Gwyn Wansbrough on How to Create Breakthroughs in the Virtual Groups You Lead

My guest this week is Gwyn Wansbrough.

Gwyn is an independent facilitator, learning experience designer, and course creator. She focuses on empowering educators and team leaders with the skills to make learning more creative. Her focus is human-centered learning, with an emphasis on group learning.

Gwyn specializes in crafting group experiences that lead to deep, significant breakthroughs. She’s facilitated in many settings across the world – such as the socially excluded youth in Toronto, University students in Spain, bankers in Greece, and philanthropists in Europe. She has been a speaker at several global conferences, sharing the many insights gleaned through her journey. She writes a weekly newsletter called The Quest and is about to release her first online course, Breakthrough Facilitation.

All of this experience has taught her that the best group experiences combine world-class content, with engagement and connection. But it’s the engagement and connection that are often ignored or left behind. Facilitation is the key solution to address this issue. With more people learning and working online, facilitation is quickly becoming a leadership super skill for the future.

In this episode, we unpack facilitation as a super skill. It’s an often misunderstood skill, but an incredibly powerful one when applied correctly. In this episode, you’ll learn:

Practical tips to engage your audience.
Useful advice for gathering information about your audience.
How to create the conditions for breakthroughs.

Gwyn has a number of useful exercises, activities and tools you can use to create better group experiences – whether that’s an online course, a team meeting, or even your next Christmas gathering. So next time you’re in a group of people gathering online, think back to this conversation with Gwyn – and bring your best facilitation skills to the fore.

Please sit back and enjoy my conversation with Gwyn Wansbrough.

Full Episode

Guest Links

Show Notes

Beginning at the beginning. Gwyn talks about her early experiences and the journey that brought her into the world of facilitation. (00:03:10-00:06:45)
The facilitator’s first step: Creating a safe space for the group. (00:06:46-00:10:50)
Exploring the idea of facilitation as a cross sector skill. (00:10:51-00:12:05)
From analogue to digital. Gwyn shares her personal experiences with online facilitation, and how she made it all a success. (00:12:06-00:14:21)
The concomitant opportunities that come along with being a good facilitator. (00:14:22-00:17:20)
How asking the right questions and letting go of control is a fundamental aspect in facilitation. (00:17:21-00:21:27)
How can inclusiveness play a critical role in facilitation? (00:21:28-00:24:10)
How to manage silent members in a group. (00:24:11-00:26:16)
We discuss the skills and attitudes that Gwyn has learned and developed over the years from facilitation. We discover that empathy is one of the most important abilities when facilitating a session. (00:26:17-00:27:56)
Gwyn speaks in detail on how to engage your audience and gives us powerful advice for gathering information about your audience. (00:27:57-00:37:00)
The significance of breaks and movement, as well as tips on how to utilize them well. (00:37:01-00:42:11)
Experiential Learning. (00:42:12-00:47:39)
Harvesting insights: finding wisdom, learning, reflections through an individual’s experience. (00:47:49-00:52:52)
The approach to handling responses and redirecting. (00:52:53-00:55:38)
How to create the conditions for breakthroughs. (00:55:39-1:04:22)
What Gwyn is working on and where you can get in touch with her on social media. (1:04:23-1:05:51)

Selected Links from the Episode

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