Podcast
Episode 34: The Capability to Tame Elephants
A conversation with Vinay Kumar, founding Director of C2C OD and the global chair for the International Association of Facilitators.
“I often say that the facilitators who have been in this profession for over seven, eight, 10 years, we’ve been very fortunate to learn through trial and error. We made some errors, we got feedback, etc. Today I think there’s less room for errors, which means peer reviews.” -Vinay Kumar
Vinay Kumar is the founding Director of C2C OD, where he enables organizations and their talent to be more effective. He is also the global chair of the International Association of Facilitators and has held leadership and management positions in the worlds of education and banking.
In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Vinay about listening skills, elephants, and patience in facilitation. Listen in to hear what small, nuanced actions a facilitator can take to leverage their team’s fullest potential.
Show Highlights
[00:50] Vinay’s Introduction to Facilitation
[05:21] IAF’s Function & Explanation
[15:05] Elephants in the Room
[21:06] The Flexibility and Discernment of a Facilitator
[38:50] The Role of Neutrality in Facilitation
Links | Resources
About the Guest
Vinay Kumar is the founding Director of C2C OD. Vinay’s specialized eye for developing talent and cultivating potential on teams in various fields has given him a clear understanding of organizational strategy and the skills/characteristics that are required of a great facilitator. He serves as the global chair for the International Association of Facilitators, where he leads aspiring professionals in their facilitation journey.
About Voltage Control
Voltage Control is a change agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.
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Full Transcript
Douglas:
Welcome to the Control The Room podcast, the series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room, means achieving outcomes, while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. Today, I’m with Vinay Kumar, the founding Director of C2C — OD, where he enables organizations and their talent to be more effective. He is also the current global chair of the International Association of Facilitators. Welcome to the show Vinay.
Vinay Kumar:
Thank you Douglas, pleasure to be here.
Douglas:
Absolutely. For starters, let’s hear a little bit how you got your start. How did you find your way into this work of facilitation?
Vinay Kumar:
Oh, completely by chance, I spent about 20 years plus in the corporate world. I worked in technology, banking, a professional services firm, held management and leadership roles, and one of the things I was always very passionate about was in talent development of myself, of course, and developing my own people, putting them through training programs, et cetera. I used to sponsor a lot of training programs and bring in external vendors and I used to co-facilitate with them or co-train with them as an internal resource. That’s how I actually dipped my toes in facilitation.
Vinay Kumar:
But to be honest, it started more with training. I started the tell mode and then realized that people are pretty smart. I don’t need to tell them much, I just need to get them to think, and started exploring more and more about facilitation. About 12 years ago, left the corporate world and went full-time into training and development, and facilitation.
Douglas:
I’m curious about this switching from the tell mode to the thinking mode. What have you found to be your go-to strategies to get people thinking, versus just trying to shove information in?
Vinay Kumar:
I always remember when I used to attend training programs and workshops, I developed this very, I kind of joke with groups I work with now saying, “Look folks, I don’t want to create Death by PowerPoint, and I know all you are very skilled, like me, with sleeping with their eyes open, and having the 1,000 yard stare.” What I found very useful and engaging when I was sitting as a participant, or I still sit as a participant, is when people ask great questions and we get into conversations, and start thinking about what those answers mean, and hearing different perspectives. So I just leverage what I experience as a participant and what I would like to experience, and trying to create that same experience for groups I work with. If that makes sense, right?
Douglas:
Absolutely. So you kind of try and model the experience after something that you would appreciate or any human.
Vinay Kumar:
Exactly, and I think there is room for the entire education system, the entire professional training to evolve into this. Of course, when I started my career, I didn’t have Google. Today, people coming in, they can find the answers for themselves, so who are we to stand in front of them and give them the answers? They can actually verify and fact check whether our answers are correct, and they’ll probably find a different opinion as well. So it’s better to get them to start thinking.
Douglas:
And you’ve been the international, or you’ve been the global chair for the International Association of Facilitation for almost a year now, so you came on just in time for the global pandemic, just to flip everything on its head.
Vinay Kumar:
Oh yes. In fact, I often blame my predecessor, “You arm-twisted me in to taking this role, but you didn’t warn me about the pandemic.” But, no, but it’s the International Association of Facilitators, but I sort of got into this, was introduced to the organization almost nine years ago. Well, no, almost 11 years ago. And I absolutely feel in love with the community, it is a completely volunteer driven organization. I am a volunteer board member. Every chapter, very region is run by volunteers, and I consider it the best professional family I’ve been part of.
Vinay Kumar:
So it’s a sort of a way of giving back to the profession, and particularly now with the pandemic, I think a lot of the facilitator community, we thrived and our energy came from working with groups, obviously in a face-to-face environment, and we have all had to pivot to completely digital and virtual, like everybody else. But trying to create that same energy is so critical, right? And I think it’s been an interesting year, let’s put it that way.
Douglas:
What are some of the ways that the IAF has been supportive of members in that transition?
Vinay Kumar:
Well, the way we’ve been is, one is at a very tactical and practical level, we created a virtual facilitation resource page on our website, where it’s sort of crowd funded, our own members started posting stuff, resources links. It is also e-community helping each other. We started learning sessions, virtual meetups, and very recently, we’ve always had in October something called Facilitation Week or International Facilitation Week, and this year’s Facilitation Week probably has been one of the largest we’ve had in years. Over 260 events, 5,000 people all around the world coming together, sharing best practices, learning. So we’ve been helping them and helping ourselves and the community learn as well.
Douglas:
And so if someone’s new to the IAF or interested in learning more about it, how might they find out more? Or what’s the best way for them to get started?
Vinay Kumar:
Oh, just go to our website, www.iaf-world.org, that’s our website, or you can drop me an email. They can write to office@iaf-world.org again. There’s a huge amount of resources available on our website. There’s chapters, there’s regions, we are structured in seven global regions. We have chapters and communities all over the world, so you have that face-to-face participation as well, eventually I hope, once this pandemic starts to die down, that we’ll be able to get groups together and learn from each other. There’s also a whole professional development pathway for facilitators to enhance their skills.
Douglas:
And so on the professional development side, that would be training to level up and become certified as a facilitator?
Vinay Kumar:
So the IAF, we don’t provide training programs. We actually endorse. We have our IAF Code of Ethics and Values, as well as our Core Facilitation Competencies published. So when someone becomes a member, they read and learn about them. We have IAF endorsed facilitation training programs that you could go to, to learn the skill. But once you’re a practitioner or doing facilitation part-time, or full-time, or whatever it might be, as an independent practitioner or within a company, they go through what we call our Professional Development Path, which is you want to be an Endorsed Facilitator or a Certified Professional Facilitator. So there’s a whole pathway there. It’s grown a lot. I remember when I joined that we only had our CPF, which is our Certified Professional Facilitator accreditation. Now we’ve added a lot more as well.
Douglas:
That’s great, and with it being a volunteer-led organization, who does the certification? Or how exactly does that work?
Vinay Kumar:
Oh, it’s again, it’s a peer review. So we have what’s certified assessors, they go through an assessor path. They themselves are CPFs. One of the things I got so valuable for me, when I first got my CPF was, it really was a recognition by my peers that I meet the Core Facilitation Competencies and it’s not easy, right? So it is a pretty rigorous process and I loved it. I mean, once you’ve been in the community for a long time, you’re a CPF, you’ve been practicing, you could go ahead and try to become an assessor yourself. And there’s a whole assessor development pathway as well.
Douglas:
Very cool, excellent. I guess, switching gears a little bit, but on a similar path, what advice might you have for new facilitators? For those folks that are tuning in, maybe they’re a leader, not too dissimilar to where you were later in your first part of your career, before you switched to become a facilitator. They’re a leader who is starting to pick up on some of these things and maybe they want to lean in more, or maybe they’re early in their career and they just see facilitation as a path for them. What advice might you have for just getting started? And what do they need to think about early on to make sure they shape their course correctly?
Vinay Kumar:
One of the things I have seen in the last few years, personally right, the concept of facilitative leadership or the concept of facilitated meetings, I think facilitation is increasing in scope of application. It’s when groups come together. So I think it’s an opportunity for anybody in a hierarchical position, to use facilitation as a more effective tool. We always say to leverage the wisdom of the group. No one individual has the right answer. And particularly today I think, we talk about traditional leadership, and I personally believe that leadership is pretty democratized now. You hire good smart people, and if you keep telling them what to do, then you’re not leveraging all the good smart that you hired them for. So there is an opportunity to start using facilitation even as a frontline supervisor to solve a problem, get a group.
Vinay Kumar:
And I think to be honest, we all do it. I used to use facilitation. I never knew it was called that. For example, I’m sure you do too Douglas. When you get your team together, when you brainstorm. You say, “Let’s do a brainstorming session to solve a problem.” Guess what? You’re using a facilitation method, right?
Douglas:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Vinay Kumar:
And there’s so many other methods and processes that we can use for effectiveness, decision making, and problem solving. I would suggest to any leader, any professional starting up, learn these skills. Learn to ask, not tell. Learn to hold space, and listen, and let people share. Learn to hold your own opinion back, because I think there is so much power to hearing other people’s opinions. And I think personally right now, we need a lot more better listening skills in the world.
Douglas:
Yeah, we talked a little bit about that in the pre-show chat. I want to dive into that a little bit. Why is it so important right now that we embrace these listening skills? Why is it just so much more critical in this point in time?
Vinay Kumar:
Well, look at what’s going on around the world. I personally, I won’t say it’s just the last six months, or three months, or year. I think it’s been going on since the advent of social media, because social media was a one-way of communicating. People put out opinions out there. You can’t really have a live conversation so well using social media tools. So I think we started telling, rather than asking questions. It’s easier to post your opinion on any of those platforms, than to ask a question and hold a debate, right? So I personally think people forget to listen. We started becoming 140 characters focused and I’m glad they increased that character count, but it’s still not enough. I think it’s a great opportunity to get groups and hear opinions. We need to start to listen to each other better, ask better questions of each other, understand opinions, probe, clarify.
Vinay Kumar:
I mean it’s the same thing. In one way, facilitation is growing. But if you take another profession, coaching, right? Coaching is also growing. And coaching is exactly, it’s more one-to-one and one-to-small group, but there is also the power of asking good questions and listening.
Douglas:
I love that you bring up questions and how questions are so important as far as how we practice active listening if we don’t have good questions. So I’m curious, what are some of your go-to questions to get a group really thinking?
Vinay Kumar:
Well, the first few questions are pretty easy. It’s about asking what’s happening, why are we doing it this way. I think, what else could we be doing? What are we not doing that will help us get better at what we can do? Or, what are we missing here? So sometimes getting the group to step back and reflect. Why is it going … Sometimes the meta questions are also really cool, I like those. Why is it that we are thinking the way we are thinking right now? Right? And people go, “What do you mean?” I say, “Just think about this question. Why are we thinking this way? What’s making us think this way and move us down this path?”
Douglas:
And you know, there’s an assumption baked in there, when you ask, “Why are we thinking this way?” There’s an assumption that we’re all thinking the same, so it’s also equally interesting to say, to ask people, “How are you thinking about this?”
Vinay Kumar:
Exactly.
Douglas:
So then they take a step back and label it, right? I interviewed Jan DeVisch not long ago and he was talking about his different thought patterns that people have, and if the group is operating at different thought patterns, then it’s going to be hard to get them aligned, because they’re seeing the world from different vantage points.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the questions I really like and I used it for the first time to be honest, I heard one of my colleagues, I mean, I read one of their articles and read about this question, and I threw it out. “We’ve had a great conversation here, everybody seems to be moving in one direction, so what is it that’s not being said is this room?” Right? And then, so they went and started looking at each other, who’s going to say it? I really found that to be a very powerful question.
Douglas:
Yes, 100%, if we can get those elephants kind of out in the open and make it safe to talk about them, we’re going to move forward. Even if we don’t move forward as far as we had hoped, we might have moved in a more provocative direction that’s going to create more opportunity in the future.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love surfacing the elephant in the room, and it’s actually easy to surface the elephant. It’s what to do with it once it pops up, right?
Douglas:
Yeah, let’s talk about that. What do we need to think about, the space we have created with that elephant? Or the space we’ve consumed with it and how we move through that?
Vinay Kumar:
Well, one thing is, there’s a pre-condition though to surfacing the elephant in the room, right? Or whatever the elephants that may be. You’ve got to create a safe environment first, and also be considered extremely neutral by everybody in that room, because otherwise, you’re causing more damage. I think a lot of facilitators struggle with the elephant in the room, because they don’t know what to do with it once it pops up and they’re looking at it.
Vinay Kumar:
So having a plan, sometimes even holding the position and saying, “Okay, now that it’s out, does the group want to solve this now? Or do we want to take a break and come back to this at a later stage?” We don’t have to go into solution focus right now. Sometimes it’s just a classic change curve, right? Sometimes we just have to get people to share it first, then give time for it to marinate, simmer, whatever it might be. Or people to reflect or sleep on it, and then come back the next day.
Douglas:
Yeah.
Vinay Kumar:
So many people take a timeout for example.
Douglas:
100%, because there could be contradictions there, right? Even though they realize it’s the elephant, there might be reasons why they need it there. Even though this thing causes problems, they might see a justification or a need for it, and so they need to unwrangle and unpack those things, and it takes time.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, and one of the other challenges is, you just said it, Douglas, you said time, right? If we surface it and then we’re looking at it, once again, oh my God, I’ve only got two hours in this group and this thing is going everywhere. And this is one of my pet peeves is, when people say parking lot. “Let’s put it in the parking lot.” Oh my God, you know, it’s like, then you can’t find the car in the parking lot. You forgot where you parked. Yes, I’m not dismissing the value of a parking lot, but the elephant definitely doesn’t go there. That’s too big, right?
Douglas:
Yeah, right.
Vinay Kumar:
And I’ve seen people do that, say, “Okay, this is a big issue. I think we need to deal with that later, so let’s put it in the parking lot.” It’ll consume the entire parking lot.
Douglas:
It’s a bit dismissive too, right?
Vinay Kumar:
It is, yeah, absolutely, and groups see through it. They say, “Why did we even bother bringing it up then?”
Douglas:
Yeah, that sounds like it’s better to acknowledge it and let the group think about what our next steps might be. Whether we’re going to talk about it at a later date, we’re going to unpack it a little bit right now, or … But just kind of dismissing it and moving on is we’re probably going to make it more difficult for them to bring it up in the future.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, one of my favorite examples I’ll quote was, I was running a workshop for a senior leadership team in a resort. I had flown in, they had all flown in from another town and we were all there. It was supposed to be just a two day workshop doing some strategy work. But at the start of day two, this elephant surfaced, and I really just put it out to the group and said, “Let’s take a break. How does the team want to deal with this? Do we think it’s critical? That it has to get dealt with?” So we spent three hours just discussing how to tackle the elephant and one of the decisions the group said was, “Okay, it looks like this is going to take more time. Can we just take a few hours off? All go back to our computers, see if we can free up our calendar for another day, extend our reservation in this hotel and Vinay, can you stay an extra day and work with us on it?”
Vinay Kumar:
So that two day workshop became a third day, because that group was so open to tackling it and giving it that time, right? And I think the agility of a facilitator and the group is so critical at that time. I mean, this happened really, extremely rare. I mean, we’ve added a few hours here and there, but this was a whole day that the group said, “We need to take time to do this.” And still, I am impressed with the group willing to do that.
Douglas:
100% and, you know, I think it’s maybe one of those challenges for facilitators when, from the perspective of the facilitator, we are expected to keep time, we have to design agendas that are tight, and drive the outcomes. But then when this curveball is thrown at us, when this thing surfaces and emerges, being willing to adapt on the fly is, I think we’re talking about a level of sophistication that really separates, I would say, a skilled facilitator from the novice. And so what kind of advice do you have as far as, when you’re in that moment, and you’re in that zone of making sure like, okay, we got to keep things moving along so we can stay on track, then something surfaces that’s clearly going to potentially throw it off track, how do you distinguish between do we actually spend time on this, or do we stick to the agenda?
Vinay Kumar:
One of my fundamental rules is, well, I do one of three things, or sometimes a combination of all three. First is, I’ve learned through experience not to over-design the time, right? So if you start saying, “For 15 minutes, we’re going to spend on this, the next 10 minutes, we’ll move here” et cetera, right? So if you do that, then you feel the pressure of time even more. So what I often, well, my design today is, by the end of the day I want to get the group to achieve these outcomes, as the group has discussed. And this is the general flow I’m going to go with, because for me the quality of the conversation of the group is more important than the speed of the conversation of the group. So it gives me that little bit of flexibility.
Vinay Kumar:
The second is, when these curveballs or these things that come up, I often put it out to the group and say, “This is what has come up. How does the group want to handle this?” And if they say, “We want to tackle it?” then I’ll say, “As a facilitator, it’s my responsibility to let you know that, yes the group can tackle it. What else from the objectives that the group wants to achieve today, do you want to deprioritize or reprioritize, and does the group think we can achieve all of it today?” Especially after that incident I just gave you about that leadership team where it took an extra day. That’s something that the leadership team decided they needed another day. I just was very lucky to have asked the question, “What does the group want to do with that? Do you want to deal with it now, later? How do you want to tackle it?” And the group went in with it. So I learnt a lot from the group, power of their decision, because it’s their choice, their ownership, their accountability. So that’s the second thing I do, put it back to the group.
Vinay Kumar:
The third thing that I often do is, I also try to hold myself as a facilitator in check. I am, my colleagues will, if you were to speak to my colleagues, they’ll tell you, I’m pretty … I’m not a very patient person. So I have to be very emotionally aware of how I am feeling and the more I feel under pressure, I actually become more aware of my assumptions and biases coming involved. So I check myself, and I put myself sensing back to the group. “Guys, I’m feeling a little bit of a pressure here on whether I should tackle this or not.” And actually I had, once a group said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. It was just a small comment for us. We have discussed this particular elephant many times in the office. Since you asked, we voiced it, but it doesn’t need to get that here, so don’t stress about it.” So the group gave me that guidance as well, what their expectations of me were at that moment.
Douglas:
I love that you brought up feelings and being aware of what’s surfacing in your body, because that’s something that people always talk about, like it’s hard to read the virtual room, or someone recently just said, “It’s hard to read the Zoom” which I thought was funny. But the thing is, our body is a massive antenna, and even if we’re in a Zoom, those feelings will start to bubble up. And you were talking about, if we can tune into those, there are amazing signals that tell us how we might need to vocalize those things and do a check in, so that’s amazing. And I think that more facilitators really tune into that, because it’s a gift that’s coming up, and if you just let your emotions or your feelings get the best of you, you’re going to do disservice for the team.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, in fact you just reminded me, you asked me how do we do this, right? How do I do it? One of the things I’ve learnt and this is experience, and I also learned by errors that I’ve made, but there’s two aspects. There’s the doing of the facilitator and the being of the facilitator. When you’re in the doing of the facilitator zone, you’re worrying about what’s coming next, what activity you’ve got to accomplish, but you’ve got to pause that and say, “I need to be a facilitator here.” The doing can be flexible. The doing can change, but the being has to be consistent. If that makes sense?
Douglas:
Absolutely, I love that. It’s like, we had to show up and we had to tune in to our showing up, but one of the things we love to talk about in our facilitation training, is when you’re walking into the room and everyone’s felt it. You walk into the room and you’re like, this room is tense. If you make that assessment, but don’t verify that. If you don’t check in with the team and say, “Is it tense in here?” Then now you’ve made an assumption about that room that might not be true, and everything you do from then on is going to be impacted by that feeling that you have that … Like you were saying that assumption that this elephant was a big deal, but they’re like, “Oh no, we’ve talked about this a bunch.”
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, so I always ask permission. I set the ways of working upfront. The WOW with the group. And I hate calling them ground rules, that’s such a … it’s the group’s way of working, or how we are all going to collectively do our ways of working. I often say, “How are we going to share …” One of the questions I’ve started to ask, “How are we doing to share, pause and share how each one of us is feeling and what we are sensing in the room?” I’ve done it a couple of times and that’s been very useful.
Vinay Kumar:
And often I ask the group just, “How is everybody feeling? Where is everybody at? What are you sensing the mood in the room?” And after a while, I never assume that they want to know mine, but I’ve always when I asked a few people, they say, “So Vinay, what about you? How are you feeling? How are you sensing the room?” That gives me permission to say, “I’m sensing some tension here. I’m sensing some people are uncomfortable with the pace,” Or whatever it might be, and then that just opens it up for everybody.
Douglas:
What about when, have you ever had situations where you polled what are people feeling and sensing, and you feel like they’re only scratching the surface, or they’re not really opening up?
Vinay Kumar:
Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, just ask, so is that, what is … You ask a couple of probing questions, if it doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t go anywhere. I mean, there’s a few people who may open up, there’s a few people who may not. And we’ve got to be open to the diversity of thinking styles and how much people want to share of themselves in that room.
Douglas:
Yeah, this whole segment that we’ve been delving into, it has really been touching on this vulnerability of the facilitator, and I think it’s really important for facilitators to balance the honing of their craft and the professionalism that they bring to the situation. But also there’s vulnerability in showing people that they’re human, because it’s really easy to fall down this trap of like, “I’ve got to be perfect. I got to show up and I’ve got to run this thing.” Versus being human, showing people that you’re fallible, and that while you have studied this stuff and you’ve got a lot of experience, there’s no such thing as the perfect expert, and if we try to hold on too tightly to that, then we can’t be curious about the humans. We’re going to hold onto our agendas too tightly. We’re not going to allow things to slip and be fuzzy or squishy. And so, I just wanted to get your thoughts on this notion of being invulnerable as a facilitator.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, that comes back to my earlier thought, right? If you are focusing on the doing part only, that’s when you want to perfect the … The way I kind of do it, I do a lot of content based programs that I deliver as well. One of the things that I’m also called upon is, very, very simple high impactful presentations for senior executives, right? I do some work around that. One of the ways that I always say is, “The doing is the content, the being is the delivery.”
Vinay Kumar:
And what happens as a facilitator then, if you’re facilitating a group, your methods, processes, tools, your structure, is the doing part. But your doing is only piece. You can do everything else and still not achieve your outcomes, because it’s the being, the human element of participants and you, the group you’re in service to, and the group that has to come into play. I completely agree with you, I think.
Vinay Kumar:
Now, there’s a caveat there. We can’t overdo the being as well. If you only become the … when you work with a bunch of engineers, or being in Bangalore, I have a lot of IT companies as clients, and if you spend a lot of time getting into the, “So let’s discuss your feelings” et cetera, they say, “We want to get a move on” and they actually, “We want to accomplish this.” So it’s being able to bring it in when appropriate, when you’re sensing that room. So it’s a very fine balance between the two.
Douglas:
You know it takes intuition, I think, that’s part of reading the room. And also, ahead of time, I’m a big, big fan of doing stakeholder analysis, understanding who’s going to be in the room, what are they bringing? Where are they at? And we borrow a lot from learning experience design, where they really look at the students and like, what are the outcomes they want to drive for those student? And then, what are the students bringing into the room at that time? And if we can acknowledge that, then we can better support them, because if they’re very unreceptive to anything “Woo” then we better be very careful about that stuff, because if we alienate them, we’re not going to be able to take them on any journey.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely, I agree with you and I think it’s you can’t assume that they will not be, but you can’t assume that they will be either, right? So you have to, like you said, sense the room. And you spend at first, a little bit of time earning their trust.
Douglas:
Yeah.
Vinay Kumar:
Earning you know?
Douglas:
Yes.
Vinay Kumar:
They’re also watching whether you really hold the neutrality of it as well, and one of the things that I talk with my colleagues a lot, is when groups are doing flip chart work, and each facilitator has got their own style, I tend to be away from every group. I’ll stand away and just observe the dynamics at play, rather than … So my colleagues, and especially when I co-facilitate, I love having a co-facilitator who has got a very different style. He or she may want to walk up to each group and spend a minute, and work with them in groups, whereas I like to step back and observe the room. So those small things play a role.
Douglas:
I love that you brought that up, because as a young facilitator, when I was working with co-facilitators, sometimes I would challenge myself. I’d go, well look what they’re doing. Why are they doing that differently? I’m doing this wrong. But then as I got more comfortable in myself and my role, I began to appreciate these differences and sometimes it helped me just watching them and the way they behaved, it helped me understand how I differentiate and why I appreciate that. And I can appreciate them for how they are and then when we come together, we can create this dual kind of experience, which is cool. And that was really fascinating to hear you talk about that experience as well. Have you noticed other things about co-facilitators that you appreciate? That it’s just nice to have them along for the journey?
Vinay Kumar:
I love co-facilitating with people who have got very different styles or different skill sets. For example, I design at a very high level flow. I’ve got others who are very detail-oriented. They get all the material together, so they bring in the structure, I bring in the flexibility, right? They bring in some of the ability to ask some probing questions that I may have missed out. I’ve seen that. I’ve also seen, you know, I’ve got my nightmare stories of co-facilitation, where people have, they walk up to this group and say, “I needed it bullet-pointed it, but you guys are using a star as a bullet point. Can you use a dash please? Just to be consistent with all the other groups.” And I’m like, “Really? You want a bullet point with the same font, and color and …” Just let it go, right? It’s sort of OCD facilitation, I don’t know.
Douglas:
Yeah.
Vinay Kumar:
But I am the other way, I’m sort of a little bit of a klutz with materials. I kind of move materials around and I forget, “Where the hell did I keep this thing?” And it’s great to have someone who keeps an eye on these things for me. And I pick up some things that they are not necessarily … When they sometimes say, “Okay, we’ll wrap up this conversation, because we need to move into the next area of discussion” and I’m like, you know, we have an agreed signal, and I say, “You know what? The quality or the cost? Let’s put it to the group. So do we want to wrap this up and what’s the group’s thoughts? How’s the group feeling? Do we want to move forward? Where is the group at?” Rather than us saying, “Let’s move forward” you know?
Douglas:
Yeah, I think even if you don’t have a lot of, I would say, difference in your facilitation skills, just having someone else in the room noticing things that you maybe didn’t notice, or just checking in on things, you know, if you’re just looking the other way and something happens. And I think that especially in Zoom, where you’re in Teams or whatever virtual tool you’re using, having another set of eyes on all the screens can be really helpful, just to notice things.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, absolutely and the one thing I absolutely love about co-facilitation is the debrief and the feedback that we share with each other, right? That’s for me, the most invaluable, because when you are … We have to set that up before obviously. That this is the kind of feedback I’d like from you. This is what I’d like you to look out, things. That’s part of my development. So if you have done that well, you’ll get some amazingly significant feedback at the end.
Douglas:
100%. It’s similar to the peer review stuff you were talking about the IAF are doing, right? Where even when you’re working with clients, if you’ve got someone in the room who can give you some honest feedback, it’s such a great way to improve and grow.
Vinay Kumar:
Absolutely, and I’m sure … Do you do a lot of co-facilitation yourself, Douglas?
Douglas:
I try to when we can if the budget allows it, and then we do a weekly facilitation practice, where we invite, we bring in folks from our community together and just try things out, and we always do feedback before we shut the meeting down, just so that, not only do people get advice on how to improve whatever they’re experimenting with, but they also get really solid facilitation advice. “Oh maybe you should’ve prompted this differently.” Or …
Vinay Kumar:
Right.
Douglas:
… “When you said this, it was a little confusing.” So yeah, it’s something we try to do as often as possible, but sometimes the budgets just don’t allow for bringing in extra heads.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, so if it’s in the same town, I sometimes bring in a co-facilitator as an observer, somebody, as part of it, just to learning, because I also say, “I will have a colleague come in with me, and assisting me, or working with me on this program, we’re not …” Yes, we have clients, you know, “Am I going to get billed for this?” “No, you’re not.” But then they understand the value of having two people there, and more importantly, it’s growth for both of us.
Douglas:
Yeah, that’s a good point, and I love it when we can make it happen, and I encourage people to do it as well, it’s great.
Vinay Kumar:
It’s a lot easier in the virtual world.
Douglas:
Yeah.
Vinay Kumar:
For sure, right? Because-
Douglas:
No flights needed, right? And time zones, no concerns about time zones.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, no flights, no time zones, yeah. No, but one thing you mentioned about Zoom for example, or any technology, even observing who is unmuting themselves, because if they’re just getting the unmute button, that’s a signal for you, if you’re sensing that somebody wants to say something.
Douglas:
Absolutely.
Vinay Kumar:
Right? Just observing, keeping track of that and sometimes on digital platforms, you’ve got able to look out for, the cues are different.
Douglas:
That’s right.
Vinay Kumar:
The cues are just different.
Douglas:
Yeah, and there’s one interface for Zoom called Macro, you basically install it and then log into it, like you would Zoom, but it’s a different interface. And it shows you who’s been talking the most.
Vinay Kumar:
Oh yeah.
Douglas:
And they just get bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
Vinay Kumar:
Oh wow, cool.
Douglas:
But to your point, if there’s different cues or signals, if the software could do a better job of pointing those out to the facilitator, it would be great. But where we’re at today, it’s having an extra person that’s scanning for that stuff can definitely help out.
Douglas:
I wanted to circle back really quick about something that you said in the beginning, in our pre-chat, and I just wanted to see if there is some more to explore there around this notion of a neutral process facilitator.
Vinay Kumar:
Yeah, so there’s group process facilitation and then there’s facilitative learning, right? The group process facilitator is typically neutral. So for example when I am called upon to help a leadership team define their strategy for the next three years. I am neutral, I couldn’t care less what strategy they come up with, as long as the group is satisfied with what they have come up with. My neutrality in fact, I often say, “The more I know about the company and the more I know about their business, the greater the pressure on me to maintain my neutrality, and not jump in with my content expertise.” But that’s a very, very simple perspective.
Vinay Kumar:
But there may be community based facilitation, there may be community conversations and there are two points of view there. How do I, or how does any facilitator hold their space and be neutral in that, not take this side or that side, right? One of the most challenging conversations I ever facilitated was a group working on their diversity and inclusion strategy for moving forward, because they had feedback from an employee survey that the company was not diverse enough. They hadn’t created a very inclusive culture and this leadership team came together and were having this conversation. And some of the stuff that was being said in the room, I had to take a, you know, remind myself hold your tongue, this is not your place. You want to just jump in.
Vinay Kumar:
So I really felt my neutrality being questioned, myself, my self-awareness. I kept stepping further back and letting their conversation happen without even being in earshot of the conversation, because they were just capturing it and putting upon a wall, and then leading through clarifying questions. But I think that neutrality is such a critical piece.
Douglas:
That’s interesting. Do you think that has to do with your desire or your style to step back and observe the room from a distance, so that it helps you keep that neutrality?
Vinay Kumar:
It helps, but to be honest, it’s not, it’s a learnt style. I have stepped in early on. I have received feedback, I have made my mistake. I often say that the facilitators who have been in this profession for over seven, eight, 10 years, we’ve been very fortunate to learn through trial and error. We made some errors, we got feedback, et cetera. Today I think there’s less room for errors, which means peer reviews. I like what you said, if you are doing those practice sessions, that’s when you have got to put people through situations where they are stepping back. Are they jumping in to share their opinion? What’s the kind of question? Is it a leading question? Is there an implicit bias behind the question? Those things we need to deal with in a lab or in a practice environment, because when we are in service with the actual group, we have to be even more careful of holding our space in a neutral space with everyone. If that makes sense? So I’ve learnt this skill of stepping back as a way of managing my derailers.
Douglas:
Yeah, absolutely. Well Vinay, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you today. I want to just give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with some final thoughts.
Vinay Kumar:
Well, I would say a couple things. One is, facilitation is here to stay. Facilitation can be used in many different contexts. Every profession needs to learn how to use it, and in this time where, whether it’s in society, communities, in where you live, in your business, there is an opportunity to bring people together and leverage the wisdom of the group. So I always tell people, “You don’t want to be a sage on the stage, you want to be a guide by the side” and that’s what a facilitator does.
Douglas:
Excellent, well Vinay, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for joining me.
Vinay Kumar:
Great, thanks so much Douglas. Stay safe.
Douglas:
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control The Room. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released, and if you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.
