What Emergent Facilitation Taught Me About Human Connection

I've been in a lot of rooms. Conference rooms, auditoriums, corporate training spaces, and

everything in between. I've led workshops, given keynotes, and sat knee to knee with some remarkable people. But my conversation with Rebecca Courtney this week genuinely shifted something for me.

Rebecca is a Facilitation Coach at AJ & Smart — a Berlin-based company founded by her brother Jonathan Courtney that specializes in workshop design, facilitation training, and building communities of collaborators. Rebecca's path to AJ & Smart wasn't a straight line. She spent years as a school teacher in Cork, Ireland, shaping young minds, before her brother convinced her that what she did in a classroom wasn't all that different from what he did in corporate boardrooms.

She wasn't sure she believed him. Then she walked into a Lego workshop. And everything changed.

Learning to Let Go of the Plan

One of the things Rebecca talked about that hit closest to home for me was emergent facilitation. It sounds sophisticated, but the concept is actually pretty simple: you show up with a rough plan, but you stay tuned in to the group's energy and let that guide where you go. The agenda becomes a starting point, not a script.

She described a pivotal five-day corporate training where she walked in on Day One, read the room, and immediately knew her plan wasn't going to work. The participants were stressed, overextended, and quietly resentful of being pulled away from their work. Instead of pushing through her prepared content, Rebecca stopped, scrapped the opening, and spent an hour running a simple exercise: hopes and fears.

She gave them space to say what was really going on. And the room shifted. Shoulders dropped. People exhaled. Suddenly they were in it together.

That took real courage — especially since the client who hired her was a little nervous about the detour. But she asked them to trust the process, they did, and it became one of her best trainings.

Meeting People Where They Are

Rebecca and I ended up talking about something I feel strongly about: the principle of meeting people where they are. I told her about one of the hardest facilitation moments of my career — standing in front of a room full of blue-collar workers in Philadelphia when a guy stood up and basically called my whole message soft nonsense.

It's a gut-punch moment. Your instinct is to defend yourself. But I looked at him and said, 'You know what? From where you're sitting, I completely understand why you'd say that. Let's see if we can bridge that gap together.' He sat down. We had a great day.

Rebecca pointed out that challenging behavior like that almost always comes from a place of feeling unheard. When you create space for it instead of fighting it, the whole dynamic changes. She was right, and it was good to hear it reflected back.

Dr. Stephen R. Covey said it best: seek first to understand, then to be understood. Rebecca's mom apparently quotes that line daily. I'm starting to think she and I would get along well.

When Technology Fails and Authenticity Takes Over

I shared a story with Rebecca that I'm still processing a little. A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a lunchtime keynote on empathy to a local group. I had 30 minutes, I was prepared, and then — a 100% technology failure. Nothing worked. No slides, no support, just me and a room full of people.

I winged it. I had a few notes in my head and just started talking. And I left that room convinced it was the worst thing I'd ever done. My wife was there and asked how I felt. I told her honestly — it was my worst one yet.

Then I went back a month later. And person after person came up to tell me it was one of the best presentations they'd heard in a long time. The realness of it. The authenticity.

Rebecca laughed and said she knew it. That IS the emergent thing. When you're not hiding behind a presentation, you're just human. And people connect to that far more than they connect to a polished slide deck.

A Simple Way to Go Deeper with the People You Love

We finished our conversation with what I call the magic question — what's one thing you'd recommend someone do today to build deeper connections? Rebecca's answer surprised me in the best way.

She's gotten back into reading. Really reading — not just buying books and letting them pile up. And she's been recommending books to the people she loves. For Christmas, she gave her mom and her aunt the same book she's currently reading: Elizabeth Gilbert's All the Way to the River. The three of them are reading it together, and they've talked more deeply in the past few weeks than they had in months.

It's a small thing. But it created a shared experience, a reason to reach out, a conversation starter that goes somewhere real.

That's what this podcast is really about — finding those small things. The shifts in approach, the willingness to let go of the plan, the decision to meet someone where they are instead of where you want them to be. Whether you're facilitating a five-day corporate training or having dinner with your family, the principles are the same.

I'm grateful Rebecca took the time to share hers.

To listen to the complete conversation: https://youtu.be/vnbD02HZpRw