The Playing Big Facilitators Training Curriculum

In this module, we talk about how to redefine playing big from the inside out. You’ll have a new sense of what playing big means to you (not what it means to your friends, family, coworkers and so on) – a vision for playing big that doesn’t feel stressful, or like it leaves you in a tug of war between your aspirations and your responsibilities. This is a true playing big that works with your whole life.

You’ll also be able to see your particular playing big in a much broader context of a global movement at this moment in history. Understanding how your piece of the puzzle fits into the whole can powerfully increase your clarity and motivation about what you are doing.

We all grapple with self-doubt. For many individuals, this has only become more acute with the challenges of the past few years. More than ever, people need a toolkit for working with their own negative self-talk.

You know the amazing things your clients, team members, mentees or students could do, and the joys they could experience, if only they weren’t being held back by insecurity. This module is about how to help them get there.

In this module, you will learn:

• what’s universal for both women & men when it comes to self-doubt, and what the research tells us differs depending on gender identity
• why encouraging the people you support to become more confident and affirming their strengths are not the most effective approaches to help them overcome insecurity
• how culture, early life experiences and various aspects of our identity impact what and how our inner critics show up
• a set of simple, highly effective practices you can use yourself and that you can teach those you support to use when self-doubt arises, so that it no longer holds them back

You’ll also explore when and why self-doubt arises in your own professional, creative, and personal life and begin using in-the-moment practices that ensure that self-doubt doesn’t mislead you.

A core tenet of this training is that we do not need to become “more confident,” but rather, that self-doubt will always be with us, and we can develop a new kind of relationship to self-doubt that prevents it from getting in our way.

Have you ever felt unsure what to do when someone you want to support – maybe a client, a mentee, a student – seems to be totally lost in a dilemma or problem? Maybe you’ve noticed they seem entirely “in their head” about it, or caught in worry, or stuck between two choices when none of them feels right.

What if you had a go-to tool to use in these situations that would immediately help them access a wise solution to their problem – one that felt “just right” for them, one that would allow them to turn away from the world’s projections or visions of them, and instead turn toward their own deeper knowing? And what if you could use this same tool for yourself?

That’s just what the inner mentor tool does for us.

It also allows us to cast a clear vision for what we want to create with our work and our lives.

In this module, you will learn:

• how to guide others in discovering their inner mentors, so that they can clarify their visions for the future, treat themselves with more compassion, and create a more authentic life and career.
• how to utilize the inner mentor tool so that the people you support can become their own wise guides – and you don’t have to know all the right answers all the time! This means you don’t have to understand others’ problems well (or even at all) to help them solve them. You just have to know how to skillfully use the inner mentor coaching tools with them.
• the common pitfalls and challenges that come with use of this tool, and strategies to navigate around them.
• how to access and draw upon your own inner mentor as a powerful source of guidance and clarity in your own life and career. That means you can find calm with her when you feel stressed, clarity when you feel confused, and comfort when things are feeling really tough.

If you are really honest with yourself, are you avoiding some important leaps forward in your work because you are worried about the criticism that might come? Or do you notice yourself feeling beholden to praise – whether rave reviews from clients or gold stars from a boss?

And what about the people you support? Would they be doing more authentic, game-changing work if they were less hooked on praise and criticism? What if you could help them unhook?

When we avoid criticism or depend on praise, we can’t innovate, share controversial ideas, or effect change.

In this module, you will learn:

• What the research tells us about how gender impacts the kind of professional feedback women and other marginalized individuals receive
• How to recognize the hard-to-detect ways that attachment to praise and avoidance of criticism show up in our lives and careers, so you can help others navigate beyond them
• six factors – historical, cultural and physiological – that cause those who were socialized as women, in particular, to get hooked by praise and criticism, and how to talk about this important context with your clients
• four transformational tools for helping yourself and those you work with become less seeking of praise and less uncomfortable with criticism, so that they can avoid internalizing others’ projections or stereotypes, live their most authentic lives, and do their most courageous work

I’m proud that the Playing Big approach to women’s relationship to praise and criticism has been recognized widely by publications ranging from goop to Harvard Business Review, and was the subject of my #1 New York Times editorial.

In this particular collective moment, many of us are experiencing new callings, the ending of prior callings, or the return of persistent callings we’ve long ignored. In our course you’ll learn about how to step into a calling – and help others do the same.

It can often feel like a difficult mystery, this work of discovering what our callings are, taking action to actualize them, and helping others do the same. But it doesn’t need to feel like a mystery. There are recognizable ways our callings show up, common objections we develop out of fear, and helpful tools for moving past resistance and taking action around even the callings that seem most impossible to bring to life.

Helping the people we support to live their callings and living our own is perhaps some of the most sacred and joyful work we can do.

In this module, you will learn:

• the eight common ways callings often show up so that you can recognize your callings and help your clients and mentees identify their own
• how to support someone through the process of discerning what their current callings are, and start taking simple, low-risk action to live their calling (and your own), including in challenging economic times
• the 1000-year test we can all benefit from doing with our callings
• how to support an individual in letting go of a calling that is coming to a close (including your own)

In this module, you’ll also learn my innovative approach for moving through fear, including:

• the two types of fear and why we need to react differently to each
• how to discern which type of fear is arising in your clients, mentees, or team members and how to work with them effectively around that fear
• how to apply this model to your own present fears and learn to live with fear in a new, healthy, and even comfortable way

Getting one more degree. Putting off an important career step because it seems like a few other steps need to happen first. Launching a big project gathering others’ voices or perspectives on an important topic.

These are just a few of the things brilliant people – particularly women and others socialized to stay small – do that look just fine from the outside, but are often hiding strategies.

What if instead of hiding in these ways, you knew how to take rapid action to move your dreams into reality, and you knew how to help other women do the same?

In this module you’ll learn:

• eight common strategies we brilliantly use to hide, so you can pinpoint a hiding strategy when it shows up for you or someone you support
• what we can do instead of hiding – a powerful kind of action which in the Playing Big model we call leaping – a unique and structured way of gathering feedback and making progress toward a goal
• the six criteria that must be present for an action to truly be a Playing Big leap, so you can begin leaping in your own life & work
• how to bring the leaping way into your work with others, so their desired results come to them more quickly
• the shift in skills both you and those you support will need in order to make the move from performing well in school to playing big in the career world
• the specific ways you may need to work with women who were high achievers in school, the key new skills to develop in your work with them, and the unique challenges you can expect them to face on their playing big journey

“I just think…” “I actually disagree…” “I’m no expert in this but,…”

These are just a few of the “little things” women do in their communication that really aren’t so little; they have a big impact in undermining how powerfully we come across.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• the common habits women and other marginalized individuals use in their speech and writing that decrease our influence
• how to start removing these from your own communication
• why we use these undermining habits, and how we can better navigate the “double-bind” women and other marginalized individuals face today – the choice between appearing likable or confident
• how to work with your clients to help them more consciously and effectively do their tightrope walk between perceived competence and likability at work
• the differing contexts women face working in the domains of corporate life, the social sector, and entrepreneurship

In this module, we’ll also cover negotiation. All of us negotiate, in one form or another, every day. All too often, good girl norms, fears, and lack of training and practice cause us to give away our power in these conversations. Every year our graduates share negotiation success stories – revised job roles, compensation packages, divisions of labor at home – as a result of what they learned.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• how to dramatically change your comfort and success in negotiations by changing your mindset and approach
• why 90% of the outcome of a negotiation is determined before it starts, and the 10 key steps of preparing for a negotiation conversation
• a roadmap for 1) preparing for and 2) moving through any conversation in which parties have differing interests and goals but must co-create a solution (including with family members, friends, colleagues, clients and more)

All of us have sat with clients, team members, mentees, or loved ones who are disappointed and confused about why they’ve lost motivation toward an important goal, or betrayed themselves through procrastination or self-sabotage. Likely, at some point in your life or career, you too have relied on self-discipline to achieve something, only to find that it failed you.

In this module, you will learn the top misconceptions we have about motivation, and how to work with your clients, mentees, or team members to set up effective action plans to achieve their professional, personal, and creative goals, and how to do the same for yourself.

In any society that disempowers some of its members, those disempowered individuals often unconsciously come to harm one another – out of their own wounds and unmet needs. In our context, this means that often women fail to support one another – particularly in situations where power, resources, and social acceptance are at stake. In everyday terms, this translates into painful relationships or major woundings in family, friendships, and professional relationships among women, as well as among other members of marginalized groups.

Yet none of us can play big alone, and our playing big remains partial if it does not include powerfully supporting other women or others who share our identity.

In this module, we will:

• Explore our own limitations to supporting others, and work through old woundings in this area
• Explore how women can advocate for each other across differences in identity as well as the obstacles and biases that often prevent us from doing so
• Look at how the legacy of patriarchy manifests in our professional relationships with one another, and how we can let go of its influence

In our Concluding Session, we look at the big concepts and weave major ideas from the course together. We’ll talk about how all the pieces fit together and deepen our knowledge of what coaching tools to use when. We also look forward – and I’ll support you in a process to identify your goals and priorities for the next phase of your playing big journey. We have lots of fun celebrating our journey together, too!

After the formal close of the course, your journey doesn’t end. You’ll continue to receive a number of resources to support you: