Jo Fitz Consulting

I recently reached the milestone of facilitating 200 workshops. Here's 5 things I've learned.

1. Do Less, Be More. Being a good facilitator is not about how many tricks and tools you have in your toolkit. It’s about who you are and how you are with the groups you facilitate and the environments you create. Because it’s not really about you at all. It’s about the people in the room.

2. There’s always a reason not to have a team workshop. It’s exactly the reason why you should. There’s never enough time, people are always busy and there are always ‘fires to be put out’. But if you’re dealing with all of that as well as all the big things going on in the world, taking time to reconnect, refocus and re-energize can make a big difference to how well you work and achieve together.

3. The sign of a good workshop is not how many actions you leave with. It’s the quality of your conversations, the understanding you built, the clarity you have and how connected you feel as a result.

4. It’s what we do every day that makes a difference. Not just what we do at an away day. The best workshop in the world is of little value if you don’t follow up or keep investing in the outcomes. Yes, sometimes that’s through actions you took away but it’s also through maintaining connections, keeping conversations going and reflecting on learning and changes.

5. Great workshops are a team effort. The best sessions I’ve facilitated have involved collaboration with the team’s leader in planning, delivery and follow up, as well as shared ownership by everyone in the room on the day. We truly are “all in this together”.

And on that note, I want to thank every person who has trusted me to facilitate a session for them, and everyone who is part of ‘team Jo’ – sharing ideas, expertise, time, success, failures and learning. I am so very grateful to you all. Cheers!

Lots of exciting things in here!

Our 2024 Professional Development Calendar is out! We would love it if you wanted to contact us for one of these workshops for your people.

All packed and ready for tomorrow - my last workshop of 2023. Christmas hat included 🎄

Regular, frequent 1-1s are so important…

Wonderful day in a fantastic venue. Love coming back to this city which has special place in my heart always. Had to share this clever creation from one of the workshop participants. And look how happy I am to see this amazing human who I taught at primary school many moons ago.

Getting ready for a strengths extravaganza with 30 amazing people next week. Can’t wait. Just have to fit it all in my bag! 🤪😬🤩

Some useful questions here to open some powerful conversations…

Absolutely excited to be on the first time facilitator podcast with the amazing Leanne Hughes. I’ve learned so much from her previous guests. I hope I’ve shared something useful for others too 🤩😍😎

FTF219: Jo Fitzgerald Shares How Deliberate Planning Creates Presence in Your Workshops — First Time Facilitator In this episode, host Leanne Hughes welcomes Jo Fitzgerald, from Jo Fitz Consulting to discuss intentionality in your workshop design.

I’m Nelson for a couple of days working with a beautiful team to understand their strengths and the emotional culture they want to create together. Not a bad place to do some prep 🤩😎☀️⛵️

The time I turned up to facilitate a workshop, and my dress totally matched the decor!

People feeling psychologically safe in the workshops I run is really important. Here's a little story about my own experience...

Why I think feeling safe in a workshop is so important. | Jo Fitz Consulting

Here’s my tips for getting the most out of coming to a workshop with me 🤩😀

Jo’s 3 tips to get the most from our workshop | Jo Fitz Consulting

Still one of my favourite explanations of the impact of focusing more on strengths...

Invest in Your Strengths Every one of us has unique strengths. And every one of us will contribute more when we take our strengths seriously, and intelligently leverage them for the ...

Everyone always notices my cat cushion when I'm on Zoom sessions but I just realised my grandparents are sitting over my shoulder too 😍

Wonderful to work with a team on mapping their emotional culture yesterday. What a great way to start the year sharing how they want to feel and don't want to feel at work (even though the reality is we might sometimes).

I continue to be impressed at how much The Emotional Culture Deck helps people have really meaningful conversations about their feelings at work. A simple tool that enables an anything but simple conversation.

Some people dread coming to workshops, and add having to talk about feelings on top of that and the reluctance is often even greater. I've really enjoyed seeing how having a card deck has made it easier for even the most reluctant people to get involved and even enjoy the sessions.

There were The Emotional Culture Deck cards and post it notes galore at my last workshop for 2022 (along with lots of great discussion and some coffee and treats!).

As this leadership team reflected on 2022, we moved beyond the usual what went well and what didn’t questions to talk about how we felt closing out the year. This took us out of our heads and more into our hearts. That’s not always a comfortable place for people to ’sit in’ at work, but the connection and insights that come from the conversation helps take the team to a different level.

As one of the leaders reflected “the use of the card deck was a creative and safe way of getting getting the team to deceive how they’re feeling about the Group, their year and life in general!”

I spent this morning with a fabulous leadership team thinking about the emotional culture that will support their people to be successful, using the The Emotional Culture Deck.

Loved this piece of feedback which I think sums up the power of the Deck to help us take conversations to another level:
"The cards are a great way to focus discussion - they help to uncover emotional descriptors we might not have thought of."

At this time of year, a lot of us are reflecting on the year that was. Using the Deck helped today also helped to build some energy for the year ahead as part of closing out 2022.

If you're looking for ways to connect more to how we want (and don't want) people to feel at work as part of your end of year reflection or year ahead goal setting, check out the Emotional Culture Deck https://www.ridersandelephants.com/the-emotional-culture-deck

Having conversations about how we feel and want to feel at work is one thing, but talking about how we don’t want to feel is quite another.

To close out this week I worked with another team using the The Emotional Culture Deck to share how they do and don’t want to feel at work, and what they’ll do about it.

I always feel it’s a privilege to work with teams as they build their culture. It’s even more so when they’re willing to be open and vulnerable and talk about feelings.

Using the cards has been a wonderfully simple way to have conversations that we often put off because they seem anything but simple.

I have great hope for how the conversations we’re been having will make a positive and lasting difference in how teams work together. And don’t we all need more of that?!

As you head into the last month of 2022, I encourage you to take time to think about how you’ve felt this year, and how you want to feel in 2023. And if you want to find out more about the Emotional Card Deck let me know 😀🤩

We spend a lot of time in teams talking about values and behaviour but often not so much talking about feelings - the very things that drive what we value and how we behave.

Today I spent time with a team getting very specific about how they want to feel and how they don't want to feel, using the The Emotional Culture Deck. They came up with two great lists but the best bit was the conversation they had about what the words meant to them and what they looked like. It's amazing how different the conversation feels when when you're talking openly about feelings.

This great HBR article talks more about the importance of managing your emotional cutlure, and how it differs from the cognitive culture that we often focus on.
https://hbr.org/2016/01/manage-your-emotional-culture
I ask all groups I'm working with to read this article before we meet as a way into our conversation about emotional culture. See what you think.

A very thoughtful session today with a team to map their emotional culture using The Emotional Culture Deck. The discussions about what we mean when we talk about certain emotions were so good I didn’t want to interrupt them! Thank goodness we had some extra time up our sleeve.

It was wonderful to hear people talking about importance of challenging the idea that a workplace isn’t a place for emotion.

One of the most powerful insights came at the beginning of the session when we talked about our emotions being embraced as a strength rather than being seen as a weakness. I think connecting our emotions and our strengths and being able to talk about those things in teams is exactly what we need more of.

Can’t wait for the next the next session ♥️

If you haven't seen the Emotional Culture Deck yet, check it out here https://www.ridersandelephants.com/the-emotional-culture-deck

Loving this new page on the Gallup website. Loads of cool information on how to develop your strengths. Definitely a link to save.

How to Develop and Improve Your Strengths Learn how to develop your strengths into something you can depend on at work, at home and in every relationship -- time and time again.

Isabelle is definitely worth getting in touch with if you’re thinking about updating your cv…

A good friend asked if I had a poster, so he could put it up at work - so I made one. Here it is, in case any of you lovely people can print and put it up at your work, gym, local shop etc. A4 colour. Msg me if you need the pdf. Thank you! 💜

Very excited to start the The Emotional Culture Deck masterclass in September. I’ve been wanting to do the course since I first got hold of one of the great card decks! Fun to get more goodies in the mail today.

A great reminder of the power (and science) of focusing on your strengths. Hope you all get a chance to do that today. 🤩

Invest in Your Strengths Every one of us has unique strengths. And every one of us will contribute more when we take our strengths seriously, and intelligently leverage them for the ...

Stunning view for day two of a programme with the most amazing leaders.

Absolutely loving this podcast series as a way to think about joy in work, development and career.

What Do I Really Love to Do? (HBR Podcast) Part two of our four-part special series, Find Joy in Any Job, with Marcus Buckingham on how to design your work to focus on what you love.At a time when 41%...

When I lost my mother suddenly nearly three years ago, I was so lucky to have been working for patient and supportive clients.

I think this article from the latest Umbrella Wellbeing newsletter is so important to help employers think about how best to support people experiencing loss.

https://umbrella.org.nz/how-to-support-people-through-grief-and-loss/

How to support people through grief and loss Various terms such as “grief” and “bereavement” are used in diverse ways – in this article, we refer to “grief” as the emotions we feel in response to loss. These can include painful emotions commonly spoken about in grief, such as anger, sadness, hopelessness, shock, loneliness, despa...

Sparkles sparkles everywhere for yesterday’s workshop 🤩