 Hey, I'm Jonathan. I'm a workshop facilitator and I help some of the biggest companies in the world solve big problems and make big decisions using workshops. I read a lot of books on facilitation, a lot of books on workshopping, a lot. What I wanted to do today is bring it down to my seven favorite books in the facilitation space. Now, there are some books that I've probably missed out on here, but these are the ones when I think about giving to a facilitator just to make them better and to give them more recipes and to give them more ideas. These are the ones I go to. And I think even if you're a real season facilitator, there's going to be one or two books here that you have not yet heard of. Let's go straight to it, but let me just say this is not in any order. I'm not saying number seven is the worst and number one is the best. It's just whatever one I'm picking up from the floor. All right, just give me a sec. The first book is called Visual Thinking by Willamine brand. Willamine brand. I don't know if I'm saying that name correctly, but I'm sorry. Visual Thinking is a really, really great book that brings you through the step by step process of how to visualize conversations and really being a workshop facilitator is all about visualizing conversations. It really shows you everything. It's also very cute, really well illustrated. And if you're trying to figure out really from scratch, the best way to visualize conversations and to make the mess of a meeting something that's easy to digest for people using sketches, using drawings, using different exercises, I think Visual Thinking is really one of the best books out there for workshop facilitators. I always open it up before I'm going to run a workshop. Check this one out. By the way, we're getting no money for talking about these books. There's no affiliate links. Nothing here is an endorsement. It's just the books I actually like. All right, let me take the next one. My next favorite book is called Creative Competence by Tom and David Kelly. This is, I think one of the first books around the facilitation of workshopping space I ever read, and it's a deep dive into sort of the beginnings of how design thinking came about. And really, it's the design thinking bible. This book got me super excited about running workshops. It teaches you the concepts about why workshops work, why design thinking works. And honestly, it's my original version of this book. You can't even read it anymore. It has so many notes in it. It's full of really great exercises. It's a fantastic book. If you want to learn techniques to help a team that wouldn't naturally be creative to become creatively confident. So Creative Confidence, one of my favorite workshopping and facilitation books, you have to read this one. This is, I love this book so much. Let's go to the next one. The next book, this is a bit cheeky, but it's free. So it's actually okay to talk about it. It's the workshopper playbook. So I wrote this book. And what it does is it gives you a really quick, like less than one hour intro into everything you need to know to run your first workshop. Gives you some techniques, gives you some tools, tells you the story of why I got into workshop, and just shows you how to run a really simple problem solving and decision making workshop. I think the team will put a link down below to the PDF. It's free. There's nothing like you lose nothing by taking this. And I think it's a fantastic introduction to the whole workshopping space. So check out the workshopper playbook. It's a fantastic one. Next one, a bit more famous than the others. I think a lot of you know game storming, but if you don't know game storming, you have to pause this video and get this book right now using our affiliate link. Just joking. There's no affiliates. This book is written by these three people. I am, you know, you can just zoom in or something. It's a book full of exercises based on the topic that you need to actually do. And I think it's a really, really great reference guide when you just need a couple of exercises. Honestly, this book is the Bible of workshop exercises. You definitely need it. If you're a facilitator, if you're a workshopper, get yourself a copy of game storming. It's similar in a way to visual thinking, but it's not like teaching you visual thinking from scratch. It's really showing you a lot, a lot of exercises. This is really, it's called a playbook for innovators, rule breakers and change makers. I think it's fantastic. I think every workshopper has to have a copy of game storming. My next one and really one of my favorites is sprint. It's an entire book based on one workshop recipe. And this recipe is the design sprint, but it's not just for designers. It's for anyone who wants to run a workshop to help solve big problems and test new big ideas in just five days. My company runs a ton of design sprints. In fact, design sprints is what almost completely got me obsessed with facilitation, obsessed with the workshopping. And I think it's one of the most robust workshopping exercises out there. It's really a five day process. There's so many exercises in here, game storming. And the other books are kind of like, here's loads of exercises, pull it together yourself. Whereas the sprint is here's one recipe. We've already tested it a hundred times or more. It works. Just use this recipe. And I think every facilitator doesn't matter if their designer or not should know how to run a sprint. Really amazing book. My friend Jake wrote it. He's a beautiful man. He's very tall. Let's go. So I got excited and I knocked out the mic. The next one you might not know about. And I'm excited about it. It's called the surprising power of liberating structures. So the idea here is that adding structure to a meeting or to a group setting can actually liberate people to actually get the work done that they really want to do. And this is a thick, fat, chubby book, full to the brim of different exercises on how to actually get things done. It's really not the most enjoyable read, but it is a really fantastic reference guide when you just want to run specific types of exercises, simple rules to unleash a culture of innovation. And it's really like a, it presents a framework for helping teams innovate and come up with ideas and really get things done. I think it's fantastic. Again, it's a bit long. It's a bit of a dry read, but I do think it's a fantastic, fantastic book to give you just a ton of different exercises, a ton of different techniques as a facilitator who wants to run workshops. And a lot of people don't know about it because it's just not like very sexy. So if you're looking for exercises, techniques and methods that people maybe don't know about yet, liberating structures is a great one. I love this book. It's really, yeah, it really got me excited reading through it. Yeah, get it. Last but not least, this one is called The Secrets of Facilitation. And I really like this book. It reminded me of a school book, the way it's laid out. You know, it's really like a school textbook. And there's lots of little exercises for you to fill out in here. What I love about it is that it shows you how to deal with situations that will come up as a facilitator in like a script format. So you can see here it says Pat, here it says facilitator. So you actually get to see the conversations, not just here's the technique, but also here's that technique played out as a conversation in a workshop. Again, I do think this is a book that not a lot of people buy because it's quite expensive. It's also very dry and very textbook-like. But it's honestly, I think, I think it's actually the best book I've read on pure facilitation in terms of really in-depth techniques, in-depth scripts and case studies. I think it's a fantastic, fantastic book. If you want to get like a little boost above other facilitators, I would recommend checking this out. It also has a lot of sections on how to deal with troublemakers, which is something I love. So like what happens if you're facilitating and something goes wrong or someone tries to push back and ruin your workshop, this book is full to the brim of those types of ideas and how to actually deal with those types of people. So those are my seven favorite books. Okay, look, it's six favorite books on facilitation and workshopping. And then it's like my book squeezed in there in between, but you know, whatever. I think these books are fantastic. I don't think everyone knows about them. I think if you're interested in getting into the facilitation space, I would recommend reading them. Obviously, I, you know, I'm reading these types of books all the time and all this channel is basically kind of an amalgamation of all the things I'm learning by reading these types of books, but also running workshops. Also, if you're interested in compressing a little bit of that knowledge, I've just recorded a one hour free training on how to become a top 1% facilitator. It obviously takes a huge amount of knowledge from these books and from other books and from other classes I've taken and from the work I've been doing over the last 10 years as a facilitator. If you're interested in that kind of thing, if you're a facilitator who wants that kind of knowledge and who wants to level up, there'll be a link down below that says like free training. Check that out. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you like these types of book videos or resource videos, let me know in the comments, but I do have a question for you. What's the worst thing you've ever smelled in your life? Let me know in the comments and I can't wait to check it out. Have a good one, everyone. Bye. Okay. Actually, the team wants me to change that question to what's the best facilitation at workshopping book you've ever read, but also put the bad smell thing in there with the comment, maybe two comments. It actually helps us if you have more comments. So what's your favorite workshopping and facilitation book plus what's the worst thing you've ever smelled in your entire life? Actually, the worst thing I've ever smelled in my entire life, I just remembered while asking that question. It's not something disgusting. Don't worry guys. It was a bucket of rotting paint in my art class in secondary school or high school. Americans call it and a friend of mine found it and he smelled it and he immediately puked into the bucket of rotting paint and then he made me smell it and yeah, I got a pretty bad headache and I couldn't forget the smell for like three weeks and that's what this YouTube channel is about. Peace out everyone. Bye.