Facilitation Lab Podcast

“Through my continued research, I realized there's a way you can blend and merge identities. And actually that's your truest form of yourself when you're in the intersections of multiple identities. And that's the hybrid.” Sarabeth Berk

Sarabeth Berk, Chief Creative Disruptor of More Than My Title, is a researcher and innovation strategist demystifying the human experience. She is known for her research on the hybrid professional - people with multiple professional identities who integrate talents together and bring unique value to employers and clients.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Sarabeth about the professional identity crisis that inspired her research on the hybrid professional, the increasing demand for hybrids in the job market, and how you can network to learn someone’s identity rather than their position. Listen in to find out if you might be a hybrid professional.

Show Highlights

[0:59] Sarabeth’s professional identity crisis

[6:25] Jobs of the future will always become commonplace

[16:17] Emerging hybrids vs established hybrids

[23:00] Identity work & being seen

[26:25] Gaining clarity of self through misunderstanding

[31:21] How to network with identity in mind

Links | Resources

Sarabeth on LinkedIn

More Than My Title

Are You a Hybrid Professional? Sarabeth’s TEDx Talk

About the Guest

Sarabeth Berk is a creative disruptor and innovation strategist who demystifies the human experience. As a researcher, she is known for her research on the hybrid professional - people with multiple professional identities who integrate talents together and bring unique value to employers and clients. Sarabeth is currently the Chief Creative Disruptor of More Than My Title, a professional coaching agency in Denver, CO that helps clients discover their truest professional identity.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I’m with Dr. Sarabeth Berk. Dr. Sarabeth Berk is a hybrid professional, who also researches hybrid professional identity. She’s also the author of More Than My Title. Welcome to the show, Sarabeth.

Sarabeth: I’m so glad to be here. Thanks, Douglas.

Douglas: So, tell us a little bit about how you got started in this work you do, this notion of hybrid professional identity. Where did that even come from?

Sarabeth: Yeah. It's been a wild journey, and it really started with that age-old question: What do you do? And I was going through my own career-change transition and trying to figure out what my next move was. And when people asked me, “What do you do?” I just struggled. I didn't know who I was. I wanted to be seen as more than my current job, and at that point, I was a teacher, and I was ready to break out. I wanted to transform systems and do more strategy and design and innovation work. And so essentially, I was having a professional-identity crisis. I didn't know who I was.

And that led me onto this big research journey and interviewing a lot of people and starting to understand, what is this notion of professional identity? We just don't talk about it. And I looked at existing research. But what was fascinating to me the most was when I talked to other people, I thought they had it f...

“Make moments of fun, of celebration, and acknowledging that we're all accomplishing good things together. And micro celebrations and bigger celebrations and learn how to celebrate remotely.” Mariano Suarez-Battan

In this episode, I’m very pleased to be speaking with Mariano Battan, CEO & Co-Founder of MURAL, a digital workspace that we at Voltage Control love to use both internally and for design sprints. Mariano says he loves to dream about new things, and sometimes he can make them come true.

Listen in to find out the power of purposeful silence, how to power up your team’s imagination at work, and why you should be blocking out time for kids and coffee.

Show Highlights

[5:10] Multi-threaded thinking in the digital realm

[12:35] Blocking time for kids and coffee

[17:56] Powering up imagination at work

[26:09] Making space for celebration

[32:56] Purposeful silence

[37:12] Micro-celebrations, remotely

Links | Resources

MURAL

Mariano on LinkedIn

Mariano on Twitter

About the Guest

Mariano Suarez-Battan is the CEO and Co-founder of MURAL, a digital workspace for visual collaboration. He is accelerating innovation by providing facilitators with the tools and inspiration that they need to make global change. Before MURAL, Mariano created video games through his studio, Three Melons, which was acquired by Disney in 2010.

Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Android

Stitcher

Voltage Control on the Web

Contact Voltage Control

Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.

Douglas: Today I’m with Mariano Battan. Mariano’s the co-founder and CEO of MURAL. He’s on a mission to inspire, enhance, and connect imagination workers so that they can collaborate and problem solve wherever they may be. Welcome to the show, Mariano.

Mariano: Hello, Doug. And glad to be here.

Douglas: I'm really curious, Mariano. How did you get your start working in this field of bringing remote workers together to collaborate and do this imagine work and found a company to do that? It’s amazing.

Mariano: It is. And I was fortunate to be a mobile or remote worker. Ten years ago, I had a video-games company, and that company ultimately got acquired by Disney. So I was working for Disney. I'm from Argentina originally, but I was in the Mountain View office quite often. So I was “remote” because I was not really remote; I was just, like, distributed right? So my programming team was in Argentina. I was mostly in the U.S. I was designing a new game called Emotions. I was using Keynote to collect inspiration, and we can go further into the problem, but that sparked the idea of having an online space that felt more like a whiteboard, felt more like a project room. That's how we started 10 years ago already.

Douglas: Yeah, it's amazing. You know, I watched your presentation from MURAL Imagine recently, and you were sharing how you got your start using PowerPoint, or just reflecting on how you use it and how that helps you collect your thoughts. And it really, the light bulb went off for me, because we always talk about prototypes can be anything that we bring together to help visualize our ideas. And so we often talk about how PowerPoint can be a prototype. And so MURAL, in a way, is a tool to help build prototype or ideas and present them.

Mariano: Definitely a tool in a space to make space as we call ...

“But the thing that I hear the most from the students is that they're afraid that they're not going to know how to help. They're going to stand up in front of their peers and say, "I'm here to help you guide you through this, A3 problem solving workout or this kaizen, but at the core of it, I'm really just got this structure that I'm following. I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a robot or I'm going to be like, 'We are in current state. We are in root cause analysis'." Because they're learning the structure, they don't feel natural in it. And that is totally what I went through. But I knew I had that cheat sheet of the structure next to me so I could look down at it. And maybe what my practice was is just to feel more comfortable knowing that I don't know exactly and I've got to kind of follow a guide.” -Lori Serna

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking withLori Serna about her career leading business transformation initiatives at Cal Poly. She starts with tips on how to facilitate transformation at a large organization. Later, Lori explores common fears that facilitators share during transformation work. We then discuss the nuts and bolts of Lean and Kaizen Methodologies. Listen in for insight that spans industries.

“But what we don't realize is that it's actually our job to help manage change. And it's our job to give people a vision that helps them get to the other side of change. So, so often we just tell people, you need to change. We never tell them why. And we don't give them a vision for the future. And we don't ask them to come alongside of us and help build that future together. We oftentimes, change feels like it's happening to me and change imposed is changed opposed. So we're going to oppose anything that's imposed on us.” -Natalie Born

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Natalie Born about her role as VP of Innovation at Territory Global. She shares how an interest in negotiating influenced her career path. Later, Natalie explores topics running from emotional journeys and change, to groud rules and burnout. We then discuss the importance of developing a rest ethic. Listen in to learn all about giving people a vision that helps them get to the other side of change.

“ That playbook is completely outdated, and it's dangerous. If you applied a 20th century mindset to a 21st century world, we're going to be much more hurt. How can we think about a way in which business and society can thrive together? We have to exist in a place of constant learning, a place of much more caring, and a place where we think about long-term value creation as opposed to short-term profitability growth ”

Nancy Giordano is a strategic futurist, an author, and the founder of Play Big Inc. Her focus and vision bleed into PBI’s own initiatives, where they focus on helping enterprise leaders meet the escalating expectations of a fast changing world.

In this episode of Control the Room, I speak with Nancy about updating strategic efforts, machine learning, and the tools meeting planners have at their disposal in bettering their teams’ success. Listen in to hear Nancy break down the importance of bringing a relevant strategy to multi-faceted, complex teams.