Greetings from Barcelona☀️where I celebrated my mom and all moms (including step-moms, aunts, grandmothers, dads-who-are-moms, and carers) yesterday on Mother’s Day. More on that below👇
🙌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!
🔑I’ll never forget my big lesson on how to be authentic.
I was taking part in a 2-day facilitation workshop led by one of the best facilitators I have ever met. His name was Charlie Murphy. He was magnetic. He was funny. And he had the gift of cracking people’s potential wide open.
Charlie, our trainer, used to be a performer.
In a previous life, Charlie was the lead singer of an 80’s band that filled stadiums around the world. He sang about making social change, protecting the environment, and his struggles growing up gay. His unique authentic style earned him a loyal following and lots of success as a musician.
Charlie was an exceptional facilitator.
Leading groups came naturally to Charlie. He had honed his ability to captivate people’s attention. After years of writing songs about his life experiences, he was completely comfortable being himself in front of others. It made people feel like they could be 100% themselves.
Charlie became my mentor (and dear friend).
I first learned the craft of facilitation from Charlie. I wanted to be like him. I tried to imitate his facilitation style as my own. There was one small problem. I wasn’t a performer. I didn’t know what it was like to live his struggles. And I definitely couldn’t tell his jokes. (Okay 3 big problems😅).
He helped me discover my facilitation style.
For a long time, I thought you needed to have a big personality to be a good facilitator. I realized that my true style was more grounded, calm, and anchored. I hadn’t valued these things in my facilitation because they weren’t “performative”.
Embracing it changed everything.
It was like receiving the key to a locked vault where I was keeping all kinds of things about myself sealed shut. Once I opened it, I felt way more at ease with groups. And I realized that the more I brought my unique style into my facilitation, the better my facilitation was.
Authenticity is one of your most important facilitation superpowers.
Being true to your personality, values, and spirit is the key to building trust and safety in your groups. It unlocks your creativity. It’s a hallmark of great leaders and people who are pretty cool to hang out with.
🤔How do you activate your authenticity?
That’s our Quest for this week. 🔎
👉A Masterclass in Authenticity from Kelly Terbasket
👉Embracing Your Weird by Felicia Day
Plus:
You are invited to two (awesome and free) events:
🎟️Join me for a free facilitation workshop at InHive’s Enact! Festival on Friday, May 13
🎟️Learning Culture Summit May 19&20
Details and links below👇
A Masterclass on Authenticity from Kelly Terbasket
A brand new TEDx talk by facilitator and IndigenEYEZ founder (and Quest reader, hi Kelly👋), Kelly Terbasket. It’s called Recognizing Our Implicit Bias Towards Indigenous Peoples.
Kelly has both Syilx Okanagan and European heritage. She is an exceptional facilitator with a gift for navigating the complex relationships between indigenous and settler peoples.
I had the great honor of collaborating with Kelly for many years. Hearing her story has impacted my understanding of the issues facing indigenous communities in Canada more than any(highly biased) lessons I learned in school.
There is a lot to learn from Kelly in this TED talk: The devastating impact of colonization on indigenous peoples in Canada, the steps we can all take to right relations, and more.
Kelly also gives us a shining example of what it means to be authentic. She shares how she reconnected to her values and spirit through the wisdom of indigenous peoples.
Watch Kelly’s full TEDxBYU talk 👉 here. (And give it a 👍)
📙Embrace Your Weird
A book by best-selling author, producer, actor, TW writer, and web-series creator Felicia Day on how to face your fears and unleash your creativity.
I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for months. It’s been on several trips and returned unopened. I finally read it over the weekend. And I loved EVERY SINGLE PAGE (style borrowed from the book😅).
Day is not talking about the kind of weird that your teenage kids call you. Her book is about embracing your weird – i.e. what makes you truly unique. She argues that your weird (the second kind) is the fuel for your creativity.
Here are 3 pearls of her hard-earned wisdom that gave me some insights about authenticity (sorry, I couldn’t find a pearl emoji, we’re going with the oyster)👇
🦪1/ The great thing about being weird is that you just have to be yourself.
The more you channel that uniqueness, people will see that authenticity and say “hey, I feel like I belong with that person.”
🦪2/ To create, we have to know the truth of ourselves for ourselves.
That means taking some time to understand why we do the things we do and building our self-knowledge.
🦪3/ Self-awareness is a muscle we need to flex.
The more aware we are of ourselves, the more comfortable we’ll be in expressing our points of view.
Check out the 👉 book and a short 👉video summary.
🎟️You are invited to 2 awesome + free events
📅InHive’s Enact! Festival – Friday, May 13 @11am CEST
Join me and seasoned facilitators Nick McGirl (ChangemakersXChange) and Michael Ukwuma (HundrEdorg) at a free facilitation workshop at InHive’s Enact! Festival. If you are interested in social change, networks, and boosting member engagement, this workshop is for you!
Register👉here. Check out the full program of free events 👉here.
Thanks to Quest reader Brendon Johnson for this opportunity.
📅Learning Culture Summit May 19&20
Curious Lion CEO Andrew Barry is bringing you the Learning Culture Summit on a fascinating new frontier where the Creator Economy meets Corporate Learning with a stellar line-up of speakers.
Register 👉 here. While you are at it check out Andrew’s insight-packed free online learning newsletter 👉 here.
📸Photo of the week
Me and my mom taking a weird selfie last August 😅
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
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🙌Special shout out to Chris in Brussels, Maria in Miami, Katrin and Yusra in Berlin, Barry and Michaele in Bracebridge, Joan and Connie in Toronto, and Stefy B for the feedback on Twitter.
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Creatively yours,
