How do you get past imposter syndrome? (part 1)

Full transcript

Intro

Hey there, welcome to another episode of Facilitator's Q&A. This series is dedicated to helping facilitators practice their craft of facilitation, to design better, more engaging, more trusting conversations with our teams.

So far in this series, I've created 10 videos to share my ideas and methods and tips for you to try and learn from, and I'm excited to say that, the very first guest that I'm having to this series is a friend of mine, Richard Banfield, who is the VP of Design Transformation at InVision.

Rich and I had a lot to talk about, in fact, it turned into two videos that will be part of this series. What we're talking about is getting over the fear of imposter syndrome as a facilitator, because facilitation isn't really a skill that we're taught, it's not a class that we take, it's something that we just throw ourselves into, we raise our hands to say, "I'll lead that meeting."

And so Rich has lots of good lessons for you to think about and learn from. In part one, Rich answers the question why facilitation is such a growing, important skill, and then he talks about getting over this false expectation we set for ourselves of showing up as the expert. And the muscle that you can start to use more and more to push against that fear.

Today’s question

Jay: So then why is facilitation important? Why should teams really consider like spending some time getting better at the craft of facilitation?

Richard: I think there's two parts to that question, one is, do you bring a facilitator in if you need that third party perspective. If you've got a group of people who are coming together for the first time, or a group of people that's not used to working with each other, or there's not a deep sense of security or safety or trust between those people, having a facilitator in the room gives that neutrality to the conversation.

It allows the conversation to be mediated just like, you know, you would in a divorce or any legal matter, the reason why you have representation is because you need the proxy, to be able to share in a much more neutral fashion.

So that's the one area of why facilitation is important, the kind of the umbrella of why it's important. Why individuals should learn how to be good facilitators? Everything is a conversation. Every single thing in the world is a conversation, whether you're conversing with a machine, like your device, or whether that device is actually sharing information with a server, that's a conversation.

There's a handoff, there's a conversation, there's an engineering version of that, there's a human version of that, there's a cultural version of that. Everything is a sharing. And when we absorb that, and start to realize that then we realize that facilitation, both in the facilitation of others and also in the facilitation of yourself, is like a step closer to, you know, a moment of real, you know, self acknowledgement and understanding and even kind of an enlightenment moment, we're like, "Oh, there's that little voice in my head that's always whining and complaining, and maybe throwing me off, you know, where I wanna be, my ego for example." And there's the consciousness of me that wants know what's truthful and good, and right.

And those things are sometimes in conflict, well, facilitating that in your head is actually something you can do once you become a good facilitator. You can start to say, "Well, what is the question I would ask?" "What is the problem we're trying to solve?" You get down to first principles, and that allows you just to be a good facilitator of your own, you know, internal dialogue, and also the dialogues you would have with the teammates and between others as well.

Jay: Yeah. Rich, so you know, one thing that I've noticed over the years of honing my craft, as a facilitator, specifically to being hired to be a design sprint facilitator, is this fear that I had, that I had to show up fully prepared on the topic that I had to be a subject matter expert.

And so I think one thing that I have always wondered is, am I showing up as a consultant to have all the answers or as a facilitator? What are you seeing?

Richard: Yeah, I mean it's funny, you should say that, 'cause I think we've probably all had that experience more than once, and maybe unless you're a sociopath, you have that every time you walk into a room.

And I think one of the ways that we compensate for that is, to try and be the experts. We try and fulfill the expectations of the room and of ourselves to be the smartest one with all the answers, you know, maybe that's what people think a facilitator needs to be. They need to be the person who can provide the solutions as well as also facilitate the conversation. And of course, that's garbage, right?

You know, we're not there to provide answers. We're there to facilitate a conversation and to keep that conversation directed, aligned, inclusive, making sure that everybody feels heard, the way that I've kind of stumbled on it, and this is partly because of the way that I approach my article and book writing is, through a sense of curiosity.

The idea is that instead of showing up as the expert, I show up as a journalist, as a curious person, who's got a whole bunch of interesting questions that I think, I would love to hear the answers to, and also, others might want to hear the answers to that.

So, you know, in a little bit of kind of, like, fake it before you make it kind of thing. I get myself into this mindset of, Okay, I'm Mike Malcolm Gladwell, and I'm walking to a room, and I'm there to understand, I'm there to be curious about what people are doing and why they're doing it, and what kind of biases and pretenses they're bringing to that conversation. So how many good questions can I come up with in order to facilitate that?

Jay: One thing that happens for me, when I hear people talking about, like, a phrase that I hear a lot is, "I'm just naturally curious." And that doesn't resonate for me, like a lot of the time, I think that I'm selfish, I think that I'm, like, I have my blinders on. So what can you do to help people like me, just feel like it's okay to be curious, even if you feel like you're wired a different way?

Richard: Well I think, you know, you might think of yourself as not being curious, but that would then also, like, set you aside as being the only human being that is not curious, like, human beings are naturally curious. Otherwise, we'd still be in caves, breaking stones.

You know, we're interested in what's happening. You may not see it as curiosity, but you may see it as domain expertise, or mastery, and those things might feel good for you because as somebody who, as you say, like has a sense of self or is self oriented, that the sense of mastery might be the driver or the intrinsic motivator behind that, and then you might say, "Well, how do I get to mastery?"

And we all know that, you know, whether you going to a spiritual source, or to an academic source, it's through Q&A, right? It's through that you know, investigation, or exploration or discovery.

So you may use different words, discovery being probably the one that's used most frequently in the design product space that we're in, but it's really the same thing. Discovery is really just digging in and understanding.

Jay: Yeah, so it's just curiosity just takes many forms, basically, yeah.

Richard: Yeah.

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