Speaker 1: I'm guessing if you're in this room that you probably spend a fair amount of time working with groups, right? So you are either a trainer of the materials here and or a facilitator of other kinds of group processes in your organizations or your communities. Maybe you're the leader that really actively engages and involves your team. Or maybe, to quote a line from the influencer training, you're a professional cat herder. Like many of us are in the type of work that we do. So much of what rides on our ability to have these kind of successful impacts is how we facilitate the process. And I know probably you know the dictionary definition of facilitate. Does anybody know? To make easy. Okay, so what we're trying to do is recognize how can we, as facilitators, make it easy to learn, to apply, to really have the kinds of success and impact that we have. So as I've developed my facilitation skills over the years and honed them a little bit, I always sort of refer back to a model I learned many years ago. It's a very, very simple model, but it's a really powerful framework to really think about how can I be a more effective facilitator and facilitate learning, facilitate outcomes, etc. Okay? So you'll see in the simplicity, it's called the I, We, It model. Very clever title there, the I, the We, and the It. And what I'd like to do is just briefly define what it is, dive in a little deeper to each and think about kind of how they play out, and then we'll discuss some of the nuances of how they kind of work together, okay? So the I, the We, and the It. The I is comprised of my role. My role as the facilitator in the context that I'm working with this particular group on. So my role could be facilitating learning. My role could be facilitating perhaps a group decision-making process. So what's my role within the context of what we're trying to accomplish? And what about myself? How do I bring my own personal self to the table here? Mike just mentioned that. How do I just bring myself who I am? Which includes my own needs, my issues, my hot buttons, maybe a personal agenda. So keeping aware of all of that. The We is about the group, right? It's group development, group dynamics, it's being attentive to how does a group grow and evolve over the time that I'm spending with them, and how might that affect my engagement with them, or what I have them do, or kind of how we work together, and how quickly we can get to where we want to go. And of course, group dynamics. I think we're all attentive to that. What's going on in the group? What's the energy level like? Are there interesting kind of things going on around interactions with others? Are things like hierarchy or personality somehow impacting the flow of the group? So keeping our eye on the We. The third piece is the It, okay? This is the content. This is the material. This is whatever task is in front of the group, what it is we're trying to accomplish, okay? So as we look at the I, the We, and the It, in concert there, recognizing that there's three components, and I'd like to do a quick survey here of all of you, and ask you if you think about these three components, in the very briefest of definitions here, which one do you think is the most important? Which one do you think you really need to absolutely bottom line, pay attention to that one, and the others will follow? So I'm going to ask you to raise your hand if you think the I is the most important. Got to focus on the I, got to know my own bit, okay? How about the We? How many people believe, hey, it's all about the group? Got to pay attention to the group. All right. Interesting. How about the It? How many people believe if you're not there to deal with the It, then what's the point? A couple of hands. How many of you are like, well, hey, wait a second. Isn't there an It depends? Anybody? It depends? All right. Ding, ding, ding. It's sort of an It depends thing here. So what's the point that we're looking at? You know, being an effective facilitator, I always think it's a combination of art and science, right? You got to kind of get a feel for what's happening in the group. You have to ground it in some group development and group dynamics theory, all of that sort of thing. So having some flexibility, and I look at this model kind of like a multi-lens tool, right? So I might want to zoom in and focus in on one area more than another at this particular point in time, or I want to keep two in focus and not so much the other. So it's a flexible sort of approach, a modality to focus, zoom in, defocus, but know that they're all there going on at the same time.