At Work with The Ready – Episode 42: The 3 Skills Change Agents Need in 2026

Hosts: Rodney Evans & Sam Spurlin
Date: January 26, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dive into the three essential skills that will define effective change agents and leaders in the evolving landscape of work by 2026. Instead of focusing on environmental or organizational change—which is their usual forte—they zero in on personal skill development: what individuals can and should cultivate in themselves to survive and thrive in the future of work.

They break down the conversation into three core skills:

1. Metacognitive Awareness
2. User Feedback (User-Centered Design)
3. Expert Facilitation

Each skill is discussed in depth, with practical tips, personal anecdotes, and lots of humor along the way.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Individual Skills Matter (04:00-05:30)

• Most work environments reward old skills, so protected, intentional skill-building is needed.
• Mastery of these three skills enables real work redesign: “By cultivating mastery of these skills, you will be more able to do the kind of work design that is necessary and that we talk about on the show all the time.” – Rodney [05:15]

2. Skill #1: Metacognitive Awareness (05:38-21:02)

What Is It?

• The ability to “think about your own thinking”—noticing mental and emotional patterns, and consciously choosing responses over automatic reactions.
• Essential for noticing opportunities to use other key skills.

Why It’s Foundational

• “If you lack metacognitive awareness, then you won’t notice the opportunities to practice other skills. So I feel like it’s incredibly foundational.” – Sam [05:45]
• Rodney connects it to emotional flexibility: those who cultivate this skill can “really understand their own experience of a moment and also hold a counter perspective.” [07:00]

Practical Examples

• Instead of “Rodney’s just being difficult,” practice: “I’m interpreting them as being difficult right now and I’m also feeling defensive because my idea is all tangled up with my ego right now.” – Sam [09:06]
• Connect to systems thinking: Helps separate “your stuff from the system’s stuff.” [13:00]

Development Tips

• Cultivate reflection habits: do regular hot washes, weekly reviews, and retrospectives, asking:
  • When did I feel triggered?
  • What story was I telling myself?
  • What did I do next?
  • What would I do differently? [16:06]
• Use transcript tools and AI to analyze your behavior in meetings (e.g., feeding transcripts to GPT for feedback). [16:57]
• Slow down interactions at work: “The pace of our interactions at work is just generally too fast… Slowing the fuck down in most contexts is going to help you do that naming, do that reflection, take that moment to make some sense.” – Rodney [19:18]
• Name what’s happening for you in group contexts: “Narrating a little bit of what is happening internally for you in a group setting goes a long way for building trust and credibility.” – Sam [18:24]

3. Skill #2: User Feedback (User-Centered Design) (21:05-34:32)

What Is It?

• Involves developing products, services, or processes with users involved throughout—not just asking for their opinion at the end.
• A critical discipline, often neglected, especially by internal org designers and HR leaders (“Listen up, nerds.” – Rodney [21:05]).

The 'Cake' Metaphor

• “We have an idea for a cake. We think everybody’s gonna love it... then we bring it out and we expect applause and delight. And what we find is a room full of people who did not ask for cake.” – Rodney [00:01] / [22:00]

Common Pitfalls

• “Here’s what I’m about to launch, give me feedback.”—that’s not user-centered design. That’s seeking validation at the wrong stage. [23:37]
• Soliciting opinions ≠ ensuring adoption or value.

A Better Approach

• Start with the problem, not the solution.
• Validate the realness, urgency, and willingness to invest in solving the problem—before building.
• “Talking about the financial realities of these things feels gross. But the products and services… are commercial.” – Rodney [25:03]

Case Example & Key Practices

• Rodney’s transformation after designing “The Future of HR”: ongoing user validation at every step led to actual market fit. [27:00-29:05]
• “We sort of got out of our own way. The ideas that we brought to market were the ideas that customers asked for, not the ideas that I thought were super neato.” – Rodney [28:33]
• Use four stages:
  1. Problem Identification/Validation
  2. Problem-Solution Fit
  3. Product-Market Fit
  4. Business Model Fit ([29:05])

Courage to Innovate

• Don’t get hung up on disruptive innovation myths (“if I asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse!”): Most work is iterative, not paradigm-shattering. [30:27-33:27]

4. Skill #3: Expert Facilitation (34:33-52:10)

Why It’s Critical

• The most “learnable” of the three—anyone can start from scratch and get better.
• Goes beyond running meetings; encompasses workshops, asynchronous facilitation, setting group processes, and managing group dynamics.

Facilitation Demystified

• Not “standing at the flip chart capturing comments”—it’s about shaping both structure and “vibes.”
• “Everything that is true about your organization or about your OS is happening in the meeting.” – Rodney [37:10]
• Good facilitation is almost invisible—group feels progress without obvious steering. [40:26-41:45]

Key Moves & Approaches

• The facilitator’s job is to hold the outcome as the most important thing (not individual comfort).
• The macro (group culture, systems) appears in the micro (one meeting).
• Use of two-facilitator setups: one runs the session, the other captures/processes content. [40:02-40:26]
• Sensing when to deviate from the agenda based on group energy and need. [42:27]

Preparation and Relationship Building

• Prep calls with every attendee make a noticeable difference, especially in building trust and surfacing real group needs. [44:02-45:52]
• Short, pre-meeting chats help if prep calls aren't possible.
• Avoid overengineering the agenda to the point of rigidity. [46:31]
• Use what’s learned in prep to discover “leverage points” beneath the surface, not just stated agenda items. [47:00]

Mastery Advice

• “If you have five facilitation moves that always slap, do those a hundred times rather than trying to do a hundred things once.” - Rodney [51:15]
• Get comfortable improvising—prepare deeply, but also be ready to toss the plan.
• Use AI (GPT) as a sparring partner for agenda crafting. [50:38]
• Favorite facilitation resources: Liberating Structures (but note, “I probably use three liberating structures 90% of the time.” – Sam [50:07])

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “We are cake bakers… and what we find is a room full of people who did not ask for cake.” – Rodney [00:01, 22:00]
• “By cultivating mastery of these skills, you will be more able to do the kind of work design that is necessary and that we talk about on the show all the time.” – Rodney [05:15]
• “The pace of our interactions at work is just generally too fast. Like it just generally is. It’s too fast to be good.” – Rodney [19:18]
• “The ideas that we brought to market were the ideas that customers asked for, not the ideas that I thought were super neato.” – Rodney [28:33]
• “Facilitation should actually be almost invisible.” – Rodney [41:20]
• “Everything that is true about your organization… is happening in the meeting.” – Rodney [37:10]
• “If you have five facilitation moves that kind of always slap, do those a hundred times rather than trying to do a hundred things once.” – Rodney [51:15]
• “Metacognitive awareness… helps you avoid over-personalizing everything (‘I’m failing’) or over-externalizing everything (‘leadership sucks’). The reality lives in the gray in between.” – Sam [13:00]

Timestamps for Significant Segments

• Check-in & setup: 01:31-05:15
• Skill 1: Metacognitive awareness: 05:38-21:02
• Skill 2: User feedback / User-centered design: 21:05-34:32
• Skill 3: Expert facilitation: 34:33-52:10

Additional Insights

• The episode shows a strong alignment between introspective (personal skill-building) and collective (systems and structural change) approaches.
• Both hosts stress: mastery of these skills is not about ticking off a box, but about ongoing, deliberate practice and reflecting deeply on one’s own role in change and collaboration.
• Many frustrations at work (organizational or product failures) are traced to skipping the uncomfortable, slow, iterative parts of these skills.

In Summary

Rodney and Sam make a compelling case for focusing on three underappreciated but mission-critical personal skills for any modern change agent: being metacognitive about one’s own mind and group dynamics, genuinely centering the user in design processes, and mastering the art (and subtlety) of facilitation.

If you practice these three, you’re already ahead of the curve for whatever the future of work might bring.