How Facilitation Transforms Teams & Drives Success with Therese Miclot

Episode Overview

​Therese Miclot is a distinguished leadership coach and facilitation expert with over two decades of experience in guiding individuals and organizations toward enhanced leadership effectiveness. Holding a Master’s degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, she combines academic rigor with practical insights to develop leaders who are both competent and compassionate. Throughout her career, Therese has partnered with a diverse array of industries, including technology, banking, media, pharmaceuticals, and retail, to unlock individual potential for organizational impact.

As the Director of Facilitation Excellence at Proteus International, Therese specializes in elevating the quality and impact of facilitated experiences within organizations. Her expertise lies in catalyzing learning, deepening conversations, and achieving superior results when working with groups. She has collaborated with all levels of leadership, from senior executives to new managers, focusing on areas such as skill-based leadership development and change management. Her consulting portfolio includes prominent corporations like Facebook, the New York Stock Exchange, Madison Square Garden, Citi, Chanel, Grant Thornton, Rockwell Automation, Scotiabank, Discovery Communications, and McDonald’s.

Therese is also the co-author of “The Facilitation Advantage: How to Drive Impact, Build Relationships, and Lead with Influence,” a comprehensive guide that serves as a how-to manual for facilitating any interaction, whether virtual or in-person. The book emphasizes that facilitation skills are a force multiplier for leader effectiveness, enabling leaders to navigate complex challenges, inspire their teams, and achieve exceptional results. It offers essential ingredients to transform unproductive interactions into engaging and inclusive ones, reinforcing Therese’s commitment to practical and simple solutions tailored to client needs.

Episode Transcript

 Therese Miclot: When you’re in a meeting and you say something like, you know, why did this problem happen? I guarantee everybody in that meeting is thinking like they’re looking to pin it on somebody. You know, it wasn’t my fault. Like, you know that. That’s unfair. We weren’t supported. And all of a sudden, we’ve leaned people towards defensiveness. Right. By the very way, we’re asking a question.

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, welcome to PayPod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. In today’s dynamic business environment, effective leadership is more crucial than ever. But with so many changes to how we work and what people expect, leadership is also more difficult than ever. My guest today is Therese Miclot, a seasoned leadership coach and facilitation expert with over two decades of experience in transforming individuals into competent and compassionate leaders. Theresa and I discussed what facilitation and leadership entails, and how reframing your mindset can make you more effective. We also talk about how remote and hybrid work have changed the way leaders have to lead from how they conduct virtual meetings, to what expectations they have for their team. So what makes a great leader? Let’s find out. Please welcome Therese Miclot. Psychology is a fascinating subject. Why? Us crazy hans do the crazy things that we do. Questions are always very interesting to think about. What drew you to industrial and organizational psychology? It’s a very specific area. But you went into that early. Near as I can tell.

Therese Miclot: Yeah, I did. I actually found it in a pamphlet when I was working at the library when I was 14. So that’s it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Awesome.

Therese Miclot: And the reason it drew me in was because it sat at the intersection of psychology, like understanding how hands work and business. And I was just really fascinated about, like, how do certain people get to the level that they’re at? How do certain people, you know, become leaders and others are drawn to them versus others that are repelled from them? And that just got me hooked. And, uh, that’s how I got my undergrad and grad degree in psych.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. That’s interesting. It’s such a good point. Like, without naming names, there’s a lot of big time leaders out there right now, and there’s a group of people who love them and a group of people who hate them and a bunch of people in the middle. And it is fascinating.

Therese Miclot: Yeah, yeah, that’s on a macro scale. But think about it. It happens in small businesses. It happens, you know, people dynamics are everywhere. You really can’t get away from them unless they get your, your, you know, you know, in a cave.

Kevin Rosenquist: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, there’s certain characteristics I feel like are known to make great leaders, whether it’s vision, emotional intelligence, resilience. Uh, you know, more recently I think empathy has been associated with great leadership. What are some characteristics that you think make exceptional leaders that maybe people don’t talk about as much?

Therese Miclot: Sure. I think the first is mindset. I think good leadership is something inside out. And that means that how you talk to yourself as a leader is really, really essential because the story you tell yourself is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if I have, you know, negative thoughts about myself or about others or about a customer or about whatever, it will play out as such. So I think that the first things leaders have to do is really be very self-aware and recognize the stories they’re telling themselves. And instead of that running rampant like, check it and stay curious about it. So that’s a big one. I think another is, the skills of listening. And it’s you know, I think everybody spends all day in meetings like I’m listening all the time, but it’s really an advanced skill that helps you get to the bottom line faster. It helps you build in, buy in. It helps you get the real story, whether that’s from your customer or from your employees and presence. Like how you show up, whether you’re, you know, with the board member or you’re with a smear intern or you’re with, you know, a client.

Kevin Rosenquist:  Yeah. That’s a good point. I remember a line and I think it was a Quentin Tarantino movie. Do you listen or do you wait to talk.

Kevin Rosenquist: There’s a big difference between those two things.

Therese Miclot: Completely. Yeah. And I think the more we’re experienced in a domain area of expertise, the more we tend to shut our brains off from listening because we’re moving fast. And, you know, someone comes up to us and says something and our minds are already saying, I already know what you’re going to say. You can, you can stop. I’ll tell you the answer. And so we shortcut really good listening, because our brains at the same time are trying to formulate the answer or give a solution.

Kevin Rosenquist: I give my wife grief about that because she does that to me all the time. So try to guess it and I’ll be like, nope, not even close.

Therese Miclot: Yeah, yeah. Or like, my problem is my daughter will talk and I’ll be like, huh? Huh huh huh huh huh. And she’s like, you’re not listening.

Kevin Rosenquist: I’m not listening.

Therese Miclot: You caught me.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, I do the same thing with my son, but he’s four. I cannot listen to everything he says.

Therese Miclot: Well, I mean, yeah, they say a lot. Four year olds have a lot to tell you.

Kevin Rosenquist: A lot to tell me. And it’s all very, very important.

Therese Miclot: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: So facilitation is often associated with managing, you know, managing meetings. But it encompasses a lot more than just that kind of stuff. Can you explain what facilitation in leadership entails and why it’s a critical skill today?

Therese Miclot: Sure. Yeah, I think it is the unknown but extremely powerful skill that most of us are missing. And how I came about this was I used to lead global learning and development efforts. I would sit in rooms with CEOs as they were talking about succession, like who can fill big seats as fast as possible? And the thing that I noticed is the technical competency. There’s usually an easy fix for that. I’m not saying it’s simple, but it’s pretty easy. It was like they don’t know how to manage change. They don’t know how to delegate and get others, you know, to be able to take on more. And so that really kind of directed my career a bit to like, okay, well then what is it? And facilitation by definition there’s actually not one like universal definition. But the Latin root is to make something easy to remove obstacles. And I think that that is at the root of what leaders have to do to remove obstacles, make things easy, make things whether you’re trying to pitch to an investor or you’re trying to get a team to buy into a change, or you’re trying to, you know, you know, build a, you know, credibility with, you know, a senior leader. It’s all of our jobs are to facilitate because wherever you’re getting work done through others, you are facilitating.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. The delegating thing has always fascinated me, because I’ve known so many people and worked for so many people who are so bad at it?

Therese Miclot: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Is it a control freak thing? Is it a I the only one who can do this properly? Is it just an. Is it lack of trust? What do you find is a general cause of that?

Therese Miclot: Well, I’ll be above. I’ll go back to mindset. If you’re thinking no one’s going to do it as good as me. Yeah. Or I can’t risk having this person fail at this, or it is too much riding on it. Your mind is already leading you in the direction of not getting it up right. So some of it is your mindset. Some of it is skill. I mean, I think most of us have been on the receiving end of delegation and it just feels like doing. And most of us don’t want to do that to others. And so we will take things on. And if I could shift the mindset of leaders, it would be from, you know, I can’t give this to them. They’re already overloaded. Or, you know, mistakes will happen to delegation when it’s done. Well is development. Like you’re developing capability. And I was just on a call with a CRO Ho, who was lamenting about one of the senior executives who was kind of, you know, step away from the CEO role. And he said he’s spending too much time in, you know, these smaller businesses. And some of it is because he’s not delegating to people and knowing how to help develop them, to take things down so he can focus on bigger strategic things.

Kevin Rosenquist:  Yeah. And you talk about developing and building a team. I mean you can’t build a team if you’re not, if you’re not trusting them to do what you brought them in to do. Yeah.

Therese Miclot: And I think you have to do a little bit of a gut check of like, okay, does it have to be exactly the way you did it?

Kevin Rosenquist: Right.

Therese Miclot: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Or.

Therese Miclot: Okay, they might take a different route, but if they can reach the same outcome, the same deliverable. Can I live with it? Can I, you know, do the gut check. Like it doesn’t have to be a photocopy of me if anything prevents you from scaling a business.

Kevin Rosenquist: Right. Very good point. How does mastering facilitation skills contribute to an individual’s growth as a leader. And what impact have you seen it have on like team dynamics and organizational outcomes and the like?

Therese Miclot: Sure. Yeah. So when we think about facilitation, we break it down very simply into like ten primary skill areas. There’s a mindset. We already talked about subject matter expertise. Here’s a big one. When you are a domain expert on something and you have a lot to offer and you get questions, do you know how to flex your answers and customize and tailor your answers to your audience? So if you’re, you know, working with a CEO who’s not as technically astute as you. Can you translate it? If you’re working with, you know, data engineers, they want something else. So the first thing that a leader can do to have an impact is really be able to tailor their messages to their audience. That’s where you lose a lot of people, right? You’re speaking over people, or you can see that they’re glazed over but you don’t really know, like, okay, maybe if I try a different explanation, like that’ll break through.

Kevin Rosenquist: You never want to see that glazed over look, do you? It’s just like people.

Therese Miclot: And then the last set of contributions are called process contributions. It’s about how you get a group from point A to point B. Some of that is just about how are you leading meetings? So I work with a lot of leaders who are frustrated. They like they want more engagement with their team. And what they get is a lot of passive head nods or cameras off or, you know, do you have any questions? And you get crickets, you get stuck.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Therese Miclot: So another way that a leader, if they’re better at facilitation skills, has a bigger impact is if they know how to read the room, if they know how to listen below the surface. So I was with a client recently where I watched this happen, and it was a challenging situation and this leader was talking and someone, you know, hey, I got a question. And the question was, you know, senior leadership really bought into this and the leader just answered it as a yes or no. Like, yes, of course, we’re putting, you know, investment in this. This is a priority for first quarter. That was not the real question.

Kevin Rosenquist: 

Therese Miclot: Under the surface the real question was you know, how is this different from all the flavor of the day. You know initiatives we’ve had like you know leaders are inconsistent with how they say what they say and what they do. And that was the real conversation to be had. And the leader missed it. And so if you ever find, like me in my career, there’s like the meeting after the meeting and like it didn’t get addressed. You could be immediately more impactful in terms of how you listen below the surface, because then you’ll be faster at addressing the root of issues. And I know a lot of leaders that feel like they’re in a whack a mole situation every day, like, you know, constantly pounding like, here’s a problem, here’s a solution, here’s a problem, here’s a solution. And it goes round and round and round. Well, when you’re a better listener and you get to okay, what’s the root of what’s driving this? Solve it once instead of this constant, you know, people coming into your office like, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. I’ve definitely, I mean, we’ve all been on those calls where. Yeah, someone asks a question and so everybody anybody got any, you know, some someone trying to like build a community or trying to build that with or with everybody and nobody, nobody’s really interested. Nobody’s into it. They’re just trying to get through this meeting so they can get back to whatever it was they were doing. How can a leader avoid that? It’s probably a bigger question right.

Therese Miclot:   Well I’ll tell you the first question. If I could wipe it from the face of the earth Kevin, it would be this. Any questions. Anybody have any questions I need to find. Like that’s the first thing that, that, that kind of shuts things down or at least it doesn’t engage people. Why? Because it’s so predictable. It’s like we’ve, you know, like okay, throw that in at the end. It doesn’t necessarily show you’re really interested. It’s you know, and so and also for the people in the room like any questions about what.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. We talked about 15 different things. Yeah.

Therese Miclot: Exactly. So one is like even the shape of your questions being different, more curious. So instead of any questions you might reframe it as. All right. So we talked about a lot. I’m curious about what are you what are you what are your biggest concerns right now. You know, it’s not only is it open ended, it’s curious and it connects and. Yeah. And you got to obviously pause to really invite people in because some people are going to be like, are you really interested in the truth or are you just saying that? So you have to, you know, kind of give a little context to why you’re asking a question. It makes it so much easier for people to answer and tell you the truth and, you know, discover what your blind spot is.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. It feels more like a conversation than to. Right? It’s not it’s it’s less about just like, you know, if any questions, you’re like, well, I don’t know. Should I say this. Should I bring it up later? Like I have a question. I don’t know if I want to say it in front of everybody.

Therese Miclot: Right.

Kevin Rosenquist: But if it’s framed a certain way, you could feel more comfortable answering it.

Therese Miclot: Exactly. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not . It’s not hard. It’s not. You know, it’s something you can just do immediately, you know, in your next meeting, like, just take 10s and think of a better question than an a curious question that can replace. All right, guys, do you have any questions?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. The standard, uh, meetings toward getting towards the end, the kind of situation.

Therese Miclot: Right. Yes. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Because that’s true. Like too, like I said, people want to get out of the meeting. So, you know, they’re like, all right, finally this thing is over, you know? Yeah.

Therese Miclot: Right. And then also everybody’s looking around like, don’t nobody say anything. Nobody’s saying anything.

Therese Miclot: Like, please don’t anybody speak up. , and so I think that’s a really good point, too, Kevin. Like, don’t save it for the last minute when everybody’s packing up and ready to run to their next meeting.

Kevin Rosenquist: 

Therese Miclot: It’s too late.

Therese Miclot: And so you know, use it at the start of the meeting. Or , I taught someone who just really had a hard time pausing to like put a little guardrail for himself. And so he would verbalize, he’d say, all right, I’ve said a lot already. What, what’s on your mind? And so he would it was a way for him to like, break his, you know, he could be excited about something and he would be, you know, rambling, but he couldn’t stop himself. So he would say, okay, I’ve talked a lot, talked for ten minutes. Now let me pause. You know, what about this is exciting to you? Or, you know, how do you think this would work? And that worked a lot better in the middle of the meeting instead of the last, you know, five minutes.

Kevin Rosenquist:  What are some of the other challenges that you see leaders face when facilitating discussions or meetings like we’re talking about and how can they overcome those obstacles.

Therese Miclot: So I think if you’re trying to influence an audience, and I think a lot of times we have to influence without maybe formal authority. Other tools that you could use that are facilitation tools is the skill of storytelling. And because I think, you know, we’re in back to back to back meetings, let’s say you’re in the eighth meeting of the day and people are just exhausted. You leave this meeting, people are just looking at their watch like, you know, when will this be over? And one of the things you can do to kind of break inertia is not just offer information straight on. Tell it in a story. And the reason story works so well is it’s sticky. Like our brains want to make sense of things and story helps us do that. And story is meaning it wakes a part of your brain up that is just, you know, on, you know, autopilot. And so if your job and your meeting is to get people excited about something, introduce a change. You know, offer new direction. That’s another skill, is the skill of storytelling. I think in general, though, facilitation is about choice, and the more you have a lot of choices that you know how to employ, no matter what happens in a meeting, the more you are a skillful leader.

Therese Miclot: So for instance, like if you look at, you know, you’re talking and you see blank faces, you could do lots of different choices. One would be to stop and ask a question. Another would be maybe to tell a story. Another might be to take a break. You know, there’s a lot of choices. And I think that as leaders, sometimes we choose one thing that we’ve done all the time, and we keep using that as our one method of leading meetings or, you know, for instance, getting curveball questions like, I don’t know if you’re like me, Kevin, but I’ve been in my fair share of meetings where I get a curveball question I was not expecting, and I’m not ready to answer it. Yeah, and that’s another moment of choice. So what could you do? So if you have facilitation skills again, you know, one is before you just flat out answer it or try to like find your way into the answer.

Kevin Rosenquist: Fable around and.

Therese Miclot: Fable around. You know, stutter. You could ask another question. You know, that helps you have a minute to like, understand, like where are they coming from with that question? Or maybe, maybe again, it’s not the initial question. There’s something below that. So you know that that’s a choice that you can make in that situation. Another choice is around keeping things on track. You know, like, I know so many meetings where, you know, we have 90 minutes yet we have probably three hours of content to get through.

Therese Miclot: Yeah. And there’s, there’s sidetracks and derailers and like, wait, we weren’t going to bring that up. And that’s another place as a leader that you want to do this balance of keeping on track. Right. Like we only have 90 minutes, so what are we going to be able to accomplish? Balanced with adapting for impact. Meaning that sometimes the agenda that you had needs to take a back seat to what’s happening with the group. All right. We weren’t going to talk about this, but, you know, it’s the elephant in the room. And so we better address it because that’s not going to go away even if we follow the agenda. , if this.

Kevin Rosenquist: Honestly more. Right. It’ll just frustrate the other people because you’re, you’re they know you’re ignoring the elephant.

Therese Miclot: Right. And now their heads are somewhere else. They’re not listening. And so you have to surf the polarity of keeping on track with and you know, being able to adapt for impact.

Kevin Rosenquist: How have things changed since remote and hybrid work. Obviously , that’s a huge hot topic right now especially I just read today that Trump ordered all the federal workers back to the office and stuff. So I mean, it’s definitely been in the news. It’s very much in the news now. Yeah. You know, it’s from a leadership perspective. We kind of know about how it affects all the employees and how they feel about it. Is it more difficult for leaders to lead? Is it because there’s a presence that’s sort of missing there.

Therese Miclot:   Yeah. It’s more challenging. Right. And I work with clients some who have a real strong policy that everybody has to keep their cameras on and work and others where it’s like well it’s optional. And that’s a challenging thing for leaders, especially when I can’t see you. And if we were in a room together, I could see your microaggression. Right? I could, or your micro movement. Right. Like the push away from the table. Cross your arms, look down. Right. I could see the you know, you’re looking at your watch, right. The subtle signs.

Kevin Rosenquist: There or something.

Therese Miclot: It’s hard to, you know, the eye roll. And that’s hard when you’re looking at, you know, eight faces or how many faces on a on, you know, on a call or again you can’t even see faces. So I think that’s where you actually have to double down on these skills. And the first one is listening because you’re not getting the real time, you know, it’s hard to be able to spot some of the non-verbals. So here would be an example of a leader I coached. What helped them. They were like it was like pulling teeth, trees, pulling teeth, like everyone dreads these meetings. Nobody wants them and all that. And he said, I know people have things on their mind, but they won’t speak up. And so I said, well, one thing you could do is, you know, when people aren’t speaking up, you know, you could say something like, look, you know, I wish we were together, you know, and I can’t. I don’t know how to interpret your silence. And just that question like, help me understand, like, I, I don’t know what the silence means.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s interesting.

Therese Miclot: Got people saying, well, you know, here’s what’s going on. And it’s just that like curiosity with, you know, the ability to ask really good questions and listen. I think sometimes we are easy and quick to blame others when a meeting goes bad. Like they just weren’t engaged. Yeah. You know, they, you know, low energy.

Therese Miclot: It’s Monday.

Therese Miclot: But rarely is it the group’s fault. You know, like it’s easy for us to put blame on like, well, they weren’t prepared or they should have come when really it’s our job to be able to know again what choices will have the best likelihood of drawing people out, getting to the root of the issue, you know, understanding where people are coming from.

Kevin Rosenquist: I feel like, and this is maybe just me getting old and crotchety, but I feel like there’s a lot less accountability in people. And I wondered if that had anything to do with remote work because of the fact that we’re not around each other as much. I’ve just seen a lot of people in various situations that rather than owning up to a mistake or trying to find a solution to a mistake, they just either don’t respond and try to like, hide from it or deflect. Is that something that you see a lot, and how does that translate into the into how leadership handles that sort of thing with, with the remote situations?

Therese Miclot: Yeah, I think because, you know, we talked about mindset, our own mindset as a leader. Everybody has it. So when you’re in a meeting and you say something like, you know, why did this problem happen? I guarantee everybody in that meeting is thinking like they’re looking to pin it on somebody. You know, it wasn’t my fault. Like, you know, that’s unfair. We weren’t supported. And all of a sudden we’ve leaned people towards defensiveness.

Therese Miclot: By the very way we’re asking a question.

Therese Miclot: You can reduce people’s defensiveness by the way you frame a question. So, for instance, instead of saying, you know, why did this mistake happen? And people again, fill in the blanks and basically, oh, Kevin’s looking for you know, which you know.

Therese Miclot: You could say something like, look, I’m going to ask this question more because, you know, in the spirit of continuous improvement, because we’re going to learn a lot from mistakes. So why did this happen. And now people understand where you’re coming from with that question versus what I think has happened to us over time is, you know, we tell stories to ourselves about why are you doing that? And we’re often wrong. And I think in fast moving organizations where it’s easy to asse, well, you know, where I’m coming from, you know why I’m asking you that question? We’re often wrong because people are going to feel vulnerable if you haven’t created an environment where you know, it’s okay. In fact, one of the other facilitation skills is called balancing risk and safety. And the fact of the matter is, if you want the best out of people, you have to create an environment where they can explain their mistakes, own their mistakes, you know, learn from their mistakes. Tell the truth. You know the uncomfortable truth, and you’re not going to do that. And people aren’t going to own up to those things unless you create an environment where people aren’t going to get punished by it. At the same time, it’s not only about creating like safety, right? Like, oh, it’s easy and nothing bad’s going to happen. You also have to create a little sense of it’s okay to be uncomfortable. Like being comfortable, being uncomfortable in tech, you know, industries and roles where things are changing all the time. You’re going to have to learn things over again, even though you might be an expert in some space. It’s no different than going to like a trainer, right? If you went to a trainer and they didn’t, you know, walk out kind of feeling tired and like sore, wouldn’t you be like, why am I paying them?

Therese Miclot: I be hurting?

Therese Miclot: Want to obviously pull a muscle, right? But you do need to feel like you’re on the edge of something like the edge of your growth. And so your job as a leader isn’t just to make everybody feel comfortable. You have to have the foundation for psychological safety, but you also have to help people lean into their discomfort.

Kevin Rosenquist: Kind of wrapping up the discussion on remote work. You know, a lot of people, there’s like a return to office thing, you know, that people are talking about. And a lot of employees aren’t happy about it. They got used to working in their pajamas. They got used to not having to be in a car for an hour or plus a day. Do you think that it’s hard question, but do you think it’s a mistake to push people towards returning to the office just because the leader prefers that? Or is there an approach that’s better? How can this sort of like impasse be avoided?

Therese Miclot: I would say this as a, you know, having led teams of people, I’m of the mindset of you hold people accountable to results. And whether you know you’re coming in at 8 or 9 or you’re working from home. Today, to me, is secondary to results. And I think that no matter if you’re going to call people into the office or not, is you have to set really clear measures of success, like what does success look like? Because even if you’re in the office and I work with a lot of leaders right now who are like, I can’t, you know, we have to. No one’s holding anybody accountable. That’s and they’re all in the office. And so I do think that like that, that is the underpinning. And then second to that is does the work need to be done in person. You know, the collaboration because that’s a springboard to achieving outcomes. I don’t think a one size fits all approach works great. I do think certain things, like I have a son that’s just kind of entered the workforce, and he is working primarily remotely, and I think it’s such a detriment to him.

Therese Miclot: Like he’s not running into people in the office, you know, he’s not making those connections. And I you know, I’m really sad about that because early in your career, it’s all about relationships and getting known and seen and, you know, all that stuff. So I don’t know. That’s a, you know, not a direct answer to a very complex problem. Kevin.

Kevin Rosenquist: For sure. I wasn’t trying to put you on the spot, I promise.

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s an interesting one because I totally agree with you, especially as a person just entering the workforce as a young person. You know, you’re right. And if you get too used to that or if you’re not used to it, but if you miss out on that communal off in office experience or in person experience, it it just it changes things. I mean, we all know how different it is once if you have a meetings like, like this on zoom multiple times, and then you finally meet that person in person, it kind of changes things. You know, your relationship sort of changes. So yeah, you’re missing out on that in-person connection. Right, Yeah, right.

Therese Miclot: Yeah, I worry about that.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Me too.

Therese Miclot: Because I do think it is about work at the end of the day, is about how you get things done with and through people. And I worry about a generation of people starting their career that don’t get the benefit that comes from, you know, face to face interactions.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re talking point forever as far as kids and video games and more introverted activities and things, less, less extroverted stuff. And that that concerns a lot of people. Yeah. For sure. So for anyone listening who either is, you know, stepping into a leadership role, whether they’re looking for a promotion or they’re looking to start their own company when it comes to facilitation, which is the thing that you’re really you really focus on. What is your best advice to someone getting started and how to kind of use facilitation to, to to set themselves up for success?

Therese Miclot: Sure. I think, you know, like take it one step at a time because, you know, I think whenever you try to like, okay, I’m going to do all these things differently. It’s it’s too much. So one of the things that we have on the Facilitation Advantage website is a free self-assessment, and it’s a way for you to stack yourself up against like these facilitation skills. So for instance, there’s, you know, how do you do on story or listening or executive presence. And so I would say like pick one thing and just double down on that and that will lean you towards, I think, starting to see a payoff and just notice how people interact with you differently or how it changes how you influence because you know, you’re busy people. And so, you know, to try to like now add five more things to your busy day. Seems, I think, a little bit too unrealistic.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. That makes a lot of sense. All right. Well, so if someone wants to chat with you, if someone wants to, to learn more about you, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Therese Miclot: Yeah, a couple ways. So LinkedIn, I post a lot on facilitation like very practical tips multiple times a week. So follow me on LinkedIn. I do coaching one on one on these skills, do workshops as well. And so you can find me on the Facilitation advantage.com website and then my own website. Therese Miclot.com.

Kevin Rosenquist: And did you I’m sorry, did you write a book I can’t remember.

Therese Miclot: I did yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s what I thought. I thought, “What’s the book.

Therese Miclot: Yeah the book is called The Facilitation Advantage. And again it’s written for leaders. And so the website is the same title, the free self-assessment that’s connected to those skills. Also on the Facilitation advantage.com.

Kevin Rosenquist: Awesome. Well Therese, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate your insight and and all your advice.
Therese Miclot: Thanks I enjoyed it.