014 - What it Takes to be an Authentic Facilitator with Lily Gros Artwork

workshops work Podcast

This is a podcast about facilitation: the practice of creating conditions for people to think better together.

Whether you’re leading strategy, navigating change or developing leaders, the quality of your conversations shapes the quality of your decisions.

Hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes, behavioural economist, facilitator and founder of workshops.work, each episode explores the human dynamics of working together: how psychological safety is built, why some conversations lead to action while others stall, how leaders foster genuine participation, and what behavioural science can teach us about collaboration. Alongside these conversations, Dr Hadnes shares reflections from her own client work, offering practical insights from the realities of designing and facilitating workshops in organisations.

Recognised as the facilitation community’s most-recommended podcast in SessionLab’s State of Facilitation reports from 2024 to 2026, the show has grown into an archive of more than 350 conversations spanning the craft, the inner work, and the unexpected edges of facilitation. Whether you’re a facilitator, leader, consultant or L&D professional, you'll come away with sharper questions and a few ideas worth borrowing.

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workshops work Podcast

014 - What it Takes to be an Authentic Facilitator with Lily Gros

June 05, 2019 • Dr Myriam Hadnes • Season 1 • Episode 14

0:00 | 50:12

In this very-early morning and truly authentic show, I speak with Lily Gros, a facilitator, entrepreneur and youtuber. Lily started La Minute Facilitation, her business with which she facilitates workshops for (mostly non-profit) clients, trains facilitators on their mindset and runs her own workshops on authenticity and perfectionism.
In the show, we talk about “authenticity 360 degrees” which includes the facilitator and the participants. And, we talk about mindful facilitation which becomes crucial as soon as challenges come up.

Don’t miss our very honest exchange on how we dealt with challenging situations. These lessons we learned will surely inspire you to anticipate problems so that you can make your workshops work.

Questions and Answers

[1:37] What are your different roles as a facilitator?

[7:36] Authenticity became quite a buzzword. How do you define it and what does it mean to you?

[10:54] How did you learn to be authentic?

[12:43] How did you come up with this topic?

[15:16] How do get your groups to be more authentic?

[16:27] You get to know your participants before the workshop?

[17:30] What would be an icebreaker for a “cold” group of participants?

[21:35] Why does it feel so scary to be authentic?

[24:21] How do you approach the puzzle that a team might accept imperfection and vulnerability and still show high performance?

[31:34] How do you test the water in terms of openness of your participants?

[34:20] How did you manage to create the safe space after this tricky situation?