Facilitator Skills: Revealing the Special Sauce of My Leadership - Facilitator Tips Episode 60

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In this, the final episode of the Facilitator Tips video series, I reveal my top three personal strengths which have helped shape my career as a successful experiential trainer and group facilitator.
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Click play and watch this final Facilitator Tips episode to understand the distinction between my strengths and what I’m good at (note, these are not the same thing.)
This is just one of many dozens of leadership tips you can use to improve the participation, relationships and overall performance of your students, staff and team.
This Facilitator Tips video tutorial is presented by Mark Collard, one of the world's most experienced & respected experiential trainers in the world. As a Master of Group Games & Activities, Mark can teach you how to help your team engage, interact & connect with one another more powerfully.
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|| Video Transcription ||
Hi there and welcome to Episode 60 of the Facilitator Tips video series.
My name is Mark Collard, I’m an experiential trainer and author, and in this episode, I want to answer the question that comes up a lot, what is your special sauce? What is it that makes your programs so remarkably fun, Mark?
I’ve enjoyed and been very fortunate to have carved a career over 30 years, and barely a program goes by where if not during it, at the end of it someone comes up to me and says, “Oh, I love what you do!” or “I would love to do what you do.” And you know, it’s lovely that people have been engaged and are wanting to connect with me in that level, but what’s really difficult to explain to those folks is what I bring to the work that I do. And so I want to give you a few clues about what has helped me be so unique and so special in this space that I’m sure you’ll be able to look and… look at your own skills and abilities as well in the same way.
But let’s first understand the difference between what you’re good at and your strengths. I am good at for example facilitating groups because of my strengths. And I will leave this link in the show notes, but there is a number of places where you can identify more clearly what your strengths are.
And I know my top three strengths are this in this order, curiosity, social intelligence, and humour. Those three top strengths helped me stand before groups and be able to lead them to some sort of transformation. My ability to be curious, to know what’s possible, to also read a group, that’s my social intelligence, and clearly the ability to help people feel comfortable and laugh. So they’re my strengths and based on those strengths I’m able to be good at leading groups in an experiential learning format.
So part of that is my personality, but also the playfulness, my willingness to play with a group, for no win or lose purpose. We all want it, to be a part of it and desire for it to keep going. All those elements of play need to be present. Again, it’s part of that special sauce that people are attracted to.
Passion. It’s really clear. It looks like every time I speak about this it’s the first time I’ve chosen to share it. And you know I’ve been doing this for 30 years, so there’s a certain passion that dwells in me when I want to share with groups. That’s part of my special sauce.
I shared this in an earlier episode, my authenticity, my ability to be vulnerable with a group, to share with them what hasn’t worked, what I did wrong, where I could do better, and just stories. All of that relates to my authenticity. And we all know, we can all sniff it when someone is not being authentic, and I don’t want that to happen in my experience. So what you see is what you get.
And finally I hold myself to high standards. I expect that of my groups but I also hold myself to high standards, and in many ways I can be my biggest critic.
Now that’s my special sauce if I had to put it into a couple of minutes, but what would be yours? I’d love to hear from you. Share that in the comment section and I’ll leave some links within this episode that will give you a few clues about what you can identify as your strengths. It’s easy, you’ll do it in a couple of minutes, and it’s completely free, and it’s a survey that people have done over 8 million times already.
Okay, I’ll look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
If you’d like to reach out to me at all times, feel free to do so at [e-mail].
Otherwise, I’ll look forward to seeing you soon.
Bye for now.
#facilitatorskills #playmeo #education

[@mschmidt111]

Mark can you please share which link you used to identify your strengths? Curious which process you use. Thank you very much for your sharing and experience. Very helpful!

[@playmeo-group-games]

Wow, I'm sorry I missed your question. I use the VIA Strengths test. Plug this into a search engine and it will come up on the first page. Free, easy and extremely useful.