Greetings from Barcelona☀️
🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest.
If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into facilitation, learning, and how to live a creative life.
Let’s jump right in!
🐈In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, there is a conversation between a disoriented Alice and the mysterious Cheshire Cat that goes like this:
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,”
Alice: “I don’t much care where–“
Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.“
Whether it was Carroll’s intention or not, he describes the meaning of intention.
Intention is a word that you hear a lot in facilitation. And I have to confess. When I started facilitating I heard that word and my eyes would glaze over. I was pretty comfortable running my group sessions by coming up with an agenda and keeping my meetings on track.
I realized I was focused on the “how”.
And my sessions were pretty uninspiring. Most of the time it felt like we were just going through the motions. What motions? I wasn’t even clear on that.
I needed to focus on the “why”.
Working with seasoned facilitators for many years taught me to start with the session’s purpose and work backward from there. And it’s completely changed the way I plan, design, and run any group session I lead.
Intention simply means a determination to act in a certain way.
In facilitation having a clear intention helps others know where you are coming from. And it makes it easier for you and your group to reach a desired destination.
🤔What is intention and how can you be more intentional with your groups?
That’s our Quest for this week🔎
👉 Insights on intention from Ask Powerful Questions
👉 Oprah Winfrey on How to Have a Clear Intention
👉Drawing of the week
🎯Insights on intention from “Ask Powerful Questions”
A book by seasoned facilitators Will Wise and Chad Littlefield explores the art of asking questions that build trust and connection. According to Wise and Littlefield, Intention is the foundation of asking powerful questions.
Sharing your honest intention means fully understanding three things:
- What you are aiming for
- What your purpose is
- What you plan to achieve
You may be asking, isn’t intention the same as purpose?
Wise and Littlefield say that it’s connected to purpose, but it’s more than that. They go to the word’s Latin room intendere which means “to stretch”. So when you make an intention, you invite yourself and others to stretch, grow and evolve toward something greater.
Check out the book 👉 here.
Chad also posts a lot of great facilitation tips on LinkedIn. Check them out 👉 here.
💡Oprah Winfrey on How to Have a Clear Intention
I can’t write a newsletter on intention without including Oprah Winfrey. She is one of the best living examples I know of someone who lives with clear intentions.
In this video, she breaks down how being clear on her intention led to her success. She shares how she went from living the “disease to please” (who else is familiar with that one?) and how being clear on her intention cured her.
Her pearl of wisdom? It’s not enough to know what you want, you need to know why you want it.
Check out the 3 min video 👉 here.
✍️Drawing of the week
Published today! 😅
 Aar Aalto May 2nd 2022 1 Retweets 9 Likes |
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Just hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas.
🙌Special shout out to Delia in London for recommending Cal Newport’s work on Deep Work, Romy in Stuttgart for recommending Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, Andrea in Los Angeles, Joan in Mansfield, and Barry and Michaele in Bracebridge.
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Creatively yours,
