I'm a recovering academic who uses her insights from behavioural economics to develop methods that facilitate collaboration. In my weekly newsletter, I share the summary of my latest interview on the "workshops work" podcast along with an application of facilitation as a life and leadership skill.
🎙️ workshops work final podcast episode: The start of a new chapter || Episode 354 on Facilitation in Diplomatic Spaces
|
Happy New Year, Reader! I wish you a healthy body and a content soul. I wish you inspiration, and the courage to act on it. And I wish you meaningful connections, conversations, and collaboration for 2026. As the year is about to begin, I find myself asking a familiar question: what do I want to start, stop, or continue? We tend to focus on beginnings. New habits, new goals, new energy. It's exciting. Yet, we've all learned that what we forget to stop often comes at the highest cost because it prevents something new to emerge. This week, I am stopping the workshops work podcast after 355 episodes. Episode 354 was my final guest conversation (you'll find the details below). Episode 355 is a short solo reflection on why now, and what comes next. Over the years, workshops work evolved. It started with workshops as a format. Then facilitation as a craft. Then the facilitator's inner journey. What fascinates me now are the participants. The people we gather and often invite (usually through the process we design) to be a little less professional. To loosen the mask. To speak as humans, not roles. To connect as peers rather than performers. Much of my work, and most of my joy, sits in that moment where someone dares to drop the script. Where psychological safety turns from a concept into a risky, lived experience. Where unprofessional doesn't mean sloppy or careless, but human, present, and real. Reader, you may have subscribed because the podcast spoke directly to your practice as facilitators, trainers, leaders of groups. And I hope that you will enjoy the development this show and I took and follow me. Here are your options for what comes next: Stay with me for Unprofessionalism The new podcast launches next week. Same RSS feed - if you're already subscribed, you'll automatically get the new episodes. The artwork changes, the jingle changes (yes, I hired a composer), but all workshops work episodes stay available. On the new podcast, I'll be talking with professionals who dropped the script about what happened next. When being unprofessional - showing emotion, admitting "I don't know," asking for help - actually worked. When vulnerability created trust instead of destroying credibility. And there will be conversations about other outcomes, when professionals had to wear the mask to remain safe. Join the workshops work Podcast Club If you want to go deeper into the workshops work archive: I'm launching a Podcast Club on Substack. I've imported all 355 episodes. Every month I'll share a theme with 2 episodes to revisit, and on the last Thursday we'll meet on Zoom to discuss. It's free to join. If you want to support it financially, you can opt for a paid subscription. Click here to subscribe to my Substack 🎙 Meanwhile, on the podcast…High-stakes diplomatic missions, peacekeeping, and intergovernmental meetings are inherently protocolised spaces. So what happens when facilitation is invited to show up in all its newness, threatening the sensitivities, the power structures, and the familiar dynamics? After a longstanding frustration with the way meetings were run, Tigist Hailu found her way to facilitation. As a regional diplomacy, peace and security, and strategic communications expert serving at the African Union, United Nations, and now IGAD, she discovered that it is possible for creativity to be invited into the room of diplomacy: softly, quietly, tweak by tweak. She joins me for the final ever interview of the Workshops Works podcast, as we explore the conditions that allow people to get vulnerable, build trust, share their ideas freely, and return to their humanity. Find out about:
🎧 Click here to listen to the final episodes 📥 Check out my 1-page summary That’s it from my side! Thank you for 355 episodes. Thank you for listening, for sharing, for investing your time in something that makes the world better, one workshop at a time. For 2026, I wish you a year of conscious endings, spacious beginnings, and the courage to follow what genuinely pulls you. I hope to see you next week! Myriam
|
How can we facilitate collaboration?
I'm a recovering academic who uses her insights from behavioural economics to develop methods that facilitate collaboration. In my weekly newsletter, I share the summary of my latest interview on the "workshops work" podcast along with an application of facilitation as a life and leadership skill.
Dear Reader, What tells you that you’ve done a good job? Pause for a second before you answer. Is it a number, a feeling, a comment from someone else, or the simple relief of being done? Most of us have a metric, even if we’ve never named it. And once it’s there, it starts steering far more than we realise. I noticed this recently, in the most unlikely of places: on my meditation cushion. Before my last Vipassana retreat, a “good” meditation was easy to define. It was a sit where my mind...
Dear Reader, I came back from ten days of silence on Sunday. No phone. No writing. No reading. No podcasts. Just long hours of sitting, scanning sensations, and noticing how quickly the mind wants things to be different. Less pain. More comfort. A way out. Vipassana calls the practice equanimity. The capacity to stay with sensation as it is, without craving when it’s pleasant and without aversion when it’s unpleasant. Not suppressing. Not indulging. Simply noticing. When we stop feeding our...
Dear Reader, By the time you read this, I’ll be sitting in silence. Today will be day six out of ten. Ten hours of meditation a day. No phone, no notebook, no book, no calendar. Just me, my breath, and whatever Goenka has to say about observing sensations without reacting to them. It’s my sixth Vipassana (listen to my insights after the last), which means I should know by now that the first two days feel excruciating. My mind throws a tantrum like a toddler whose iPad has been taken away....