Bryan’s Blog

A Whitepaper for you on Facilitating Critical Conversations

If you’re an avid reader of my blog you would have noticed over the last six weeks that I’ve been writing about the importance and skill of facilitating valuable risk workshops. I’ve also had the pleasure recently of hosting a couple of free MasterClasses on this topic with great success and engagement from my followers.

Do Validate

The workshop is over. The hard work is done. The Chair, CEO or team leader has taken you aside and thanked you for such an enlightening workshop. Job done! No, it’s not. The last thing you need to do is make sure you are helping the team with sensemaking, not nonsense making. The key is

Don’t Vacillate

The more prepared you are the better you will facilitate. The less likely you will vacillate at a difficult moment. Regardless, the ability to effectively facilitate a workshop is a wonderful skill to develop. When I facilitate I concentrate on three things: To be in service of those in the room. I’m not the star.

Making Sense

Over the last few weeks, I have encouraged you to look at risk workshops as pathways to creating clarity for teams about what is between them and success. Sensemaking or making sense of the world. The secret to successful risk workshops is the preparation you undertake. I know you are busy, and preparing takes time.

Sensemaking

Sensemaking. This is the answer to my question last week about why risk workshops should deliver the success your audience craves. Yes, they identify risks to help us understand the uncertainty surrounding the objectives we wish to achieve. However, in doing so, we are helping the business make sense of a crazy world. We should