Confessions of a Facilitation Artist

About Confessions of a Facilitation Artist

A short, unedited audio supplement to my weekly newsletter on substack! creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com (https://creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Monica Joy Krol, Creative & On Purpose!

Category

education · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Dec 2024

Latest episode

4 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

86 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   4 Oct 2026

   My Favorite Decision-Making Tools (and one that bugs me)

   Strategy season is here, which means I’ve been living in decision-making land. And the more workshops I run, the more one question keeps nagging me: why do the tools work great, and the decisions still don’t stick? Today’s post is part lay of the land, part confession. If you’re new to facilitation, you’ll get the toolkit. If you’re a seasoned pro, you’ll get what’s been bugging me, and an invitation to figure it out with me this month. The Toolkit (quick version) Heat maps (dot voting). Everybody gets a handful of sticker dots (three, ten, or unlimited if you’re critiquing solution sketches) and puts them on the ideas they like. No debate, no justifying. When everyone’s done, the wall shows clusters of energy. I love it because it skips the part where the loudest person in the room talks everyone else into things. Put all your dots on one idea if you feel strongly. Vote for your own. It’s mostly anonymous. Straw polls. The softer sibling. It’s a temperature check, not a binding vote. Everyone places one dot on the single most impactful option, then gets about a minute to say why. In a group of five to seven, that’s a great way for the leader to hear everyone before they decide. Matrices. I am, truthfully, a little obsessed with a good two-by-two. * Eisenhower Matrix: important vs. urgent. It sorts your stuff into four boxes so you stop treating those two words like synonyms. Here’s a link to my FREE mini meeting masterclass (https://mk.themeetingkitchen.com/minimeetingmasterclass) where I teach you how to use the Eisenhower matrix to plan meeting agendas. * Impact/Effort: a cousin that asks a different question. What will move the needle toward the goal, and what will it cost in time, or engineering days if you’re in product? Start with the quick wins, plan toward the high-impact/high-effort work, and ditch what isn’t worth it. * The Foundation Sprint’s Differentiation Map and Magic Lenses, from Jake Knapp (https://substack.com/profile/12115955-jake-knapp) and John Zeratsky (https://substack.com/profile/16984148-john-zeratsky)’s Click (https://a.co/d/0cfzDhLH). Differentiation Map: plot every competitor on your two most differentiating traits and see where you actually win (think coffee shop: “warm and lovely to sit in” vs. cost). Magic Lenses: run your candidate ideas through customer, pragmatic (cheap and fast to ship), growth, and differentiation lenses. It’s a great gut check on how much conviction your team really has. Pincus said in Life at the Speed of Play that our instincts are right about 95% of the time, but our ideas only about 25%. The Foundation Sprint matrices are a smart way to test your ideas against the core instinct. The Decider Vote All of those tools are the beginning of deciding. Then comes the Decider, a principle from the original Sprint book: one person with the actual authority to make the call, so you don’t leave the room with a pile of sticky notes and no direction. They pick the target customer, the solution to prototype, the North Star. It isn’t about hierarchy or the boss steamrolling the room. It’s about focus. I agree with this 100%. And here’s my confession: not every Decider decides the same way. Confession: I’m a gut decider I’ve been into Human Design lately (yes, I know, hippy-dippy, we can debate later), and my chart says I have sacral authority. Translation: I decide from my gut, out loud, in the moment. Ask me “where do you want to go to dinner?” and I’ve got nothing. Ask “pizza or Chinese?” and I know instantly. Reading that cracked something open. Other people have splenic authority, emotional authority, whole different ways of getting to “yes.” That’s exactly what I’d been watching in workshops without naming it. And now I feel bad about every time I’ve said, “Come on, what does your gut tell you?” to someone whose gut doesn’t work that way. Two Decider patterns I can’t stop seeing 1. The blender. They want to combine the ideas. Sometimes that really is the better call! But often it isn’t deciding. It’s the opposite of deciding. It’s people-pleasing in a strategy costume. Nobody wants to be the one who says “not yours,” so everyone gets a little bit of what they wanted and nothing gets decided. Refusing to decide is still a decision, just with a cost: it costs you focus and framing. I saw this in a design sprint I facilitated. The Decider wanted this and this and this in the prototype. We got great feedback, but couldn’t tell which part of it was actually valuable, because we’d tested too many things at once. It’s basic science: no control, no variable, no learning. One genuine bet you’re willing to fail fast on will teach you more than a hedge of three. 2. Decision whiplash. This is the one that really gets me riled up. I push someone to be the Decider. They make the bold, genuinely innovative call in the room, the one I actually think is right. Then a week later, they quietly walk it back to the safe option. And I keep asking myself: did I just push someone into a gut decision when they don’t decide from their gut? Was it ever going to stick? Is there something I should be doing to help them feel safe enough to take the risk? I don’t have the answer. I’m not handing you a framework with a bow on it. These are observations, and I’m grappling with them going into strategy season. After our last strategy retro I told my senior leaders I’d commit to reading up on how we can better support people who make decisions differently. Helping people surface and challenge their own assumptions is the facilitator’s job, so I’m doing it to myself, in public. What’s next? Honestly, I’m having some whiplash on whether I am going to have another bookclub series in Q4 and if it will be behind a paid tier. Honestly, I’m really busy so I am going to lay low and appear when it aligns for now. If you enjoyed this substack, please comment and/or share! Get full access to Confessions of a Creative Leader at creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe (https://creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   20 Sept 2026

   Confession: I'm a Working Mom Who Never Feels Enough

   Heads up: This one is very vulnerable. It’s worth a listen if you’re a working parent, or if you lead, manage, or facilitate working parents and want to understand their world outside of work. It’s cathartic, it’s unrehearsed, and there are tears and some explicit language. When I told my friends on a walk what I’d written in my journal, they said I needed to share it. So here it is. Raw vulnerability is part of creative leadership, and this feels like the most aligned thing I could put out this week. If you feel seen and/or if there is a working parent that needs to here this, please share. For months now, I’ve had a constant feeling that I’m not doing enough. Anyone who knows me would call that nonsense. People literally ask “how do you do it all, Monica?” because I make it look easy, and that’s a blessing and a curse. When you make it look easy, nobody offers to help. And I’m too busy doing it to think about asking. Nobody can talk me out of this feeling, and that’s the point. The healing has to come from me. So I flipped the usual gratitude exercise. I write about what I’m thankful for in the people around me all the time, but I never write a thank you to myself. This episode is what I wrote in my journal, told out loud: a thank-you from my boys to me. It’s not advice-seeking, and it’s not pity-seeking. It’s also not a comment on my husband, who does a lot too, just different things. It’s me giving myself permission to feel enough for one day. Thank You, Mom Thank you for waking me at 5 in the morningso I make it to the bathroom.Thank you for washing the sheetson the nights it didn’t work.Thank you for wiping down that bathroom flooralmost every single day. Thank you for a good breakfast,even when I don’t want to eat it.Thank you for standing at the counter and talking with meso we can connect,while you unload the dishwasher,start another load of laundry,and write the grocery list so the fridge stays full.And thank you for the job that pays for all of it. Thank you for packing the lunches,checking the bags,asking if my homework is done.All before 7 a.m. Thank you for making me practice piano in the morningso after school I can just play.Thank you for making sure I showerso I’m not stinky and don’t get picked on.Thank you for clean clothes. Thank you for walking me to the bus.I’m still young,and even when I act strong,having you there matters.Thank you for getting yourself dressed and ready first,so you can give me 100% of you.Thank you for walking me thereeven though it cuts into your workday. Thank you for keeping your phone closein case I get sick or hurt,so you’re the first calland the first one to come get me.Thank you for reading the school emailsin the middle of your day. Thank you for being ruthlessly efficient at work,for picking the highest-impact thingsand skipping the busywork,so you don’t bring work home with you.Thank you for skipping a real lunch breakso you can leave early,meet me at the bus,and be there at dinner,cooking while you help me with homeworkor listen to me talk about my hard day. Thank you for Pasta Mondays and Taco Tuesdays.Thank you for meals we can all mostly agree on,even when they’re not what you’d pick.You’re just making sure we get fed. Thank you for driving us to piano, robotics, and soccer,activities you might never have chosen for us.Thank you for spending those eveningsin a library or a coffee shop,reading a book,doing more work,or recording this podcast,so you get a sliver of time that’s yours.Thank you for choosing that over volunteering like the other parents.I know that’s a hard decision.And thank you for carrying the guilt about it. Thank you for picking us upand making sure we have time for a snack, a show,and a chance to decompress,when all you want is to go to bed.Thank you for making sure you get to eat dinner too. Thank you for family dinners on the nights that aren’t chaos,even when we complain.Because what you’ve told usis that time with your kids matters.Thank you for letting us stay upwhen you’re desperate for sleep.And thank you for the nights you tell Dadyou need to go to bed,and you take care of your own needs.Thank you for going to bed earlyso you can get up and do it all again. Thank you for the time you spend on your phonethat isn’t scrolling Instagram.It’s playdates.It’s checking our days offso you can schedule time off to be with us.It’s researching fun things we can do as a family.Thank you for being a working parentso we can afford those experiences. Thank you for the two-page checklistyou write for Grandma, Grandpa, and Dadevery time you travel for work,so nobody misses a beat while you’re gone.Thank you for taking the early flights and the late flightsso you’re away less.Thank you for the nights you land after a long travel dayand still get up at 5 anyway.Thank you for being honest with uswhen you’re tired, depleted, or having a hard day.Because then we know you’re human,and that you need help too. Thank you for any sacrifices you made to be here for us,even the ones that may have cost you a promotion.Thank you for getting up at 4 a.m.so you can take care of yourself before we’re awake.Thank you for the times you get to volunteer at school,and the days you take off work to be with us.And thank you for telling us,even when we don’t want to hear it,that you feel bad you can’t be the parentwho signs up for everything. Thank you, Mom. On some level,thank you for not feeling like enough,because it drives you to do so much.And thank you for the days you really don’t want to do itand do it anyway,because you know you can’t say hell no to your kids. * The empathy piece for leaders. If you manage or facilitate working parents, this is a peek at what happens between 5 a.m. and the moment they open Slack, the subtle part of being a parent that they can’t shut off during the workday, and how their day remains ruthlessly busy when they leave. It’s a lot, and most of it is invisible. * Permission, both directions. If you’re a parent who doesn’t feel like enough, you have permission to feel that. And I have permission to feel enough right now. I gave it to myself while recording this. I don’t know if I’ll ever do a Part Two on what it’s like to thank myself for the workday version, but the thought is there. If this landed, send it to the working parent in your life, or to the manager who needs to hear it. And I’d love to know: what would your thank you list say? Get full access to Confessions of a Creative Leader at creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe (https://creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   13 Sept 2026

   Life at the Speed of Play - Conclusion

   We finished the book club today, y’all. After almost two months in Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus, we landed on the conclusion — “How Ambitious Are You?” — and it’s a short chapter, but it hit different than the rest of the book. It’s more direct, less framework, more gut-check. So this one’s less me paraphrasing and more me reading it straight to you and telling you where it landed. What you’ll learn: * The gap between instinct and idea is where founders lose. Pincus’s core claim is that your instinct is probably right, but your idea is probably wrong — and the founders who win are the ones with the intellectual honesty to kill their B-plus ideas instead of falling in love with them. That distinction is one I’m sitting with hard right now while I build Momentum. I believe in the instinct behind it completely. Whether the current shape of the idea is the right one is a separate question, and this chapter is basically daring me to ask it. * Conviction changes your odds, and corporate red tape is a real variable. He argues the same founders don’t succeed by luck — they’ve got conviction on both instinct and idea, and once they know they’re right, nothing stops them. I’ll be honest: building inside a company that’s deeply entrenched in enterprise product launches makes “nothing stops them” a lot harder to pull off than it sounds on paper. It was oddly comforting to hear that when you truly have the right product, you can do a lot of things wrong and still succeed — because some of what’s slowing me down right now genuinely isn’t the product. * Build to learn, not to be right. One thread that kept surfacing for me was how much this connects to building with AI specifically — you don’t learn by reading about the idea, you learn by shipping it and watching what comes back. I was in an Uber from LaGuardia to SoHo last week talking to Claude the entire ride, drafting a PRD for something completely unrelated to my day job, because the instinct wouldn’t wait for me to get back to my desk. That’s the “shots on goal” mentality this chapter is describing, whether or not I framed it that way at the time. * Burn your resume and go narrow. The book closes with permission to take risks, follow your curiosities, and get hands-on with the best people building in your space before going off to do it yourself — and the idea that going narrow and small is actually how you find the edges worth innovating on. I spent Thursday in a Guides meetup with my fellow AJ&Smart-certified facilitators, where Jonathan Courtney led us through a self-development workshop on exactly this — what we already know we want, underneath the noise of what we think we should want. * The real question isn’t “is the idea good,” it’s “what do you want to build today.” That’s the line the book actually ends on, and it’s the one I keep coming back to. Not as a hypothetical — as something I owe myself an honest answer to. Up next: I’m heading back to more off-the-cuff episodes for a bit, and I’m seriously considering a paid book club round using Nudge to dig into decision-making. Official word on that in a week or two. Get full access to Confessions of a Creative Leader at creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe (https://creativeleaderconfessions.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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