This week, we're excited to chat with Katie McLaughlin about the McLaughlin Method and the magic of experiential learning. Katie's journey into adult learning began when she realized how powerful theater techniques could be for creating engaging and immersive learning experiences. She blends her theatrical background with her expertise in adult learning principles, crafting interactive and memorable sessions that really resonate with people.

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Welcome back to learning matters. I'm Doug Wooldridge, your host. And today we're joined by Katie McLaughlin of McLaughlin method to discuss experiential learning and how it can make massive impacts to your organization. Let's get to the interview. Thank you so much, Katie, for joining the podcast today. I wanted to kick things off with how you found your way into adult learning and consulting world and what made you start your own business.

Hey, well, thanks again, Doug, for having me. I'm excited to be here. And hello, listeners out there. So I'm kind of one of those accidental learning and development professionals and fell into a career partially just because I love people. And I'm a natural trainer, a natural teacher, natural facilitator of groups. so I was like, wow, this realm of corporate training

really fits my skill set, things I love to do. And then the deeper I got into it, I realized just how much background I really kind of already had in human performance and behavior and psychology and took this lens to learning and development that was about how do I get the best results from the learning and training that I'm delivering, that I'm developing so that people can really

were some of the people on the chopping block early during the pandemic. But it was actually really perfect timing for me. I kind of knew that the next step for me was starting my own business. And the primary driver for that was wanting to focus holistically on company and organizational culture in a way that facilitates that high performing teams.

engaging people and creating that sense of belonging and safe space inclusion that many of us crave and of course has been a really big driver for a lot of companies. And the other reason to start my business was giving me that freedom to integrate my theater background and theater exercises specifically to help boost results for my clients. Definitely. So let's talk a little bit about theater.

As someone who has also done a lot of theater in my life, I know how effective opening yourself up to expression can be. And whether that's expressing outwardly or receiving that expression from another person, it can be profound. I also know that it can be really difficult at times to get a group of people in a room into that safe space to make them feel comfortable enough so that they can actually open up.

and fully embrace the process. what is your secret to working with folks and getting them to open up and really commit to the process? you know, many folks, when they hear I bring theater into the way that I work, many folks have an immediate like, God, that's not for me. Or ask questions of like, are people being put on the spot? Are they being required to perform? Right? Are they're kind of a, I don't know, like.

requirements to our prerequisites to enter into this. And in reality, we are all performing all the time. And we just don't really think about it that way. We're also all improvising every day in our interactions. We never know really what's going to happen when we say something, especially to another person. And especially in the workplace, we are performing specific roles, whether that's

cultural perception in the workplace especially that emotions aren't allowed and that we have to put up this professional front and that certain behaviors and affects equal professional. And in reality, we are all experiencing pretty strong emotions all the time. are emotional beings and we

We have to be going to that deeper level of that emotional experience in order to really build relationships that have trust, where we have an openness to share about things that are going wrong, to feel like we can stick our neck out and offer a contrary opinion, call out risks, all things that business leaders want, right? But we get, we struggle to get to. So.

Some of the ways I do that with clients include we start everything with just fun and some games. Everybody's just, everyone's participating. I'd never put people on the spot. All of the actions and activities that I do are really group at the same time. Everybody's participating and that by itself starts to open the door to realize that, okay, I'm not going to be put on the spot. and I've been a facilitator for

Gosh, at least 20 years. And so in general, I'm pretty adept at reading the room virtual or in person and realizing, okay, some folks are maybe not feeling it. I'll bring, I'll be the crazy one, right? Or, I'll be the one that's really silly and, praise my hands up in the air and make crazy faces and just be sillier than they are or are willing to let themselves. So they can just start to laugh a little bit and start to let loose.

and start to connect. And then we can move into some exercises and activities that allow us to go a little bit deeper, build some empathy for each other and really develop and rehearse some new skills that would be essential for us in the outside of this kind of container of the workshop. And how has, well, as we all know, COVID totally threw things into chaos. And so what I would imagine

would have been quite a bit easier to get together a bunch of people in a room so that you can be in that true one space type of mindset. How has the things going more remote change kind of the aspect of how you can make sure that folks are still involved and find the same results as or similar results as you would in a full room? So I had a bit of a leg up on this whole remote nonsense.

to when I started my business and now I'm bringing in these theater exercises, which you probably bet I learned in person. previously, like that was kind of the grounding for me. And so I had to really very quickly figure out how to bring in these types of exercises, use my own creativity and even do research and figure out if there were other ways that folks were tackling this. Cause I'm not the only person who uses like improv or theater or games.

you know, within my facilitation. And so, yeah, I just had to figure it out. And, you know, there are cooler, more in -depth, more nuanced things that we can do in person. And so that is always my preferred mechanism, especially when I'm going to be working with a group over a period of time. And so we could maybe do an initial or a second workshop.

virtually kind of to kick things off and then having a couple of workshops that are in person as part of kind of a longer engagement. Gotcha. I mean, I think a lot of companies found out very quickly that while they were able to transition to that remote lifestyle, it was still incredibly important to bring people into a room. obviously it's much easier to do if you have a smaller group size, maybe 15 employees, but it is still

I think imperative to even in larger organizations to find those times to safely bring people into a room together because as much as I love my remote lifestyle makes things easy. I don't always have to wear like button up shirts and stuff. I can wear hats and things. It is really nice to get to be together with your, the folks that you're working with. think it's it's powerful to be in the same room.

Just to go back a little bit, kind of want to know what the McLaughlin method is. So how would you describe that to folks in a way that they would be like, okay, this is going to be perfect for my room of people and she's got what it takes to bring us together. So my method is a really cool blend of

business acumen, business outcomes, and theater and people skills mixed together. And the secret sauce that I bring in is that theater component. so again, after some fun, after some icebreakers, getting people feeling comfortable with each other, then the real thing, the real meat of any workshop, again, whether that's a team building, team dynamics kind of thing, or skill building, like collaboration skills.

then I get into these theater techniques. And so what that looks like, again, people aren't being put on the spot, nobody's being required to perform, as a group, we're all responding to a prompt. And we're using our bodies and our facial expressions to create an image of how we feel or how we would respond to that prompt. And the reason we do that, we're all familiar with the phrase of an image is worth a thousand words.

Right? And so as we create our own physical images, we make them big, really expressive. It allows us to communicate some emotional components to how we work together, maybe hesitancy that we might have about working together or some of that excitement, challenge, that whole range of emotions that we really feel in the workplace, but don't have a place to express them. Sure.

We're able to do that through these exercises. by eliminating language, by eliminating words, we are allowing people to have more freedom because we don't use words the same way as each other. And we're often using one word to mean tens of hundreds of things. And so that makes communicating and getting on the same page really difficult. And so if we're not

If we're trying to create trust and we're trying to create healthy teams that can work together, feel good together, we have to be looking at that emotional component. And these exercises allow us to think about, we're not maybe that different from each other, but we thought we were. But now we can see, hey, we might be reacting to something in the same way as people who maybe we didn't jive with before. I guess that's a really good segue into

something I wanted to ask about, is conflict. So conflict is going to happen. It doesn't matter how well we can communicate with each other. Organizations in their nature just have a diverse group of opinions, ideas, views on how we're going to get from, you know, step one to step two. So I think conflict can be a very healthy thing. How do you, how do you approach conflict or conflicts in organizations and how do you

How do you take that in and give away for folks to feel comfortable in their own shoes, whatever their job is, whether they're one of those, you know, doers or their leadership or, you know, project manager, whatever. How are you able to go into a room full of all sorts of folks and let them feel like and really get their leadership to understand how important it is to

allow for either like transparency or just honesty within feedback. So, gosh, conflict and the world of conflict resolution is so diverse that what we will be even define as conflict can mean a lot of different things. And some people think conflict is just disagreement. And then other people think it's this like lashing out like argument thing. And it's really all of those pieces.

And so my approach to conflict and conflict resolution is that conflict is healthy. We need opposing viewpoints. But that said, we're often bringing a lot of judgment into the workplace and how we're thinking about someone's offering of a suggestion or feedback that we're all assuming it's very judgmental. Right.

One thing that I know it's not helpful and we're not going to want to do is say, Doug, you hurt me when this thing happened. Right. Nobody wants to do that. Even in our personal lives. I already felt bad. Right. I felt that same. And, you know, Doug and I have zero conflict. So it's I actually believe that in conflict resolution, it's usually irrelevant to rehash old wounds, but they are there.

And so typically how I work with a group is beforehand, potentially identify past sources of conflict, like where they occurred in an organization, kind of just naming them. And then I can leverage that and bring that into a more broader aspect. So let's say conflict typically happens at a team meeting. And that conflict comes from

people offering an idea and being shot down by somebody else, right? That probably sounds very familiar to a lot of folks. So now we can take that kind of more generic experience that we all have had of offering an idea in a team meeting or a group meeting and being shot down for our idea. So now let's create an image. We all do it at the same time. Let's create an image of how that feels.

to have like, you literally just did this, you've now been shot down and now create an image. So I'm gonna do it and explain it verbally for those who are just listening. But if you're watching, you'll get to see it. So, you know, my image might be like cringing, I've got my eyes kind of squinting, I've got my hands up, like maybe I'm trying to protect myself, right? And other people might create a similar image within the group.

But some people, when that happens, might create an image like, this is me, like, I've got my fists up, I'm like leaning in, I've got kind of a scowl on my face, like I'm going to fight, right? And all myriad of other types of responses. And just by looking at it that way, right, now we can see, wow, that's how it feels. And that we've all felt that way. So even the people who are

The ones shutting you down, right? They're part of this group too. They've felt it too. And so now we fast track our empathy for each other by first viewing and like observing someone else's emotions. And then I often ask folks to take on an image that is different from theirs. Feel what that feels like. And...

That's another kind of really deeper embodied way to build empathy with each other. And then we can start to move forward by co -creating, how do we want to feel when we offer an idea in a group setting? we create another image. We then talk about it and say, what are ways that would

support us as a group, like are there new structures? Do we need to have a space where people are submitting ideas in advance and they're kind of anonymized? You you find out from the group what they need structurally in order to do that, while we've also created the understanding of what we need emotionally in order to be able to do that. I think this pairs very well with just culture in general and

think culture can definitely make or break a company, especially startups, companies that are, you maybe they have a five year plan. They're like two years into it. They're just finding out that they need, let's say 20 or 30 more employees into the team. So what are some of the most important aspects of culture to you and, and how do you help organizations build a successful culture? So

Culture is this thing that we don't have a unified definition of. for the most part, culture has meant events, our parties, right? And it's meant swag, and it's meant what does our physical environment look like? how are we talking about culture? And sorry, but that's like...

5 % of culture, right? Or something. You know, the vast majority of culture is that day -to -day experience. And it's what behaviors we allow to persist. And so as we continue to allow behaviors where it's OK to just lash out at somebody and not be reprimanded for it or not be called out in a group of like, hey, that was really not OK. You know, that's part of our role as leaders is to

not allow that kind of behavior and to not be that person ourselves. And so at the very basis, I'm educating people about that. And I work with my clients to identify what their goals are. What do they actually want it to feel like to work in their company? And many of them, especially at the executive level, because really what they model is what persists throughout your organization.

What they want is often what their employees want, but it's not being created. So I work with my clients to create what I call a culture contribution plan, where we look at all of these typical places where we interact with others in the workplace. And this is industry agnostic, company size agnostic. We're all meeting one -on -one with people. We're meeting in groups. We're sending virtual messages to each other.

And we really define how, I usually anchor it in a company's values, how do we actually live those values in these different interactions? What is expected of people? So when we have really clear expectations of what the behaviors are that are desired in the workplace, it's easier for us to meet them and easier for us to reinforce, hey, you didn't do that. So for an example, what does

the value of transparency look like in a team meeting? What does that look like in executive communication, et cetera? And then we document it. And then we socialize it. We train on it. We workshop it. We get feedback from the employees as well. And I also integrate a lot of company data to identify groups that might be struggling more with their culture and especially

What I think is the most underutilized data point that companies already have is employee engagement or culture survey scores. You're asking for feedback. They're giving it to you. You should use it. One would help. And I just know it's not happening. It took me, you know, gosh, probably 12 years or so or, you know, at least 10 of being an LND professional before I saw the data.

And there's just, I could talk about employee engagement scores for hours and hours. You know, and I think you've had a lot of experience with startups. So I think one of the craziest aspects of startups is that once you get the ball rolling, it starts, it can start rolling really, really fast. So you don't, oftentimes these things get put to the wayside because you're not really thinking that far enough into the future to where you have

all of these brand new employees that are now six months in and how do they feel about this company knowing that now you're now you're working with bigger clients. Now you're bringing more money, all of those chaos type of things. How are you able to drive this into leaders and potential leaders that if you focus on these type of aspects, a lot of the potential issues that can arise from this will never happen.

And you just continue to worry about the fun stuff, like getting bigger clients, getting more purchase orders and those types of things. So many, many startup founders, like they all have these big dreams, but it does, it becomes this like snowball, right? That is just like happening faster than, than they can do it. And they, most founders that I know think that they can operate the same way.

throughout the course of the growth of their company. So sometimes that includes like jumping in to fix something, which once you have a team, you shouldn't be doing that. Again, more on that topic some other time or for now. And also that you are not going to be in all of the rooms. You're not going to be able to control each individual's

experience. You're not going to be able to know how to give them praise. You're not going to know if you should be giving someone feedback. And so it has to start at the top. It has to start with the founders and founders need to realize that the moment they start hiring people, they need to be creating a culture strategy. How do they want people to feel? How do I want to show up and model for everybody else who comes along of how we work together as a company?

Because the better we work together, the better our business does. And the better you can delegate to people, the better that people want to work there and want to stay. It's so much cheaper to keep great people than it is to keep finding them when you've got a revolving door. One of my buddies who has worked in tech for a long time would always say the same thing to all the CEOs that he's worked with, which is,

you're going to save yourself around 20 grand by keeping someone in your organization as opposed to trying to find the replacement because you may, you may be two years down the line and not find that replacement still. So I think that's why to me, this is the most important part about a successful organization or even just an organization that wants to keep going for another year or two. You could have, you know, folks,

that our founders get into a point of where maybe they want to move on from a company, maybe they want to sell it or that type of thing. But just to keep it going for the next six months, you need a successful culture. need to have your employees totally bought into the idea that what they're doing in the company is not only worthwhile to their leadership, but worthwhile to their clients and worthwhile to themselves. I have a piece to add to that is

there is no shame in getting help. Yeah, exactly. You can't do everything yourself. You can't. And as a founder, you have so much on your plate and on your mind. And the biggest piece probably is that organizational solvency, right? You want to be able to keep hiring people. You want to be able to keep employing people. so you need to make that a prior, make your people a priority and not just in how you talk about people.

That is one of the big missteps often in the tech industry is it's a lot of talk and we've all bought into the Kool -Aid. But when it comes down to it, that day -to -day experience is what matters. And you as a founder, all of us are a product of our background and our experience. So if we have had bad leaders, but they have been in leadership, subconsciously, we are assuming that that behavior is okay because why would they be there otherwise?

And that is a thing that happens too often is we just keep bad leaders in place. Sometimes because we feel like we have no other option, right? Or we are like, well, but they get results over here. But it's bleeding out the other end, right? So at least 60 % of leaders have never had any kind of manager training. And it's an extra problem in tech.

You know, I was often brought into kind of mature organizations within tech and startups where we already had at least a hundred employees when I became an employee and was doing leading learning and development and so it was It was only and like we we are always like we need to get to manager training. We need to get to manager training and We never did

You know, I would frequently leave an organization before I had a chance to because I hated the culture, right? And I didn't feel good there. Yeah. You know, and so I then couldn't keep advocating for something that there wasn't support for me either. So, you know, we just assume that, you know, the highest performer, this is tech companies are most, most notorious for this, that the highest performer should be the new manager, should be promoted to lead that organization.

but we've given them no tools around how to make that switch or what we expect of them. And that's really a problem. Yeah. I would imagine that just tossing someone directly into the deep end and saying, good luck is not going to be a successful process and it's going to lead to a lot of headaches in the future and, the necessity of bringing teams of people in to potentially fix or alter some mistakes that were made.

I guess before I get you out of here today, what would be maybe your biggest goal when you're working with organizations that you, that when you leave, what, what do you hope that they've at least come to understand?

The biggest pieces are that self -awareness. Start with yourself. It is truly the one thing you can control in the relationships that you have with people. You can't control how people think about you. You can't control how people treat you. But you can control how you choose to act upon your reaction. You can choose, going to act from my default place and I'm going to go to fight. Or I'm going to act from my default place and I'm going to shirk and shrink away.

Or you can make an intentional action and take a breath, yourself and say, how do I actually want to show up in these interactions? So that's my first piece. We can all do that and do it better. And the second piece is that everyone leaves feeling a sense of support, connection with the people in the room and a start, if nothing else, to empathy for each other.

because empathy helps us to drive that intentional communication. If we can't empathize with the fact that someone else is going to have a reaction to the way that I act, then I, why should I change how I'm acting? So it's really about empowering the individual and what that allows you to do as an organization is to grow together at the same time and really

find yourself making progress where you may have never seen yourself be able to do. And with that empowerment, hopefully the trust that everyone and their opinion is leading towards the right direction. Exactly. So, you know, I believe that everybody wants to be creating that environment in our organizations.

It doesn't happen by accident. We have to be intentional about it. We have to be deliberate about it. And so that's, that's really one of the biggest takeaways that people have from working with me is that sense of ownership, right. And self responsibility. That's incredible. Well, thank you so much. This has been a very enlightening discussion. And I think every single organization out there needs to have this in the back of their mind constantly is how do we continue to not only progress,

profits. How do we progress the people that work within our organization? So Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. And, we'd love to have you back anytime. Cool. Great. Happy to. Thanks so much for listening. As always like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don't forget to sign up for our newsletter, the buzz to keep up with all things LND. See you next time.