Nathanaelle Ravez: Do you want to find solutions that help teams make better decisions, solve problems faster, and free their creative minds to come up with smarter solutions? There's a workshop for that. Bonjour, I'm Nathie Ravez, and I'm delighted to welcome to this show facilitators and experts who share their knowledge and experience of everything you need to know in the world of facilitation, giving you tips and tools for leading groups, sparking collaboration and driving innovation. Thank you for tuning in and let's go. Hi everybody. I'm very, happy to welcome today someone that I really admire. My guest of the day is a pioneer and an ambassador of facilitation. Her name is Kirste Lewis. We both have a lot in common. Our age. I work with corporates, you in learning and development, me in project management. We have a passion for connecting people. And of course we both guide, train and empower those who want to make facilitation their career. So yes, you might think we are in competition, but you couldn't be more wrong. And that's something I really cherish about this community. It's all about sharing and growing together alongside. Honestly, I admire her because she started her career years before. A lot of us know what it is about, what is facilitation. And 10 years ago, you founded in 2014 the School of Facilitation. In short, you saw the opportunity first and created a service that was missing. That's entrepreneurship spirit in its glory, if I may. And we will talk about that today. Welcome, Kirsty. Hello. Wow. What an introduction. I'm blushing here. If you're not watching the video, I'm sitting here quite like, my life, Nathy, what an intro. Thank you. You're welcome. I thought about each words I wrote. How are you? Wow. I'm good. I am good. Thank you very much.

Nathanaelle Ravez: So Kirstie, we know you are one of the boys to follow when you start in the field of facilitation and you have a background in learning and development. So before I tell anything wrong, would you be so kind and tell me a little bit of your background and how you came into facilitation? Yeah. Well, if we go back to university, I've always done what I love. and I didn't realize that that was a, maybe a good thing to do. So I studied geography. I played a lot of sports when I was meant to be doing my big dissertation. was organizing a sports ball for 750 people. Might be an indication as to why I only got, we call it a two two in the UK. Then I was the sports president for a year. So all I did was play sport, talk sport, drink a lot. And then I was like, I have to get a job. And I again, just was like, how do you do that? And luckily they were in the UK where I'm based. Companies go to universities to like look for graduates as we're called. And I applied for some jobs and I got taken into work for a big brewery. So it was like a student stream job, know, work, work in alcohol, sell alcohol, talk alcohol, play in alcohol. it's amazing. But I ended up, My career ended up, I was working for Diageo and many of you listening might know the brands of Diageo, maybe not the name Guinness, Murdoch, Johnny Walker, Bailey's, many, many more. But there I was in the global sales team and we were the, the role I had for two and a half years before I left was to be the custodian of the Diageo way of selling. So I got to travel around the world, work with sales directors and their sales teams basically, ROM workshops and coach. And that's where I discovered this real love of training, learning and development. So to the shock of many, I resigned in 2007 and left and started working for myself in 2008 as a freelance trainer. So even though I started in 2014, I started working for myself in 2008. I make a difference between

Nathanaelle Ravez: A trainer and a facilitator, but maybe I'm wrong. What is the difference for you between a my God, Nathie, this is my soapbox as we say in English. I get very frustrated. So for me, there's a distinction. So a trainer is a subject matter expert who enables a group to learn new or upgrade. skills, knowledge, behaviors, mindset, but they have the knowledge. There's a clear set of outcomes they're seeking to achieve. A facilitator is working with a group of people to enable them to go through a process, an ideation, a creation. They are not subject matter experts, but they are there to hold the space, manage time. Keep everybody on track. Someone recently in the SOF community said, I am there to be forgotten. Basically, I should just disappear. They shouldn't rely on me. And you squeeze, actually, you are here to squeeze out from the people their own expertise, right? Yeah, you're there to help them dig and find them. What really, really bugs me. is when I hear trainers call themselves facilitators. I'm like, you're not a facilitator, you're a trainer. You are delivering training. no, no you're not. A facilitator, you might be using facilitation skills. Absolutely. So I've come up with a third option, which is a facilitator trainer. So this is where you are more, you're still training, but you very much leaning into facilitation skills, behaviors, mindset, and do more pull than push in the way you deliver. Yeah. In Asia where I am right now, there is a lot of facilitators. So I was very excited at the beginning, but they assimilate the word facilitation to a trainer actually. Why do you think they do

Nathanaelle Ravez: facilitate the world, the word in French is facilité means make it easier. It is maybe because of making easier people to learn something. Maybe it comes from that. I don't know really. Do you know what I think? I think it's snobbery. To be a snob is to like lift your nose up and go, no, not very nice. I wonder if people think calling themselves a trainer. limits them, minimizes them, isn't a great business to be in. I'm like, own it, embrace it. Say you're a trainer and do it proudly because there is such a difference between being a trainer and being a facilitator. But I really like the facilitative trainer. I did, for example, workshop or a training and a workshop with a company where they had, they received like one hour video about the Terry Tools techniques of facilitation so they could look at it. And then I came and in the morning I explained them how to work making decision workshop and in the afternoon they were facilitating some of the exercise each of the other thing. it could be a facilitative trainer in this case. when you use facilitation to bring the people to learn better and to practice what they have learned. Would it be right? That's how I would do it. Okay, so you are in 2008 taking the leap, making a significant How did your close people react? I mean, it's a big step. mean, you have a salary, you're in a good position, you're traveling the world to go to corporate and do your job and suddenly you decide to quit. And are you sure that it will work? So the decision happened, and I can tell you exactly when the decision happened to that I thought I might quit Diageo was the 7th of April.

Nathanaelle Ravez: 2007 and I told this story a few times. So on that date, I was at a friend's workshop. They were testing a new workshop about if you really worked on an outcome, what could happen. So I went to this workshop. I was doing it as a favor and then the boys were like, right, what's your outcome? Like, what do you want? What do you want to focus on today? And I just went, I don't know. So I made something up and what I said, and I've got it written somewhere is it is April 2009. and I am an NLP trainer and coach and I earn 5 ,000 pounds a month. And I thought that was ridiculous. I mean, I was at Diageo, I was gonna be a sales director. I was gonna be in HR, you know, I had all these big grand plans, I was gonna move. And then I wrote that outcome down and then I worked on it all day. So we looked at the values behind it that I had, my beliefs, limiting beliefs, supporting beliefs. And by the end of the workshop, I remember I was living in London and I cycled home and I rang my Australian friend, Simone. And I was like, mate, I, I might leave Diageo and do something like in the training world. And she's like, what? So I described it to her and then excuse the Australian accent. If you're Australian, maybe I think that's a really good idea. I think you'd be amazing at that. And I was like, thanks Mona. So that's how it all happened. was literally on that day. then between April to October, because I resigned in October, because I knew I wanted to leave at Christmas because I had a really big amazing project on that had me traveling around the world. had to go to Africa, Asia, and I finished in Sydney, Australia. So I was a bit like, I want to do that. I want to do some cool travel. So, but what I did to help myself, the first bit is already there. Like I started to really look at the outcome. What is it I wanted to achieve? I then worked with a coach and a mentor over that period of time to really look at the why, the what, the how. I called in some really key people and I've written about this before, like I needed cheerleaders. So I needed people that were going to go, yay, but not go, ooh, do you think that's a really good idea? Like, a bit too, I just needed emotional support at the

Nathanaelle Ravez: I have my ears. So I had people who would just sit and listen to me when I was like, just going, it could be this, it could be that, or I'm just sitting there crying. Cause there was a lot of crying, which I wasn't very used to because I was corporate. There was then my elders. So I went and spoke to people who were already in this space and what did they do? How did they do it? What does this space even look like? So. And then I have my energizers, that was it, not cheerleaders. The energizers were just people who were just, they didn't have to know about this world, but they were there to like, keep me going. I didn't tell my parents until the August, because I knew that they would worry. Because to your point about the money, and I've got a thing in my head that my dad, I don't think it's the first thing he said, but he did say to me, Does that mean you'll lose your Amex gold card? Your BA gold card? British Airways gold card. And I went, yes, probably it will because I won't be traveling as much. And that was his big worry. I said, I'd give it a year. So yeah, that's how I left. So the mindset piece, the people around me, how I told those closest to me. The other thing was at that time I wasn't in a relationship. I didn't have dog or a cat, I didn't have children. I knew I was really fortunate from that perspective. Like I was making this decision on my own. So that's good in one way, but making a decision on your own is equally challenging because you've got no one to fall back on. So getting the finances right was really, really important. On the finances at that time, I knew I needed four or five months of money to be able to live. because I knew I wasn't going to get paid at least until April made time, if at all. And then the other thing I worked on was building my network and I knew I was going to be an associate. I knew I wasn't going to go and do my own thing straight away. So finding associate, a relationship, working. Can you shortly explain what an associate is? Yeah, I'd be really interested

Nathanaelle Ravez: What other people use, other countries use, it might be a subcontractor. It's when you are delivering a workshop on behalf of another agency, individual company. It's a good bridge until you find your customers. Yeah. And I think it allows you to, if you're coming out of corporate and I talked about leaving the Diageo duvet. You know, It isn't for everybody. I think this is a really important thing to talk about because right now a lot of people are dissatisfied with their work. They are dissatisfied in organizations. And I think because of social media, it's really evident that there is another world out there that you can work for yourself and be a freelancer, just like you and I have. And what doesn't always get discussed is what it's really like, like how tough it is, the resilience you need. the ability to deal with rejection, the ability to like really stand your ground and like keep the faith. And that isn't for everybody out there. And that's okay. I think more people need to really check in with themselves and go, can I not draw down any money for six months? Can I cope with writing proposals that take two days and still not win the business? Can I cope with someone saying, no. And can I cope working on my own? This is the other big one. Being on my own every day for a week. Yes, you're talking to people virtually, but you might be on your own all the time. It's a lonely profession. And you need to have discipline. When you're in a corporate, in a company, you need to wake up at six, be there at eight, the driving time, you take your breakfast before, and then you start there. When you're a freelancer, it's difficult

Nathanaelle Ravez: Yeah, to not say, okay, now I will go to the beach for me for two hours. For example, really setting your own schedule without that anyone is waiting for you. I just, I don't tell about workshops that are fixed with customers, but you have to do all the rest. Yeah. marketing, the bookkeeping, you have to learn everything while you to set your business if you are not aware about everything. And the opposite of that being, and I'm in this trap at the moment, is working too much and not stopping. like right now, as we're recording this in July 24, the world just feels very strange. Like the client world, like finding work, the economies around, like everybody's, we've gone to the vote. America is going to go to the vote. We've just had America just, Biden's just stepped out of the race. know, businesses are in restructure mode. They're making people redundant. They don't want to commit to more learning and development. I'm noticing things are just weird. And even if you do get a proposal in, it takes a while. They keep coming back. can you reshape it? Can you reshape it? And you're like, for fuck's sake. Can someone just say yes and let's move But then it's not possible. mean, I got, we need a proposal very, very, very quick because we need to go in AI and we need a workshop and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you'd make the proposal very quick and then you don't hear anything for weeks. And then you ask again, yes, but there are some other priorities. Okay. And then there are the summertime. Okay. And then, and so you have to that also. Yeah. Yeah, it is. There you go. That's a bit about the reality, the reality of an independent facility. Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, an associate is a good place to start. And I think I like the word associate because you are associating to another business and in the UK, it's a phrase that's used a lot. It's, it's recognized as a, a way of doing your work for sure.

Nathanaelle Ravez: So we have a task to do, you and me, look at how to call an associate. Is it the right word for everybody? Because I'm not an English speaker. Yeah. It'd be interesting to, from your listeners to hear like, if they can share with you, like what, what do they call that relationship? How do you describe yourself if you are in that space? And one question we talk now about the reality of being freelancer. And we talk about the things that are not so easy to handle and why it is not for everyone. What are the good sides? You get to choose who you work for me, meeting people. I'm a real connector and like get to know individuals. Like you're in Bali. I'm in the UK. We got introduced by the power of LinkedIn. I'm very happy to talk to people all day, but that doesn't earn me any money. But I love that. I love the community. You just said at the very beginning of this podcast, you know, we do similar things and different things, but we're not in competition. I have an abundance mentality. There is enough for everyone in this world. And if anyone says there isn't, bar humbug. What else is good? For me, it is really nice to work with different kinds of clients in different kinds of structure and with different kinds of topics. I think when you start, it's good to have a clear topic in mind where do you want to be known for it? where do you start with? like your DNA workshop. your specific thing that people know, okay, she's here to solve this kind of problem with her method. So I think this is good. The thing is, it's not because you're starting with one thing that you are not doing other things. And this is what I love for myself now that I'm working a little bit longer. I do different kind of workshop about different kind of topics. So I discover every time new things.

Nathanaelle Ravez: about the processes, about the people, about what they wanting to go on. And this makes me curious every time. each time I'm who will I meet in this workshop. think another positive has been flexibility of lifestyle. So over the time of working for myself, I guess I can see two clear periods in my life. So there was one period I was doing a lot of sailing internationally and racing across the Atlantic, racing around the Caribbean. I mean, I was paid, I wasn't paid to do that. I was paying to do that, but I had the flexibility. I could go out there, still do some work, but then have these amazing adventures on the boats, on the race boats. And then the second part was when I was with Guillaume. my then French partner and I lived in Paris or I lived in Maribel. And again, the flexibility, could just take as long as I had my laptop, I could work anywhere. It really didn't matter. And my clients didn't mind. I think there were a couple of times I sat on the side of a piece in the sunshine and spoke to clients. It was great. I just sit there and have a good chat. Fantastic. So flexibility of lifestyle for sure. Yeah. For this one, I can say the same. Are you ready to ride the freelance wave as a facilitator? Join us for the second cohort of the take -off bootcamp kicking off in fall 2024. If you're feeling lost in the fog, unsure of where to start or how to make your facilitation services shine and attract clients, we're here to guide you out of that haze. Sounds interesting? Find the link to join our waitlist for the Fall 2024 Co -Art in the show notes.

Nathanaelle Ravez: facilitators. Yeah. And what is your opinion today? Organization are still facing a lot of challenges. Is there a place for facilitators? Yeah. First, I'm to go back to 2014. The reason I started SOF was because I noticed I couldn't find my people. I couldn't find other facilitators and trainers. So even though I call it school of facilitation, it just sounds good. I always include trainers in that, facilitation and training. Like I think we are part of the same industry, just in different spaces and different parts of it. And I couldn't find the people I wanted to hang out with. I tried to find the IAF in the UK at that time. No one replied to any of my phone calls or my emails. So I was just like, fine, I'll create something. Yeah, I did. That's exactly what I did. The other thing I noticed, nothing as well, was when I was looking for a place to upskill myself, like my knowledge on training or facilitation, how to design a workshop, like different methodologies, I couldn't find that. So another reason to start SOF was to create those spaces to help other people upskill themselves and dive in. Cause I think a lot of us learn by doing versus anything formal or even intentional. think a lot of us go, I've got to make a workshop. let me go and see what kind of exercises I can find or, or go and talk to Kirsty and ask her what she's done and see how that works. And we just adopt versus maybe go, how can I do this really, really well? And I think it's really rare that people get coaching on their delivery as well. And I think that's really, really important because again, like when you're facilitating and you're on your feet, like your language, your body language is called that. Those are your tools. Like you've got to sharpen them. You've to look after them and like help yourself. So yeah, that's why I created SOF. And then in terms of like your second question, which was are we, is there still a need for it in this day and age? I think the answer is yes. the, for two reasons.

Nathanaelle Ravez: or two audiences anyway. So one, I get people in the corporate world and leaders coming to me going, we've had quite a few team meetings or we've had meetings as a leadership team and we can't stay on topic and we can't make decisions and we're not too sure how to do this and can you help us? And so it's like, think leaders recognize sometimes they need some help and they can't get it from within their own team. So that's when it's a really great time to call in a facilitator. Also within corporates more and more, they want to deliver their own learning. I absolutely buy into that. think that's totally the right thing. So how do you build talent internally? How do you build your training and facilitation talent? So you can work it through and own it and show that your leaders and your managers care about their people just in this one other way. I've done quite a few projects in the last three, four years around creating academies of trainers, which I absolutely love. think that just makes my heart sing. And on the other side, you have what I call the collective, which is other facilitators and trainers. We need community, we need connection, we need spaces to learn and share. And therefore, SOF also provides that. So this is still relevant to this day. if... If anything, I think it's even more needed because of how easy it is, as we said, for it to be lonely. And I think having that knowledge that there are others out there that you can talk to and call upon is so important. And meet in every place in the world. Yeah. You introduced me to Lisa Portridge. Yeah. Because we had the first call together. and I told you I was going to Singapore through you. I connect with her. We connect through the cards of Yan Kek. So it was like a very nice triangle. It's so funny that we can connect with people, see the people. You can go in the community in Batta for example and I can say, hey next week I'm going to Kuala Lumpur who is in the place. Or you put something on LinkedIn and you meet other people who... Yeah.

Nathanaelle Ravez: are in the same mindset. Good, isn't it? I'm going to Cambodia in August. So I was going to talk to you about that. Yes, Lewis is in Cambodia in August. Who's coming to Cambodia? Come and find me. I want to do something. I'd love to do a meet up. Send her an email. Go to her LinkedIn. Definitely. Yeah, we will put all the information in the show notes. Manila. And then Manila. When are you in Manila? first week of September. I might go to Manila beginning of September. That would be a thing. So guys, just to say, come in the communities, meet other people, you will not feel alone and after and after you build your own inner circle of people you can talk with, the ones as a cheerleader, the others as an energizer, the others as more coaching partner. and go to the LinkedIn of KST, look at the School of Facilitation. You have so great trainings to learn facilitation itself, to create your own workshop and to make a living of it. Yeah, thank you. It was so nice to have you here. And you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed myself today. What a great conversation. It was like 30 minutes going very, very fast. Thank you, Gerstie, for being my guest and I'm sure we will stay in contact together. Thank you. I appreciated you today and I really appreciate you being here. Bye bye. Bye.

Nathanaelle Ravez: I hope you've enjoyed this episode. You can find all the information to join the School of Facilitation community in the show notes along with the link to Kirstie's LinkedIn profile. If anyone is in Cambodia or Manila in late August or early September, please get in touch. Kirstie will be there and I might join her. So we would be more than happy to meet other facilitators in these countries. In the next episode, I'll be welcoming Alex Eisenstetter, founder of the AI Tinkerer community and a facilitator with over 20 years of experience. is also the creator of Stormz, a great tool for facilitating large group workshops. So stay tuned and in the meantime, I wish you good health, success and lots of happiness. Au revoir!