You’ve been introduced to the four facilitation archetypes: the Alchemist, the Architect, the Connector, and the Navigator. (You can find your archetype here!)
To give you a deeper introduction to each archetype, I thought I’d do something I do in sessions: tell a story. You’ll meet a Navigator who read and shifted the energy of the room—while hearing about one of the BEST concert experience of my life.
*clears throat*
My husband, Matt, and I sat in silence as we zoomed through the underbelly of Chicago on Lower Wacker Drive.
We’re two introverts. Silence is always welcome in our marriage, but this was different. We were stunned into speechlessness.
Through a series of fortunate events, my sister-in-law got us tickets to see an Audrey Nuna¹, an R & B singer and rapper with a fashion sense that makes you think, “This woman only wears exactly what she wants”, concert at the United Center after the Bulls game.
Via The New Nine
Some of Audrey’s songs are household anthems², blasted in the bathroom as we get ready, on Lake Shore Drive, and on Lower Wacker, where we now rode in a pensive processing mode.
The venue was an in-house cocktail bar. Once your eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, they flitted to the backlit bar and scanned the handful of low bistro tables before landing on the makeshift stage. It was really more of a cleared space than a stage. A DJ booth and a mic. No separation between the artist and everyone else.
Matt and I settled onto a leather bench near the front of the room for a few moments until Audrey’s DJ coaxed as many of us as she could to stand in the cleared space. There were only a couple dozen of us willing to get that close. Even still, we stood a few feet from the mic to give Audrey her space.
When Audrey came out, it was clear the vibe wasn’t what she expected. I know because she named it.
“They told me this was going to be more of a club vibe,” she stated. “But it’s giving cabaret.”
The facilitator in me smiled a bit. She used one of my favorite tricks. Some facilitators prefer to shield their participants from the internal workings of an experience. They see themselves as ducks gliding over the surface of the experiential pond. Calm on top. Furiously paddling beneath the surface.
There’s a place for that, sure. But when things aren’t going as expected, I often choose to name it. When a once talkative group is quiet when I pose a question in the afternoon, I say something like, “I notice we’re quiet on this question. What’s going on? Is there something I can clarify? Are we hitting the post-lunch coma? Let me know.”
And people tell me they zoned out and ask me to repeat the question or they’re low energy and need something to get their blood pumping. We adjust together.
Audrey named the difference between expectation and reality. Then she did the work to close the gap between the two.
She told us all to step forward. Suddenly, I was so close to Audrey that I could take one more step forward and do some of our Morrison household choreo as her background dancer on stage. And though I didn’t become her background dancer for the night, Audrey used crowd work to get us dancing at the appropriate level of hype.
Every couple of songs, we’d step back from the stage. It still felt like breaking a rule to be that close. Audrey, facilitator that she is, invited us to step forward again.
It’s one thing to co-create a space as a facilitator. It’s another to maintain the space. To uphold the norms, bring us back to the desired outcomes, and navigate tension. Holding a container requires persistence.
As Audrey invited us closer to the stage, she also invited us to hear her new music. These are songs to which we couldn’t have known the words. It was an unfamiliar experience for the fans in the crowd, so she gave us cues before she even started singing.
Performers do this all the time, but as I reflected on it in the broader context of the evening, I couldn’t help but see it for what it was: another facilitation tool. In giving us simple instructions and a quick opportunity to practice, Audrey created a space where everyone felt safe enough to take part.
On the car ride home, Matt and I were awestruck. What a gift to share an intimate experience with an artist who’s been a soundtrack in our life. And what an unexpected way to get a facilitation refresher.
Are you a Navigator? Take our 8-question quiz to find out. You’ll get a report with strengths and growth edges so you can keep developing your craft.
And if you have more Navigator stories to share, we’d love to see them in the comments!