Vishal Jodhani, a skilled facilitator, emphasizes making group interactions smoother by focusing on pre-work, crafting meaningful questions, and creating the right environment. He stresses the importance of good questions in driving conversations and focusing group efforts towards shared goals. Facilitation, according to Vishal, involves leading groups on intentional journeys, balancing chaos and structure, and trusting collective wisdom. He navigates contradictions in facilitation methods regarding hierarchy and group dynamics by promoting inclusivity and collective intelligence. Vishal's unique belief in hosting oneself before others and being mindful of personal presence sets him apart in the field of facilitation.
Transcription
6694 Words, 36259 Characters
Welcome to High Variants, where we explore the strange times we're in.
I'm Danny Berkeley, and on this podcast, I speak with people who are trying to make
sense of it all.
My guest is Vishal Jodhani Vish is a facilitator, one of the best I've ever seen in action.
And someone who thinks carefully about how people gather and work together.
Vish grew up in Mumbai and has lived in Brussels, Waterdam, and Adelaide, and a host of other
places before settling in Berlin, where he has been living for the past decade with his
wife and children.
Vish, welcome.
Thank you, Danny.
That's a generous introduction, and I'm glad to be here.
Vish, what do you do when you facilitate a group?
For me, when I think of the facilitator, having lived in France, I think of the root of the
word, which is facile to make easy.
And that's what I often think, like, how can I make things easier for this group?
And if that's bringing in a question, helping them focus on the bigger picture, creating
space for everyone to be seen and heard, feel a sense of belonging, it essentially is that
is, how do I make it easier for them to move towards a shared goal, even if they haven't
named one yet?
And what are people not seeing when you facilitate a meeting or a group?
They're not seeing all that goes into the design of that before they enter the group.
People often ask me to come and run a session, let's say, for half a day.
And the session itself is probably 20% of the work.
There's 70% that happens before, probably 10% that happens after.
And there is so much of the work in speaking to everyone individually, really uncovering
the deeper needs and what is not being said.
All the logistics, the right space, the right setting for this group, all the inner work
to be able to host myself before hosting others, the invitation and how that is crafted.
And a lot of the work is essentially crafting the right questions before you come into the
group.
So, yeah, I think it's the pre-work, both outer and inner, that goal is unseen.
What makes for a good question?
For me, it is, is this the right question for this group at this time?
So is this question one that helps us dive deeper?
So for example, what is not being said here right now, or what needs to be surfaced that's
not being surfaced?
Is it a question that needs to open up possibility?
How might we find a new way to reimagine the future of, insert your own blank there?
Or is it a question that needs us to focus right now?
We've had a lot of conversations.
What is the one thing we have to make sure we get right?
It's just knowing a question is our best friend when facilitating.
And have we invited the right question at the right time of the gathering?
Even the opening question, right, when people arrive, we often call it an inclusion exercise
or a check-in moment and the right check-in question, say, the right question for the
right occasion to move the group along the journey because the day is nothing but a series
of well-crafted questions put together.
I ran a workshop on influence today.
And my opening question we stood in a circle was, who is one person who's been really influential
in your life?
And that somehow set the tone for the rest of the workshop we had together.
So it's choosing the question on the journey.
But maybe also in addition, it's a question that's clear, that's concise, and that really
frames what it is we want to talk about.
What's your theory or model of facilitation?
What makes it work?
Nani, I love these questions.
It's a chance for me to step beyond my day-to-day doing.
And it's almost a behind-the-scenes view of what might be happening.
For me, it's about taking a group on a journey.
It's understanding where this group is trying to go together.
That's how we're always designed.
We often draw a mountain with our flag and say, "Okay, this is the goal.
This is where we are going."
And by the end of this time together, it's also what I ask every client stakeholder at
the start, and they work with me, is by the end of the session, if this was wildly successful,
what is the group leaving with?
What do we want them to think or know?
What do we want them to feel?
What do we want them to do?
And just spending time with that question on why are we gathering?
What is our purpose, our intention, and where do we want to get to the end?
That's step one for me.
And then it's figuring out, "Okay, where are they starting?
What are we working with?
What are the hopes, the fears?
What are the elephants in the room that we want to work with?"
So I get a sense of where people are now and where they're going, and facilitation then
is how do you design an intentional journey to take them from here to there?
And along the way, it might be creating spaces for people to just arrive, spaces or questions
for them to express, spaces to listen, spaces to ideate and diverge, and spaces to focus
and converge, and holding a mentor of mine often says, "Prepare like Caleb and let it
go."
And a lot of it is also improvising.
Once you know this is where we're going, and we might have something, but what the group
comes up with might totally shift the direction.
So it is working with the energy in the room and trusting the collective wisdom of the group
versus just having a set agenda for myself.
So it is that.
Just having some structure and holding it lightly, and inviting people along the journey
too.
I always do that.
I always might be able to shape this as we go, and going with a clear intention, a few
good questions, and to not do it alone, that's another big one is to hold space together
in some way.
So I don't think of it as a solo sport, it's a team sport.
What are the non-obvious limits to facilitation?
There are so many obvious limits that I'm thinking of.
I often think of these principles that we talk about in facilitation, which is whoever
shows up are the right people.
What happens is the only thing that could have happened, and it starts when it starts.
It's over when it's over.
So I'm running up the obvious limits of just holding an intention and knowing that we might
end up, we might to trust the process is something that you often hear with facilitation is trust
the process.
And it's just trusting that we end up somewhere and where we end up, there is some meaning
and data in what is a non-obvious limit.
What comes up for you, Danny, when you think of it, a non-obvious limit in your experience?
I'm thinking of limitations that may be apparent to you as an experienced practitioner, but
that may not be apparent to others who have less mileage in the field.
I would say when I was new and naive, it was having a plan and following through with it,
making sure I just cover the agenda that I had in mind and for that to drive it.
And I noticed that there is only a certain part that I can prepare, but I'm, facilitation
often is working with the unknown, just knowing who shows up in the room, who doesn't show
up, who suddenly shows up, that will have a big impact.
It's not being able to control how people show up.
It's not knowing what their own context and baggage is, what the interpersonal dynamics
are at play.
So there is a lot of unknowns that you just walk into, and it's being open to when trusting
that there's a big percentage of reality in the room that you have no control over.
And can you still hold structure and just acknowledge your own limitations?
Like, I might not have all of these answers, and can I still have enough trust and stay
centered within the chaos that emerges for the group?
Like I said, at the end, what we're trying to do is create a solid, safe enough container
for the right conversations to happen.
So that's what's in mind control is the container, and the growth is, how do we expand the strength
and the capacity of this container to hold the chaos that might emerge?
So maybe that's the big learning is, facilitation is a chaotic process, and there's the mix
of chaos and order, and figuring out what that thin line is that we got to walk in the process.
And how do you know the difference between the productive, creative chaos and the unproductive
confusion?
That is a massive role of the facilitator, right, is to keep things on track.
So once we have a sense of what the journey is, how people bring along the journey, and
it happens, I've had a participant who suddenly said something, which feels like it's a total
derailing moment for this conversation.
And then again, it's a choice to be made as a facilitator.
Do we go off-road for a bit and explore maybe there is something here in this creative chaos
or in this off comment.
And if we are clear on intention, and if we feel it really is often as a very tactical
thing, I would just get a little parking lot and say, hey, it's a great point.
It doesn't serve us right now.
So why don't we, in today's world, we call it a bike rack, not a parking lot to be sustainable.
But how do we do that?
And maybe it's, and when that happens, I would sometimes ask like, hey, Jani, that's an interesting
comment.
I'd just like to check in with you on how do you feel it relates to the topic at hand.
And maybe there is a connection there that I, in my limited context of the organizing
of the content, haven't seen myself, but it's almost inviting me back into that question.
And more than anything else for me, it's designing for divergence and designing for convergence.
So I would even say like, hey, for the next hour, we're exploring all the possibilities
and I'm encouraging creative chaos.
So right now, I don't know how to shoot an idea down.
And once we come back, we'll have a filter.
Based on our ability to execute how this would move us towards our goals.
And truly dreaming bigger, which ones of these meet the criteria.
And now let's converge.
But it's giving people, because every group has the dreamers and the doers.
But do we create the right structure for both of those to happen?
Something that's really been bothering me is we broadly know how to facilitate good meetings.
It's not secret obscure arcane knowledge.
And yet it does not seem to have caught on.
What's the constraint here?
When I work with groups and I often I was running a facilitation training for a group
and I interviewed every single person one by one on asking them their hopes for the workshop
and their fears.
And a lot of them were joining because they had high stakes meetings to run, multi stakeholder
engagement opportunities.
When I asked them what's holding them back from truly stepping in, it was the fear of
the unknown.
And I see that in the work that I do is people want control and certainty and the focus is
on content.
It's a bunch of slides that I can present and then engage people in Q&A.
But even the Q&A might bring up uncertainty.
But to truly open a conversation to surface the collective wisdom of the group with power
imbalance in the room, with differing perspectives, it is that fear of conflict, the fear of
the unknown, a lack of self confidence or trust to be able to manage chaos or conflict when
it happens.
And that gets in our way is when I talk about chaos and order.
It's the leaning towards too much order and leaving the space for new things to emerge.
Or maybe it is going on the other side of just being too chaotic, "Hey, everyone's here.
What do we need to talk about?"
And that's why for me it is that odd of having some structure with holding it lightly.
And another big thing that we talk about is often learning how to host myself over hosting
others.
And that for me is the non-obvious work of the work that goes unseen is how much self-management
it takes before going in.
All our inner voices to work through of, "What if I fail?
Am I enough?
Do I know enough about?"
I have that.
I work with different industries, companies with totally different contexts, and I don't
know much about the context or the people attending know a lot more about it than I do.
And it's for me to remind myself my role here is to hold process, not to hold content.
And that the group has the answers.
How do I help them surface it?
So the analogy I use often is that the participants bring in all the ingredients.
I'm just the oil in the frying pan.
That's helping bring it together.
Who do you consider your teachers in this?
One of my biggest teachers has been Tio Kean Miller, who is one of the co-founders of the
Art of Hosting or one of the senior practitioners.
I felt the first time I came across the Art of Hosting as an organization, and so many
other teachers, whether they were Monica and Mary Alice and all these elders, when I attended
my first training, I was like, "Oh, this just speaks to me."
I get it the way they explained it, the way they held space.
A lot of it was just role modeling, good conversation.
I remember living in Brussels being invited to a co-creation session, and I never had
an invitation to a co-creation session.
And my early 20s entered this room, which was not set up as a classroom, not set up
as a boardroom.
It was just a circle, and everyone stood around, and it was such quality conversations,
such deep connection, and a really fruitful engagement, even if it was just two hours
in the evening on coming up with a new collaborative space.
How I left feeling was so different to what I had felt in other meetings.
And that was my invitation to dive deeper into the work, and how all these teachers
have brought in some of the simplicity of the Art of Crafting questions on hosting yourself.
It was more a masterclass in the being and the doing, which was a bunch of tools that
were there.
What inspires me about these teachers, it's just been the way they do it themselves.
And I've experienced it in knowing this is what the impact is on the group, and I've
worked alongside them as I grew in the field, and even then just witnessing how lit up people's
eyes are in the room, and how they feel the sense of belonging, a sense of ownership at
the end.
Yeah, it's stuff to, it's those intangibles.
Broadly, most or maybe all facilitation methods bake in some loaded assumptions about the
world, like that less hierarchy in a room will lead you to better results rather than
more hierarchy in the room.
And that can be in tension with what the group, the organization, the company you're working
with tries to achieve in the world.
When do these contradictions start to matter?
The contradictions of hierarchy and group.
One way to think of facilitation is that it's not just a neutral tool.
It's not just a hammer, but it's, in fact, it's an opinionator the hammer, and the hammer
has opinions about the world and about how the world maybe should look like or what the
world should not look like.
And you could say every method brings with it certain assumptions.
It's not as if facilitation is particularly special, but it does strike me that a lot
of facilitation methods do bring with them very strong assumptions about what a good
world looks like, let's say.
And it's not always obvious that everyone who would like to sort of enjoy the fruits
of this method actually agrees with the underlying ethos of it.
It's true.
For example, facilitation, we often, I love using a circle because a circle shows equality.
There's no hierarchy, everyone can see everyone, but a lot of the organizations that I work
with have an inbuilt sense of hierarchy in them.
What I notice is if I'm running, let's say a top team off site, and I'm facilitating
very senior leaders in an organization for two days, even then what I'm working towards
is being brought in as an external, having the privilege to say I am doing that by allowing
others to be present in a more equal way.
And I'm neutralizing the group in some way, while acknowledging there is hierarchy in
the room.
So I would sometimes get a CEO to open and welcome and frame, saying this is why we are
gallery R. And then to say, and I would love to participate myself, I'm stepping back as
a participant and letting someone else hold us for the next few days.
And I always have a talk with a senior most person in the room on what their role is,
how they frame, how they show up, what their posture is for those two days.
And what they experience is a setting where everyone was seen and heard, and all opinions
mattered.
And then you're right, they go back into the rest of the world in their senior roles, and
maybe into a default mode of hierarchical operating.
But what I feel shifts, no matter what the world is, just that feeling of, how might
I make others feel included?
How might I make others feel seen?
How might I allow the collective intelligence of my teams to surface?
And in that sense, it is not an either or, or I need to give leadership and direction
versus I need to invite participation.
But how might it shift from an either or to an end?
So maybe just expanding their range and our range of, both of that is sometimes direction
and power is helpful.
And there is time and space for that.
And there are moments to invite people's voices in, because in the long run, we do
want, you know, to explore that power of the collective at some level.
I haven't come across someone resisting it, but it's been more traditional organizations
where it is, I tell them and they do it, then I ask them, but why is that change not working?
And then they realize that they forgot to take people along the way.
But often it is helping role model and experience that they want to then bring to their teams.
What something you believe about facilitation that most other people don't?
Those are beautiful question.
For me, my biggest belief has always been about hosting myself before hosting others.
And I know there are some fellow practitioners and teachers who believe in that, but I so
strongly believe in this, is am I clear on my intention, my authenticity, my vulnerabilities,
my challenges, and what do I need to do to truly hold space for myself before I can hold
up for a group?
And I have seen people who've just spent all the time designing and working and then showing
up.
And maybe that's what the difference is.
A lot of people feel you can park that part of you aside and who you are, can be left
at the door to serve the group and what it needs.
And I strongly believe how you show up impacts the rest of the group.
It's that analogy we often use about the security announcement on an aircraft when the oxygen
mass and you should have put it on yourself before putting it on others, maybe it's that.
When should you be a chill host?
Priya Parker often talks about this and she's got a chapter in a book called The Out of
Gathering on Don't Be a Chill Host.
I notice sometimes I am a chill host and it's if I have spent a lot of, I spend so much
of my time crafting conversations, designing gatherings in a work setting that when I sometimes
host in a more private setting, allow myself to be a chill host.
I invite people in with an intention and I struggle because I struggle to put that hat
off and like I've invited a bunch of people to this gathering at home and there is intention
behind the gathering.
And do I step in and do more or do I step back and do less?
And over time, I have learned to create the right setting and then step back a bit because
I felt I got so into hosting that I would end a gathering and everyone would have such
a good time and I feel I didn't get to enjoy it myself because I was just so busy hosting.
And that's what my practice right now is to trust and surrender.
I've called the right people.
I've put in that 70% work before the gathering and I want to enjoy this gathering myself.
So it is bringing a certain amount of chill but it's a practice.
Who does better coffee and why, Berlin or Adelaide?
When I moved to Berlin 11 years ago, I really missed coffee from Adelaide.
The Australian coffee scene was amazing and there was just one place I'd go to to get
proper coffee and it was Aussies who were serving it as baristas and I feel now over time Berlin
has an incredible coffee scene that I'm so grateful for.
And maybe Berlin does better coffee because we've got the world here and everyone's having
a unique flavor to it somewhere.
That's working for me.
If we stay on Berlin, what is underappreciated about the Berlin club scene?
I am so grateful to the Berlin club scene.
What is underappreciated is the fact that you can spend 12 hours at a party and almost
you'd never get asked the question, so what do you do?
I have a friend who I know from a club in Berlin and we met and we connected and I've
been with him to different music festivals and we caught up for dinner last month and
at the end of the night, he's like, "Hey, Bisha, I've known you for three years.
I still have no idea what you do."
And I was so grateful that I'm like, we have a friendship over three years that is beyond
our roles and titles, which is just based on an appreciation of life and shared values
and interests and that is underappreciated.
That question would be asked in London or New York and it would be such an easy icebreaker,
Berlin doesn't care about that.
It is such an equalizer.
So it is that it's not being boxed in, it is allowing you to show up in your authenticity,
in your rawness, and all of you is just welcome and how we give permission to each other to
then show up fully.
How does that practically operate?
How does what practically operate?
This norm that you've just described, everyone's automatically clued into that.
How?
There's a lot of depth in the Berlin club scene, in my humble opinion, no expert, but
Berlin for me celebrates authenticity and breaking barriers.
And there is so much attention just on the being and the presence, there's a lot of
respect for a private's personal space, a lot of respect for a personal space and being
interested in the humans that are there in a through conversation or no conversation.
But yeah, there isn't small talk.
I don't know if it's a German thing or a Berlin thing, but because these are places
of depth and you are there to really to shake off your concerns from your day to day, if
it is to do some inner work on the dance floor, if it is really to explore and discover who
you are and give each other space to do the same, somehow that would be a bus kill.
I'm not here to talk about my taxes or the weather or what I do for work.
There is more to me and it also takes so much effort to get into some of these clubs that
once you're there, you want to be in the temporary alternate universe that has been co-created
with so much effort and intention for you that you don't want someone to bring you back
to your default world for those hours.
And I have by a tourist been asked that question, and you can immediately notice it.
There was just something off about this moment.
And I'm not the only one who would say this, but clubbing in Berlin and experiencing community
and self-expression does ruin parting anywhere else in the world for a while.
How does the fact that you grew up in Mumbai shape your work today?
I'm so grateful to have grown up in Mumbai.
For me, Mumbai was a few things.
One it was about survival of the fittest and we always had to work harder.
If I didn't get good grades at school and if you were my classmate Danny, my parents
would say, "Hey, you and Danny play all the time.
Why is he the topper in the class and it's not to you?"
But there was always that push to work harder because there were many people in fewer opportunities.
So this idea of hustling and showing up for yourselves and going that extra mile was we
were well conditioned for that, even if I think of just dodging Mumbai traffic.
If I can drive in Mumbai, I can drive anywhere else in the world because it was about, "Hey,
we're going to put you through chaos."
And Mumbai traffic, by the way, is a great example of K or Dick world that we spoke about
earlier.
It's minimal structure, maximal chaos, and yet we all find our way, even if we take
extra time compared to Switzerland, to get somewhere.
And it's about finding your way.
But more than anything, if I think of these things, it is the art of possibility.
When I live in Germany, something that I struggle is when people say, "Nine, can I just have
these three changes made to my dinner order like now?"
And there are lots of things with bureaucracy that you'd get to know.
Whereas in India, it was always possible.
There was always a way, no matter how crooked the way might be sometimes, there was a way
of, "Yeah, absolutely, we'll find a way to work it out."
So for me, it was not about this can't be done, it's how might we get it done?
Let's find a way, let's explore possibility.
And that is helping.
If I try to figure out my own path career-wise, if I bike my way through the streets of Berlin,
that is that grit and resilience that I'm grateful for.
What did you learn from playing cricket that you couldn't have learned anywhere else?
I was really bad at cricket because I was one of the younger kids amongst the neighbor
community that we lived in.
And I was often the last one picked on the team, which was in great for my self-confidence
growing up.
So while a lot of people are amazing things about cricket and from cricket, my big lesson
was to not really choose your sport, because it wasn't mine.
And I could have been the last pick player on a team in a sport for a long time, that
have been my world view, or I could have chosen to go a different direction and pick a spot
that works for me.
And for me, that was a big thing of India was about grades, it was about being good at cricket.
It was about having certain career aspirations.
It was very tough to go off-roading from what was considered good.
So for me, choosing not to play cricket as much, me choosing to drop out of a career
in medicine, to choose to go take a gap year, were things that weren't done or celebrated.
But it was me trying to figure out how do I do what's right for me, not what society
expects of me.
And cricket is a good example there.
You're charismatic, what's your theory or explanation of how charisma works?
I appreciate your generous compliment, Jani.
I think you're very charismatic yourself.
So I should probably pass the question right back to you.
For me, people that I find charismatic, what I appreciate the most is authenticity, is
their ability to truly be and own who they are.
I think of the metaphor of those Japanese broken bowls with a golden thread around them
and this kintsugi as an art form, I mean, that's what I think of charisma is not perfection,
but people who can be themselves, shine their light, own their shadow and raise their flaws.
Even highlight them maybe, but like, this is me.
For me, so much of my life journey has been trying to be someone or be someone else or
aspire, do more, more, more and when I see someone at ease with who they are and show
up with that effortlessness, it's that less and less is more.
That feels charismatic.
It's that ability to pull, not push, trust and flow with ease.
And maybe those are the people who I feel are not working hard to be liked by everyone
and diluting themselves along the way, but hey, this is me.
And there's a lot of work to be done to get there.
We all seek validation in some way and to stop yearning for that and giving it to myself
is the work that I would love to work on.
If, let's say, your great-grandchildren study the Jodhani method of facilitation, what will
they find?
My goodness, they would find that it is truly a family recipe that has its own flavor and
comes from opening your cabinet and just finding what is there.
They would find it truly the signature feel is a sense of good connection and community
and about creating belonging for more people, sparking joy, so joy would be one of the ingredients
and seeking for that overall well-being of the community.
According to a very different community, you've worked also in the social impact space in
the past.
And without being too critical of that scene, and it's hard, and I've also been part of
this, it's hard not to feel that the scene hasn't quite fulfilled its promise.
Why?
For me, it goes back to this either/or versus end.
I noticed there was always this tension or the focus on doing good and the focus on impact
and focusing on the work that was happening.
And somewhere there was a lot of possibility left on the table in terms of making it financially
sustainable or just sustainable in some way.
I'd always reframe it as another question, which is, how might we do good and do well
at the same time?
And finding that balance between those, it's, yes, how do we measure our impact?
And it is okay for us to get along the way and to do well for our teams.
Our teams don't have to be underpaid.
We can attract top talent and create good conditions for them to thrive and to recognize
their effort, but it doesn't have to be stepped down for anyone.
For me, what's that is, there was an abundance mindset and a sense of possibility when it
came to impact, but not when it came to operations.
So that's my personal take on it is, how might we do both?
How might we bring that sense of possibility and abundance to creating conditions for everyone
to thrive along the way?
There were so many amazing people who I met on the journey, people like yourself, and
it was people would say, yeah, I can contribute on an advisory capacity.
I could contribute as a mentor, which is also what I do right now.
And how might we create possibilities for people to invest more in it?
Not out of charity or generosity, but because it makes sense for them.
I feel this is why we lose out on people somewhere.
The people who do the work, they burn out for different reasons.
So when I say sustainable, how might it truly be sustainable for people?
It was just a stop in the career somewhere.
You do a lot of innovation work.
What's your theory of innovation?
How does that come about?
Apart from, well, I guess it's new probably.
You know, in my undergrad, I studied communication and I majored in advertising.
And for me, working with ideas and people was exciting then.
And innovation was about how do we sell this in an interesting way?
And I did that for a while.
And then I realized we were so good at selling and being innovative in how we sold things.
That was my limited view of innovation, that we might sell things to people who don't need
them as long as things sell.
And when I went onto my master's in innovation, because I knew I liked working with ideas
and possibilities, this idea of human-centered design or designing just with the human and
the core of it was the theory of innovation that had a lot of impact on me.
Because it felt like innovation was going upstream.
We can work directly with users and their unmet needs.
Understand their stories, their context.
We'd sit with them in their living rooms, have coffee for an hour, get a sense of their
lives.
And then when we could come back with all those pain points and needs and then design
from that place, that felt truly innovative.
It wasn't innovation as in a bunch of creatives sitting in a room with beanbags and posters
and smoking cigarettes and coming up with ideas.
There was people out there in the field observing people in their day-to-day having those conversations,
getting inspired by possibilities and other fields, and then working as a multidisciplinary
team to then create solutions with well-crafted design questions, that typical, "How might
we design a service that enables this?"
So for me, that has been the biggest shift and that has been my period of innovation
is, one, how do we define the right design challenge and frame that as a good question.
I'm good in context and needs, two, how do we then observe and empathize with the users?
Three, how do we look at inspiration and diverge into a sense of possibilities?
How do we ideate both from a divergence and a convergence point of view?
How might we then prototype something?
So this idea of getting it right versus getting it good enough and then having as many iterations
along the way until we find that fit and then scale it.
That journey often considered design thinking, but for me, it has been not just having a
good process but facilitating that process well with the right people in the room and
the right tools and giving ourselves permission to fail and iterate multiple times till it
eventually makes sense for the end users we're designing for.
And from a facilitation perspective, it's taking people along the journey, designing
with users, with our teams, testing it together with people.
So I managed with my innovation work to bring in different parts of my life together.
The advertising and the storytelling, the interest in humans and deep connection, the
fascination for design thinking and all the work that has been done by companies like
IDO and then just hosting good spaces to bring all of that creativity to the table.
It's been really fulfilling as work.
Michael Pollan, the journalist, his advice on, he memorably said, "What we should eat?"
And the answer was, "Eat food not too much, mostly plants."
I love that, yeah.
You could read the book, you could get the essence of the book with the title.
Right, "Eat food not too much, mostly plants."
What would be your equivalent for what you do?
Show yourself, see the other, explore together.
What do you wish I asked for having so far?
What keeps me energized about the work that I do?
Tell me.
I've had a lot of iterations in my own work, including right now.
And energy is a topic that I'm paying a lot of attention to right now, and I do a piece
of work and then I pay attention to do an energy audit during the work itself and after
the work.
And I ask myself, "Did it give me energy or did it take away energy?"
So it's still work in progress.
And the learning that I have is finding my own inner compass in the work that I do.
And that compass for me right now has been just an articulation of my purpose, which
is to bring joy, well-being, and love to the world.
And it's not something I would say out loud in a business setting necessarily, but just
intuitively knowing that for myself and naming it.
When an invitation comes my way, even if it sounds big and scary, I tune into it and I
ask myself, "Would it allow me to serve that purpose in some way?"
Or how aligned is it to my set of values?
This is an important piece of work.
So connection is a core value of mine.
If I think of work that I do with facilitation or storytelling or coaching, I really care
about human connection and this is why this work excites me.
Or I say no to interviews or opportunities, just because I feel it's not aligned.
They sound green on paper, but they don't feel energy giving or as aligned.
But it's just like purpose and values.
And it's also an invitation to others as we tune in.
Because sometimes it happens implicitly, just explicitly naming it like, "Wow, what
excites me about this work?"
I end up doing pro bono work, end up taking on opportunities that are way out of my comfort
zone sometimes, but it's more, I just feel because we spoke about burnout earlier briefly,
it is how do we find for ourselves, how might we find for ourselves that the deep inner source
of energy to allow us to fully step into the work that we want to do.
With that, Vish, thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Danny.
I appreciate your thoughtful questions and presence and charisma, just inviting me to
this conversation.
Thanks for listening to HiveAriens.
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Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Vishal Jodhani is a facilitator who focuses on making group interactions easier.
Facilitating a meeting involves extensive pre-work, crafting the right questions, and creating a conducive environment.
Good questions in facilitation help drive conversations, encourage deeper thinking, and focus group efforts.
Facilitation involves taking groups on intentional journeys, balancing chaos and structure, and trusting the collective wisdom.
Facilitators need to navigate contradictions in facilitation methods regarding hierarchy and group dynamics.
Hosting oneself before others and being mindful of personal presence are essential beliefs in facilitation.
Summary:
Vishal Jodhani, a skilled facilitator, emphasizes making group interactions smoother by focusing on pre-work, crafting meaningful questions, and creating the right environment. He stresses the importance of good questions in driving conversations and focusing group efforts towards shared goals. Facilitation, according to Vishal, involves leading groups on intentional journeys, balancing chaos and structure, and trusting collective wisdom.
He navigates contradictions in facilitation methods regarding hierarchy and group dynamics by promoting inclusivity and collective intelligence. Vishal's unique belief in hosting oneself before others and being mindful of personal presence sets him apart in the field of facilitation.
FAQs
A facilitator aims to make things easier for a group by helping them focus on the bigger picture, creating space for everyone to be seen and heard, and moving towards a shared goal.
Before facilitating a group, it is essential to focus on the pre-work, both outer and inner, which includes designing the session, speaking to individuals, uncovering deeper needs, crafting the right questions, and preparing the right setting.
Crafting good questions involves ensuring the question is suitable for the group and time, helps dive deeper into topics, opens up possibilities, or focuses on specific aspects, ultimately guiding the group towards its goals.
Facilitation involves taking a group on a journey from their current state to a desired goal, understanding their starting point, hopes, fears, and designing intentional processes to create spaces for expression, listening, ideation, and convergence.
Non-obvious limits in facilitation include the need to trust the process, manage uncertainties, navigate unknown interpersonal dynamics, and acknowledge personal limitations while creating a safe space for meaningful conversations.
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