Full Circle Associates

In our communities, workshops and courses, we often seek to bring in fresh insights, experience and knowledge. Bringing in a guest opens our eyes beyond our own thinking, gives us a view into other communities and can provide a galvanizing moment to reenergize and focus a group.

A group of us from CPSquare thought it would be useful to reflect on our practices of bringing in a guest. Most of this is in the context of bringing guests into online spaces. After our online discussion I decided it would be useful to compile both my practices and the insights from my colleagues, particulary John Smith and Barb McDonald. Most of this is intended for online situation, but could easily be extrapolated to face to face situations.

Why we bring in guests
1. Experience and understand of a domain and its practice can involve people outside of our group or community. Bringing information/knowledge in from the guest’s specialty/point of view offers:

• another practice angle
• examples of ideas in action in other settings

2. Bringing in guests models the important ways that a host organization can support and enhance the vibrancy and cutting-edge-ed-ness of a community.

3. Having a guest suggests that the knowledge being presented is "alive", which has a few sub-points:

• The "main teacher" isn't the only voice / authority. (It also gives them a break!)
• Knowledge changes over time, so what was cooked up to be presented should be superseded by what's made up by a guest.
• Knowledge is situated in practice and clumped by "point of view

4. The process and experience of the leadership tasks involved in hosting a guest speaker can be beneficial to the community.

5. Guests can expand our networks for work/business/etc. They can connect us to related communities, resources and individuals.

6. Guests can look at our work and thinking and give us an outside perspective. They can be “short term coaches.”

Choosing a guest
People’s time and attention are precious, so the selection of the guest is important to both respecting the guest’s time and the community’s time and attention. Here are some things to think about:

1. What is your vision or the reason for asking in a guest? Why might it matter? Communicate that to potential guests.
2. Explore what's currently "up" in the community? What topics of great interest, changes in the community, or even topios where the community seems to be "stuck," are floating around? Pick an issue of interest and let that guide your guest selection criteria.
3. Who do you know or who have you heard of and might they be interesting to the community? Relationship is a great resource. When it comes down to it, an invitation to someone is a personal thing. It communicates something to the guest (e.g., that they're appreciated). It helps if you have enough of a relationship so that the invitation isn't completely out of the blue, from a stranger.
   
4. Who's available? Usually there are some fixed parameters from the community side about when a visit needs to happen, resources available, etc. Be clear and realistic both with the community and potential guests if there are issues of budget, venue, scope, schedule, etc.
5. What personal styles work well in your community? Different communities have different styles of meeting. You want to pick a guest that will fit with the community's style of being together. A very formal person in an informal environment can be jarring and uncomfortable.
   

Prepare your guest
Make it easy for a guest to succeed:

• Extend a personal invitation. Be explicit about the time commitment and what flexibility you do or don’t have for scheduling the guest.
• Find out how your guest likes to communicate for both preparation and the event. Prefer phone? Email?
• Give the guest some context for their visit. Brief them on what has occurred so far. Highlights, key questions, dynamics, etc. Are they coming into a conversation mid stream? Are there other things going on, or will the community focus on the guest?
• Do a brief interview to see what the guest is currently interested in and working on.
• Get bio information and any background reading that might be useful for the community to review prior to the visit
  

Negotiate the form of the visit. Some possibilities include:

• Prepare and share a case study
• Give a talk
• Be interviewed
• Ask and answer questions with the community
• Model their tools or processes
• Tell stories

Determine the format for the visit.

• Length
• Modality
• Phone call (which could be recorded and shared for those who could not attend)
• Asynchronous conversations
• Mix of online and F2F
• Mix of online modalities
• Host or facilitator
• Guide the guest through any technology that might be used for online visits. Test it with them.

Prepare the community

• Schedule the guest visit with enough advance notice. Be alert to conflicts with other community activities. You want enough member attention and participation to make it worth your guest’s time.
• Get the date on any community listings or calendar.
• Send reminders out prior to the visit. Give information on the format, focus and what participants might expect.
• Gather questions from the community in advance to get the conversation started and to allow the guest to have some sense of what people want to know.
• Share background reading and guest bio well in advance, especially if the pre-reading is essential in understanding the guest’s visit.

Host the guest (including follow up)

• Cancel if you don’t have enough people. Don’t waste people’s time.
• Introduce the guest and review the interaction process (formal or informal).
• Make sure people show up. If an asynchronous conversation is getting no traction, track down some participants and encourage them to jump in. For synchronous events, MAKE SURE there are some participants!
  
• Facilitate the discussions as appropriate.
  
• At the end summarize and thank the guest.
• If there are follow actions or resources, remind and make sure these happen.

Contributors to this guide:
Nancy White
John Smith
Barb McDonald