“The moment you reframe it, saying, ‘Hey, I know I got it wrong. Let me figure out how I got it wrong. Let me be curious to identify what part of this wasn’t quite to my assumptions,’ then you can take action. And then the magic happens.” ~ Andres Marquez-Lara
Ask Andres Marquez-Lara what it takes to lead in the 21st century, and his answer will come swift and sure: facilitation.
And facilitation? That’s nothing more — and nothing less— than putting curiosity to work in powerful ways personally, professionally, individually and collectively.
Andres is founder and CEO of UFacilitate, a global platform for matching facilitators with folks who need them, industry sector agnostic. As they put it, UFacilitate helps leaders deal with the “messy, human stuff” that gets in the way of teams achieving their greatest potential.
Facilitating is like playing 3-D chess. You have to be aware of what you’re feeling – your own things – you have to be aware of what’s happening with people, what’s happening in the room, the agenda. So you’re mindful of time, of the energy of all these things that are happening, and then you have to make a choice. Facilitation is all about choices.
Listen to Choose to be Curious #211: Facilitation, Leadership & Curiosity, with Andres Marquez-Lara
With the help of Chat GPT, Andres has written Facilitating Leadership: A Quick And Easy Guide To Leading with Brain, Heart & Soul, which he describes as “an appetizer plate” of facilitation ideas and frameworks, and indeed it is. The facilitation curiosity practices that Andres and I dove into include:
Prototyping – Probing and sensing to learn and grow; reframing “failure”; learning by doing; putting something out there before it’s really ready, then iterating, reiterating and repeating.
Improv – Co-creating, going off script; getting playful to discover new things; buying into a different story of what might be possible; letting go; what Andres calls “embodied prototyping”.
Creating Space – As Andres so beautifully puts it, “Facilitation creates space where our soul, feelings, ideas, and relationships can catch up to us.”
Self-Awareness – all of this starts with us leading ourselves, being curious about our own reactions, and working from that base of awareness.
What’s a facilitation practice that you particularly like? Share it below and I’ll share it with others!
Check out Andres Marquez-Lara – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresmarquezlara/ – and UFacilitate: https://www.ufacilitate.com
Visit East Side Institute to learn more about improv and the study of social therapeutics and performance activism.
I can’t say enough good things about Otto Scharmer, TheoryU and prototyping.
Want more? Here are some related conversations you might enjoy: Leadership with Scott Nycum, Leadership Inclusion & Curiosity with Karen Coltrane; Networking, with Dana Theus.
Theme and other music by Sean Balick.
You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts and now on Spotify.
