PRINCIPAL COACH & FACILITATOR | MINDAVATION
Haydn Thomas
Haydn Thomas is a Principal Coach and Facilitator at Mindavation with extensive experience designing and delivering strengths-based coaching and people development programs for business analysis and project delivery teams across Australia.
Having delivered over 100 keynote presentations in Australia and around the world, and with over 25 years of experience empowering project teams across nine countries, Haydn is renowned for his high-energy, interactive presentation style that challenges audiences to leverage their unique strengths.
Workshop: Taming the Turbulence: Mastering Difficult Dynamics in Facilitated Conversations
This interactive workshop distils the essential moves every facilitator needs when group dynamics turn messy, unproductive, or unexpectedly intense. Drawing on practical guidance such as “When one person is over participating, everyone else is under participating” and “People repeat themselves because they don’t feel heard” , it reframes difficult behaviours not as disruptions to control, but as signals to interpret and opportunities to strengthen engagement.
The workshop highlights strategies for chronic challenges: reigniting investment among disengaged members, improving follow through through team based accountability, and managing time respectfully without feeding lateness. Finally, it tackles subtle but corrosive behaviours—whispering, side jokes, and silent members—showing how small group structures and warm, humorous interventions restore psychological safety.
Participants will leave with a sharper lens for diagnosing group behaviour and a toolkit of facilitation responses that transform difficult moments into productive turning points.