5 facilitation lessons for stronger relationships, how to have deeper conversations, and more
Hello friends,
Greetings from Barcelona☀️ where my husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last week 🥰. More on that below👇.
Many thanks for your feedback on the last edition of The Quest. A special shout out to Jen in Chicago, Silvia in Rio, Fiona in London, Themis in Athens, Michaele and Barry in Bracebridge, Joan in Mansfield, and Connie in Toronto 🙌.
If you are joining The Quest for the first time, welcome to our weekly exploration of creativity, facilitation, and learning.
You can catch up on last week’s edition on💡Facilitating Breakthroughs and all past editions here.
This week is all about how to build meaningful connection 🔎
👉 5 things that facilitation has taught me about building stronger relationships
👉 36 questions that lead to love
👉 Norman Tran’s Relating Between the Lines
👉 8 questions that go deeper than small talk
Plus:
👉 Live Event: Breakthrough Facilitation session @ OnDeck Learning Conference on June 11
👉 Breakthrough Facilitation – course update
Let’s dive right in.
✨5 things that facilitation has taught me about building stronger relationships
Facilitation has taught me a lot of things about how to lead engaging group experiences. I’ve written about how discovering facilitation was a breakthrough for me. It changed the course of my professional career.
Facilitation has also taught me many lessons that I have applied to my personal relationships. Last week I celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary with my husband. I realized that I have applied many facilitation skills to my marriage.
Like groups, relationships are complex and constantly changing. I learned at an early age from my parent’s divorce that relationships don’t always last forever. And sometimes they aren’t meant to. There is no one recipe for “success”. And there simply are no “givens”.
Like facilitation, relationships have their ups and downs. In my own marriage, we have had wonderful adventures together. For our anniversary, I made a slideshow of some of these amazing moments. We’ve also had our fair share of crises. Those ones didn’t make it into the slideshow. But they have been equally important in building resilience in our relationship.
Like becoming an exceptional facilitator, building strong relationships is a life-long quest. We’ve had to pass through the good times and significant challenges to grow in our relationship. At times it’s been hard work. I’ve had to examine my own assumptions and behaviors. And, own up that I have a lot still to learn.
How can I do better? I wish I could say I have always navigated the most difficult moments with great empathy and care. But I have made mistakes. There are things I wish I had done differently. Instead of looking back with regret, I have learned to ask myself regularly “How can I do better?”.
So how can I do better?
👉Here are 5 things that facilitation has taught me about building stronger relationships.
What have you learned about building stronger relationships?
💗The 36 questions that lead to love
An article by Daniel Jones in the New York Times. It explores the idea that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. It points to a study by psychologist Arthur Aron and others. The topic? Whether intimacy between two strangers can be sped up by having them ask each other a specific series of personal questions.
Here’s what they found:
“One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.”
That’s why skilled facilitators provide opportunities for increasing self-disclosure. If you have led or participated in connection activities, you’ll recognize many questions from this study. Check out the article here.
📶Norman Tran’s Relating Between The Lines
We are taught a lot of things in life. But when it comes to building quality connections with others most of us just try to figure out and hope for the best. It took me years to learn that there is actually an art and science to quality communication.
That’s why I was excited to discover Norman Tran. Tran is a facilitator, learning experience designer, artist, improviser, composer, poet, and more. He facilitated the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ renowned “Touchy Feely” course on interpersonal dynamics.
He launched his own online course called Relating Between the Lines. In it, he lays out psychologist Richard Francisco’s 5 Levels of Communication. Levels 1-3 are where most small talk and casual conversation happens. Levels 4-5 take us into deeper conversations. Learn more in his tweet, and on the Relating Between the Lines course page.
🤿8 Questions that go deeper than small talk
An article with tips for getting beyond small talk and into deeper discussion from Go Sky Bound. The key? Use powerful questions that encourage an engaged and authentic exchange (with a few important caveats). Read more here.
🎫Live Event: Breakthrough Facilitation Session June 11 @ 9:30am PT
Over the past 8 weeks, I’ve been immersed in an online course for creating online courses. (I know, very meta😅!). We’ve been guided through the process by online course expert Andrew Barry. I’ve met the most inspiring course creators from all over the world (👋hello to ODCC friends reading this newsletter). OnDeck is a much larger network of “ambitious founders, creators, and career builders looking for fresh ideas and new opportunities”. OnDeck is organizing a 3-day Learning Conference from June 9-11. It’s a paid event with all proceeds going to OnDeck. Tickets are available here.
I am honored to be leading a session on June 11 @ 9:30 PT where I will share the Breakthrough Facilitation framework.
😃Breakthrough Facilitation Course Update!
I am getting very close to launching the course landing page for Breakthrough Facilitation, my 5-week online cohort-based course.
Expected launch: Fall 2021 😃
I’ll be organizing free online workshops and sharing facilitation resources in the lead-up to the launch. I’d also love to hear your thoughts and ideas of what you’d like to see in the course.
If you are interested in learning more about the course please add your email here. (P.S. Soon I’ll have an opt-out option if you don’t want to receive info on the course.)
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Leave a comment below👇or hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas. Visit my website for ways we can work together here.
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Until next week!
P.S. I loved hearing your comments on my new Creativity Kickstarter e-book. If you haven’t seen it yet you can download it for free here💥.
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