Facilitation Friday #4: Help Make Connections and Meaning

You get off your plane at the airport and the first thing you do is check your cellphone or the gate monitor for information about your connection.  You want to know one thing: where do I need to go next? Whether it be volunteers on a conference call, staff colleagues in a meeting, or learners participating in a workshop, they seek the same thing: connections.

In a fast-paced environment overloaded with information, people need to connect on a variety of levels: with their colleagues, with the issues at hand, with internal information and external insights, and with the lessons from the past and the potential of the future. Facilitation involves listening for and seeking to make (or help others make) these connections more possible and explicit.

For example, you might ask how a current decision under deliberation could affect operations in another area, or how the current discussion connects with others that have occurred and/or with what individuals are doing in their work.  Facilitation also helps connect comments made by various individuals in a conversation. Because facilitation involves deep and active listening, individuals who have developed these skills likely have an overall sense of the links among disparate threads of conversation.They help group members make these linkages, as well as identify the meaning behind what is occurring, by posing expansive, open-ended questions that invite others into the discussion.

• So where are we at from your perspective?
• What might the idea(s) we are considering mean for your efforts or what we collectively need to do next?
• How does what Tonya just shared relate to the points Andrew and Wanda were making earlier?
• What are you noticing right now and what might it mean for where we go next?
• What, if anything, isn't connecting for you or making sense right now?
• We've heard lots of different viewpoints.  Any common threads among them?

These types of questions create a reflective space for individuals and groups where they can make sense of what is transpiring and capture real-time learning about both what they are doing and how they are doing it. Effective facilitation periodically slows the conversation and invites the group to assess the nature of the deliberations and how they can be enhanced:“How are we doing what we are doing?”

Individuals filter what is happening through their respective lenses, roles, and experiences in order to make sense of things ... to make meaning for themselves.  Periodically inviting these different meanings to be shared can help knit together a richer and more robust understanding among the various individuals in a conversation since each person has his or her own lenses in play.

This often is most true when clusters of individuals come with specific shared perspectives that may be influencing the meaning they are making; i.e. individuals from different departments, different geographic locations, different institutional sizes.  Workshop facilitators in particular need to help connect their content to the different contexts individuals may represent and invite individuals to make meaning of the ideas and issues being discussed by exploring the "so what? now what?" questions of implication and application.  Doing so explicitly helps individuals realize greater learning value.

By listening deeply and helping weave individual comments into a coherent whole, as well as helping individuals make (and share) meaning from what is occurring and being discussed, facilitation can help achieve synergy, producing a group result that surpasses what any individual might have accomplished on his or her own.

What are questions or other tactics you've seen or used that help make connections and meaning in a meeting or workshop?

Every Friday in 2012, I will post information and insights about effective facilitation, sharing some of the content and thinking I provide in the one-day and half-day facilitation workshops that groups often engage me to present.  You can find previous posts by searching for the tag: facilitationfriday.

Water Your Ideas Like a Garden

I remember when I got my first house and I would dash outside in the evening and do a quick spray from the hose on all the plants and flowers, thinking I had sufficiently watered them to withstand the summer heat.  I hadn't.

Garden enough and you quickly learn the value of slow, steady watering.  The moisture reaches deep to plants' roots as it slowly seeps through the soil.  Instead of spraying the water down on top of the plants, you use soaking hoses that lay right on top of the soil.  It takes longer, but it is more effective.

Nurturing sustainable and genuine commitment to ideas, instead of mere short-term compliance, requires the same approach.  

Instead of selling ideas with a superficial or surface-level appeal from a podium speech, you get down in the dirt and connect your thoughts to the roots of the people who will be most affected.  It takes longer, but it, too, is more effective.

The Cost of Not Being You

"We find it an awful thing to meet people, serious or not, who have turned into vacant effective people, so far lost that they won’t believe their own feelings enough to follow them out."
William Stafford, "An Introduction to Some Poems"

In his wonderful post, Joe Gerstandt asks if you've recently paid the cost of being you, of bringing your whole self into your relationships and making the contributions that only you can make.

When we stand out from the crowd, when we do not conform to others' expectations, we often have to pay a cost.  I'd suggest that when we choose to do the opposite the cost may even be greater.

"If you are unfaithfully with us, you are causing terrible harm."
Rumi, Sufi philosopher

Each of us regularly makes choices related to fitting in.  We dress the part and say our lines in order to be accepted by others.  We did it as kids in school, and we do it as adults in the workplace and our communities.

“Whenever people refuse to participate in their own subordination, they resist the way power asserts itself in organizations and society.”
—Debra E. Myerson, Tempered Radicals

So here are a few questions for you:

• Is the part you are playing in your life consistent with who you are or have you simply become incredibly adept at consistently playing a part?
• Are you spending more energy trying to fit in instead of seeking the places, the people, and the opportunities that fit?
• Wouldn’t you rather be rejected for who you truly are than embraced for someone you truly are not?
• As you "play on bigger stages" in your life, are you slipping into performance mode instead of preserving the raw connection that comes from staying unplugged and using only your own voice?

In the wonderful play and movie Shirley Valentine the lead character namesake offers this truth about how so many people lead their lives:"We don't do what we want to do.  We do what we have to do and pretend it is what we want to do."

We can only pretend for so long.  It is not a sustainable choice.  When so much of our attention and energy is devoted to fitting in, it depletes the vitality we need to actually make our contributions.

So yes, the cost of being you will sometimes be great.  But the cost of not doing so is a limited-term loan and comes with a significant balloon payment at some point in the future.

“To be as authentic as we know how to be at the moment, so that we can be more and more present in what we do. The more we can do that, the safer we are. The problem is it feels most dangerous … But this very thing that seems dangerous is where safety lies.”
—Barbara Cook, vocalist and star of Broadway shows and movies

Facilitation Friday #3: Balancing Challenge and Support

Psychologist and scholar Nevitt Sanford introduced an influential construct related to cognitive development that is a valuable framework for facilitation: challenge and support (PDF link).
Challenge, provided by either internal or external stimuli, can lead to growth and development so long as the disequilibrium caused by the challenge does not overwhelm the individual, in which case the person retreats or shuts down.

Support is an external influence that helps an individual successfully navigate the challenge being experienced without coddling the person so much that growth and development is impeded.

Let's take a physical example of this concept to help make it more concrete: lifting weights.  If you're doing chest presses and select a weight you confidently know you can press 10 times, you may experience a sense of satisfaction, but because your muscles weren't challenged, you won't experience much growth.

To produce growth, you have to select a weight heavier than what you normally lift.  Because this increases the challenge and the possibility of failure, you should have a spotter who can help you with the weight when your muscles become too fatigued.  A good spotter doesn't step in and grab the weights though the first time you start to strain a bit … that would be too much support and your muscles wouldn't be challenged at all.

Understanding the dynamics of challenge and support can help us in the design of effective meetings, workshops, and conversations, as well as facilitating what is actually happening in real-time.  A group used to meeting in a hollow square with a highly structured agenda could find a rooms et with a circle of chairs and a meeting agenda with just a few discussion questions posed to be somewhat challenging.  Individuals accustomed to lecture-style presentations may find a highly experiential workshop involving a great deal of personal sharing to be somewhat uncomfortable.  These are just two examples of how challenge and support are evident in a facilitation environment.

My previous post focusing on how behavior is the result of people interacting with the environment can help us think through challenge and support in a facilitation effort.

Think about the individuals you will be facilitating.  What content, environment, session formats, conversations might they find challenging?  What support might you build into the facilitation so that they can successfully navigate that challenge and grow instead of retreating or shutting down?  What support might be excessive, unintentionally impeding their learning and growth because you eliminate too much of the challenge?  Here are a few examples:

• Individuals who are analytical might struggle with an exercise that has vague instructions or asks them to engage in a creative task.  Offering them more detailed information or an example of what a possible creation might look like could allow them to fully engage in the activity
• Workshop designs or meeting formats that focus almost exclusively on verbal participation can sometimes impede the contributions of more introverted or reflective learners.  Including brief segments where individuals think on their own before verbalizing their ideas with the group can support their interaction and learning needs.
• A lecture segment introducing an idea or concept to a very diverse audience might not connect with each individual's respective work environment or job function unless the presenter gives a variety of concrete examples illustrating her concept in varied settings.
• Not honoring traditional or expected norms in any setting (think nametags at a conference, assigned seats at a meeting, slides or handouts for a presentation) could cause some initial discomfort as people are unsure of how events will unfold given the absence of the features to which they have become accustomed. This doesn't mean you couldn't eliminate these items, but just be sensitive to the discomfort or challenge this might cause.
• A group that is very comfortable with unstructured, informal conversations can become hesitant or challenged if an intense conflict erupts in the middle of such discussions and may need the facilitator to help provide structure and new norms for working through the disagreement.
• Individuals attending a workshop in which the presenter covers content they already know extremely well won't learn anything unless the speaker modifies what is being explored to include more challenging material.

Embedded in the very root definition of the word facilitation is the emphasis on actions that make it easier for groups to accomplish their goals.  But if we as facilitators do the work of the group for them or provide too much support, we take away the challenge and reduce the group's likely learning and development.  The same is true when working with an individual.

The key is a thoughtful calibration of challenge and support in the original design of your meeting, workshop, or conversation, as well as a real-time vigilance about recalibrating your contribution in order to produce real growth.  It's more art than science, but it is critical nonetheless.

Every Friday in 2012, I will post information and insights about effective facilitation, sharing some of the content and thinking I provide in the one-day and half-day facilitation workshops that groups often engage me to present.  You can find previous posts by searching for the tag: facilitationfriday.

The Power of Purpose

Perhaps more than ever before, we need purpose-driven organizations and leaders because they

• Seek contribution from people rather than try to control them
• Nurture creativity rather than force compliance
• Coach members rather than command troops
• Unleash commitment rather than settle for consent 
• Build a sense of community instead of force confinement of individuals from one another
• Accept complexity instead of contrive certainties

(these qualities taken verbatim from The Purpose-Driven Organization by Terry Pascarella.

But all around us we find examples of fear-based leaders whose inflammatory rhetoric attempts to unite, but only to rally against false foes or unlikely threats.  In challenging times it's easy to resort to such an approach, but if we learned anything from Built to Last, we should remember the importance of preserving an organization's (and I would suggest our own individual) core purpose and values: this is who we are and this is why we exist.

For me, the Hoberman sphere is a perfect metaphor for the power of purpose.  This simple object expands and contracts effortlessly while preserving its basic framework in its entirety as it does so.  An organization's or individual's purpose can do the same, remaining as the essence of ones efforts while expanding or contracting in scope based on internal priorities or external realities.  Regardless of the chosen scale, the purpose—your identity—does not vary, nor is it sacrificed for quick short-term gains.

If your organization lacks clarity around that seemingly simple, yet incredible difficult to determine and preserve essence, you know where your work needs to begin.

The Memo on Meetings

Apparently not everyone got the memo.  That's the only plausible reason I can think of why so many meetings and conferences are still the same mind-numbing gatherings that have been turning us into drones and zombies for years.

In case you didn't get the memo here is some of what it said:

--We've shifted from being in the "meeting planning' business to being in the "connecting business," connecting individuals to the people, ideas, information, and resources they need to achieve their goals and aspirations.  As a result, getting the banquet guarantee exactly correct will no longer earn you a raise.

--People actually come to events with ideas, interests, and passions.  Therefore, we shall not suck the life out of them by starting our gathering with an endless number of talking heads.  Anyone doing so will have their resume forwarded to Macy's Thanksgiving Parade department where swelled heads are indeed important to display.

--Packing people into a ballroom and providing alcohol and cheese cubes is not a "networking event."  We will intentionally help participants connect to the individuals who have knowledge and connections they most seek.

--The most brilliant presenters of information are frequently among the least capable facilitators of learning.  To ensure participants have powerful learning experiences, we select, coach, and support all presenters (even the big names with the big fees) to create engaging sessions that balance their knowledge with the wisdom of the crowd and help attendees connect the content to their everyday efforts.

These four points are just the beginning of the conversations we should be having.  Actually, enough talk, let's focus on action.  We already know better.  It is long past time for us to start doing better.  The clock is ticking and people's patience is waning.  Let's not make them wait any longer.

Facilitation Friday #2: Behavior is the Result of People Interacting with the Environment

Preparing to facilitate a group involves many considerations.  One framework that I always draw on comes from Kurt Lewin, considered to be one of the pioneers of social psychology.  Lewin asserted that the behavior of individuals results from how they interact with their environment, b = f(p,e).  This simple equation helps unpack much of what we need to review for an individual facilitation effort.

Behavior

Think of the outcomes for your facilitation efforts.  At the end of it, what do people need to be thinking, feeling, committed to doing?  What are the behaviors you hope people will display during the meeting?  How would you like them to interact with each other? What do you envision as the pace, tone, and nature of the conversation?  Visualize the conversation you hope to help create as if it was happening in front of you and you are viewing it in slow motion

People

Who will be involved in the conversation?  What are their existing roles and relationships? How do they learn, process information, engage in group settings? What meeting norms and expectations are they accustomed to? How do they like to do their work? What strengths can they contribute and what weaknesses might they need support managing around? What diversity of perspectives will they bring to this work and what lenses will they be filtering it through? Do any individuals have special physical needs?

When possible we must make sure the “right” people will be contributing to whatever meeting or conversation we are facilitating.  The right people are the ones needed to achieve the desired outcomes for the effort.  Some individuals may only need to offer input or feedback at various stages of the conversation while others may need to be an active participant throughout.  We should honor individuals’ time by involving them only when it is most appropriate as opposed to assuming everyone needs to be in every moment of every conversation … the way it is traditionally done in organizations.

Sometimes, we inherit an existing group of people who may or may not be inclusive of everyone who could help achieve the desired outcomes.  If we are unable to change the composition of the group, we need to help the group explore whose/which perspectives may not be represented among them and how they want to access that information to inform their efforts.

The Environment: Theirs

What are current issues affecting the people you will be facilitating?  What’s the state of their profession, industry, organization, department?  What’s happening in their world right now that might have implications for how they engage in the conversations?  What’s the context to which they will return after the session?  What does the space where they do their work look like and how does it affect their pattern of interactions?  What are the communication norms in their organization?  How do they use technology in their environment?

The Environment: The Meeting

When will the meeting occur, and what implications does that have for individuals’ participation, particularly for individuals in different time zones? Think about the physical space for the meeting:  room size and layout options, privacy or openness, sound considerations, tables and chairs, lighting, open space for movement, what’s on the walls, options for displaying information and output, sightlines, ceiling height, location within the building, access to food and beverage, location of restrooms, what will people find when they arrive (signage, music playing, a greeter), and much more.  Think about the design and contents of the materials involved in this effort: the agenda, pre-reading, any advance homework or surveys, name badges or nameplates, and items you might have on tables to engage participants (toys, markers, notepads, Post-It’s). If virtual, what technology will be used? 

So what? Now what?

The environment is perhaps the most under-utilized facilitation resource.  We often are able to change it far more than we are able to influence the participants we are facilitating.  Doing so means really thinking about the behavior/results you want to produce and what you know about the people you will facilitate.  What environmental considerations will increase the likelihood that these people will produce the envisioned results for the session?  What room set and other logistics will help support the conversations that need to occur?  What supportive material will help inform people’s thinking so they can make the needed contributions to the conversation? 

But wait …

Don’t forget yourself: you are a part of the environment.  The existing you have (or don’t have) with participants will influence the behaviors they display.  Your attire, your speaking rhythm and pitch, your nonverbals, your physical placement in the room … all become a part of the setting that influences how people contribute or don’t participate.  This requires remaining very self-aware of the choices you are making. Always consider how you might change yourself and what you are doing in order to create a positive change in how the group is functioning.

Next week: the role of challenge and support in effective facilitation. 

Every Friday in 2012, I will post information and insights about effective facilitation, sharing some of the content and thinking I provide in the one-day and half-day facilitation workshops that groups often engage me to present.  You can find previous posts by searching for the tag: facilitationfriday.

Timeless Questions, Timely Tactics

One of the challenges with strategic planning sessions is that once the vision, goals, and objectives have been identified, the good thinking that created them often stops. Almost in unison you can hear the sigh of relief from planning session participants: "Whew, glad that's over with. Now we don't have to think strategically again till the next time one of these sessions rolls around."

And, of course, that is one of the reasons why strategic plans often do not yield the commitment, action, or results they are meant to produce. Any answers identified during a planning process are temporary by nature.  While the objectives and tactics already identified for each goal are being implemented, continued contemplation of the questions should be an ongoing endeavor.

Most organizations can probably identify a handful (say 6-12) of what I call perma questions. A perma (nent) question is one unlikely to ever go out of style. In other words, it is one so fundamental to what you do that regularly exploring it and identifying new ways of answering it will always produce value.  Nonprofits frequently turn to Peter Drucker's infamous five questions as a starting point: (1) What is our mission? (2) Who is our customer? (3) What does our customer value? (4) What are our results? (5) What is our plan?

Over the years, I've developed a dozen questions to draw on during strategy conversations, ones that while timeless in nature almost always can generate new and timely responses.  They are listed below.  You could draw on my list and Drucker's five questions, as well as identify some of your own.  Once you've finalized your organization's list of perma questions, you should (1) incorporate them into regular meetings, brainstorming sessions, etc., (2) establish a process for screening the ideas such discussions produce and (3) add them as desired into your strategic plan.

1. How can we be more of who we say we are … as defined by our core purpose and core values?
2. What do our members (current and future) most value and how can we increase the benefits and value they associate with our efforts?
3. What infrastructure ($, time, people) is required to produce the future we are trying to create and the results we want to produce?  How might we better engage our community in creating and producing these results?
4. What are the most significant issues on the horizon that will affect how we do what we do and how we will do it? How should we address them?
5. How can we further enable connections, facilitate community, and strengthen relationships among our members?
6. How can we better disseminate information so that captures members’ attention, interest, consumption, and application?
7. What processes and systems could we implement to more efficiently and effectively do our work?
8. What current successes, it they were to diminish or disappear, would have the most devastating consequences?
9. What efforts do we need to begin to retire or let go of?
10. What are the biggest obstacles to people realizing their potential and how can we remove those obstacles?
11. What is most holding us back right now, and what might we do about it?
12. What one thing, while seemingly impossible, would make a tremendous difference it was achieved? 

What is a perma question you'd add to the dozen I've suggested?  How does your organization keep strategic conversations occurring while still executive on current priorities?

What Kids Can Teach Us About Life and Leadership

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age.” Aldous Huxley

Some have suggested that children and travelers are best prepared to succeed in a rapidly changing environment because both theoretically possess strong capacities for adapting to their environment, learning new things, and going with the flow.

Kids can teach adults a great deal that can help us in the grown-up playground we call work. Here are a few lessons I have found particularly beneficial, ones I share in a popular keynote entitled, Be a Kid Again.  Download a colorful one-page PDF with the seven takeaways.

Be curious.

If it is on the floor or in their path, it will be in their mouth. Kids want to pick up, look, touch, throw, taste, and squeeze everything. Many years ago, Hyatt Hotels and Resorts ran wonderful ad campaign showing delightful kids looking out an airplane's window.  The tagline?  When did you begin insisting on the aisle seat?  The campaign poitned out how growing up can dull our natural curiosity … no more looking out the windows on planes, etc. Yet curiosity and a sense of wonder is what can lead us to innovations, new and unexpected possibilities, or just wonderful learning from surprising sources.

Take field trips.

If you let it, everyday life can be a field trip, requiring only that pay more attention and with greater intention.  But we all have daily routines and rituals that we should interrupt periodically, putting ourselves in new places with different people trying activities we have yet to experience.   Field trips were always one of the most popular school days, and not just because they got us out of mundane classwork.  They refreshed our sense of wonder, expanded our range of experience, and allowed us to interact informally with peers … all benefits equally valuable in our professional endeavors today.

Play with everybody.

For a good part of their early years, kids are equal opportunity playmates: they will play with everybody. This provides them a diversity of interactions and experiences and an openness to all kinds of individuals. No need for mandatory diversity education for kids. They live it and welcome it everyday. We adults would be wise to open up our circles, interacting and networking with a far more diverse group of individuals.  This is as true for who you follow on Twitter or which blogs you read as it is for who you hang with at a professional conference or in the office lunchroom.

Speak the truth … always.

Oh the delightful honesty of those too young to know better … or those wise enough to know best perhaps. Kids do say the darndest things, but they tell it like it is. Most adults see being completely honest as risky. We need to create a world where tempering or censoring our honesty is seen as the greatest risk of all. Because it is. How much time do you or does your organization spend dealing with half-truths, rumors, and misstatements simply because people were unwilling to be honest? Enough said.

Participate … and do so with enthusiasm.

When kids volunteer in class or try to get picked for a team, they swing their arms wildly, make loud noises, and jump up and down. You really know they want to get involved. If only we could tap into that same energy level and enthusiasm in our volunteer workforce, matching people’s talents, time, and what they care about to our organization’s needs in such a compelling way that they jump up and down to get involved. And schools are particularly sensitive to ensuring kids get a chance to participate so that everyone is involved.  Our organizations should adopt this mindset when looking to engage individuals in collaborative endeavors.

Let your imagination run wild.

Successful innovators know that fresh thinking occurs in a playful environment, and that sometimes the best ideas result from building on wild ideas that too easily could be rejected upon presentation.  So while it is important to stay focused during any idea generation sessions, that focus must not shackle the range of ideas expressed.  You can't predict when a crazy thought will become a catalyst for a provocative innovation, so while you should remain cautious of ideas that can derail a discussion, remain open to those that might provide interesting detours.

Always get back up when you fall down.

Resilient and resourceful. Kids fall down, dust themselves off, and get right back up to try again. They don’t take such apparent defeats as setbacks; rather they see them as a natural part of the process. We would be well-served in our organizations if people bounced right back up and began to try again whenever a temporary setback is experienced.  Things not working out according to play should be seen as normal given that we can't 100% plan for what will happen when other people begin to interact with our programs, products, or services.

There Really Is a Simpler Way

a simpler way, the wonderful book co-authored by Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers,  continues to guide my thinking about organizations. It asks us to no longer look at the world as a machine, and most importantly, human beings as machines. 

Rereading the book over the holidays reminded me how this biological perspective, as opposed to the previously entrenched mechanistic viewpoint,  focuses less on control, order, and structure, and more on exploration, growth, and life.  Discarding a mechanistic perspective means embracing some alternative beliefs about people and organizations. Here are a few of them:

Living systems learn constantly.

This being the case, what is true today might not be true tomorrow. Therefore, our planning efforts must become less rigid and more like tinkering … trying lots of things and seeing what works best. The answers and plans we develop don't have to be right; they just have to work.

Living systems are self-organizing.

People in organizations, just like other biological forms of life, will self-organize into temporary working structures as needed. We can spend less time on master designs for organizational structures or hierarchies. People can organize themselves as the work requires.

Life is attracted to order, but it uses messes to get there.

We needlessly seek simple and clean solutions to complex problems. We need to become comfortable with fuzzy, ambiguous attempts to approach an issue. Further, such approaches may often be happening simultaneously at different points or places in our organization. Life isn't neat; progress isn't neat and orderly either.

Because we are living systems, most people are intelligent, creative, adaptive, and self-organizing.

"We want to learn, to do high-quality work, to contribute, to find meaning. We do not need to impose these attribute on one another. We merely need to learn how to evoke them."

From these beliefs and others, Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers suggest how we can create supportive conditions for self-organization (these are quoted verbatim):

"An organizational community that is clear about its intent knows what it wants to accomplish and knows what its purpose is." If intent and purpose are clear and individuals are self-motivated and self-organizing, they will direct their efforts to fulfilling that intent and achieving that purpose.

"Living systems are webbed with feedback, with information available from all directions." Information is what drives organizational life, and we must allow all individuals access to as much information as possible so they can make informed decisions that support the organization's purpose and intent.

"Living systems also are webbed with connections; individual members have access to the whole system." Members of organizations need to be able to reach out to others freely, to collaborate without limitations, to access talents and information whenever necessary.

Conclusion

Instead of spending our time as leader focusing on designing structures, implementing mechanistic training programs, or initiating controls and checks and balances, we should choose a simpler way ... and focus our energies and talents on engaging members of our organizations in meaningful discussions about who we are, what we believe, what we do, and how we can do it better.  There is as much, if not more, power in our core purpose and principles as there is in any of our policies or plans.

a simpler way.

By Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1996.

Readers who find this interesting should also check out the recently published Humanize by Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter.