Rachel: when I go into a company like that, the biggest thing with a technical team, a very technical team, is to respect their knowledge, honor their knowledge, honor what they are bringing to the room, right? I’m not there to patronize your knowledge. I’m not there to diminish your knowledge. The only way we’re going to get somewhere together is by using your knowledge.

[Musical Intro]

Joel: My name is Joel and I’m a recovering nerd. I’ve spent the last 25 years bouncing between creative jobs and technical teams. I worked at places like Nickelodeon to NASA and a few other places that started with different letters.

I was one of the first couple hundred people podcasting back in the early aughts until I accidentally became an IT analyst. Thankfully, someone in the government said, “Hey, you’re a nerd that talks good.” And that spun me off into the world of startups, branding, and marketing, for the same sort of researchers and startup founders that I used to hang out with. 

Today, I help technical people learn how to get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

On Nerds That Talk Good, I want to help you do the same. I talk with some of the greatest technical communicators, facilitators, and thinkers that I know who are behind the big brands and the tech talk that just works. Today’s guest nerd is Rachel Davis, who is a facilitation expert who I’ve had the pleasure of working with before. And, uh, let’s just get into this conversation. 

Thank you so much for joining me today on Nerds That Talk Good.

I’m super excited. We’ve done a bunch of fun stuff together, but I’m very excited to introduce her to you guys just by way of reading the bio. Rachel’s a workshop experience designer and facilitator who runs a business as an independent consultant. With almost 20 years of strategy and workshopping experience, she’s a believer that play .Is the doorway to our wildest ideas. And I’m really excited to dig into that. She comes from an environment where being creative was like pulling teeth, but she helps others move past those blockers to create problem solving by crafting workshop experiences infused with joy and energy.

There’s a lot in there, Rachel. We’re going to unpack it. Thank you so much for joining.

Rachel: Well, I’m super happy to be here because I feel like every time we talk, we’re actually like kind of Pretending to, you know, record a podcast. 

Joel: We spent like 20 minutes riffing before we even got started and I already picked up like three awesome things from you, so, so should have been recording those.

Rachel: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty like a long career, I guess it’s, I’m going to make myself feel really old here. I have almost a 20 year career so far. And so the first decade of my career, I was in a, you know, a very government focused space, which was not, you know, it’s not intentionally creative.

I, and I, it was very technical too. So that’s why I kind of relate to what you do in the technical messaging space. I have worked in cyber offices, I have run UX teams, I have, you know, all that kind of nerdy background as well. I don’t know if you know this, but my husband Wes and I actually started the Code for Baltimore Brigade under Code for America. And we also, one year, I think it was like a Valentine’s Day award, we won like the Tech Power Couple through Technical.ly in their I guess it was like an award ceremony thing for, there were a couple other couples in there with us, but apparently we are a nerdy tech power couple.

Joel: Well, well, you are a, designer coming from the technical background, but now you are, you’re a workshop facilitator, which, you know, I, I, I think is a, is a mysterious realm for a lot of technical practitioners. Tell us what a, what a, workshop, facilitator’s, job and role is. 

Rachel: So I think I’ve been doing workshop facilitation a lot in my career already without having the title and I think a lot of people already do it without realizing it as well. It’s really being able to guide a group of people through participatory decision making and problem solving. That’s really what facilitation is in general.

You help guide people to their own breakthroughs and to their own clarity by using activities and exercises that help them look at things in different ways and answer questions in different ways. Like, you don’t only answer a question with words, even though we’re talking about talking, right?

Facilitation helps you answer questions also in different ways. Drawing, building, right? That’s the play aspect we’re talking about. And you don’t always have to call it play. You have to meet people where they are. Play means different things to different people.

Joel: Okay, so you work with a lot of technical groups, technical teams. Can you, can you talk about maybe some of the roles or some of the problems that they bring you in to, to do that collaborative problem solving? 

But I’d love to know first when you’re dealing with a technical team, what are they asking you to come in to do? And then we can talk about the techniques that you use and, and maybe the, the, the obstacles that they face or how you get them over that pushback.

Rachel: So it really depends on the team and what they’re hiring me for. One of the things I do a lot of is Brand Strategy Workshops, so helping companies get clarity on their brand, be able to know who they are and tell people who they are, which I think aligns a lot with the type of messaging that you do as well, Joel, which I think is why I’m so drawn to you, besides the fact that you have this magnetic personality. Well, I think I’m just kind of drawn to people that have that same interest and passion in branding and messaging that I do. 

So when I go into a company like that, the biggest thing with a technical team, a very technical team, is to respect their knowledge, honor their knowledge, honor what they are bringing to the room, right?

They are very smart people, and we don’t want to The biggest thing is, I’m not there to patronize your knowledge. I’m not there to diminish your knowledge. The only way we’re going to get somewhere together is by using. Your knowledge, Right, And so when I talked about before, articulating things in different ways, that’s part of what facilitation in particular with brand strategy is about, right?

They have all of this goodness in their brain and a facilitator’s job is to get that out of their brain to architect a new message. 

Joel: At the same time, they think that the way they think is the way that, that everyone else thinks. That is our, our egocentric, you know, being humans.

Rachel: It’s a bias, right? So everyone brings implicit bias, even a facilitator sometimes, into a room, and so there are approaches to get away from that bias, right? That’s part of what a facilitator brings. I have a toolbox of intentional activities that I use to help people prime their brains for what we’re going to do, and get them into a mindset of, “Oh, okay, maybe it is more than just the status quo, or maybe I can go past my first three answers to my next three answers to my next three answers, because my first three answers are my shitty draft.”

Joel: Right.

Rachel: The very first thing is about helping people realize everyone has bias. How do we look past that? And how do we listen to other people’s perspectives in the room? Because even within a technical team, every single person on that team has a different experience, different background.

 They have different stories of their childhood. They have different stories about how they got where they are, right? Even if they think they’re all the same or they think they’re similar, there are different experiences that each of them

had. 

Joel: ultimately the goal, if the goal is to, to come up with a unified message or a unified brand, I think it was even you in one of our early conversations that introduced me to the concept of “Me, We, Us, Progression,” which, which has become a, a serious cornerstone of my workshop. I mean, you were, you were super instrumental in helping me with the MessageDeck workshop and seeing it that way.

I thought I had a thing and a tool that I could just put in front of people and I didn’t understand the, the progression I was taking people through. You almost pointed out to me, “Hey, hey, dum-dum, there’s a word for what you’re doing. It’s not the one that you think you’re using. Right. You didn’t invent it. You’re smart…”

Rachel: I would never call you a dum-dum!

Joel: No, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s me internalizing . That’s maybe that’s my, my harmed child speaking out. Anyway, that’s a problem for therapy. 

Rachel: Hey, sometimes branding is. brand therapy. 

Joel: So when you face somebody who thinks they’ve got an original idea, and they’re so bought into how they want to present that original idea.

I see this a lot with, you know, With taglines, you know, our technology, your success. And I’m like, yeah, that’s cute. That’s, that’s, that’s you and 20, 000 other comp. Yeah. When, when, when someone is, is very technical, they have that bias. They’re so bought into that. When they walk into your workshops, what are some of those tools that you have to help them unpack and, and melt that, that, that stone wall maybe a little bit,

Rachel: yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of different approaches. Let me start here because the first and very first question is always Why do you have that strongly held belief? Is it because the people before you did? What is this sacred cow you’re holding on to? And is it really a sacred cow? Why is this the answer?

Is it because it’s always been the answer? Because that’s not the answer, right? Is it because this was the founder’s vision? Maybe the founder’s still there. Maybe they’re not, right? Maybe they’re going through an acquisition and it’s different, right? I think the first question is, why is this your very strongly held belief?

Why do you believe that that’s your strongly held belief, right? And the other thing is, they might actually have a deeper message under some of those words, but they don’t know the words to use instead of, Best or Cutting Edge. Right? So I like to do an anatomy of a brand brand statements activity where we write out some of their current statements and highlight some of the words in it.

So let’s say they have cutting edge technology in there. So we highlight that word and I ask specific questions to help them think about it differently. What do you mean by cutting edge? What makes what you do cutting edge? And don’t just ask it one way, we’re going to ask it multiple ways. If you had to identify the one thing in your company that was cutting edge, what would it be?

Don’t use the word cutting edge, right? It’s like a game of Taboo. Right? And just buzzer every time they use the buzzword. Is that why they call it buzzword?

Joel: I don’t know, maybe, maybe so. It’s been so long since I played that.

Rachel: So, that’s one of the things, right? Like, it’s a buzzword breakup kind of activity that I do. Like, alright, tell me what this word actually means, right? And sometimes people can’t articulate that. 

So I was talking about how you give answers in different ways.

Maybe I ask them to pull an image of what they think is cutting edge technology onto the board. Or sometimes just draw it, right? Like, we don’t have to be artists in this room. Like, instead of using words, can you, like, Draw a representation of it. You know all those different types of ways to communicate.

And, and I don’t explain that as play to them. Especially these kind of executive levels. Sometimes they don’t react well to that. So what it is, is using our curiosity to ask questions in different ways to get different answers,. And that’s what play is anyway, right? Curiosity and wonder. You’re just not telling them play because they have, again, an internal bias or implicit bias on what that means for them.

Joel: And, and play and games are such powerful tools, but they often get discounted. So when you walk into a room and if anybody has ever seen your content, it is very playful. It’s childish, 

Rachel: Nope. Childlike, 

Joel: Thank you for that correction. When you come up against a technical person, you have that blockage. You’ve got that developer, maybe, who ended up in the meeting. I love that. I love having developers and, and, and the hardcore nerds in, in my sessions, but oftentimes they’re the ones who are sitting back.

How do you get them to take that first step without, without falling to the, the trust falls and the, the, the typical…

Rachel: well, I never do any of that, right? So, for me, team building activities, for the sake of team building, they might, like, aspects of that might have, A place in a intentional activity, but that’s not really what I do, right? So the reason I have such kind of joyful and childlike kind of imagery, and one of those, the quotes I think is my favorite quote from Gary Ware that “childlike is not childish.”

It’s not about being juvenile. It’s about being able to look at things with a beginner’s mind, right? And taking that different perspective to it. Now, you know, my husband is very technical and I know he has a playful side, right? I think the challenge with technical people, is a lot of times how they’re entering the room, what kind of pressures they have, what kind of goals they have, and what people are expecting of them, and so the mindset of a lot of people when they enter the room is, “I don’t want to look stupid because I have goals I have to meet, and I’m not gonna do my job well, or anything, if I participate in this way.”

But there are little, you know, inside jokes that technical people, like anyone else, have with each other, you know, like, the rubber duck on the desk,, things like that. There’s, there are Ways to, and it’s not about breaking through. It’s just about giving people a chance to step out of their day to day to get better ideas.

Right? So people are so focused on what do I have to do next? Where am I coming from? That they don’t just give themselves a chance to take a breath. Right? And so part of this is culture, depending on the company that they’re in, they, there needs to be leadership that gives them a chance to open up and be, you know, have those ideas or not feel fearful that there’s going to be backlash if they’re taking a different approach.

And I think that is the biggest thing. One of the ways I kind of try to do this if I’m coming into a technical team is I try to have one on one interviews with the participants in the workshop beforehand so that I can get to know what they’re passionate about, what brings them joy, what brings a smile to their face, right?

So I can actually connect with them. in the workshop by saying, Oh, well, I know, you know, Joel really loves LEGO. And I do a lot of LEGO serious play. I learned that most of the team is really competitive. Maybe we do a little build competition or something like, or a wildest idea of the day award.

Something that brings a little bit of competition to there. How can I craft. An experience for them that’s going to make them feel like I’m not just creating a workshop and throwing it over the transom at them.

Joel: You’re not just doing the dog and pony show, the typical consultant. I’m going to come in here and impose my process on you and I’m going to give you my conclusions. It’s really about, you know, becoming one of the, not, not necessarily one of the in group, but you talked about the inside jokes that people have and, and reflecting and building that instant rapport with them.

I think that that is really important. 

Rachel: Meeting them where they are and shared vocabulary, too, right?

So, talking about my husband, but actually we met at a design agency we were both working at. One of the first things that he did, he’s a technical person, but he learned all the design language, like kerning and all that, so that he could talk well to the design team that was working with the developers.

It’s part of understanding how people speak, and you can make that into an activity. I have a shared vocabulary activity. So let’s say I was going to use the word “play” in a workshop. We could do a warm up where we have everyone kind of define what they think play is individually first, then pair up, kind of talk about it with their small group or pair, and then bring it back, and we all vote on the top three elements of play together, and we use that definition as a shared definition going forward.

Joel: I love that. I love that. So, so you have a lot of activities and things, some that, that you, that you pick up from other places. We’ve talked about card games and tools and things like that, but you also, you also invent or at least you come up with your name for these. You know, and I, do you often pre plan when, when you, when you’re walking in?

As Mike Tyson says, everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. How, how do you switch very quickly when you see that, okay, maybe this isn’t working. How important is that flexibility? Cause we were talking about breaking out of the rigidity of thought.

Rachel: So it’s really important. I am a recovering perfectionist, and so planning is kind of in my soul. But, being a facilitator, the most important superpower of a facilitator is the ability to pivot. And so I have a, you know, I have my plan, I have my run of show, I have my script but I have to be willing to flip that script.

I need to be able to kind of read what’s happening in the room or you know, on the screen and understand how people are reacting. And there’s a couple different ways to kind of test the waters there. You make sure that you have some vibe checks or things like that built into your session to kind of test it.

Feel how, how people are receiving build in feedback about the sessions. If you’re going to be working with a technical team multiple times, there’s multiple sessions, get some feedback about the actual session at the end of the first one and make them feel like they’re having a contribution to shaping the next session because then you’re going to get more buy in from that team on your next session. Like, what worked for you? What did you like? One of my favorite activities is “I like, I wish, I wonder.” What did you like? What did you wish had happened in the session? What do you wonder about next?

What kind of questions did this session spur for you? And that as a facilitator can help you craft the next session. With that team to really what they got, what were their breakthroughs in the room? Because if you planned out, like, let’s say all four sessions at once, right? You’re not building on the outcomes of the session, which is really what the goal of the facilitator is, is to get those breakthroughs and those outcomes.

And they’re going to be different for every group. So you have to be able to understand what’s coming out of that particular group and use that. That’s that power of improv and having that toolbox of activities, right? I understand which activities get me to what types of desired outcomes, right?

Like, I understand which activities I have that are for creativity, which activities I have are for problem framing. And if something’s not really landing, I’ll probably adjust in some way. Or let’s say, you know, people are having trouble in the small groups, I’ll bring everyone back to the group sooner, right?

Like there’s, there’s other things that we could do, or if people are having trouble in breakouts, I will have kind of maybe some prompts to help them and kind of go around and, and help them with some question prompts and things like that. So it takes a lot of just doing it.

To get to that experience of pivoting.

Joel: You use a lot of tools and technology being a nerd and now in this, in this virtual world we’re in. I know that you’re a big fan of, of the Butter platform and not a, not an ad, not a, not a sponsorship or anything like that, but, but you turned me onto that, and I immediately jumped into it.

I think it is a much more playful way of connecting. Can you just share a little bit about what, what Butter is and, and how, how you find it so powerful? Maybe I should go back to them afterwards for a little bit of sponsorship. But anyway because, because I have a specific question after this about that pivoting around it, but I want people to have the context of what Butter is.

Rachel: Sure, I’m gonna tell you a story. When you go to an offsite, where is it usually held?

Joel: Out of the office, somewhere other than …

Rachel: …than the office. Right. 

Right, okay. When you hire someone or a facilitator for a workshop, there is a outcome you’re trying to get that kind of gets you away from the day to day, the norm. It is very similar to an offsite. You’re trying to take people out of their current environment to be able to think about things differently. Butter is that virtual workshop. Way to take people out of their day to day. And so if you’re in Microsoft Teams all day or Zoom, or I’m going to just mention them all, so I’m not singling any out WebEx or whatever you know, all day long, if someone comes in and be like, we’re going to sit on a two hour workshop on, you know, one of these platforms you’re in every day that you probably just want to like, throw up a little in your mouth when you hear it, no one’s going to be excited, right? You’re not going to have the energy or the excitement, which is the kind of mindset you need for some of these, this workshopping. 

And what Butter does is take people out of that day to day. It puts them in an environment that has aspects for engagement. You know, it, like with any tool, right, you know, whatever you put into it is what you get out of it.

You have to be able to craft your session in that and utilize the tools within it to make it an immersive experience. But this is what I try to explain to people that this, I always use Butter for my workshopping. And there, you know, I’m like, I’m not expecting you to use it for every single meeting in your, company, that’s not what this is about.

This is about taking you to an experience that’s outside of your day to day so that people are engaged, they participate, and they actually open up their sense of wonder. One of the things I love about Butter is the second you get in that waiting room with the customized music and the GIF you can’t help but smile, right?

And, and, and when people enter the room smiling, you’ve already kind of primed them a little, whether it was a Jedi mind trick or not, you’ve already kind of primed them a little, right?

Joel: And for those who don’t know Butter, it is, it is a video teleconferencing platform, but it is the design is a bit more whimsical. It is customizable, co brandable, but it has sound effects and soundboards and music. And, you know, whereas Microsoft has tried to do like, I can do a thumbs up emoji, it goes beyond that. There are integrated activities.

Rachel: It’s built for facilitation and they take into account the journey of a facilitator in it, right? So you can build your agendas, you could save your agendas, right? It’s not just what people experience in that butter room, it’s the whole process of crafting workshop experiences, including afterwards.

Like they have a really robust recap system, right? That you can see it generates GIFs of the session, right? If you want people to have momentum and be excited and share those things, right? You have to have that journey for momentum.

Joel: The reason I brought Butter up is because there’s that callback. The callback I wanted to make was when you say you have to, you have to pivot, right? You, you, you have to pivot your, your activity. Wow, this, this group really isn’t resonating with X. But my next activity that’s coming up, I, I have something that I need to accomplish.

And so you’re, you’re able to maybe have a couple different activities in your toolbox that might be the same underlying objective, the same underlying thing, but they’re skinned differently. You’ve, you might have the, I, I, you know, I, I always start with the the Nic-Cage-o-Meter.

Rachel: The Nic Cage gage. I love The Nic cage Gage. 

Joel: So butter has a, a thing where you can pull up a card and people can stamp their little face over, over where they are. So there’s a robot one and there’s a dog or a cat person? There’s voting activities. And I, and I’d imagine that, that you just sort of intuit a little bit like these group this group that I’m talking to they’re they’re a LEGO group They’re a Nic Cage group.

Rachel: Or they like puns. I have a pun one.. I it’s actually in the public templates for Butter. But like, let’s say you’re talking to like a storytelling group. You’re like, all right, these writers are going to like some puns, right? But that’s where those kind of pre interviews help as well. But if it’s a large group, I can understand that’s hard for a facilitator to do one on one interviews with everyone in the room.

Another tool you can use is VideoAsk. You can actually record a question to participants like you on a video, right? So they know you’re a human, not an AI bot, right? You can video ask them a question, and just how they pick to respond tells you something about their personality.

They just don’t. What they pick to respond, right? Because in VideoASK, you can respond with a video, you can respond with just audio, or you can respond in text. So just what they pick to respond to your question, and your question could be as simple as, What are you most excited for with this

workshop? Or you could balance it out, and you could ask two questions. Wishes and worries is one of the things I like to do, right? What do you wish for with this experience, and what do you worry about? Right? And that answer only goes to you, and you could tell them, right? Like, this is not something that everyone else is going to be able to see, right? You tell me, what do you wish for, what do you worry about?

Or you can do that as an activity with all of them in the room, kind of anonymize the post its, right? What do you wish for and worry? And that gives you a nice starting point, and it gives you an anchor for a closing point, because at the end you can go back to those same Wishes and Worries, and see where you ended up as a group.

You said something earlier, and I kind of want to go back to it, because you said, I have a goal for this workshop, right? Yes, we as a group have a desired outcome. That’s what I talked about with whoever was the champion kind of user that brought me on or hired me for this, right? But at points, you might ask the group, like, what do you expect to get out of this? Aligned with what I tell you, kind of our desired outcome as a group. I’m going to tell you the purpose in the beginning. And maybe kind of check in, like, do you think we’re close enough to this yet? What are we missing? What are the gaps?

And that’s what would help me determine what types of activities I kind of bring in that weren’t in there previously, or if we drop out an activity, if we feel like we’ve Really gotten to somewhere already, and we don’t have to ask it in another way, right? It’s really kind of evaluating that, where we are.

Joel: Cool. Thank you for that. That’s, that’s super helpful. I, I do want to touch on some more tools. I feel like, I feel like now this is becoming like a tool talk, but. there are a lot of things happening with technology, large language models. I’ve been really using ChatGPT heavily you know, to helping me to write the book, not write the book, but to structure and, and inspire.

And there’s a lot of that. I, you know, I, I still poo poo the. Thinking Machine, the I’m going to give you something original marketing on, on AI, but there’s a lot of there’s a lot of things there that are, that are promising as far as like contextualizing or making sense of a lot of input. Is there anything specific that you’re excited about or that you’re using maybe mid process or with the groups you’re working with?

Rachel: So, I actually use Otter, transcription tool, to transcribe my workshops. And so I will bring the video out of butter, into Otter, and Otter has an AI chat tool which allows me to bring all of, let’s say there were three sessions for a workshop into one folder and ask, “hey, across all these workshops, were there any themes around XYZ?” and it kind of helps me mine that and pull out highlights, patterns, themes. What that helps me do as a facilitator is it might do it after a first workshop and it’ll help me build the next workshop, or it helps me write the recap for all of the workshops together, or the playback of that, right? Like, here’s what was observed.

And, and that helps me from having to make my own notes during a session as a facilitator. So I don’t context switch and I don’t split my focus. Now I could go back and I could listen to all the workshops and I could pull those out. I probably have made notes at right after the workshop and stuff like that.

But what this tool in Otter allows me to do is it also will point me to where that is in the transcripts so that if I wanted to go back and listen to that particular part, I could. And AI helps me a lot with sense making of information that already came from the participants and that came during the workshop, right?

So it’s not that it’s adding new information to it or other things like that. It’s helping me sense make what happened, right? Summarizing, looking for themes, looking for highlights, things like that.

Joel: Wow. Yeah. So it’ll strip it back and, and help you find that little, little element that you may have missed or you may have been looking for. But then it’s still up. And this is the, this is the point I make a lot with my clients. It’s still up to you to put the human back into that. 

Rachel: Yes, exactly. And what’s really interesting about AI in that way, the kind of human in the loop there, is it’s human to start. You’re asking AI to come in the middle and then human to end, right? So you’re bookending it with people. It’s not, it’s, you know, and I use AI in a lot of different ways. I’m also a fan of ChatGPT.

I’m a fan of Midjourney. I have a design background too, so I’ll bring images into Photoshop afterwards, but it helps me kind of quickly tee up Images and graphics for my workshops that align with what I’m doing. And, you know, you talked about kind of my personal brand being a little more wonder focused and joyful.

But if I’m working on a workshop for someone, I can align to their brand, right? Like, that’s that. pivoting aspect, right? It doesn’t have to look like my brand. I can align to their brand, and we can still be playful. Like, it doesn’t have to be in my colors.

And the other ways that I use AI, well, I’m an independent consultant. I kind of use it, like, as a co worker. I feel like to, to double check my thinking you know, one of the other things is it’s really great for competitor analysis, you know, put a website in there and be like, “from this website, can you tell me X, Y, Z?” So I don’t have to sit there and read through every single page on the website, right?

It’s not giving me new information. It is sense making

Joel: I love that. I love that sense making. I’m going to, I’m going to put a pin in that and, and And dwell on that, because I think that is what these are. These are sense making machines, and they’re not meaning making machines. They’re making sense of things. But we have to take the, we have to do the meaning.

Which is why I call the MessageDeck a cross between tarot and ChatGPT. You’re prompting the human brain to see what do they see in the cards, or really any card activity. The meaning is already there in us. We can’t, we can’t outsource that or offload it.

Rachel: But sometimes you can’t articulate it, right? And I think that’s what your, what your deck helps with.

Joel: Where do you see the field of technical communication evolving in the next couple of years or facilitation working with these teams, being able to do more of it assisted by tools? 

Rachel: Sure. Well, I mean, not just assisted by tools, but one of the things that I offer to people is something called fractional facilitation, right? You don’t have to have the roles of facilitators on your team, but I think everyone has those skills within them already, right? So, you know, part of what I would do with that is I go into a company, just like a fractional CMO or something would, right?

Like, if you think about creating design systems, what a fractional facilitator would do would be, you know, create facilitation systems. And part of that is what’s your facilitation mindset as a company? And that could even just be leading meetings or leading one on ones, doing it internally or doing it externally, right?

Like, what is your facilitation mindset? As a company, right? Like, so mine is bringing joy and energy, right? But maybe your facilitation mindset as a, as a company is that we are very focused on creative ideation and we want quantity of ideas and we’re very focused on giving people space to get ideas out of their head, right?

Like maybe that’s your facilitation mindset or maybe your facilitation mindset is we want people to have an avenue for ideas that they just ideas that they need to evaluate for their goals, right? And that’s an evaluation piece for a facilitation mindset. Either way, you need to separate creative and critical thought.

That’s a whole nother story. So but the, you know, what your, your facilitation mindset might not be joy and energy. It might be complex problem solving. And so then what you need to do is be like, Okay, what tools do I need that align with this facilitation mindset? And what can I build as part of a facilitation system?

And, and actually maybe they create that in SharePoint. Maybe they create that in Notion, right? And maybe it’s like, okay, here’s some of the AI tools that we use to help us with this. And this is how they help get us to or align with our facilitation mindset. So here’s a database of activities and here’s what they’re tagged for use for. Here’s a database of ideation activities and here’s the AI tools you can use on a Miro board to generate some starting ideas for ideation, right? There’s different ways to use the different tools, but I think the key to what tools you use has to align with your culture of your company and your facilitation mindset.

Joel: Wow, that was a lot to unpack. That was very good. I’m gonna have to get that Otter and drop it in and break that apart. 

 I want to shift sort of towards the end… we talked about, LEGOs and things like that. Where do you find inspiration and joy? And hobbies outside of what you do, because I think one of the challenges that a lot of even technical people, we’ve got hobbies and things.

But we don’t often integrate that to, to what we do. And, and you would be a great person to to share some of how you take ostensibly non work things that you enjoy and bring them, or at least channel that joy into your profession.

Rachel: I, I think this is another thing I got from Gary Gary Ware it’s not work then play, it’s work and play. I, and I’ve not always been like this, right? I used to, maybe not intentionally, have someone that I was at work and someone that I was at home. And that was too hard for me to maintain multiple identities, right?

It is not something I wanted to do. It is not who I want to be. And so now I am who I am at work and at home. Like I’m just me. I’m just Rachel. And I think, you know, obviously being an independent consultant has afforded me the privilege to be able to work the way that I work best. Right. And not everyone has that privilege, right?

Yeah. But for me, it allows me to bring more of myself into what I do. And for me, that has equaled more success. So some of the, you know, I’m a maker. We have made our guest room in our house here, a maker space because we have more hobbies than friends. And so, We don’t need a guest room. We just need a maker space.

We have a laser cutter, we have a Glowforge, we have a 3D printer, right? Like all these things. And then I think about, okay, well, how, how can I use things that I like doing to bring things into what we do? You know, like I like making stickers. Okay. Well, what stickers could I have for my in person workshops?

Love LEGOs. So I love LEGO Serious Play. I’m actually getting LEGO Serious Play certified soon because I love it so much. I’ve been using it all the time in my workshops. And obviously that’s, It’s harder to do in virtual, but it’s not impossible, right? There are creative ways to bring the physical into virtual workshops.

So, you know, I think it allows me, when I think about how can I bring what makes me happy into what I do, it gives me this opportunity creatively problem solve different ways to do things at work.

Joel: Yeah, LEGO Series Play is something that I, I stumbled on. I think maybe, maybe because of you or the, or the Cardstock community that I’ve, I’ve fallen into. And that immediately to me was like, how can I make an excuse to use that?

Rachel: Well, it’s not about making an excuse, right? Like make it purposeful. So you’re all about communication. There is a ton of communication LEGO Serious Play exercises. A lot of them are the duck exercises, the, you know how do you communicate and give each other feedback? There’s a lot, so that’s about the intentional activity I’m talking about.

Like there are hundreds of activities. I use activities from improv. I think I was just telling you before we got started here that my most recent activity I added was an inspiration from an Instagram reel. Like I look everywhere for those types of inspirations, but it’s all driven by what is the outcome that we want from this activity?

And I remix things all the time. I’m like, all right. Well, how could we use a you know a drawing exercise to get to what we need for 

Joel: You know, as I’m, as I’m wrapping up this book, we’ve had this conversation that I think you should, you need to compile the stuff that you do. And, and, and I, and I think you probably have a Notion a big Notion database on that, but anyway. 

Just, just wrapping up a little bit, some recommendations. 

Let’s say we’re talking now, to that technical person who feels they’ve got a creative streak that they’re not exploring, and they’re looking for a way, not necessarily to make the jump into facilitation, but to bring more facilitation into their their work.

What would you say to them would be some, some people to look at besides you and I, and, and and following you? You mentioned Gary Ware. Who are some other communicators and authors, content creators other facilitators. 

Rachel: So Thinking about LEGO serious play, right? There’s some people so Michael Fearne, F E A R N E has written the LSP Methods book, and he also has a LEGO Serious Play community. He is a wonderful person if you’re interested in LEGO Serious Play in particular.

And what’s really interesting is, you know, they are creative about, okay, how are you using LEGO Serious Play? Are there new activities, right? Like, it is a dynamic and kind of growing thought set that’s not really stagnant. Oh, I’m teaching you a framework, which is what I really love when I’m looking for facilitators to follow, right?

Like I, I’m not a, I’m going to take one framework and you’ll use only that framework person. I, you know, I think you could take from all different places. I like Brittany Bowering. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She has a YouTube channel. I like her cause she’s, she’s also kind of got a joyful and energetic thing to the types of things she shares about workshopping. I really like that approach. 

Anamaria from the Butter community, Anamaria Dorgo is her name, and she has a really interesting approach to learning and development overall, not just facilitation, right? She’s coming at it from a learning and development aspect and also runs a learning and development community called L& D Shakers.

I think you’re seeing a little bit of a theme here with the type of people I follow. Many of them run communities and community is super important to me. So, I think that really is something that I look for in people. Are they giving back to people? Are they giving knowledge? Do they have a community where other people are sharing knowledge?

You know, I’m part of a lot of communities. I’m part of the Session Lab community, which is actually another tool that I use as a facilitator to write my runs of shows. And I’m also part of the Miro Community.. So I’m a Miro MVP, Miro Hero community. And so there’s a lot of people that I’ve connected with through there.

One of them being one of my co facilitators where we run our Miro improv sessions Jonathan White. And he is also a wonderful person to follow if you’re looking for like Miro tips or, or things like that. That’s what they do. They have a company called Hero Studios, which basically creates those mural board experiences and then Lucie and I am, I think I’m gonna like murder her last name here.? Agolini? 

Joel: Love what she does.

Rachel: Yes, Canvas is the C N V S is what she was, and I I absolutely love what she does because it helps, it kind of reduces that barrier to entry for using really cool illustrations on Miro boards or mural boards or something good to use for a virtual facilitation.

Joel: And shame on me for not even mentioning Miro at the very top. Because you and I did a session at their user community last year which was phenomenal. I’ll include a link to that. 

Rachel: Yeah, the Distributed Conference, which is the global conf… Don’t diminish it. It 

is a 

global 

conference 

that they have.

Joel: That was a great time. And yeah, so, so if you want to see Rachel in action, and I’m just a bonus there. You were so instrumental in helping me turn the MessageDeck into an actual workshop in a, in a Miro activity that we took a bunch of people through and had a whole, whole bunch of fun.

So if you want to see Rachel in action and what she can really do. I think that would be a great example. We’ve got a YouTube up for that. 

I want to close just and give you just an opportunity. One piece of closing advice for our listeners about improving their communication skills. The Big One.

Rachel: Well, this is actually the banner on my LinkedIn. Everything is a prototype. And so don’t wait until it’s perfect to try it. Even with communication. So I think building in public is a great thing. I think putting things out into the world, like even with your book, right? You’re building in public.

I think the only bad idea is the idea is still in your head. And so I, I, I think putting things out into the world, building with people around you, getting that feedback, like don’t, I know a lot of people are afraid people are going to steal their ideas and things like that, but what good is it doing you just staying in your head. 

Joel: Yeah. The only bad idea is the one still in your head. It’s all about getting them out of your head, getting them where you can do something with it, and that’s perfect. What I love about you, Rachel, is that you are such a giver. You, you just, you totally are. I, I think, I think your middle name, I don’t know what your middle name is.

I don’t need to know, but it’s community in my mind, because you really are a giver. You get plugged in. How can the people who are listening, my hopefully tens of listeners at this point early in the podcast, connect with you, learn more about your work get to know you and, and bring you into their teams to help do that collaborative problem solving.

Rachel: Well, the best place to find me as LinkedIn that’s really only social network that I use. I really I really enjoy the kind of, I know a lot of people have a lot of things to say about LinkedIn, but everything has its pros and cons, right? That’s really where I make the most connections. LinkedIn messaging is great for me.

And then I have what’s called a Bento page, which showcases all of the free community events I’m doing, the workshopping. There’s also YouTube videos of me on there facilitating if people are interested in, and those are really my two hubs. 

Like, even though I have a website, like, I don’t really care about my website and I know you’re probably cringing when I say that, but I, you know, I worked for years without a website.

And so for me, it’s about creating those relationships. Through conversations on LinkedIn. I share a lot of things there. Although, you know, my website has, you know, three main ways people can work with me. Right?

Through that fractional facilitation I talked about. You know, as a facilitation copilot. With you or creating a workshop that I run for you and your team, those are the three main ways. 

You know, one of the things I love doing, which I’ve done several of this year, is I have a 90 minute strategy session I can do with people. A paid strategy session where, you know, You might have all this content and you’re like, I don’t know, is this a workshop?

Maybe it could be into a workshop, or you have a couple workshops and you’re like, I don’t know how to sell these, or something like that. And we do a little prep work, and then we spend 90 minutes in an intensive kind of like collaborative work session where we create something. A workshop experience. We look at the points of engagement, right?

And you tell me what your goal is for those 90 minutes. I want to create a run a show for this that I need to sell to a client. I already have an outline and I want to put in points of engagement. I have an outline of a workshop I’ve done, but I want to put some LEGO series play activities in it, right?

You tell me what happens in those 90 minutes. And that’s my lowest price offer. I those start at 

$395. 

Joel: Well you’re speaking directly to me, and you know it. So don’t be surprised if you see me show up on your calendar for one of those. So awesome. Well, thank you so very much, Rachel. Rachel Davis just, it’s been an absolute pleasure. It always is. 

Rachel: I just want to say thank you. I’m so honored to be one of your, I think, first guests, right? On your podcast. 

Joel: All right.

[Musical Outtro]

Joel: If you want links to the resources mentioned on the show, head on over to the episode page. And for information on booking a message therapy workshop, getting your hands on the MessageDeck, to check out my upcoming book, or just buy me a coffee, go to nerdthattalksgood.com/podcast. 

 Until next time, happy messaging.

 Remember, you don’t have to speak well, you only gotta learn how to talk good.