Greetings from Barcelona ☀️.
Many thanks for reading The Quest.
🙌A special shout out to Mark in Hong Kong, Chris in Brussels, Sophie, Stefy, Connie in Toronto, and Barry and Michaele in Bracebridge. And big thanks to Merott and to Aarushi Singhania for including me in their fabulous newsletters. What an honour!
If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our exploration of creativity, facilitation, and learning.
I’ll be slowing the pace down over the summer to once every two weeks.
Hopefully, this will give you a chance to catch up on the last edition The Dynamics of Group Bonding, and all past editions.
This week👉6 books that will supercharge your facilitation (and make you an all-round better person).
Plus: Breakthrough Facilitation course updates & more.
Let’s dive right in!
🚀Course update!
I’ve been working on launching my new 4-week online Cohort-based Course called Breakthrough Facilitation.
I’ve learned that there are a million moving parts to launching an online course 😅. But it’s almost ready to go!
The first cohort will launch in October.
If you are determined to brush up on your skills in leading virtual groups, I invite you to check out the course page and join the waitlist:
👉You’ll receive the latest course updates. You’ll get guest speaker announcements. And you’ll be the first to get the registration link when it goes live in September.
There are 30 spaces for cohort 1. Thanks to the 21 Quest members who have already joined the list!
Questions? Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions by hitting reply to this email.
📚6 books that will help you become an exceptional facilitator (and an all-round better person).
Does anyone else have a stack of books waiting to be read? Mine looks like this👇
And that’s not including books waiting patiently on my kindle.
Ahhhh if only we had unlimited time to read. But we don’t. So we have to be selective.
When it comes to facilitation, there are a handful of books that have made me a better facilitator. They have inspired concepts and activities for my Breakthrough Facilitation course. And I believe that they have made me a better person.
Here are 6 handpicked books that I want to share with you that are well worth adding to your book list👇
1. The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, Priya Parker
What makes a gathering effective and memorable?
That’s what Parker explores in her book The Art of Gathering.
I read this book when it came out in 2018. And I have re-read it several times since.
I have used it to design facilitation workshops. It was also my guide for designing my son’s virtual graduation, and my mom’s virtual 80th birthday.
My favourite insights👇
- Have a clear purpose. Knowing your “why” is how you will know what is right and wrong for your event
- Don’t be a “chill host”. As the host, it’s your job to set up the rules and set the agenda “selflessly for the sake of others”.
- Don’t be afraid of the heat. “Good controversy can make a gathering matter more” when some good can come out of it.
2. Get Together, Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, Kai Elmer Sotto
“Although communities feel magical, they don’t come together by magic”.
People & Company founders Richardson, Huynh, and Sotto have written the ultimate guide on how to cultivate community.
They compare community cultivation to igniting a fire.
They share case studies of people and organizations that have been wildly successful.
I learned a ton of actionable ways to create a community with people, not for them.
My favourite takeaways👇
- Spark the flame. Pinpoint your people, do something together, get people talking.
- Stoke the fire. Attract new folks, cultivate your identity, pay attention to who keeps showing up.
- Pass the torch. Create more leaders, celebrate together.
3. Connected from Afar:A Guide for Staying Close When You’re Far Away, Kat Vellos
I just finished Connected from Afar this morning. I am so glad I did so I could include it in the book list.
It’s a beautifully designed guide to cultivating your most important relationships by experience designer, speaker, facilitator, and entrepreneur, Kat Vellos.
The book contains activity and discussion prompts to help you deepen existing relationships from a distance. It gave me a bunch of ideas for connection activities to do in pairs for groups who already know each other well.
My favourite activities👇
- Highlight Reel: Come up with cherished memories or highlights that you have with the other person. Come up with a creative way to share these memories with the other person.
- Brag, Baby: Tell each other about a time that you did something that you were really proud of. The person listening is an amazed, enthusiastic, effusive superfan. Then switch.
- Quotable: Come up with a wise, clever, silly, or sage saying that the other person has said (or would say) that everyone in the world should hear and repeat forever.
4. Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
I like giving feedback. But when it comes to receiving feedback, well, that’s a lot harder for me.
That’s why I was so happy to discover Thanks for the Feedback by Harvard profs Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen on how to receive feedback well.
This book has made me more open to receiving feedback. It has also helped me understand how to set up a framework for peer feedback in my groups.
My favourite tips👇
- Understand the feedback. Be curious, ask questions, understand what they are recommending.
- See your blind spots. Ask what others are seeing that is getting in your way.
- “Right size” the feedback. Be aware of your own distortions so you can hear the feedback more clearly. And remember – you decide whether you take it or leave it.
5. Questions are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life, Hal Gregersen.
A book by MIT prof Hal Gregersen that explores the power of what he calls the “catalytic question”.
The kind of questions that helps us to dissolve barriers to thinking and limiting beliefs. They help us question our assumptions. And they help us to channel creative energy down more productive pathways.
The result? Better answers.
Asking powerful questions is a facilitator superpower. Gregersen’s book gave me a whole new understanding of how to get better at it.
My favourite insights👇
- Getting the right question is key to getting the right answer.
- Questions help us re-examine fundamental assumptions.
- Questioning is a muscle that we can all strengthen with deliberate practice.
6. Siddartha, Herman Hesse
You may be wondering what Hesse’s epic book on enlightenment is doing on our facilitator reading list. Good question!
In a nutshell: the book follows the spiritual journey of a man named Siddartha during the time of the Gautam Buddha in what is modern day Nepal. He is destined to become a Brahman teacher. But he decides to follow his own journey to enlightenment. In the end, he learns true wisdom from a river and a humble ferrier who helps people cross the river in a boat.
There is way more to the story than that.
The book helped me understand some of the more profound concepts of exceptional facilitation that are not always easy to grasp. Concepts like attunement, deep listening, curiosity, engaging our many ways of knowing, and more.
My favourite insights👇
- You cannot learn by studying alone, nor only through life experience. It is the combination of the two that leads to true understanding.
- We all have many ways of knowing. Finding out how to engage these ways can help you examine your own assumptions, and free you of the expectations that others have of you.
- Nature is often our best teacher. It was a river that teaches Siddartha his most profound life lessons.
👉What books would you add?
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
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See you in two weeks!
