they're taking them into account um yeah and also yeah they they might what normally happens is because they're working as part of the as part of a team and because the workshop space that you've created is so collaborative and safe and nice they're going to want to give or like put votes on other people's stickies as well and just make sure that they acknowledge other people's challenges and they they'll be able to relate to a lot of the other people's challenges too um yeah it's never happened to me before where somebody's just like oh that's the one thankfully I know not yet but see there's no voting rules they can do it if they want just try to set it up in a way that you make sure that they're taking all of the other challenges into account and making the point that also today like let's say in this workshop you can say as a facilitator we are going to be just working on one challenge and but all of the other challenges that have votes let's say the ones that we have here but three and two they're also going to be looked at in the future so it's not just that there's one like one that we're just going to look at and all the rest of them are going in the bin there will be other times to work on these challenges which are going to help the team improve in the future what if participants choose to put one dot on each issue how can you prioritize that what to ignore one dot yeah so we have never happened to me again so you have one that normally so basically like yeah or like all the stickers gets two votes each for example I think just the cider can the decider yeah normally what happens in that situation every in every workshop you have a decider and that just means there's a person within the team that you have basically assigned as the overall decider so if it is a case that all of these stickies just have one vote on them or two votes on them and you can't figure out what's the priority you can ask the deciders as the facilitator you can just ask them okay you're you're the decider you can give the decider one green dot we don't have the green dots right here they're just a bigger dot bigger than the red one and they can you can encourage the decider to use that green dot and pick one of the challenges that that person feels like they should work on today um yeah that's what I would do to mitigate that probably it's never happened but that's what I would do coming back to how you explain how you explain the exercise to the group yeah um at the beginning you were giving some examples of like what to put on the on the sticky notes do these examples are they they need to be related to the clients that you're working with for the group or you're just giving generic they're more so the examples that you use are very generic so the first example that I used I was kind of pretending that I was facilitating the the team in their own office space so I said something like you you could say as a facilitator oh I noticed that you're you actually have a really really nice office space so that's what I'm going to write down this is something that you could write down as um as a positive thing that's in your in your company um it really doesn't have to have anything uh got to do with your client or the challenge or the problem you try to keep that separate and especially the challenges then you don't want to put any ideas in people's heads so you're trying to really keep that neutral um neutrality as a facilitator so you'll come up with a challenge that has nothing got to do with um with the team and their challenge uh but just giving them an idea of like what direction to go or how to write it how short it should be and how concise it should be what techniques would you recommend to get shy people and quiet people to start speaking up in a workshop so the first technique and I think it's the power of workshopping is being able to visualize the the discussions that automatically um gives more introverted more shy members of the group the space to get their opinions out um and yeah I think that's number one that's visualizing discussions making sure that they're getting their ideas straight up on the board and that their their ideas normally what happens in these workshops are the more shy members the more introverted members or like what happens in normal meetings is that the more shy introverted people's ideas are normally kept within them they have no space to get them out and normally there's somebody who in the group who's more articulate who's louder um the shy person could speak up and say I have it and then the the other person would dominate them um and their their ideas completely sabotaged so visualizing the discussion is number one the perfect way and the perfect tip to include introverted and shy or members um I think the other thing you need to do we we mentioned it before as the facilitator you are creating that safe space in the workshop and you are making sure that everyone including the shy or members in the group feel safe in the space and feel like they can talk about anything that they want to um you're going to try avoid doing like icebreakers that are really really intense or that require the shy or members to yeah talk a lot or do anything that's outside of their comfort zone you're just making sure as a facilitator that you're catering to everyone's needs within the within the workshop so before the workshop you're going to be talking as I said to the participants individually you try to talk to each participant if you're working with a small group and there you can kind of get an idea of the type of person the type of personality they have you can ask you can actually ask those questions do you like sharing in a group or what what do you not like doing in a group you'll get an idea there and then during those calls or during those conversations um the type of personalities you have and need to cater to within your workshop um so yeah creating that safe space making sure that you are um coming up with activities and icebreakers or those sort of things that are not too intense and not they don't require too much of the participants um and what was the first thing I said I'm trying to summarize creating the safe space oh and visualizing the discussion that's number one making sure they have the space to get everything out and making sure as well when you're creating that safe space that you um let the participants know that there's going to be a lot of exercises as you saw with this one um throughout the workshop where you're going to be you're going to remain anonymous um letting them know that first and foremost at the very beginning kind of takes a lot of pressure off the more introverted people she's out of her role okay I have one two three four everyone still five questions last five questions yeah the last five questions I love us just the last few that's perfect I'm stay with us I'm completely with you all I need is a sip of water I realize I never gave you any water today gasping actually that would be really nice Ellie thank you so much oh thank you huh what's in this what's in this no it's actually water just water yeah just water yeah okay are we on to the next question yes yes perfect and everyone can hear me everyone's doing good are you still with us um yeah thank you all so much before we go into the last five questions I just want to say thank you for staying with me thank you for joining us on this um this live adventure uh it's really fun I find these incredibly fun I love doing them and I hope you're enjoying them let's get on to the next question I'm getting I'm getting a bit sentimental not yet you can you can meet them all at facilitator club yes oh yeah well I'm going to be talking and continuing the conversation in facilitator club look forward to that can you talk a little bit about questioning and no okay yes next question so what is a clarifying question what is a probing question can you give some examples of that I'll take out my book I'm going to be asking so um I just wanted to basically this is the workbook that goes with facilitation fundamentals and it it goes through everything in detail about questioning um but I just want to have a sort of a guide when I'm answering this question too so oh there's a lot of um noise in the background so okay clarifying questions but so clarifying questions it's the name it's very very simple you're just but it's also it sounds simple but you need to be able to learn this skill and learn this questioning skill as a facilitator because it's going to really help you figure out a team's challenges because normally what happens is it as a facilitator you're brought into a team um it could be you could be brought in to run a workshop in a hospital where you know nothing about the team and their challenges um but using clarifying questions is going to help you as a facilitator figure out the kind of the group the groups challenges so that you can help them get to their outcomes so clarifying questions is where the facilitator rephrases the speaker's point or question in a clear way so that everyone understands what is being communicated and this is very simply similar to paraphrasing and paraphrasing is simply just kind of you listen to what somebody says and you kind of speak back what they said in a different way just to make sure that you've understood them correctly so very similar to paraphrasing which we discussed anyway sorry these questions clarify group members ideas and ensure that everyone is on the same page so all the time as a facilitator you're making sure that you know what's going on but also that the participants know what is going on and what is being talked about the whole way through the workshop and an example question an example clarifying question would be what did you mean when you said blah blah blah um that's just making sure that you know and you know what's going on and normally what I find happens in group situations uh you might be able to relate to this is that you're in a group something is being discussed uh and you're kind of sitting there as the participant like oh what what the hell did they mean there and then it's overlooked and the the conversation goes on and you feel completely lost as a participant because you've missed something so you as the facilitator need to be very aware of those dynamics in the group um and ask these clarifying questions throughout the workshop so that everyone knows what's going on probing questions then um a facilitator can use probing questions to zero in on or to zone in on a specific part of someone's answer and engage in further follow-up questions to better understand where the answer is coming from so you're just trying to get draw out what the person actually means so an example question of a probing question would be can you tell me can you tell me more about that idea or why is this important to you um so you're just making sure that you're getting more out of the participants so that you can know more about the challenge and therefore the participants all know what's happening um yeah there are loads of different types of question questioning there's directive questions there's redirective questions redirective questions as a facilitator is amazing it's a skill um still learning it myself but you're just kind of i suppose it's actually probably one of the most effective facilitation techniques i'm i'm i giving too much away of all this am i talking too much i'm reading the whole book um no but i really do like redirective questions because you're it's saying here that it's the most effective facilitation technique book can be challenging um and it takes a lot of practice so a person asks the facilitator a question and instead of answering the question the facilitator throws the question back to a the person who has asked the question or b the whole group so you're not just taking control and answering all of their questions you're getting them to properly critically think about what's going on or the challenges at hand um and it it makes for a better discussion and yeah i really like it it's a skill though it's a skill that you need to learn but yeah questioning is a powerful powerful skill to learn as a facilitator can we briefly talk about what actually happens after you run the sailboat no i'm not loud i'm on you and uh you mentioned yeah i can ldj yes so maybe let's talk about okay so normally what happens after the the sailboat and as i said can i go over here now yeah so normally what happens let's say you're after coming up with the how might we you've created um how might we for the team the how might we is going to be how might we uh improve the internet so that we can all work more productively and what you're going to be doing then after that is running a an exercise called 10 for 10 and yes 10 for 10 and what you're going to be asking your participants is giving them 10 minutes literally it's it's in the name 10 minutes to come up with 10 solutions to solving this problem um this problem is kind of a tricky one to like i'm just trying to think if there's seven participants 70 ways to solve that problem of the internet um the challenge is normally a bit more yeah a bit more complex to solve so you're just going to encourage the the participants to come up with multiple solutions to that one um challenge wow oh i'm looking she's gone she's gone lads um okay we can't get a giddy bang now because that would be terrible um but yeah that would that's what would come next uh you're just coming up with loads of different solutions to the problem then you're going to be zoning in on it again um one of those solutions so you're going to be doing some voting again um and i don't want to give too much away the ldj is a very special one to us but we will share it exactly or in the the chat on what the other exercises would be it's very hard to explain it right now while not having while not teaching it um yeah you can say that there is but it is like if you use the force these framework which is also there you'll also see that after this you'll have another type of exercise that is about to creating yes solutions and solutions then it's another about committing and then there is another one about choosing which solution so exactly so basically yeah the whole idea of the ldj or a retrospective like this and this type of workshop is you are trying to figure out the best solutions to the challenge that you've that you've drawn out of the team um and then you're trying to narrow down and zone in on one of those solutions so that at the very end of the workshop they can go okay this was the challenge this is the solution here are the next steps and this is what we need to do going forward um so that everyone is clear on their tasks their roles and responsibilities to solve that particular challenge um it's a really really great workshop to yeah just to draw out these problems and to get everyone aligned on the same page wow you're laughing at me and is that sentence in like a like a lower note i don't know i mean ellie's laughing at me okay so next question i think this is the third question i'm gonna combine this uh this these the last two questions a combo like this yeah um in european in well are the pros and cons of in-person versus remote workshop and do you have any tips for running a hybrid session oh a hybrid we'll stay away from them massively um okay so pros and cons personally i love in-person workshops i feel like the energy i get from people physically being in the room is like yeah it kind of you can't really get the same energy in a remote workshop um i'm trying to think i'm trying to think of all the the cons the remote workshops the remote workshops of course okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna start that again in person i find that it's easier to manage people's energy um it's easier for me to observe as a facilitator when the energy levels are dropping um i can kind of look around if people are yawning if people are like completely disengaged i find it easier to notice those things when i'm in person with people um i'm also i'd be very in tune to people's energies like in person so i'd feel the energy of the room straight away if it's dropping uh so that's much easier for me and also i prefer just i'm i prefer standing up and moving around as a facilitator so in person is great for me that way because i get energy from that and i also love like interacting with the whiteboard and things and writing down i just i love the whole process of the workshop in person um i'm trying to think also in person another pro for that is that you can really celebrate milestones with people you can take them out like let's say if you're running it in your office or if you're running it in a nice space for breaks or for at the very end of a workshop you can take people out for dinner you can take people out for ice cream as an energizer so there's more opportunities to really connect with the team in that sense um in person in comparison then to remote it's harder to manage these things like the energy level as it's harder to create these very powerful moments within your workshop remotely however though remote is really great because it's so convenient you can you can run a remote workshop from anywhere from your bedroom if you want to if it's at like nine o'clock you can get up a quarter to nine and you're just like at work and you're there so it's very convenient i would say um also in remote workshops there are so many different tools available now so whiteboarding tools that it is making it much easier for people to run these remote workshops another cool thing about um remote workshops that i really like that you can't really do in um in person workshops is that you can you have all of the post-its on file i know you can take pictures of the post-its in an in-person workshop and keep track of them that way but it is easier using these tools like mirror or mural mural mural and to take to keep all of the the post-its and the ideas and solutions in one place and document them um i'm trying to think uh hybrid was that part of the other question i think we avoid hybrid workshops as much as we can um we don't take clients on who suggest that we do a hybrid workshop not not i'm not saying that we never do it we of course have to do it sometimes but we try to avoid it as much as we can just because it can be very hard to keep the people who are on their working remotely or tuning in remotely it's very hard to keep them engaged and make them feel included in the whole workshop um ways to kind of make sure that you're keeping people feeling involved in these workshops is physically like oh like what we do when our colleague Ryan who works in South Africa when he joins our hybrid meetings is that we physically hold the laptop um and pass him around so weird we have to literally like physically hold the laptop up to make sure that we remember that he's there sometimes because sometimes it can literally be all of us in the in the office and then Ryan will be like hi guys we're whoa you're still here oh whoops so you need to be very cognizant and very aware of the people who are tuning in remotely and making sure that you're coming up with different ways to keep them engaged and another thing is I think a lot of people that I've seen this done before is using or placing a mic if you're running a workshop in a conference room or a meeting room you have like the main mic in the middle so that the people tuning in remotely can hear exactly what's going on I'm trying to think of what there was another there's another way yeah exactly so you you all work online but even though you're in person together yeah that's another one so using miro the tool again all of us have our laptops even the people who are working in person we all tune into the same miro board so we're all working from the same whiteboard essentially and so that that really actually is a great point it really helps us all stay on the same page and we know what's going on and also the same we have everything documented we can keep that miro board look back on it months from now and and do a retrospective on on the workshop that we had run um yeah I'm trying to think of there any other cons or pros that I've missed maybe just for the in person workshops is that it's generally a little bit more inclusive you can invite people who work in or live in remote locations or you can't get into the office yes if they're in a wheelchair for example exactly yeah um that's a great point as well yeah there's also when you're running in person workshops you put everyone all the participants are in a different mindset because they change location and they're in a very like specific place just dedicated for the workshop instead of like when they're remote they're sitting on like the same place where they work the rest of the day so it changes the mindset it really does that's a really good point and also another thing that we like to do with remote workshops because it is hard to keep participants engaged throughout the whole thing the whole session firstly we we try to keep our sessions like under three hours long and we don't want anybody just falling asleep this is this goes for in person and remote workshops we have the same rule but you're trying to what we like to say at the very beginning is we encourage people to put their cameras on and this could be we communicate this to them prior to the workshop it's not like they land into the remote workshop and where I put on your camera because most of the time people have their pajamas on like me sometimes I'd have the pajamas bottoms on and then the blouse on top and we've all done it I know we have but yeah you let them know in the emails coming up to the workshop okay we want to make sure that we get the best out of this workshop we want to achieve the outcomes of it and what we feel is really important is that we all participate and keep our cameras on so that they they know what is expected of them that actually is really great when everyone's faces are when everyone's cameras are on that really impacts the energy levels and the participation levels throughout the remote workshop um yeah yeah is that it there's one more oh I kind of want to stay here for the night now I'm actually I'm in the flow of it now a lot of the questions were kind of related to everything we teach in the facilitation fundamentals course yes and you as the course creator could you talk to us a little bit more about the course about the course okay so yeah so myself and Jonathan who actually is my brother if you didn't notice the the last names I'm not his wife which a lot of people think I'm his sister um uh huh you're showing a little picture okay I think this one is a little thing right now love it okay so yeah basically I'm him with him with longer hair although his hair is getting longer now so we basically we're gonna look the same in probably a month and but yeah so myself and Jonathan created the course along with our team and and it's called facilitation fundamentals and a lot of inspiration for creating the courses for uh it's actually it Jonathan had been thinking about the course and coming up with all of the content for the course over the last number of years um but I think even me coming into the space um from a teacher with a teaching background we realized how important it is to talk about the fundamentals of facilitation because when I came in I was like wait what is it though no but literally I need a definition of what facilitation is what is a facilitator I needed all the basics and we realized just how important that is for people um so facilitation fundamentals it goes through the basics of facilitation um the first module is all about the theory around facilitation uh what it is why we need it why it's so important um also talking about group dynamics the dynamics of group decision making why collaboration has broken all of these great things that you need to know as a facilitator to set you up in a good way then um the second am I meant to be going through all this there's this what people wanted to hear yeah the second um module then is all about the different techniques and skills you need as a facilitator some of the things that I already went through like active listening questioning all of those skills that you need to know as a facilitator um and then there's a whole magic module dedicated to designing and running workshops so figuring out exactly what you need to do before a workshop what questions you need to ask clients how to actually design a workshop from scratch and then we go into a whole brief and we go through a whole workshop like this one start to finish um but yeah it's just it's really great for if you're just starting out as a facilitator um you're going to get all the basics all the fundamental um knowledge that you need to start your career as a facilitator or add facilitation skills to your toolkit if you're in a different um area of work but also even if you are experienced and you have been facilitating for years it's going to be a really really great way for you to actually um learn all the basics from scratch again like refresh your memory on that but it's going to give you a neatly packaged tried and tested way to teach facilitation to others like to clients and what we've seen other our prior students do with our workbook or course is they um they turn it into a bootcamp and they can literally just go into clients and teach a three-day bootcamp on facilitation and the fundamentals of it and they teach internal teams on how to become facilitators so that's another way to use it um I could talk about it forever because I'm very passionate about it and I'm very proud of what we've created um but yeah I won't go on too much uh more about it if you're interested in it if you want to learn more there's maybe a link in the chat I don't know or maybe get DM me on school if you're in the facilitator club and that's the platform we use in facilitator club if you're unfamiliar with the name um I love the name I felt at home immediately when I came from teaching I was like oh our platform is called school okay I'll be okay here um yeah that's facilitation fundamentals um it's a self-paced video course as well so there's no time limit on when you need to complete it um there's video self-paced video footage footage no it's a self-paced video course with a corresponding workbook which has lots of additional information like resources checklist workbooks or workbooks resources checklists and templates in it that will help you as a facilitator as you can tell my words are going fast um I can't say I'm an inony anonymity no anonymity and that's really it is there another question that's it the workbook is insane the workbook is insane it started out it was meant to be like a little 30 page brochure complimentary of the course it turned into a 165 page beast um just when I started writing it it just yeah it's just taken over so the workbook is it has way more information additional information lots of research and um great data in there as well um yeah I could talk about it forever I love it I'm very proud of it look at it so cute okay um okay everyone that is it once again before the live I was worried I was thinking oh no how is this going to go now after it I'm so buzzed I'm going to be so excited running around this office that it went so well I hope he enjoyed it um yeah there's going to be more of these things happening these live events happening within the facilitator club so be sure to join be sure to talk to us over there yakub is in there managing the community as well as myself um and the AJ and smart team are also in there to answer any of your questions thank you so much for joining us goodbye I'll see you soon Marianna bye