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!
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.
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.”
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.
From WeKnowMore.org
Trustworthy Behaviors
1. Act with discretionKeeping 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.
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 communicationFrequent, 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 communicationPeople 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 transparentPeople 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 languagePeople 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 trustTo 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 limitationsBeing 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. 🙂
Liberating Structures Principles
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
I’ve been absent from my blog catch up due to flooding basements and such things. Ah, good intentions.
Today I was led to a stunning photo by NASA of the Salish Sea region – where I spend my time – in the snow. Click in to look at it with more detail. It made me think of you, dear readers (all seven of you!)
We had record breaking cold and snow the last week in December. Seeing it from space was one of those “if I could only look from a new perspective” moments. We need those moments to question what we are doing and want to do. And to just sit in awe of nature.
Speaking of questioning things, Alexandra Samuel‘s remote work newsletter came out today with great reframing questions to consider not just about the return to F2F work, but the very nature of work. It made me want to convene a Strategic Knotworking Session (draft structure description in process to formalize this Liberating Structure here) about work! Worth a read!
(Note: This is a resurrected draft from 2009. The language I used in the draft I now know is wrong… a particular term. So I am trying a new term: clown. Please read this in the voice of Nancy White of 20098. And know I still have a challenge describing both what I used to do, and figuring out what I’m going to do next…)
This morning I had coffee with two people I met online. I’m always struggling to describe what I do. At one moment today I started to say I was an clown savant around online stuff. But really, I’m more on the clown side than the savant. And proud of it.
You see, I think every village needs its clownt. The person who will ask the dumb question out loud, who will utter something half baked, who is not afraid to fall flat on their face, with enough sense of humor to get up again. Better yet, if they can get up with grace. I aspire to that grace.
Remember, the village clown has permission to say the emperor has no clothes, that the sky is falling or that the strawberries are ripe, right as they have the juice dripping down their chin. The clown is not just for amusement or entertainment, but for sensing things, for voicing the unspoken and trying out the slightly outrageous. They have permission because they are, well, idiots. They can be loved and forgiven, tolerated and cared for.
What a delightful role. I think I have found my niche. Now, however, I have to define what village means when one lives a life both online and offline. Hmmmm…..
Beverly Wenger-Trayner’s old Eudaimonia blog post “What makes something a place?” is no longer online but in my archives of draft blog posts, this bit of text was saved. It seems to elegantly follow the words of Gardner Cambell in yesterday’s post, that I’m adding it into the slip stream. What do you think, Bev? Your description still resonates for me
Funny, I have been thinking about “place” related to another line of inquiry, and that is place as a recognizable border when I feel I am shifting between community and network. In my networks, I don’t feel the absence of place, but instead focus more on PULSE. In community, and even moreso in TEAM when I am intricately reliant on my partners, place becomes MUCH more central.
In communities of practices, I think I slip between place and pulse. Hm, I think I need to think about this concept some more and blog about it. After I do more housecleaning. (On a roll. Painting.)
Network. Resonance. Place. Pulse. There is something there….
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