Music. Welcome to the L&D Career Club podcast, where purpose-driven people come to start and grow the L&D career of their dreams. I'm Sarah Kinistra, an L&D career, business, and executive coach, and I'm here to take you on a weekly journey to create a seamless, energizing, and engaging L&D career blueprint so you can live a life of fulfillment, inspiration, and freedom. If you're here to find your first L&D role, move up the L&D ladder,
or land that high-level L&D role you've been dreaming of. Welcome to the club. Music. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the L&D Career Club podcast. I am so happy that y'all are here. If you can't tell from my voice, I am recovering from a cold. So luckily, this was already scheduled to be a guest episode, and you don't have to hear me sniffling for the next 30, 40 minutes. But today we have the amazing Kirstie Lewis on the show.
Kirstie is a passionate and motivated person, which you'll be able to hear immediately from our interview. And she loves to enable other trainers and facilitators to create a change within themselves and the businesses that they serve. She applies 20 years of experience in facilitating and training across global businesses, and she helps others design and deliver awesome learning. Kirstie is the creator of the School of Facilitation. We're going to talk a lot about that today.
And it's a space for global facilitators and trainers to come together to connect, learn, share, and inspire, where community and collaboration are the main focus. Kirstie supports facilitators and trainers to be their most brilliant selves in their business, with their clients, and when designing and delivering learning that focuses on the a participant. Today's episode is jam-packed. I loved going back and listening to it.
I know that I took a lot of notes. We really focus on a lot of themes that we talk about here, and that is the ethos of the L&D Career Club podcast and the Overnight Trainer as a business of how do we better support ourselves. And our training teams. So that way we can be better trainers, facilitators, workshop creators for our employees out there. So I know you all are going to love this episode as much as I loved hosting it.
Kirstie is an absolute gem. I dropped all of the information on how to connect with her and all the resources she talks about in the show notes here. So without further ado, welcome Kirstie Lewis to the LOD Career Club podcast. Kirstie, welcome to the LOD Career Club podcast. How are you doing today? Very good. How are you? I am awesome. I'm so excited to chat with you for so many reasons. One is that you are the founder of the School of Facilitation. And I got my start in L&D in facilitating.
And I consider myself like at the core of like who I am in L&D, even though my number one strength and strength finders is strategic. I just love facilitation always has like a special place in my heart. So when you reached out, we connected. And I learned more about you. I was just so excited to have you on the show today. So thank you so much for being here. I always love to start off the episode since we are focusing on L&D careers on your career and your own career journey.
So why don't you tell us a little bit about your career path and ultimately what led you and inspired you to start the School of Facilitation? Oh my goodness me. We should just let your listeners know I'm old.
It's my 50th next next year next week next week next week 17th on the 19th okay so sorry we're meant to be yep having a little moment there uh so long story short I graduated in the UK we all graduate from uni we then don't go and do business school so I got a job as a graduate uh in the drinks industry the alcohol drinks industry. I've worked for people like Guinness and then Guinness merged to become Diageo.
So I had the joy of selling amazing liquor brands, basically Smirnoff, Bailey's, Johnny Walker, Guinness. And whilst I was there, Diageo had over 10,000 salespeople and they had a dedicated global team called Sales Capability. And that was my last role. I worked in the capability team for three years and I was a custodian of something called the Diageo way of selling. And that was a big global sales program. And I absolutely loved it. To your point, I was on my feet delivering workshops.
I was coaching, I was working with sales leaders and I was like, how do I get some more of this? So I did the very brave thing in 2007 and resigned with a plan. I just want to tell anyone who's listening, I had a plan. So it's not something that happened overnight and stepped out and came into the world of training.
Which has just been amazing so it's been a ride 15 years and then around 2013 I've always wanted to be a teacher if you asked any of my friends though they laugh and go but we always knew you would be a business person I love teaching and I think it was always going to be a natural progression that I started my own business but that was in relation to learning and to designing designing and delivering workshops.
My biggest bugbear, Sarah, is poorly designed workshops and then not being delivered, either trained or facilitated well. So that is the essence of School of Facilitation, which was inaugurated in 2014. So I wanted to create a space for both the freelance facilitators and trainers to be able to come together, to connect, to learn, to share. But I also wanted to create a space for those facilitators and trainers in the corporate world to be able to come and do their learning.
Because one thing I learned when I was in L&D, well, it was called sales capability. I didn't get much development. I was expected to do all this delivery and this design and to be brilliant for everyone else and help all these salespeople. people. Yet, the way I had to learn was through shadowing my colleagues and doing my own reading and buying books and articles. So that is what I do. I work with both corporates and freelancers.
I love that. And I mean, on that same vein, right, and I saw this on your LinkedIn About Me section, and it really stood out to me where you said that you support businesses who have a passion and desire to develop their facilitation and training talent internally.
Because like you mentioned, not all businesses have that passion, that there are some who, while they have their wits about them to invest in having an L&D department, so obviously they value it in some way, shape, or form, and they value learning because they have that department and they're educating the employees inside the organization. There's a disconnect between how are we educating L&D, right?
And we were talking about this before we hit the record, but I had mentioned, and it's a common phrase that L&D, that we have the reputation of being those cobbler's kids with no shoes. So we're constantly developing everyone else, but are we actually getting the development themselves? So- I actually have a two-part question here. A, why do you think that is? And then B, what areas do you find L&D teams needing the most development in themselves?
So why do I think it is? I think it's probably two, there might be two things that are said to us. One, we do not have time to do our own development because we are so busy looking after everybody else. Secondly, we don't have the budgets because they might source their budgets from the different departments or different functions and they don't have their own budgets themselves. That would be my hypothesis, which is a real shame. That's what I noticed. Second part of the question was?
Where areas do you think that or do you find through the work that you're doing that L&D teams games need the most development in so there's again there's two areas that I really focus on that I've noticed that when we talk about it people like oh god that's so helpful so the first is around design so how designing workshops that are either virtual or in person that are really human-centered and designing learning that is experiential and that creates engagement it's It's delivered with purpose.
We are not train attainment. We are not Intel mode. That's really important to me. Another piece is around then delivery. So what I mean by that is when you are on your feet and you are in the training room and you are delivering a workshop, how you are showing up with your language, your body language, how you're using the environment, how do you use your space? Workplace, again, people don't get, even the freelancers don't get coaching on that.
And yet it's so valuable because how many of us have ever stopped to think like, yeah, how am I showing up in this room? What am I saying? What am I doing? Another area that I think is really important within corporates that's related to what I do is facilitation skills for leaders. So I think this this is an underused set of skills for our leaders because if they... Became aware of what facilitation actually is. And so the basic facilitation means to make easy.
It comes from a French word, facile. I think if leaders had some of those facilitation skills, so it's about great questioning, it's sitting in silence, it's being comfortable with ambiguity, it's learning to speak last, listen first. I think that would also help some of our great leaders in this world today. So those would be the three areas, design, delivery, and leadership. I love that. Yeah. Back in 20, oh goodness, probably 2013 or 14.
I was working for an organization and we did a whole workshop series with our executives and senior leaders on being better facilitators. And it was something that people weren't doing at that time, right? And I was, I had such a great leader of our department, and he was so forward thinking in that. And it was amazing to see a them being vulnerable about, you know, this, like, wow, this actually isn't easy, right? Like, yes, it has the word easy in it, right?
But like, to gain that skill, it's, it's not something that, you know, is always easy for people, but it can be built, and it can be taught, and it can be developed. And so it gave them respect for what what we do as facilitators, but it also then gave them the skill to be able to do that. And it was just so amazing to see just the shift in the culture when you move. And we'll talk about this too, right?
Like there's training, there's facilitating, there's coaching, and like there's the intersection of those two and how those all can, can, can leverage each other as well. But I think without that facilitation piece, it's really, really hard to train. It's hard to coach, you know, that facilitation piece is really like a nightmare. Can I ask a question? What did it, for your listeners as well, what did your leadership team do?
Get and benefit from by doing that learning on the facilitation skills. Yeah, I think exactly what you're saying about the idea. The idea sparked to me or the thought came to me because of that listen first, you know, react afterwards. And I think that piece, I think it gave them permission as well to not have to have all the answers. And that part of facilitation is having those, it's a conversation. It's not teaching and telling you all the things.
And so I noticed that shift very quickly, actually, of their conversations turning more conversational instead of transactional. And that there was more of a co-learning happening through facilitation and through their new skill that they had versus the pressure they had to have all the answers and to be the end-all, be-all. So it really, it created a culture of, of ease. I'll say that there was just more like, okay, well, let's figure this out together and let's listen and let's hear.
And yeah, just, there was a sense of ease and togetherness that happened from that. Love it. Thank you. Yeah. I love that you turned, I don't think I ever had anyone turn their heads on me. I was like, what's the next question you have for me? Well, let's talk about
that though, right? Right. Because like there are and you wrote an article on this a while ago and then you brought it back up, I think, a couple of months ago or a year ago to around the differences between training and facilitation. And then I also throw like coaching in there, too. Right. Because they are three distinct things that there are some overlap in them. But I think you also mentioned there's a, you know, training facilitator or something like that, too. Right.
So what are those big differences? And where are those overlaps? Yeah. So, yeah. Training is when you are learning something, whether it is a new skill or a skill, a behavior or a process. And the person delivering the training is a subject matter expert. And so they understand what it takes to be great at communication. They understand leadership. So they are training you.
If you are in a workshop and it's about and it's being facilitated my personal belief is that the facilitator is not a subject matter expert and they are there to lead you from point a to b they're there to help you get to a certain set of outcomes yes they may use a process yes they may use a particular activity like liberating structures or something from game storming world world, but they are not there with the answers.
What I see happening, and this is my big bugbear, I know for a fact there are trainers out there who call themselves a facilitator. And I think it's a hypothesis, Sarah. I'd love to hear from your listeners what they think. I think it's down to snobbery that if someone said, I am a trainer, trainer, they would, it feels like some, it feels less than being a facilitator. And if you say to someone, I am a facilitator, they I'm sitting up straighter. There's a, yeah, I facilitate.
Okay. So I then go to the place of, well, that's interesting. So that's about mindset because I've been a trainer and I've been a facilitator and there are two, they are different skill sets and knowledge sets. I think, as you said, I love this phrase, the intersection. There is an intersection. I have a spectrum, basically. And I think there's something called the facilitative trainer. So the facilitative trainer is someone who is a subject matter expert.
Probably this is what happens in a corporate, by the way. So you have subject matter experts. And then as they evolve and as we evolve as trainers, we use more and more facilitative skills and behaviors. So we do more pull than push to get the best out of our participants. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I remember thinking about my own, like my own career journey and thinking now, like, oh, in that point, like I was a trainer. And at this point I was a facilitator.
And I think it also too, for me, there were things that I was a subject matter expert in and I came from corporate and I came from the field to move my way up. And so very early on, I was the trainer, I was a software trainer, you know, step by step, here you go. But then moved more into, you know, know, I did a lot of DEI work and that was a lot of facilitation and it's easy when we talked about facilitation, right. Being able to have, have those sessions.
It's interesting to, to think about my own career journey. And I'm interested too, to your point of like the listeners and them thinking about their career journeys. And yeah, you know, I think it's easy to put a stamp on it and say, I was a facilitator, but actually taking a step back and saying, were you, you know, were you a trainer? Were you a facilitator? Were you a, would you call it a, what a facilitator? I love that.
I love that. Where does, where would you say coaching fits into all of this? Does it, is it, is it, is it off to the side? Yeah, I think so. Personal experience when I have been training, when I've been training, cause I used to be a sales trainer and I used to be sales coach as well. The coaching element comes through a one-to-one relationship and it's off to one side for me. So I think it can be part of the overall learning solution and it should be, and the same can be true in any subject.
I think coaching is supportive and it helps some of the embedding of those skills and behaviours. I genuinely do. So I think it has a role to play.
I think a good trainer and facilitator also knows how to coach because sometimes that is needed that just one-to-one conversation yeah well I'm and I'm also seeing now currently in my open programs I have more coaches coming to me saying I'm being asked by my clients to run workshops to run not group coaching but actual workshops and I'm sort of okay but how do I actually do this and I often say to coaches is like you've got all the skills and you know the majority of the behaviors you're
used to doing one to one maybe one to three one to four a workshop is one to many and so look we've got some frameworks you can use you're going to use the same skills but you've just got to practice the mindset shift. Is the bit that I've noticed. Yeah, no, definitely. And I think it's like all of those skills all work together. It's just almost like the modality and the output of it is a little bit different too, which I like there.
So kind of on that same vein, I saw you, I can't remember if it was a post that you did or where you put it, but it really stood out to me because I'm a huge values person. I always talk to my clients and looking for a new role that the new role is great, but the right right values of a company is where that alignment's really going to matter. So I love values. And you had mentioned somewhere about our values impacting our delivery style.
So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that concept and what you mean by that. Yeah. So how to explain it without drawing a picture. I'd love you to think about an iceberg right now. And an iceberg, you have a third of it bit above the waterline and two-thirds of it below the waterline. And I'd like to imagine for the rest of us, we're all icebergs. So what people can see above the waterline is my choice of environments where I live, how I dress, what I drive.
The next layer they can see of me are my behaviors, what I choose to say, my body language, my tone of voice.
People do not need to interact with me to make a judgment and to make a perception of of who i am what i do by looking at above the waterline below the waterline though set the next levels so there are my skills and capabilities and below my skills and capabilities are my beliefs and my values and below that is my identity now to understand all of those you need to have some interaction with me because you probably need to ask me some questions so Bye-bye.
And if anyone's gone to the NLP world, these all relate to DILT's logical levels, but inverted. So identity being at your root core. Your values and your beliefs, I believe, really shape your skills and your capabilities, your behaviors, and the environment that you choose to play in. So therefore if we take that to be true how you show up above the waterline on your iceberg as the facilitator as the trainer what you're saying what you're doing how you're doing it.
Is rooted back in your values and so I think it's a really important thing that as you grow as a facilitator and trainer you take some time to examine what your values are and your beliefs beliefs because we have both limiting and positive beliefs and they all show up but they don't show up just like as a big signpost they show up in our tone of voice they show up in our mentality they show up how we how we're standing how we're saying things and so some examples i can give
that might help your your yourself and your listeners so there was a there used to be a time when i used to run training and if people were late back into the room part of my heart would just drop and I'd be really annoyed and then sad that people were late and I and I'd get irritated and some the way that would then show up above the waterline was probably a sarcastic quip so it was never shaming it was never the old school
10 press up say a poem do a dance like people if you're doing that still, we've got to have a word. But it would come out in a bit of a, oh, is everything all right? I hope. Nice coffee. Did you bring us all a biscuit? And then I was like, why? Why is this bugging me so much? Why does it bug me that people are late? And then what I recognized by going back to my values is, and I have my values on my wall, a really big value for me is my own personal learning and development.
And whenever I went to workshops, I would be the keen bean who knew exactly when I had to be back in the room and I'd be sat there waiting because I valued that learning. I valued beginning the time. And what I realized is not everybody thinks like that, Kirsty. Not everybody has learning or personal development on their values. So their behavior is a reflection of their values.
So they might've been on the phone to one of their customers because that is more important to them at that point in time. And so it's things like that. So So I often say to facilitators and trainers when I'm coaching them is you've got to sort your shit out because if you don't sort your shit out, it leaks.
It really comes through another one that I could body language so there was I've got I'm very tall I'm six foot one one eight one so I'm very tall very imposing I sort of strike I'm quite striking in the training room and there was this point in this sales workshop that I started to notice my body language would change and so I would normally stand in what I call the a-frame if anyone's ever watched Amy Cuddy's yeah knows I call it the superwoman stance I wouldn't put
my hands on my hips necessarily but I would have a very clear strong frame but then I would start to stand with my legs crossed crossed over one another and I was like what is that about because that was then saying to me what am I trying to protect myself.
From why am I almost diminishing my size and sort of protecting myself so I started paying attention to the topic that it was always was one point in a three-day workshop I just paid attention to the topic and I realized it was a topic that whilst I could talk about it I didn't understand it 100% and so I went away did some learning felt comfortable next time I spoke about it knew what what it was about and the questions I wanted to ask and what the potential responses
would be and it shifted my body language so go back below the waterline into that skills that capability that knowledge section that then impacted my behavior so good and it's that that it doesn't even it doesn't just affect our facilitation right like I talk about that in terms of people when they're interviewing when they're having networking conversations right that it will it will ooze out of you if you do not if you do not know what's
going on and can work work with it and work around it and work through it it's going to ooze out one way shape or form and usually it's in your body language it's in your tone of voice. It's in your, you know, maybe your heart's racing. And so you're super breathy because you're, you know, you're, you're so nervous about it or it's coming up to the top of your mind.
And, you know, I, I love, I think what I really took away from what you just said and what I hope others take away too is the recognizing, right? So like, like the first step is noticing like, oh, I crossed my legs there or that annoyed me. And I do a pet peeves exercise with my clients too, to help them figure out their values, right? Like what are the things that just freaking make you want to just strangle people. Well, that's probably a violation of your values.
And so my language, Sarah, my interpretation of that is our icebergs are banging up against each other. I love that. Our icebergs are up. Yeah. And the way people can tell if someone's triggering you, I often find like what's making your stomach turn? What irritates you? What makes you roll your eyes when someone's talking to you like, for God's sake, Thank you.
Come on like what are those moments that really trigger you i mean if you're facilitating and training obviously you can't stand at the front of a room and go that's a ridiculous thought or what are you saying that for but i would encourage you though if you notice that you are getting triggered not in a great way when you're facilitating your training just write yourself a post-it note at a convenient point and take that afterwards
and that's part of your reflective process like what happened there what made me have that reaction that response what what is it within me that and you just keep drilling down and doing that bit of discovery for yourself yeah I think that reflection that discovery is so important I feel like we could probably do a whole episode on post post facilitation and how do we reflect but I you know it was interesting I, my next question to you, I was starting off with facilitation was how I got
my start in L&D, but it's not training was how I got my start in L&D. But I was like, let me let me correct myself here now that I have learned from this episode. But I know from personal experience, that sounds like obviously you as well, that when we kind of talked about this in the beginning, that when a A workshop is designed well. It is much easier to facilitate. Yeah. Where do you see workshop designs go wrong in terms of how it impacts the facilitation and the facilitator?
Oh, so how it impacts the facilitator? Yeah. Like, where are they going? Where is the design going wrong? Yeah. In terms of how it's really impacting whether or not we're able to facilitate effectively. Yeah. So many places to go on this. Or we can flip the question to thinking about, if we want to think about like, where can we, how can we design better workshop for facilitation is more seamless. But both I can answer. So I will always say, get very clear on your purpose and outcomes.
So the purpose is the why. Why are we here today? And what are the outcomes? So the outcomes are, what will I have learned, understand, know by the end of this workshop? And the outcomes are often should be written from both the participant and the business perspective.
And sometimes I find when I work with a corporate they will have identified what it is for the business that they need but not necessarily the participants or vice versa so I think you need to start there and if anyone's read the art of gathering by Priya Parker that's her big thing you know start with the why you need to understand your why so the purpose and the outcomes I I think also having a framework.
So that was one of the things I didn't have for a very long time in my design was a meta framework for a workshop. And whether that workshop was an hour, two hours virtually, or a day, two days in person. And I think we now coach and teach our corporates and anyone we work with a very simple framework called the five E's and it extends outside. So it starts with excite, enter, engage, exit, embed.
And I think personally, and I just like to say to anyone listening, you go, oh, my God, another framework. I have fought against frameworks all my life. I was a salesperson. I hated that I had to have a six step, an eight step process. However, may you take this from an old person? A framework allows you to play within it. And once you can understand the framework and you can play within it, I promise you it makes life so much easier.
Because if you don't have anything a framework you have no boundaries it's almost anything it's limitless anything is possible but sometimes that is that's too much so having some restrictions in place can be super helpful to help your thinking i i agree the first company i did training for one of the things we would always say was freedom within a framework so we'd give you free like Freedom, and I have carried that with me now for a decade plus of anytime I create a
framework, anytime I see a framework, I don't ever see that as a prescription of I have to follow all these steps all the time, right? That there's, okay, this is a great framework. Where is my freedom within that? I love, oh my God, I want to write that down. I love that freedom in a framework. Freedom in a framework.
Yeah, and I'm so grateful for that lesson that I got early on in my L&D career because Because it allowed me to create frameworks with that in mind and not feel like, oh, because I'm not, I'm actually not a framework person either. Coming from a sales background, like I just want to sell my stuff. I want to, you know, I want to help people. I want to do the thing. But I'm also someone who can have all those big, big ideas and not know when to rein them in.
And so I love that. I love that perspective of how do we create frameworks.
Works another thing that I'm just also noticing more and more corporates a lot of people ask this it's not just the corporates it's the freelancers as well where can I find activities like where do I find exercises where can I find structures that because it's so easy to get stuck in a rut and always use the same same activities so I often if you're in pure facilitation mode so you're helping a team with their thinking ideation strategy I point people towards liberating structures so I
don't know if you've come across that but they've got a great app they've got an amazing book they've got a good website so it's that's one place the other people that I love are game storming the Canadian boys so their books are great and then also workshop tactics some some other people that i use i'll put all that in the show notes too i'm taking those right now and for facilitators i think who have got a bit more nuance and like i've got one know the stretcher.
Facilitation cards by meg bulger the other tool that i would recommend as well and i think. You can also be talking to, another reason to look outwards if you're with a corporate hat on, if you look outwards and talk to people and go into different communities. That's another reason to hang out there because you find different ways of doing things. You'll see different perspectives.
So that helps. Yeah, I agree. I know for me too, one of the things, you know, I would talk to some of my participants and say, how would you want to practice this? Yes. Like what would that, what would that look like for you too? And I think having those conversations of like, oh, if I did this, I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. I would never have thought about that. Like that is a great way for you to practice it. You, you, you know better than I do in some cases.
So I think that's always a, a low hanging fruit that people don't utilize in facilitation and workshop design is like going to the people and saying, Hey, like how would, like if you could practice this in any way, what would that look like for you?
Maybe you can make can happen maybe you can't but but I also think sometimes we get stuck as a facilitating trainer and think especially we need to have all the answers and we don't and so that's a really beautiful example Sarah whereby we are humble enough you're humble enough to go to the to the stakeholder and go or to some of the audience like how do you want to do this and I mean you You might do that before you go into a workshop.
So I recommend anyone thinking, yes, I like that, do that before. But also as you get, as you grow into yourself, as you grow into the role of trainer and facilitator. I would say the stretch, next stretch is, you might say to some people, you might say as part of a workshop, how do you want to do this? How should we learn this section? Because you will start having more and more tools and resources at your fingertips tips that you can just pull out of your toolbox.
But that comes with confidence. That comes with time. I don't think I'd recommend that to someone who's new to a role and like practicing being a trainer for the first time. I would never say to them, hey, make it up in the spot. I would never do that to you. But eventually you'll get there.
So this came up earlier when you mentioned that you have people who are coming to the school of facilitation who are now being asked to create workshops, to develop workshops, to facilitate workshops, but maybe they just had more of a coaching experience. So for those tasked with developing workshops, maybe it's kind of their first time or maybe now listening to this episode, they're realizing that there's another, like workshops are different than other things they might've created before.
What would you say would be your three workshop design non-negotiables? Yeah. Oh, God, there's so much, Sarah. You must have purpose and outcomes. Just must, must, must. And you need to design those with the stakeholder. Do not write them in isolation. Two, when you are actually in design mode, please don't do it at your desk. Please do not do it on your computer. Please go and get a really big bit of flip chart paper or a really big, I've got my really really big notepad.
And I just write on that all the time. That, that is my, that is my thinking space. So go to your favorite coffee shop, sit somewhere different, like where's your inspiration space. So that would be two. And then three non-negotiables when I'm designing time, please, please give yourself time. It takes way more time than you think.
Story of my life still i i mean so many years i've been developing workshops and i still, think i can do it so much quicker than i actually can every time every time and i know and i know i'm like oh you're not giving yourself enough time and i'm like i can do it so i number three is like hits home for me for sure so i i think as well like if anyone's listening here okay yeah it can't take that long so we would quote for a i i often say to corporates because we can't we'd never charge them
exactly what we'd want to charge them because of the number of days but i would say to write a one day workshop from zero it's easily six seven days of design oh yeah easily including meetings including sign-off processes including the creation of a detailed detailed trainer guide, any supporting materials, whether that be PowerPoint or, posters that you need to draw, curated lists of resources. It takes ages. Yeah, it definitely does. It's always a good reminder for me.
So as we wrap up, tell us more about the school facilitation. What services do you offer? Tell us more about the company as a whole and then how can people join work with you so we've got a variety of offers from zero cost through to some pennies which is i think's fair so if you're corporate please reach out we work with.
Global corporates just because you're hearing my english accent and you might be in the states don't be afraid we've got clients all over the world and the way we work with the corporates is often they just. Hit me up through an email and we just get on a call like this and we chat and I understand what their needs are. I write them a proposal. Very simple. If you've got some people on here who want to do their own learning for themselves,
we offer a free event on the first Friday of every month. It's called the Community Pod. Now it is 9am UK, 0900 to 1000 UK. If I thought there was There's a big calling from over the seas and stateside, maybe something that you and I create. So I'd love to do another one in the afternoon. That's one. And so that's a community of facilitators and trainers. We have a variety of subjects and topics. There's the podcast.
Have a listen to that. It's called A Facilitator's Journey. That might be of interest. And also on the School of Facilitation YouTube channel, you can go back in time and see all the videos of the community pods. so you could do some free learning there as well. We have masterclasses, virtual masterclasses on how to design a workshop and also your facilitation stance and style.
They happen quarterly and probably for European, UK-based listeners, we have something called the Flourishing Facilitator, which is a four-month program where you deep dive into your training and facilitation from a design and a delivery perspective. And that starts in Feb. That's either February and or October. Amazing. Yeah. So this podcast, actually, at least every week, we're in the top 200 of several charts outside of the US.
So we do have a big global... It's always fun to see where we're hitting from a global audience. But Kirstie, this was so great. I learned a lot about myself. I have a lot of reflection to do as well. This was just so fantastic to hear more around the the facilitation side of things and understanding more the difference between training and facilitation and how we can become better at both of those.
It doesn't have to be, we don't have to choose one or the other, how we become better at both those and what that looks like in order to really, at the end of the day, facilitate a really great experience for our learners. So thank you so much for hopping on. I know this is not the last time we'll be talking about this. Already, there's a couple of things I'm like, oh, we could do a whole episode on this. We could do a whole episode on that. We could do a whole episode on this.
So I know this is just the beginning of our friendship and the beginning of our working relationship here. So just thank you so much for hopping on the show today and for spending time with us. My pleasure. And I really look forward to talking to you again and hearing from some of your listeners. Thank you so much for listening to the L&D Career Club podcast. If today's episode sparked anything inside you, I would love to hear about it.
Feel free to share your ahas and takeaways by sending me a message on LinkedIn or Instagram, or by leaving a podcast review. And if you want more support on your L&D career journey, I invite you to join us inside the L&D Career Club membership, where we are redefining what it looks like to grow in your L&D career. Visit theovernighttrainer.com slash programs for more information and to activate your membership. See y'all back here next week.