Here’s the number one mistake new facilitators make: they work way too hard on all the wrong things.
Today, I’m going to show you the traps and teach you how to not walk through them.
The Mistake That Cost Me Millions
This is young Chad speaking, the new facilitator version of me. I made this mistake over and over and over again for many years.
Looking back now, I can safely say making this mistake cost me many millions of dollars over the course of time. In lost revenue. In having a gig and not getting it rebooked. In being invited somewhere and not being invited back during those early years. And I see new facilitators make this all the time.
Here it is. You ready?
The mistake that new, and oftentimes very experienced, seasoned facilitators and speakers make: they work way too hard on all the wrong things.
New facilitators spend all their time making sure the PowerPoint deck looks really nice. They spend all sorts of time paying attention to how they look and what they wear. They pay a majority of their energy to what they’re going to say, what’s on their agenda and their outline.
And these are all the wrong things. Here’s why. Because all of those things I just listed focus on me, me, and me.
Overestimating Your Own Importance in the Room
The worst mistake new facilitators make, and seasoned facilitators, and maybe all humans on Earth, is overestimating our own importance in a room.
A mentor of mine, Matt Church, says usefully but crassly, “Just remember you don’t matter and nobody cares.”
This is not a diss at all. If you know anything about my work, you know that I uplift the value of human beings to the utmost highest height. And yet we often overestimate our own importance in a room.
“Now, great, Chad. You told me the mistake. The trap. How do I get out of it?”
Turn Nervous to Service
My late co-founder and co-author Will Wise, who I wrote Ask Powerful Questions with, passed away a few years ago. He had this beautiful phrase: turning nervous to service.
New facilitators, new speakers, new presenters are often nervous. Heart rate is high. I would argue that your heart rate is high because you’re focusing a lot on what people are going to think about you, what you’re going to say, whether you’re going to mess up.
Will would say, “turn nervous to service.”
If you can take that word “me,” cut on the dotted line, and rotate it 180 degrees, it spells a really lovely two-letter word. And when you shift your focus to who’s in the room, your heart rate goes down, but also folks get served better.
Want tools that help you shift the focus to the people in the room? Download our free printable cards, book excerpts, and more here.
Your Delivery Is Your Best Marketing
The business case for this, whether you are an independent facilitator running your own practice or you’re internal to an organization: your delivery is by far your best form of marketing.
Oftentimes facilitators spend a lot of time on LinkedIn advertising themselves and self-promoting, says the person who posts on LinkedIn and is recording a YouTube video and sending it to you. The irony is not lost on me.
We focus our time on self-promoting when really what actually has moved the needle over the last decade in my practice, and grown things to the place they’re at now, is that every single engagement ideally should be turning into two more. And if it’s not, something is broken. I would say with that dynamic, we’re working too hard on the wrong things.
So work on the things that matter when you actually get the engagement. When you get invited in to work with a group, they invite you back. They share you with others. They spread the word with no self-promoting whatsoever. You continue to have this stream of work flowing in.
Mistake Number Two: Going It Alone
Mistake number two, which you didn’t ask for in this video, is going it alone.
In particular, I’m speaking to the solopreneur crowd, the people running their own practice, even if you’re doing it with one other person. Don’t try to do that alone. You’re going to be recreating so many wheels.
This is one of the reasons that I decided, after 10 years of private practice working with organizations from IKEA to Google to Nike to the CIA, to turn down almost all private work. Now I host a once a year event called the Connectors Summit. It is a gathering, in my humble (biased) opinion, that is the best-designed gathering for professional facilitators, speakers, and educator types.
If you are actively leading groups and you come to the Connectors Summit once, I guarantee you that you will want to come back in year two and year three and year four and beyond. The community of people growing around the summit is the tribe of folks that builds the support network that allows you to be on your own, even if you’re internal.
Being a connector facilitator type is kind of a weird job. Oftentimes you’re on an island doing something very different from everybody else in your organization. This is the place where you go to not be alone and get an immense amount of practical inspiration and sharpen your saw.
Want to go deeper? Register your interest for the Connectors Summit this December, a live experience where facilitators, trainers, and leaders come together to practice, connect, and reset.
Have an awesome day.
