How Observation and Play Enhance Your Facilitation Style

How Observation and Play Enhance Your Facilitation Style

“I take the opportunity to build culture and connection with that team to make them stronger. And that’s something that’s really rewarding for me—when I leave the process to see after nine months of working with them that this team is much more close, more connected, and trusts each other more..”- Julie Baeb

In this episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast, host Douglas Ferguson speaks with Julie Baeb, a Senior Consultant at Team Works. Julie shares her diverse career journey from advertising to architecture and eventually education, where she developed a STEM enrichment program. They discuss pivotal moments in Julie’s facilitation career, including a transformative professional development session and a human-centered design retreat she led for school administrators. Julie emphasizes the importance of icebreakers, observation, and incorporating play and movement into sessions to foster engagement and psychological safety. The episode highlights Julie’s commitment to building strong, connected teams through thoughtful facilitation.

Show Highlights

[00:01:40] Building Community through Facilitation

[00:07:02] Authentic Experiences and Human-Centered Design

[00:13:38] Observation and Innovation

[00:15:38] Observation in Facilitation

[00:22:28] The Role of Play and Embodiment

[00:29:59] Facilitating Children vs. Adults

[00:36:17] Challenges in Building Culture

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About the Guest

Julie Baeb is a senior consultant at TeamWorks where she partners with education leaders in public school districts to improve systems and experiences of students, staff and families. Innovation and creative problem-solving is a common thread throughout her career, with past roles in advertising, architecture and K12 education. Julie holds a Masters Degree in Architecture from Rhode Island School of Design and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Drake University. 

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.

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Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab podcast where I speak with Voltage Control certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances of enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab. If you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com.

Today I’m with Julie Baeb at TeamWorks, where she works as a senior consultant. Julie partners with education leaders and public school districts to improve systems and experiences of students, staff, and families. Welcome to the show, Julie.

Julie Baeb:

Thanks, Douglas. I’m really happy to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s great to have you, and I’m really looking forward to our conversation. What an amazing pre-show chat we had and lots of interesting things to dig into.

Julie Baeb:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

So just to start off, I’d love to hear … I know that there’s a couple of moments that were pivotal for you that informed your opinions, your early experiences with facilitation. I’d love to hear a little bit more about those.

Julie Baeb:

Well, I started out … well, I’ve had kind of a meandering career path. I started out actually in advertising, ended up getting my degree in architecture, worked in that field for about 10 years, and then found myself in the world of education, K-12 education, and taking my background in architecture, I started creating and building a STEM-based enrichment program for elementary school students. I had an opportunity to attend a professional development session in my district. It was like a summer institute kind of deal, and I signed up and sent in an application. I was able to make it into the course, and I was really excited to take this learning, apply it to what I was doing with my STEM students. I remember right away just being captivated by even just the opener, the way she built community with the group.

It was fun and I thought … I’m like, “Wow, okay. So these meetings and sessions, they don’t have to be boring and sit and get. They can be interactive and with this group of …” We have a big district, there was a lot of different people in the room I’d never met, and by the end of the session, we’re exchanging phone numbers and we’re feeling connected and how can I support you in this work? But she did that. She facilitated that for us, to the point where we were each other’s cheerleaders. But that doesn’t just happen. You can’t just walk into a room and … someone needs to facilitate that experience. So I remember thinking to myself, “Huh, that’s cool. This is a job. She goes around in districts and does this”, and it stood out to me.

Douglas Ferguson:

What do you think was so pivotal to creating that environment that allowed people or just encouraged people to start exchanging phone numbers and have those deeper connections? Do you remember any qualities or anything that showed up for you there?

Julie Baeb:

I mean, it’s silly, but I think there is power in those welcome activities, connecting icebreakers. People gloss over those and are like, “That’s silly”, and “Oh, that’s lame”, but actually it’s super critical and not only to do it in the opener, but in the closing activity to bring the community. I remember … I think one of the activities, and it was at the end, we just did a rock, paper, scissors tournament where you do rock, paper, scissors and the winner moves on to find someone else, but the loser is the cheerleader. So you stay behind the person and you keep cheering to the point where the two finalists and everyone is literally screaming and cheering and clapping for the two finalists, but it actually carries over. It actually is like … you leave, “Yeah, way to go”, and you’re excited for the winners and also just excited to help each other and support each other.

I don’t know. It created a vibe in the room by doing that, and I think sometimes we overlook the power of that. And so it’s critical to me, even when I facilitate a really simple Zoom meeting, I always have some kind of connection, welcome activity opener, I think it’s really important, and a close. I always want to have a moment to reflect on what happened in the meeting, so that’s important for me to do that too.

Douglas Ferguson:

I know, there’s this kind of undercurrent of icebreakers are cheesy, and why waste our time doing that? But to your point, so powerful if they’re done well. I don’t know if you noticed this, but you talked about when you remembered the occasion about each other’s cheerleaders, and then you’re telling a story about a rock, paper, scissor tournament where the whole point is to be cheerleaders.

Julie Baeb:

I know.

Douglas Ferguson:

So that’s funny use of words there, right?

Julie Baeb:

Actually, any activity in any of my workshops, I think I spend a lot of time thinking about how is this connected to the purpose of the session. It’s not trivial or just, “Oh, that’d be fun. I literally think about”, okay, how can I drive the message through the activity … just like rock, paper, scissors, and we have each other’s back, you don’t know it at the time, and it’s just fun, but to have an activity that supports ultimately the purpose of the session, that’s something that I think about a lot.

Douglas Ferguson:

A super important point you brought up there, and it makes me think about something we often talk about, which is if you do something with a group and you turn to the group afterwards and say, “Why did we just do that?” and everyone’s like, just staring back at you with blank stairs, then maybe you should turn that question inward. So I think it’s super critical, and probably the number one reason why people don’t like icebreakers is because folks just grab something out of the grab bag without thinking much about it.

Julie Baeb:

Right, and I think the other thing … I mean, with my background as a STEM teacher and an architect, I’m really visual, and it’s important to me to make every experience authentic. When I was a STEM teacher, we’re not just going to talk about bridges, we’re going to build a bridge. I mean, my coworkers would go … I’m like, “You guys, we should build a real bridge. We should walk on it.” I was always thinking that way, like how can we make this as real as possible, life-size as possible? That’s always going through my brain. That still carries over in my work with adults.

I mean, there was a session I facilitated. When I was still in education before I was a consultant, I facilitated a day long human-centered design retreat for the administrators in our district, so all the directors, department leads, the superintendent, all the principals in the district, they come together for a two-day retreat in the summer, and one day was focused on human-centered design, and I facilitated for them to just identify problems in their department or in their school, and then to be able to solve that through rapid prototyping. Then they presented to the whole group what they came up with.

But as I was thinking about this and collaborating with my colleagues on designing it, I’m like, well, the first step in human-centered design is gaining empathy for your user. Well, we can’t just guess at that. We have to have kids. So I literally arranged for a busload of kids, and they came to this offsite location. It wasn’t even at the district, it was in the middle of the summer, and it was quite an effort, but we got a busload of kids, and it was a surprise. So they didn’t know the kids were coming. So I do this big intro on what HCD is and do our welcoming activities, and then we talk about empathy, how to gain empathy, ask them to write some questions. What would you ask a student regarding this problem that your department or your school is facing?

Then literally doors open and the kids came in and sat down with the administrators, and then the administrators had an opportunity to interview those students. Then later the kids actually collaborated on the prototype and got to listen to the presentations of the solutions at the end of the session.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that, and as a huge fan of prototypes, super curious, what was the nature of the prototype? Prototypes can take on all sorts of forms, and so I’m curious in that moment, what kind of materials was it made out of and how did it take shape?

Julie Baeb:

I’m a big fan of prototypes too, Douglas, and being a former architect, I’m all about build it, make it and then that will tell you what you need, right?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes.

Julie Baeb:

I mean, prototypes are not just to get information, the test from the user, it’s also for the designer. As you make it … I used to tell my students, your hands have brains. So sometimes you overthink and you’re like, “I don’t know”, and you’re trying to put this thing together. Sometimes you just got to start working and you got to start making it, and then it will tell you, it’ll inform you as a designer what to do next. So in that particular session, and it was a super-fast sprint, I did do everything from pipe cleaner’s paper, make a model to act it out. So I encouraged them to do just a play it out, show us. So put a name tag on, make a costume.

One of the building and grounds team had … it was regarding vape detectors in the bathrooms at the high school, but they play out a whole scenario with someone’s the student, someone’s the … the alarm goes off. So they played it out. They literally played it out, and I think some people too, there were some scheduling, things about bell schedule or changing the schedule, so they drew out the schedule. So it was just like … but everything, when you actually create it, when you actually make it, when you write it down, when you build it, then there’s something to respond to. So those students could look at the prototypes that the administrators made and say, “Oh, yeah, but that’s not going to work.” So I’m a big fan of prototypes, and I still try to implement or build that into the work I do at TeamWorks now today through different design change facilitation work that we do. It’s important.

Douglas Ferguson:

It reminds me of building physical things like woodworking and whatnot. It’s like if you’ve got 50 pieces to cut, you’re probably going to cut one piece and make sure that it fits and that you didn’t transpose a measurement or something, right?

Julie Baeb:

Oh, yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

And once you’ve got confidence, then you can kind of do things at scale, you can move faster. This idea of hands having intelligence I think is really neat.

Julie Baeb:

It helps me. I think because when I was in architecture school, I was an overthinker. I mean, I still maybe am a little bit, but I went into that experience. I had to stop overthinking. There was a deadline. I had a model I had to produce by 8:00 AM the next day, and I just had to make it, and I learned a lot from that. I apply a lot of that now, that just don’t overthink it, your hands have brains. Just start building the slide deck. Just start making the thing.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that you had them acting things out, and there’s a method in Liberating Structures called improv prototyping. It’s basically a structure, loose structure, around this idea of, well, if we engage in some curious exploration as a group, we might solve the problem more so than just thinking. So that’s the idea that not only our hands, but our bodies can have intelligence. My favorite story about that is there was a clinic that was plagued with MRSA, and they were trying to figure out solutions to it, and so they were going around and saying, “All right, well, what’s our protocol for patients?” They were kind of going through these motions together, watching, “Well, how do we respond to this? How do we respond to that?” One of the things they noticed is when the doctor was leaning over the patient, the neck tie was dragging all around the patient. It’s like, “Oh, that’s a vector of transmission.”

Julie Baeb:

Yeah. Right? Oh, man. I mean, the power of observation is huge. There is a district that provides special education services for a group of metro area districts, and we did a big project with them trying to figure out … they have a big wait list, more students want to be there than they can accommodate, and trying to figure out how to have those students be served and not be on a wait list. The one thing that I really pushed for was just observe. Let’s observe what’s happening in the classroom. Let’s observe what’s in those member district sites and not make assumptions as a design team what needs to be done. Let’s just go see what’s happening. So just like the observation of the doctor and the tie, noticing that there’s some ways actually that this intermediate district can support the classroom teachers before the student even gets referred.

There’s some tools, there’s some processes and ways that we can support them and coach them without the student having to leave that member district. So noticing that, like, “Oh, what if we shared this resource? What if we coached them on this way of handling that situation?” But you wouldn’t know that without observing and seeing and being in the room to start to realize some solutions. I really do believe a lot of powerful ideas come out of, again, connecting with the user, understanding their needs, talking to them directly or observing them. There’s actually … I coached a student innovation team back when I was in that school district role, and they were middle schoolers, and the kickoff was “Go observe.” I mean, literally there’s a schedule, there’s an interviewing schedule, and there was an observation schedule and a rotation for half a day. So we had some kids that were just going in classrooms and just sitting there, and they were like, “What are we supposed to do?” I’m like, “No, just watch.”

So there’s one group that came back and said, “You know what’s kind of interesting, Mrs. Baeb?” I’m like, “What?” “Everybody puts their stuff on the floor. They don’t put it on …” Because the desk is tiny. They’re those old school with the built-in desk and the chair. So they have their iPad, they have books, they have notebooks, they have their water bottle, they might have a pencil bag. So all this stuff is sitting on the floor. Ultimately, they were able to create something that they called the seat saddle. It literally is a cushioned thing that you put on a regular student chair with little saddle bags on the side so that you can slide the iPad and the notebooks. This was actually produced by Education Furniture Company here in Minnesota and made it into their catalog and actually got produced and made and so .. Anyway, it was an interesting partnership with them and the idea of coming up with ideas just through observation.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s super cool. The power of the improv prototyping is that you can simulate these observation moments, because sometimes perhaps the group isn’t totally bought in to the power of observation or it’s going to be really costly or inconvenient to put ourselves in an observation situation. So let’s simulate it. Then when we learn things in the simulation, then there’s a lot of hunger. They’re like, “Oh, let me pay attention when I’m in these moments, too.”

Julie Baeb:

Right. So true.

Douglas Ferguson:

How would you say observation shows up in your facilitation style?

Julie Baeb:

I think you do have to read the crowd and know when you need to pivot, when there’s strong emotion or when something … you need to spend more time there. I was just facilitating a session last week with a group of staff that were just internally bumping up against each other, some differences, and just from a culture standpoint, things weren’t very solid. There’s some kind of gossiping and just not connected and aligned, and so you kind of do have to start up here. You can’t dig into that right off the bat. So we kind of worked our way down through the levels to get to that point. But to just kind of pause and observe when … there are moments where you see some tension or you need to stop and talk about, “Okay, let’s talk more about that”, or “Let’s address that.”

I mean, as a facilitator, I think it’s your job. You have to be courageous and name things that you see, but make people feel safe too. I mean, it’s a balancing act to be able to facilitate those hard conversations and notice when you need to pause. But we … actually, speaking of Liberating Structures, I used TRIZ in that session, and the group started out by defining their department’s purpose and then their desired culture. Then that question, you throw in, “Okay, so how could we fail miserably at achieving that desired culture and the purpose that we’ve defined for our department?” What’s nice about it is people laugh. They’re saying silly things, but then they’re saying some real things too, and taking that moment to then stop and say what on this list are we remotely maybe a little bit actually doing here? When they circled it and kind of stood back, and then that’s where the hard conversations kind of began, but what can we do about it?

So ending on what are some action steps we could take to stop doing this or start doing X, Y, Z. I just have to say Liberating Structures, and I learned about that through my certification with Voltage Control, that was such a great resource. I come back to it weekly. I literally use those … I mean, I use them in all my sessions now. I think what’s so great about my training and what I learned with Voltage Control through the certification, I mean, before I was very well versed in how to facilitate a human-centered design workshop, and there were steps, and I just kind of did it with students. I did it with staff, families, community. I knew how to do it, administrators. But once I learned about Liberating Structures and other techniques, it’s great. It’s just like … more of a recipe.

These are ingredients. This is the purpose of the session. What do I need to pull in order to achieve that outcome? Always when I work with my clients, one of my first questions is, what does success look like when we’re done in three hours, when we’re done in four hours? Then that gives me that purpose and what I’m aiming for, and I can pull in every activity, every icebreaker, every moment to converge and make a decision. It’s all grounded in that purpose and Liberating Structures, I do, I pull from that all the time.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s a fantastic repository. I think you’re hitting on something there that I think is true for a lot of folks. If I were to really take a step back, I could tie it into something you said even earlier, which is … I think it was in the pre-show chats. I don’t think this came up yet, but a lot of people relate to this idea of being an accidental facilitator, doing the things, but not really having the vocabulary of realizing necessarily what you’re doing or that you’re showing up in those ways. Then you start to key in on it. Usually the keying in on it is related to some sort of framework methodology, or it could be industry specific.

So design thinking is a popular one. A lot of times those have recipes and, “Oh, here’s how you do it. Just go through this checklist and you’re good.” Then the next level of mastery is when you start to realize, “Okay, I can kind of improv a little bit here because now I’ve learned enough tools. I’ve started to see how things fit together in different ways, and now I can assemble things that are really custom and really bespoke for the group that’s coming together.”

Julie Baeb:

I was just a human-centered design, design thinking facilitator machine. I kept doing it over and over again. I think where I started to break away was there was some professional development that I was facilitating for our district. I was collaborating with some colleagues that … it was all about how space shapes your learning and learning experiences, the power of your environment. With my architecture background, when I heard about this opportunity, I was like, “Yes, yes. Sign me up, I’ll help.” So I started facilitating these cohorts of teachers meet four times a year, and there’s where the riff started coming in as far as facilitating the thinking and the creativity, but it wasn’t fully a script of human-centered design, do this, this, this. Then things started to kind of domino. After that administrative retreat I talked about, there were department heads who came to me and said, “Could you help me? Our department’s having this problem. Could you come for a half a day?” “Sure.”

And then I was like, “Oh, this is a little bit different. Okay, how do I … ” There was a foundation for our district that called on me and said, “Could you facilitate a session?” Again, I started just asking that question, what does success look like? I had to just say, “What do you want out of this time with your group? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to accomplish?” Then I just had to really pull back and think, okay, what would get us there? How could we do that? But still always making it fun. I mean, I think with my background in teaching and architecture, I love to bring the fun and the creativity. I mean, people just light up. They’re more engaged.

I mean, even I bring Legos to my sessions. I have a prompt to have about with educators, what is your purpose as an educator, and then build it. So then they have to build it with Legos. There’s just nuances that come when you build your purpose versus just tell your elbow partner, “This is my purpose as an educator.” Some little things come out, little stories and little snippets about the person when you take Legos and build it. It’s different.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s that hand-brain connection again that we were talking about earlier.

Julie Baeb:

Yes, absolutely.

Douglas Ferguson:

Love that. I’m seeing this theme of play emerge again, which you spoke to briefly when you were mentioning TRIZ. People laughing, and then the truth was coming in around the edges of that laughter. Or maybe oftentimes I’ve noticed the room is getting really boisterous in a TRIZ, and I’m like, “Oh, we’re going to have some real juice at the end of this” because they’re willing to say some stuff when they’re in that mode. I don’t think there’s enough dialogue around … I mean, sure, there’s lots of stuff around play, creativity, laughter, and the power of it, but I don’t think there’s a lot of conversation around laughter and psychological safety. It seems to me, as I’m reflecting on it now and thinking about my experiences and what you’re saying is that’s really all unlocked for teams. If they’re laughing together, they tend to feel more safe and act in ways that would indicate safety.

Julie Baeb:

Absolutely. I think another Liberating Structure, but the 25-10 crowdsourcing, I’ve used that a couple times. I think there’s something about … I don’t know why … that one’s a playful one too, though. When you’re putting the ideas and you’re shuffling around the group and scoring it, but there’s less pressure than if we sat and looked at chart paper, which ideas are the best ones here, and I like this one. It’s like there’s something when you gamify it where you’re writing down the idea and it’s anonymous and people are just scoring it and passing around, I play music so people are dancing and they’re passing along the cards, that make it … it lightens the mood. It makes it less, I don’t know, heavy and serious. But then you can still analyze it and you can say, “Yeah, I like this idea. I don’t like this idea.”

I think it also gives voice to everybody in the room. It levels the playing field because there definitely is a dynamic with leaders and authority and people backing off on sharing their opinions when they think, “Well, they’re the decision makers, so they’ll just decide anyway.” So when you find ways to give a voice to everyone in the room that’s been invited to contribute, that’s a good way to do it.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. It’s certainly one of my favorites, and it’s interesting too that you talked about there’s a lot of dynamics going on there, but you made me think on the overanalyzing piece. There’s certainly this phenomenon of because of the speed and because the music’s going, everyone’s moving around, everyone’s standing too, and they know … especially after round one, they know, “Okay, I’m going to have to shuffle this pretty quick, so I just got to score this thing”, I think it forces people to really go with their gut versus really overthink it. So they might actually score something higher than they would’ve, and they might be willing to take bigger risks because they’re going with what really feels true to them.

Julie Baeb:

I think that’s so true. I think I’ve spent also, just when I think about my career, so much of it overthinking and being logical versus going with my gut. I’ve just started embracing my gut in the last, I don’t know, five, 10 years. It works pretty well. I think a lot of us don’t trust it and overthink, and I am trying to go with my gut more.

Douglas Ferguson:

There’s a lot of fun ways to bring in embodiment into activities, and I think that’s a big part of 25-10 too, is that people are getting on their feet, they’re moving around, they’re handing these cards to each other. So it can be fantastic to get people just up and moving. I mean, even something as simple as a human histogram. What ways have you experimented with embodiment or just kind of movement in the space?

Julie Baeb:

Well, it’s important to me that there’s a play back and forth, that you’re not just in your chair. I do a lot of virtual sessions too, and I do have some background in, when I was in that school district, prior to my consulting job, we actually had … as a training PD session, I was an innovation coach and supported … we had at the time a crowdsource innovation program where staff could submit ideas to make the district better, and I came alongside those … what we called idea champions to help develop proof of concept of their idea, and the innovation coaches … we had the opportunity to partner with Brave New Workshop, they’re an improv group here in Minneapolis, and I learned all sorts of great improv games. I still weave that into my work too. So even with going back to a Zoom call where you’re sitting, sitting, sitting, I’ll just do a shakedown like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one two, three, and stuff like that, literally physically move your body because it just, I don’t know, it helps your brain.

People have been sitting all day, and then they have to get into a session with me from 5:00 to 8:00 PM virtually. That’s a lot. So I do try to look at ways to build in physical breaks. I’m mindful of breaks. People need that. You can’t just go, go, go for three hours straight. I think when I plan out my sessions, I think, okay, we’re sitting, now we’re going to turn and talk, now we’re going to get up. Now we’re going to work at chart paper. I do still use chart paper, and part of it, honestly, it’s just to get people standing. So instead of … I do love Mural and tools like that, but I do just really appreciate the need to stand up. So I think about that as I design a session. We’re down, we’re up, we’re moving, and then those welcoming connecting activities, I will literally …

I do a pick a side where it’s like coffee or tea, but I literally get them to physically cross the room. Coffee is on the side, tea is on the side, and people move through the room to go on the coffee side. So I mean, I think about that. I feel like movement is important. I think it helps your thinking and your creativity to move your body. So I try to weave that in.

Douglas Ferguson:

We had a really cool presentation at the summit this year from Solomon Masala, and he had this book called Zoom, and basically it was almost like a puzzle. The front cover of the book was the full picture, but each page of the book was a different zoom level, a different little square within the bigger image, and if you assembled them all together, or as you flip through it, it’s almost like you had a telescopic zoom and you were slowly zooming out. But the thing is, this guy is sitting on a boat, but then his shirt has boats on it. And what he had us do was we couldn’t show anyone in our little square. We had to assemble each other in the right order. So all we could talk about, “I’ve got a guy in a boat.” “Oh, me too.” “Oh, but do you see the whole boat?” “No.”

But meanwhile, you don’t know that, oh, this is the boat on the shirt, or is it the guy that’s on the boat? It’s this really awesome experience around not only bodily movement, but assumptions and communication, a little bit of leadership. When someone makes an epiphany, how are they communicating to that group and getting the group to respond? It was really fun.

Julie Baeb:

Very cool.

Douglas Ferguson:

So as we wrap up, I got one more question just about your work, and then we can kind of pivot to the future real quick and close out. So you’ve had the opportunity to work with children and adults. How would you compare and contrast facilitating children versus adults?

Julie Baeb:

That’s a good question. I think going back to that idea of your hands having brains, I think younger children can embrace that really easily. I think as kids get older, they become overthinkers, like adults, but when they’re younger, I think it’s easy for them to fully embrace that anything is possible. I can make anything. I can do anything. There’s that spirit within children, and that’s fun to see. When I was teaching this hands-on STEM enrichment program, it was always so rewarding. I don’t think kids get enough of that, of just making things and creating things. It’s always here’s the answer, two plus two equals four. Here’s how you do this thing and here’s your worksheet. I was not like that and I just enjoy the lighting up and just the, “oh my goodness, this is so exciting.” That was super rewarding for me, and I miss that actually.

I don’t get to do that anymore, and I do, I miss that of just that pure joy of making something and being the facilitator that helps them get to that solution and create that thing. But I still see that with adults. I still see that joy of, “oh, we came up with an answer”, or, “Oh my goodness …” I see that too with adults. It’s a little bit different, it takes us longer to get there, and we have bigger, weightier problems that we’re working through, but that’s why I do what I do.

As a facilitator, I come to my groups not saying, “I have the answer for you. This is what you should do.” They have the answers. It’s my job to coax it out of them. I did that with kids, and I do it with adults. I just have different tools in my toolkit to get there. But ultimately, it is coming up with these creative solutions and using the wisdom of the group and the room that’s assembled to get there. It’s just maybe a little bit different what we’re making or what we’re coming up with in the end, but similar techniques to get there, actually.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love that, and I especially love the question that seems so simple actually unearthed a critical part or a core component to why you facilitate.

Julie Baeb:

Yeah.

Douglas Ferguson:

Very cool. So as we think about the future and how the world’s evolving, how is that impacting your practice or the way you think about preparing for your practice and how things evolve? You mentioned that unlike the children, the adults have weightier issues. So what’s top of mind for you as you think about your growth and just supporting your clients and your peers and what’s necessary to do the good work right now?

Julie Baeb:

I definitely think, and I support K12 district administrators, leaders, ultimately with the goal to create the best experiences for student, staff and families. We come at that from different ways, different angles, different processes, but I definitely think as I do the work that I do … I mean, culture is so critical and I do feel in the world of education right now there’s definitely … I mean, it’s a very trying time for educators. It’s not a field that people are running to right now. I think that things are getting more complicated and I do see, as I talk with educators, the importance of building trust and a strong culture I think can carry you through and weather any storm, and really facilitation can do that. Sometimes you need an outside perspective, someone else to come in to help you get there, and I do think sometimes it gets overlooked like, “Well, we really need to just focus on getting this done or getting to completing this initiative”, but really looking at your culture and how your staff are connected with one another and using each other as resources, trusting one another.

I think that’s really important, those connections. So when I facilitate, whether it’s a strategic planning process or any work that I do, I take the opportunity to build culture and connection with that team to make them stronger. That’s something that’s really rewarding for me when I leave the process to see after nine months of working with them, that this team is much more close, more connected, trust each other more. I do think that’s needed right now and it’s something that I strive to do and all the work I do with my clients.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s always difficult in trying times because it’s so easy. I’ve seen so many organizations, it’s almost like defaulting to like, “Well, let’s commiserate the problem”, and that becomes the culture in itself. It’s so top of mind because struggling so much, that’s where our focus goes. Then it’s so hard to ritualize happiness or joy or any of the other things that are really important to bring us together. I once heard it saying, and this comes from my background in technology startups, but a lot of times the strife at technology startups is like, “Oh, well, sales are down and we’re having trouble raising money because we’re not growing. We’re not getting new clients so the investors aren’t losing interest.”

The statement I heard was, “Sales will fix all problems at startups”, which is kind of not entirely true, but certainly I’ve definitely seen situations where the culture was miserable, everything was dire, and then all of a sudden we turn some stuff around sales wise, things get successful, and all of a sudden everyone’s focused on doing what they’re supposed to do, and everything just gets a lot better. So I guess the point is, it’s like culture is easy when things are going well, and it’s always hard when things get tough. So I commend you for stepping into those moments and assisting, and I do agree that having a facilitator to help even just knock people out of the ruts or the norms they might be in as far as a habitual problem, admiration, and being a little more optimistic and thinking about solutions over just stacking up what’s wrong.

Julie Baeb:

absolutely.

Douglas Ferguson:

So anyway, great there. I love it. I guess want to end with giving you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Julie Baeb:

I think all of us can be facilitators, right? I mean, we can facilitate those moments of connection and build stronger culture no matter what you do. I mean, when I was in the facilitation certification course, I met so many interesting people from all these different walks of life that have these different roles, taking these skills to these different industries and different teams of people. But I think really when we gather whatever it is for a workshop or a Zoom call to ask that question, what does success look like at the end, what do I want to accomplish with this group of people, and then to as much as you can inject that play and that fun to make it authentic, to use that time to actually do the work, not just talk about the work, but get it done and to make it fun and playful. I think that ultimately will help your team build a stronger team, be able to come up with better solutions when you’re really thoughtful about the way you gather the group.

Douglas Ferguson:

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing about your journey and about how you’re applying facilitation, and certainly intrigued by some of the challenges that the education system is facing, and so it’s great to hear that folks like yourself are out there helping and applying facilitation skills that’s much needed.

Julie Baeb:

Well, thanks, Douglas. Thanks for having me.

Douglas Ferguson:

It’s been a blast. Thank you.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration, voltagecontrol.com.