Facilitation Anywhere

We’re not alone in wanting to explore the opportunities and challenges of holding events online, or blended face-to-face (f2f) and online. Suddenly the web is full of courses and primers on how to do it, like this first in a series of webinars from the deeply experienced Martin Galbraith, or this one on virtual collaboration from Grove. And in our blog on Coming to Agreement in meetings we highlighted the great resource on web meetings just released by the wondrous Nancy White. Everyone’s talking digital.

Today was the online introduction to the three-day Facilitation Anywhere course, which begins next week. It was wonderful to meet the participants, after all our preparations, and we’re both excited – and properly apprehensive – about next week. After several introduction exercises, increasing the bandwidth as we went along – from text chat to video and audio – we introduced some of the concepts underpinning our design.

Apart from big, all-purpose events, most gatherings engage a group of people with a common purpose. This could be a product they need to develop together, or some planning, or some ideas they need to work through in detail, or a programme they want to share experience and learning on. But of course a whole range of personal, emotional, social and organisational currents operate in and around the formal agenda.

As with all those events, we see the Facilitation Anywhere course happening at broadly three levels:

1. The fundamental level of exploring and sharing practice around designing and facilitating events and workshops
2. The reflexive level – a process in which we will all be reflecting on our experience during the course
3. And the level of a specific ‘topic thread’ around blended and online learning.

We’re proposing three enquiry questions as a way to connect these levels, and frame the process and our learning together:

1. What does it mean to be a participant and a facilitator in f2f, online and blended environments? (a reflexive question)
2. How can we maximise engagement making full use of participatory f2f approaches and digital tools or channels?
3. What are the core conditions for effective f2f, online and blended gatherings? (including people, processes, tech and self)

Our digital footprints

As we start it’s interesting to reflect on our own experience over the months we’ve been thinking about and designing the programme, since we come to the event with very different digital trajectories.

Isobel: “I’ve been facilitating groups for many years, but until now I haven’t done much online, apart from using Skype.  Sometimes we just need a push, and the course has given me that.   The last few weeks have been a steep learning curve, doing a whole lot of new things at once – blogging with Pete, using googledocs, making a start with online facilitation, and getting used to a new computer.  It’s reminded me what resistance to change feels like – I’ve had it in spade loads!  Getting out of the comfort zone and into the learning zone is what we’re often asking groups and teams to be doing.  It feels really important to be doing that myself as a facilitator, especially as I’m now seeing what’s possible when combining core process skills with skilful management of different communication channels.”

Pete: “I’ve been involved with things digital since the introduction into UK public education of the early mass-produced PCs in the mid 1980’s. In the 1990’s I began working online, riding the Internet wave into Oxfam GB, infuriating some and enthusing others (only a few at first) with email and talk of global networks. I’ve been using online communication channels since that era. I’m still an enthusiast, less for the tech. itself than for what it can enable people to do, especially how it can link, connect, enable people to collaborate and communicate”. So I’ve always enjoyed experimenting with and learning how to integrate social and online digital media into events I facilitate.

We’ve both been living the process of blending deep experience in face-to-face facilitation with online technologies, feeling what it’s like introducing and being introduced to the possibilities opened up by the new digital platforms. We’re looking forward enormously to exploring the issues with the participants, and will be reporting back here on how it goes – what people say, how we’ve learnt and what is changing about our own practice.

The year end has got us thinking about the flow of experience from beginnings through to endings and transitions, and how the best of our experience and learning can enliven and enrich the next stage of our lives.  So too with gatherings.  When a meeting comes to an end, how can we best support people to make that sometimes tricky transition back to the workplace?

In our first blog in this series, focusing on the ‘openings’ of an event, we talked about a key early task for facilitators being to help people ‘arrive’ in every sense  of the word.  At the start of a gathering we help people transition from the clogged busyness of the everyday so they can focus on their shared purpose and agenda. When a group spends time together, committed to a common agenda and prepared to relax into a more creative frame of mind, together they can make a kind of magic when they find or combine ideas, untangle the knots that block progress, and release energy for joint action. 

Meetings and gatherings at their best open up space for focused conversation and exchange, thinking and reflection on the issues and questions that really matter to the people in the room.  These are luxuries under normal operational pressures.  All the more important then to intentionally create spaces that allow for emergence – that unpredictable and magical thing that happens when ideas and thoughts combine and something else takes shape.

So a good ending really matters.  It completes a cycle of learning, energy and engagement so that people can more easily make the transition back into the realities of working and everyday life.  Ending is a process, and includes drawing together key learning, deciding on actions and personal commitments, reviewing the event process, saying thank you and good-bye, and bringing everything to a close.

Here are a few ideas about how to do this.

There are all sorts of practical ways that people can draw together their learning and decide how they’ll put into practice what has emerged during the event.

• Probably the most commonly used methods are those to do with making lists, prioritising, action planning. ‘Getting on Brilliantly’ is an intensely practical set of resources and ideas for effective meetings (and was the trigger for our own decision to structure our training programme around a set of six typical phases within meetings.) There is a free PDF download as well as a book available from Amazon.com that includes a CD. The resource has a useful collection of models and templates for Sorting Priorities and Planning for Action, cleanly structured and presented like all the other sections.
• W³ or ‘What, So What, Now What is a  typically snappy distillation of related ideas from the Liberating Structures team.  After a shared experience, you ask “WHAT? What happened? What did you notice, what facts or observations stood out?” After all the salient observations have been collected, ask, “SO WHAT? Why is that important? What patterns or conclusions are emerging? What hypotheses can you make?” Then, after the sense-making is over, ask, “NOW WHAT? What actions make sense?

• Facts Feelings Findings and Futures is one of many wonderful activities based on the active reviewing cycle developed by Roger Greenaway  
• In her article, ‘Changing the Organisation One Conversation at a Time’ Lisa Kimball talks about the ‘hypoglycaemic effect‘ of good meetings, an enthusiasm and buzz that leads to ambitious plans and lists, as well as a crash on re-entry to an unchanged world of work? Avoid unrealistic action planning by getting clear on where you can have most influence.15% solutions is an activity that helps participants focus realistically, based on Peter Drucker’s proposition  that most people have about 15% control over their work situations.

Most of these activities work well in online meetings. And if shared online documents or platforms are part of the event then there is the added advantage that ‘there is only one truth’, a record visible and accessible to all participants. Properly done, a set of notes on a wiki or platform like Google documents gives all participants the bulk of their meeting report already compiled! 

Commitments

Creating space for people to make their own personal commitments follows naturally out of the above and helps consolidate intentions, and can have a strong emotional resonance.  Participants can write a postcard to themselves, which the session hosts post back to them.  Another idea spread out a random collective of photos and invite people to choose one that resonates for them, using this as a means of reflecting  on what they are taking away with them. Borrowing the custom of two people tying textile loops around each other’s wrists while each declares their commitment to action is a gentle and surprisingly powerful way to help people make commitments they will keep (especially with the instruction that people must retain the loops until they have at least begun the action!)  

Evaluations

These are important for participants as well as the event hosts – serving as a focus for quiet reflection, while providing valuable feedback on the gathering itself.  There is a huge range of options – from written evaluation (do this in the room before people leave) through to the more creative possibilities such as a song or a story that captures the highlights.  Roger Greenaway has masses of ideas. As ever, having people physically active energises what can often be a process that dampens enthusiasm and connection. For examples, see the spider-gram activity illustrated above or the use of a spectrogram line for a ‘walking evaluation’ as illustrated below. Online, using polls is a quick and easy way to get feedback in the moment.

Bringing the gathering to a close follows on naturally.  Wherever possible we like to close with the group sitting in a circle, and give everyone a chance to share a closing reflection.  If time is tight this can be as brief as ‘three words’, with the hosts thanking all those who’ve made the event possible, from the logistics through to the participants themselves.  

Online the risk is that the closing can feel rather distant, since  people can’t see each other, so protecting time in the last part of the session to have people comment or say things is extremely important.

When people meet in groups they begin to think and feel differently, whatever the purpose of the gathering. In our second blog we talked about how our own ideas are being challenged and enriched as we design the Facilitation Anywhere training course. This process is amplified in groups. We think about and change our ideas – whether about each other, the specific work context or program, the subjects being discussed, or even ideas or subjects entirely unrelated to the workshop but in the forefront of our minds.  In the collective learning that happens in groups (often referred to as social learning), people recognise shared beliefs and what they have in common, begin to shape new concepts, identify their differences and come together around what they can agree on.

Being the facilitator

Making sense of what’s emerging is probably the most complex part of a workshop or event, for both facilitator and participants. The facilitator needs to notice and reflect on what’s happening and, in consultation with the organisers, share this with the group to help trigger further conversation. Facilitators play a central role at this stage, not because we’re driving the event, but because it’s one of the key moments when, as the person ‘holding the space’, we have the potential to add most value.

Practically speaking, this  isn’t something you can do on the first morning.  After surfacing ‘what we know’, now’s the time to start to sense into what’s emerging, give people space to reflect and see what insights, patterns and themes are taking shape.  It’s necessarily messy, often chaotic, frequently uncomfortable and can also be exciting!  As facilitators we have to call on all our internal resources to be in tune with the group, stay centred, listen and adapt to what’s arising.  Let go of the choreography and improvise!

Reflecting reflections

Of course you have your design, even though you know you’ll almost certainly have to adapt and change it. A useful tool to have as a framework for sense-making, that also enables improvisation, was developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) over forty years ago. Commonly known as ORID the simple format is summarised below:

This blog from ace facilitator Martin Gilbraith is a good introduction. And here’s a story of how ORID was used in a workshop in Hanoi to encourage and support reflective processes.

Insights and shifts happen when people  are listening together and are open to what’s arising.  Conversation cafe, world cafe (left) and fishbowl create spaces for this kind of sharing and enquiry into emerging questions. Have a look at the Art of Hosting for ideas for convening and hosting emergent learning. All three methods are also reviewed in the KS Toolkit, and the great Liberating Structures folks have their own variants.

Nobody knows you’re a dog online

Sense-making is one of the areas when the differences between face-to-face and virtual gatherings are most obvious, especially for the facilitators. Not being able to see reactions between people, on their faces, in how they move, glance – or glare – at each other, for example, makes keeping track of what is emerging much harder. Rachel Smith of Grove calls the channels available for communication the collaboration bandwidth. Technology defines what channels are available – the collaboration bandwidth – in the virtual world, and there is a wide range of possible channels. Thinking about how these types of connections might affect sense-making is a good example of how we need to prepare specifically for online or blended events:

A good, general introduction to the issues is provided in, ‘20 Tips for Facilitating Virtual and Blended Meetings’ from Grove.com.

All meetings are different, as different as the people within in them. So in our sense-making of the processes and practices that help to foster fun and engaging events, we’re acutely aware of the risks of talking about a ‘typical’ flow of activities, as we’ve been doing in the first and second of these blogs. Having shared that caveat, we’re going to continue! This blog looks at another stage in the progress of a workshop or event – generating and shaping ideas.

You’ve got the information out there, and you’re getting clear on your challenge and the opportunities. It’s tempting to jump straight to solutions, and stay safely in the comfort zone of the tried and tested. Striking out and taking a different pathway, into those unknown places of the imagination, where weird and wonderful ideas reside, opens out new possibilities. The best ideas have a way of appearing at funny times, and there are lots of tools to help, from the simplest brainstorming, through to the panoply of design thinking methods, such as those shared by IDEO. The key thing is to create the conditions for the unexpected to happen.

Resources

Brainstorming is one of the oldest and best known methods for generating and sharing ideas. Though as this wonderful cartoon comments, anything other than the lightest of touches in facilitating the process can be crushing!

Since we’re sharing resources, this cartoon comes from the superb Rob Cottingham, who gets even more karma-points by licensing his work as creative commons.

Another very rich source of resources, ideas, innovation and support comes from the bustling folks at Liberating Structures. They’re more than a resource – they’re almost a movement. They’ve gathered together on their site (and in their training programmes) a collection of approaches and methods designed to, “introduce tiny shifts in the way we meet, plan, decide and relate to one another…. (putting) the innovative power once reserved for experts only in hands of everyone”. Some of the ideas you’ll recognise as old favourites, others were certainly new to us, and others are carefully worked variations. Another major strength of the site is that they have defined a useful and practical format to enable people to understand how they would use the methods in events or workshops.

As with so many methods, they can be adapted for different situations. For generating ideas we like particularly 1-2-4-All (which you may know as cascade!); 25-10 crowd sourcing and the riskier but therefore potentially more fun and releasing of creativity, improv prototyping. And they’re also systematically exploring how to adapt methods to working online.

Being a facilitator

Our job is to hold the sense of possibility for the group.  Internally, that’s about suspending judgement and being ok with not knowing what’s going to happen.  Outwardly, that helps us create the ‘container’ – the space where people open out and draw on their imagination and creativity to access their best thinking and ideas.

The advantages of being online rather than face to face

We so often characterise online or blended meetings as problematic, needing special preparation and attention to the technology and how people will interact. However, there are also many benefits and advantages to being present online rather than physically present. We ran some experiments recently during a wonderful exchange of creativity and experience, the AgKnowledge Innovation Process ShareFair (yes, bit long but it made sense at the time!). We were using the event to work  – play – with different modes of presence. Some of the sessions were organised as blended, combining face to face with online channels. Pete was working at the event in Addis Ababa while Isobel attended some of the sessions remotely. We used Adobe Connect for the blended sessions, illustrated below, recordings of which are linked in this blog.

In the context of ‘ideation’, we observed that brainstorming, for example, worked faster online than face to face: there was an immediate record of what had been written into a chat window, online participants were able to type at their own speed, without drowning out others, and the process was less reliant on a facilitator to manage participation, record the findings. Use of polls also allowed a more or less instant prioritisation of ideas, without having to fiddle about with dots or bits of paper.

In your experience, what’s the best way to carry forward both the tangible and intangible elements of the ‘container’ into online spaces?

When we’re working together we need to have access to relevant information. Finding out what we know is partly to do with getting the relevant information on the table – the data and facts. But it’s also about tapping into the stuff that’s less tangible – the knowledge that’s wrapped into people’s experience and memories – and making this visible. In other words it’s about bringing people’s voices and their different experiences into the room, in a spirit of curiosity and learning. It’s that process we’re exploring in the second of the seven broad categories we’re using to help organise the material the Facilitation Anywhere training programme.

River of life

This combination of tangible and intangible is often best surfaced using a visual metaphor such as a journey, timeline or map. Pete worked for the wonderful Ewen Le Borgne (seen below taking a photo) on an end-of-project review meeting in Ethiopia (the first five years of RIPPLE Ethiopia) 

Simply drawing a river on rough paper, and having people put up significant moments that represented the progress of the project – and the connections, links and people with whom they worked – enabled current and past members of the project team to come back together quickly. The group was energised and spent a long time sharing and laughing after the model had been constructed. And as we went onto the rest of the workshop it was striking to see how much had come into the room with the exercise – the memories, tensions, high points and disappointments that had characterised the process were there to be ‘used’: to be talked about, to form the basis for planning and learning lessons for other projects. (More about River of Life in the KS Toolkit we shared in our last post).

Presentations can be fun too, really!

Presentations are at the other end of the spectrum for finding out what we know.  Well-organised, visual, strictly-timed  presentations that are integrated into participative activities can be very effective in bringing large amounts of information and data into meetings, both online and face to face.  Though, as we all know, long, turgid, over-factual and droning presentations outnumber good ones. Banning powerpoint can work with an audience ready to experiment but there are lots of situations where participants expect and value formal presentations, especially important for national staff who haven’t attended many international meetings.

The nightmare for a facilitator is that ‘please facilitate this agenda’ job, where by the time the facilitator is engaged, the organiser has already contacted loads of presenters, who are busy preparing 50-slide decks. Ewen Le Borgne is a model of someone who ‘works out loud’ and his blogs are a constant source of ideas and provocations. Here’s one describing exactly that situation and how they managed it.

Online, you have 60 – 90 seconds to keep my attention

For online meetings the issues are more acute.  All of the above applies but there are all the other issues that matter when the meeting is not face to face. Here’s an excellent resource, suggested by the peerless Nancy White.  Susan Stewart highlights just how careful we need to be if we use these traditional tools in online meetings or webinars and provides some very useful rules of thumb for comparing face to face and online activities.

Being the facilitator

Curious, collaborating, challenging, creative…..

Through the collaborative process of developing the training programme we’ve had to find out what we each know, both practically in terms of approaches and methods but also, more significantly, what we know works and how we know it. This latter exemplifies the more intuitive, deeper set of ideas that have to come into the room in meetings and workshops if the participants are to exploit to the maximum their experience and wisdom. We’re curious about how each other works and we’ve also found that working together has been wonderfully challenging, of each other’s comfort zones, old assumptions, regular ways of doing things (“I always start with…..”). In the same way, we need to enable participants to position themselves outside their normal way of being at work:

• to locate their ‘beginner’s mind’ – come with a curiosity about every new venture, make no assumptions, begin afresh and ask lots of questions, to bring a spirit of curiosity into the space
• to recognise and adopt a stance that will maximise shared learning, well put in this snippet about Mutual Learning

What are you curious about? What could you do differently with your group this time?