Stop running meetings on autopilot. One person speaks, everyone nods, and nothing changes. It’s time to break the pattern. This high-impact workshop delivers the mindshift elite leaders make: moving from presenting information to facilitating real thinking.

In this session, you’ll master:

• The Art of Inquiry: Why how you ask matters far more than what you ask.
• Unmasking Traps: How to spot a “leading question” posing as an open one.
• Strategic Silence: Why holding your tongue is often the most powerful move in the room.

This isn’t a basic listening primer. It’s a practical toolkit for driving sharper decisions and genuine engagement. Stop supplying all the answers—and start drawing brilliance out of everyone else.

What we’ll cover:

• How to tell a genuinely open question from a leading one, including the subtle kind that hides an opinion inside what sounds like a question.
• Holding silence after asking a question instead of rescuing it, using a simple rule that gives people time to actually think.
• The four habits of radical listening (attention, acknowledging, asking, allowing) that make people feel heard rather than managed.

Why is it important for people to learn this skill?

Most organisations spend money on presentation skills and slide design, then wonder why nothing changes after the meeting ends. But that’s not where the real problem is. It’s in decisions made by whoever talks loudest. It’s in teams that nod along in the room, then quietly ignore what was agreed once they’re back at their desks. It’s in managers who think talking is the same as leading.

Facilitation fixes that. It turns meetings into something people actually build together, not just sit through. Teams that facilitate well make decisions faster, because the real thinking happens out loud in the room instead of in whispered conversations afterwards. And the skill carries into everything else: one-to-ones, workshops, pitches, board updates. This isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s one of the most useful things a leader can learn.

Who is this relevant for?

This session is relevant to anyone who regularly runs meetings or leads a team. That could be people managers, project leads, senior leaders. It could be that you’re preparing to run your first team meeting.

However, the core skills (better questions, holding silence, real listening) transfer to anyone who wants more influence in a room.

About the Subject Matter Expert

Rob Watt is a creative director who has spent over twenty years turning audiences from watchers into participants, work that now shapes gameshows played by over two million people, immersive experiences for global cruise lines, and behaviour change programmes for organisations including McDonald’s, Deloitte, and Accenture.

He started out running community theatre with teenagers in Hackney who had no interest in theatre, or school, and learned early that telling someone something rarely works as well as getting them to do it. That principle has shaped his approach ever since: leading multi disciplinary teams through complex live builds, training others to facilitate rather than perform, and teaching at drama schools including Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and the Institute of the Arts Barcelona.