Facilitating Meetings Through Curiosity

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you may know that curiosity is L+D’s theme for the new school year. 

And if you’ve participated in one of our programs or services, you may know that one of our most commonly suggested agreements is, “Be more curious than certain.”

This maxim isn’t just something we suggest to our clients. It’s something we strive to embody ourselves. I think one of the reasons that curiosity resonates so deeply with our team is that we can’t do our work without it.

Curiosity is what drives a truly transformative facilitation – what we often call a “badass facilitation,” in L+D’s internal lingo. 

Some meetings have a goal of covering information, and sometimes that needs to happen – but that’s not true facilitation. 

Sometimes leaders try to drive the group to a predetermined outcome, out of a fear that the group can’t be trusted to create something effective together. That’s not facilitation, either.

But if we are truly facilitating – especially if we are facilitating like a badass – the goal is learning, and the facilitator is focused on making learning easier for the group.

Facilitating like a badass is about helping the group think through big questions and take responsibility for the answers. Instead of focusing on the outcome, the facilitator is focused on creating a space where people can ask authentic questions, prototype incomplete ideas, gain new insight, and make shared decisions. 

Entering the room with a bias toward curiosity – rooted in a belief that other people are fundamentally capable – is what makes that work possible. 

The curiosity behind a given facilitation might be curiosity about the school. How did our history lead us here? What assumptions does the culture carry without even knowing it? What is possible for this place that has not yet been considered? 

It might be driven by curiosity about the team. What is the quietest person in the room thinking? What topics are being avoided? What conflicts need to surface in order to make real progress? 

It might be curiosity about a particularly vibrant question. What perspectives exist and how can we explore them? What can we learn from other schools or other industries? How can we get more courageous – or make our ideas more feasible? 

And, when things get messy – as it often does when the learning is relevant and human – the curiosity might be what we can learn about ourselves as a team or as a community, and what capacities we could develop by having the conversation in front of us.

There is so much potential in any human conversation if we can let go of our desire to control the outcomes or the pace, and instead focus on what we need to learn together. 

That’s what badass facilitation is all about: as we say on the website for our Badass Facilitator training, “A truly badass facilitator can be dropped into the messiest conversations, helping groups that are struggling gain clarity, see new possibilities, and take action.”

Doing so requires curiosity…but also self-awareness, practice, and a deep toolkit. Facilitators need to manage their own responses to uncertainty and conflict, to be aware of the dynamics in the room that need to be named or responded to, and to have tools to shape the conversation in productive ways.

In other words, facilitating groups through curiosity rather than control is a craft that we develop over time. 

Re-Introducing Badass Facilitator Training in 2025

To help others embody those skills, we are offering an updated version of our Badass Facilitator training in 2025. I hope you’ll consider applying for a spot in the cohort, which will convene in Denver, Colorado from April 30-May 2, 2025.

This three-day immersive training is designed to be an intensive opportunity to learn, practice and hone a more advanced set of facilitation skills in an experiential way. We like it so much that L+D partners sometimes take it themselves as a way to get more grounded in our practice.

Unlike many of our programs, registration is by application only. If you are an experienced facilitator, don’t let this discourage you from applying; we do this to make sure that your goals and backgrounds align with this program. Once you arrive in Denver, you will be in an intentionally small cohort of experienced facilitators who share their own experiences and practice new skills collaboratively.

We will dive into experience design, explore the habits and mindsets of transformative facilitators, and grow in our own capacity to help groups without responding from anxiety or the need to control the group. This is a deep opportunity to grow as a facilitator and a leader

Members of the cohort will explore three sets of skills designed to ground their facilitation in curiosity and make productive work – grounded in learning – easier for the groups they facilitate. They are:

• Designing Participant Experiences 

• Facilitation Frameworks

• Managing Self, Conflict, and Resistance

In other words, Badass Facilitator training is a comprehensive exploration of a craft we find vital to creative work and organizational learning.

Is it for you? This conference is not for a facilitator just beginning their craft. It is for a seasoned facilitator looking to level up to something greater. If that describes you, I hope you’ll get curious (see what I did there?) and learn more on our website. 

“It was incredibly helpful to work with the other cohort members at BAF. We shared stories, a lot of laughter, and great feedback and everyone was generous with new ideas and new ways to think about gathering. I would definitely recommend this to any leader who wants to help their teams push forward in creative and generative ways.” – 2022 Participant

Learn more about Badass Facilitators here. Applications are due by January 15. 

April 30-May 2, 2025 // Denver, CO // $2499