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.
workshops work Podcast
333 - Facilitating with Fabric, Feeling, and Freedom with Paula Short
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A Mary Poppins’ bag of glitter, a big beating drum, a lump of clay, and a shiny gold crown. Bringing her wonderful, precious collection of props to the show, is the brilliant Paula Short.
As a personal development psychotherapist, talented actress, and the founder of a 1997 youth centre, facilitation has been a guiding constant in Paula’s life and work. Now as a self-exploration retreat host, she facilitates deep transformation through the expressive arts, helping people to welcome unchartered emotions without shame.
We explore how donning the cloak of the villain in a fictional story can become an embodied breakthrough, why the collective support of the group can be liquid gold, and why Paula has such an issue with tissues.
A special, heartfelt conversation – join us!
Find out about:
- How roleplay, costumes and props can help us to access buried feelings and emotions
- The importance of letting emotions free-flow without interruption, or ‘tidying’ them away
- How Paula create safe containers for self-exploration through play
- Navigating our trauma responses, and why we must learn to trust our own vulnerabilities
- Normalising say ‘no’ – and why doing so gives us autonomy, helps us reconnect to our boundaries, and signals emotional safety to others
Don’t miss the next episode: subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.
Links:
Watch the video recording of this episode on YouTube.
Connect to Paula Short:
Any thoughts? Share them with us!
👉 Are you looking for the Unprofessionalism podcast? https://unprofessionalism.buzzsprout.com/ 👈
