From the draft archives (we are approaching the end of 2009!), there is some interesting differences and similarities between our online events today and in 2009. Check out these slides from Lucy Garrick. Lucy, what would you recommend today? 🙂
Virtual Open Space Conference 5.09.
From the Drafts Archive:
Still a gem from 2009. I have always been reluctant to join in on credentialing and certification schemes. I resist it personally (my baggage, I know), it focus on the individual rather than the field, and, for process work, context is critical and practice is always evolving.
I loved how Tenneson Woolf talked about Credentials as Practice. I’ve put a few snips below, but please, go read the original post!
Tenneson Woolf: Credentials as Practice
1. Credential as Practice — An older kind of thought would be credential as certification. As bestowed. Yes, there is value in this…Yet, there is also immense freedom to think of being credentialed by our practice…2. Work with Friends — Lots of friends. Practice together. Learn together. Feed off of each other to sharpen skills to see at the next level…Â
3. Offer Something — A harvest. A story. A poem. A question. An invitation to work together…
4. Learn in Public — Make it transparent. Open… Half-cooked ideas. Learnings. Insights. Learn on behalf of the whole.
5. Have a Presencing Practice — With my friends at The Berkana Institute, I learn that this work is about emergence…Â
6. Examine Core Beliefs — Keep this as an active conversation…Â
7. Learn Global. Connect Regional. Act Local … Doing the work in front of us.
More from the drafts archive!
I went to college with a guy name Frank Konhaus. We both worked for the student workforce. One of our ongoing gigs was in the language lab, duplicating tapes for the language classes. It was dull, repetitive work. I could imitate the sound of the machines. What a skill. Frank could spin a good story and was always spanning across disciplines. We were both serious Joni Mitchell fans and he was generous with stories of being a helper in some of her recording sessions. That always blew me away. Later we worked on the tech crew that supported all the inhouse and road shows at Duke University where there were always adventures.
I was not surprised when years later he resurfaced in my social media stream with his project collaborating with his partner, Ellen Cassily: Cassilhaus, a space for art, architecture and community.
In their 2009 blog post they reflected on art and generosity. We need more of that. Take a read and enjoy. And check out their virtual artist exhibitions and events!
Blast from the past!
This will give you a laugh about the types of things we were doing back in the early 2000’s for synchronous online interaction. This is a conversational snippet from the now defunct CPSquare community (a community about communities of practice.) Skype allowed us global teleconferencing, but no video at the time. I love that dredging this up reminded me I learned the technique from Fernanda Ibarra! The image referred to in the conversation is below. Ah, the days of clipart. More from 2010.
- Just used this today with a group of people most of whom had not used Skype for teleconferencing before.  I posted the slide (modified to arrange the chairs in clock mode as you talked about in the FCoP telecon the other day) as a google presentation. Names were ready in the center and to open I asked people to “take a seat” by moving their names — demonstrating by moving mine. Then we used the result for the speaking order (group was small — only 8 people) — it worked like a charm — Fernanda Ibarra and Nancy White — you are geniuses! As you said in your guest appearance at FCoP earlier this week, small things do indeed make a big difference. One person mentioned the “chair thing” as an example of “what worked” at the end of the call when we did a round robin of what worked, what didn’t, what would you do differently — so I had the opportunity to mention that I learned about the circle of chairs from you!
best,
Ann Braun
On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 4:00 PM, < Help_in_Real_Time@conversations.cpsquare.org> wrote:
- Excellent Webinars Reply #10
- Posted onSat Feb 07 2009 19:19:00 GMT-0100 (PST)
- Nancy White-
- One Small Interactive Exercise per Webinar
- I learned this small trick from Fernanda Ibarra, who I think is a Foundations alumna as well, so maybe we can lure her here. She showed me the value of doing some small, easy interactive exercise at the start of a webinar which stealthily increases people’s familiarity with the tool and adds something to the meeting.
- Fernanda taught me about the chairs. She puts up a slide (I’ve attached my version) at the start and asks everyone to use the text tool to put their name under a chair. This sets the sense of group/circle/conversation, acquaints people with the whiteboard tools and is an easy, non-intimidating task.
- Attachment: chairs.ppt
So many years ago there was this great blog, Weknowmore.org run by Antoon van het Erve and Johan Lammers. (Hey, both of you are also KM4Dev members. Johan, here is your KM4Dev bio! Remember this post?). The post is now digital dust. I had copied it back in 2009 with the intention of blogging about it. I could not find the particular post on the Wayback Internet Archive, but I was able to find one page for a screen grab.
The post was titled: “Ten ways how leadership can influence and promote interpersonal trust in knowledge management behavior and processes.”Â
As I read them, they resonated with the 10 leadership principles that emerged from Liberating Structures. They are not the same, but they are related. Take a look and see if there is something resonant and useful for you. I’ve put a few notes in bold dark red.Â
Trustworthy Behaviors
1. Act with discretion Keeping a secret means not exposing another person’s vulnerability; thus, divulging a confidence makes a person seem malevolent and/or unprofessional.
- Be clear about what information you are expected to keep confidential.
- Don’t reveal information you have said you would not . . . and hold others accountable for this.
In the digital era, this becomes a gnarly intersection with both transparency, and organizational policies and practices. Secrets are rare things these days.Â
2. Be consistent between word and deed When people do not say one thing and do another, they are perceived as both caring about others (i.e., they do not mislead) and as being competent enough to follow through.
- Be clear about what you have committed to do, so there is no misunderstanding.
- Set realistic expectations when committing to do something, and then deliver.
In complex, uncertain times, there is the layer of working with uncertainty and ambiguity when setting expectations!
3. Ensure frequent and rich communication Frequent, close interactions typically lead to positive feelings of caring about each other and better understandings of each other’s expertise.
- Make interactions meaningful and memorable.
- Consider having some face-to-face (or at least telephone) contact.
- Develop close relationships.
In our remote/hybrid/F2F continuum, we have to reexamine these practices. What worked in the “good old days” pre-pandemic may no longer be relevant. This is a place for creative destruction not only for communications practices, but understanding the value of them – not just doing them because we always did them!
4. Engage in collaborative communication People are more willing to trust someone who shows a willingness to listen and share; i.e., to get involved and talk things through. In contrast, people are wary of someone who seems closed and will only answer clear-cut questions or discuss complete solutions.
- Avoid being overly critical or judgmental of ideas still in their infancy.
- Don’t always demand complete solutions from people trying to solve a problem.
- Be willing to work with people to improve jointly on their partially formed ideas.
Ditto to #3!
5. Ensure that decisions are fair and transparent People take their cues from the larger environment. As a result, there is a “trickle down” effect for trust, where the way management treats people leads to a situation where employees treat one another similarly. Thus, fair and transparent decisions on personnel matters translate into a more trusting environment among everyone.
- Make sure that people know how and why personnel rules are applied and that the rules are applied equally.
- Make promotion and rewards criteria clear-cut, so people don’t waste time developing a hidden agenda (or trying to decode everyone else’s).
See #1. I also think we have to rethink the value and application of rules, heuristics and practices in complex contexts where rules are not useful!
Organizational Factors
6. Establish and ensure shared vision and language People who have similar goals and who think alike find it easier to form a closer bond and to understand one another’s communications and expertise.
- Set common goals early on.
- Look for opportunities to create common terminology and ways of thinking.
- Be on the lookout for misunderstandings due to differences in jargon or thought processes.
Reframe to purpose, which can be tracked or measured, even if the indicators are less-than-perfect. The rest is still spot on. But “vision” is too vague these days. It leads to the very misunderstandings noted above.
7. Hold people accountable for trust To make trustworthy behavior become “how we do things here,” managers need to measure and reward it. Even if the measures are subjective, evaluating people’s trustworthiness sends a strong signal to everyone that trust is critical.
- Explicitly include measures of trustworthiness in performance evaluations.
- Resist the urge to reward high performers who are not trustworthy.
- Keep publicizing key values such as trust-highlighting both rewarded good examples and punished violations-in multiple forums.
What is the line or continuum of measuring trust and measuring performance, progress, etc.? How do we succeed in lower trust environments while trust is forming or absent but we still work together. This gets to the nubbins of trust itself and how essential it is. I think this is super context dependent. But I’ll save that for another day. This is getting LONG!
Relational Factors
8. Create personal connections. When two people share information about their personal lives, especially about similarities, then a stronger bond and greater trust develop. Non-work connections make a person seem more “real” and human, and thus more trustworthy.
- Create a “human connection” with someone based on non-work things you have in common.
- Maintain a quality connection when you do occasionally run into acquaintances, including discussing non-work topics.
- Don’t divulge personal information shared in confidence.
Still resonates with my “if we get to know each other, even a little bit, we are less likely to shoot each other…
9. Give away something of value Giving trust and good faith to someone makes that person want to be trusting, loyal, and generous in return.
- When appropriate, take risks in sharing your expertise with people.
- Be willing to offer others your personal network of contacts when appropriate.
Love this one. The most.
Individual Factors
10. Disclose your expertise and limitations Being candid about your limitations gives people confidence that they can trust what you say are your strengths. If you claim to know everything, then no one is sure when to believe you.
- Make clear both what you do and don’t know.
- Admit it when you don’t know something rather than posture to avoid embarrassment.
- Defer to people who know more than you do about a topic.
Well, maybe I love THIS one the most. 🙂
As I revisited the principles and cross checked them to the things above, my sense was the principles support the practices noted above. Your thoughts? The comments are OPEN!
Include and Unleash Everyone
Practice Deep Respect for People and Local Solutions
Build Trust As You Go
Learn by Failing Forward
Practice Self-Discovery Within a Group
Amplify Freedom AND Responsibility
Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See
Invite Creative Destruction To Enable Innovation
Engage In Seriously-Playful Curiosity
Never Start Without Clear Purpose