Category: facilitation

Moving Online in Pandemic: Preamble

EDITED: To include more on differentiation/integration. I had the terms all wrong. Go figure! And to add a link to a group for online facilitators considering how to support the rapid move to online meetings. Join here.

I am going to share a series of blog posts over the next days about how to move your group interactions online. For me, however, there is some starting context, a preamble, if you may. Skip this if you want to get right to the point. Come back to it later if you wish. However, if you are feeling fear, confusion, frustration, stop and take a minute with me to breathe and reflect.

Here we go…

The emails have been flying, phone and Zoom conversations everywhere asking “how do we move this meeting, event, workshop, whatever online in response to the novel Corona virus outbreak?” With each conversation, observing intense online conversations, I keep asking myself, what can I contribute? As an early student, teacher and writer on online facilitation, I sense I can be of use. What should I do?

In typical Nancy fasion I jumped into action, started up an email list, opened a Google Doc to share resources, responded to individual requests for help. Boing, boom, zip, zap!

But it felt like I was missing something fundamental. All that disconnected response. As I look back, three moments helped solidify my focus.

The first was in a conversation with Neil McCarthy on Thursday. We were swapping our group process design principles and heuristics. Everyone was asking “how do I move this meeting online?”

Neil shared his understanding about the need for holding space for people to be individuals (Jungian “Individuation“), to be heard, to be different, and holding space for people to find common ground and move forward. His pragmatic example of HOW is the power of letting people first talk in pairs to establish their own thinking, perspective and even identity BEFORE trying to work towards group movement forward or even cohesion. This is why both of us really find utility in Liberating Structures, particularly the foundation pattern of 1-2-4-All (in any variation – 1-2, 1-3-all, etc.)

EDIT: I got a bit more information from Neil. He shared that it is differentiation/integration theory. “I got the phrase from Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff book “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There“. A great book for “leading meetings that matter.” It also shows up in Dialogic Organization Development, edited by Bushe and Marshak, but they don’t call it D/I theory. Peter Block in his book Community: the structure of belonging, uses phrases like “If I cant say no then my yes doesn’t mean anything.” These are all referencing the same concept. ” THANKS, Neil!

In many online meetings there is this fundamentally flawed assumption that we can automagically do everything together at the same time. Neil’s very clear articulation helped me suggest a pattern for online design that might easily shared. It was a systems insight at a pretty find grained level.

A second shimmer of insight at the much broader systems level arrived at the end of 90 minutes online Zoom gathering with more than 100 people from the EU wrestling with how to move so many meetings online. After the formal end, some of us stuck around to debrief. I summarized by saying “Don’t just look at your technology choices. Pay attention to what is shifting. Use something like the Ecocycle to get a sense of what is happening at a systems level. It might help you discern useful first steps and set a direction forward.” Something resonated, even as I was forming my understanding while thinking. (Thank you brain, for working even when I’m not really trying!) You will see the Ecocyle in action in the next post of this series!

Finally, I woke up early early this morning and read the day’s meditation response shared by a friend (Thank You Rachel!), “The Law of Least Effort.” Here is a snippet (I’m working on the source and will edit it in once I’ve secured it.)

“When your actions are motivated by love, your energy is multiplied and accumulated. Release of this energy allows you to redirect it towards the creation of everything that you want. When your spirit is your inner point of reference, all of the immense power of the Universe is at your disposal. You can then use this energy creatively, moving toward abundance and evolution.”

Abundance. Love. Evolution.

Balance that message with all of the fear, partisanship and rancor that flows over us from the media. Some of it alerts us to act. Some of it cripples us. Then, all of a sudden it hit me. Go back to the fundamental principles shared by Donella Meadows in her seminal work, Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system. She so elegantly called this “dancing with the system.” I want to share one image from http://donellameadows.org/a-visual-approach-to-leverage-points/ that brings some of this playful approach to deadly serious issues.

The point? Start by stopping, looking, stepping back, look closer, step back, further back, look closer, closer, ready? FIX IT. These are the PRACTICES that allows us to dance with systems, to use the 12 leverage points Meadows so lovingly discovered, crafted and shared.

So if you, like me, sense a call, an invitation to to do something, but are feeling overwhelmed, consider the meditation. Consider Donella Meadows insights and then situate yourself in the place where you can contribute, from the micro to the macro. Join with me or some other person. (Don’t do this alone…)

The invitation calling me is “How can we stay connected to each other in any way in a time of social distancing?” The pragmatic manifestation of that will be to think with fellow practitioners, share practices, insights, ideas and inspirations on how groups can productively meet, engage, connect and then experiment and iterate to make progress online in a way that builds on our strengths and helps us move past fear into abundant action.

Please join me. Part 2 will be up within 24 hours.

The Dangers of Unexamined Empathy

Don’t make others fit into your view of the world

image of reflections on a pond on Whidbey Island in the early morning fog

The tension in the room was palpable as people waited for the meeting to begin.  Some perched on the edge of their seats silently staring ahead. Others fidgeted nervously. It was a first. More than 25 people from seven countries had gathered together in one room for this planning session, convened to determine the strategic direction and, ultimately, the fate of this team.

At first, the facilitators had the team’s full attention. They reviewed the agenda and did some cursory intros before diving into an exercise designed to build empathy by getting to know something about each team member. The facilitators’ intention was to focus on the interpersonal aspects of the team to warm things up by sharing their hobbies. While some people gamely stood up, others remained seated with facial expressions reflecting a combination of confusion, surprise, and anger.

People began to vent their displeasure openly, with comments like:: “What the…..????” “What a complete waste of time!” “What if someone thinks my hobby is silly?” “That is none of anyone’s business what I do outside of work!”

The facilitators were caught off-guard. After all, this exercise worked well before with teams from high-tech organizations in the greater Boston and NYC areas.  Luckily, they had a Plan B that went better, but they struggled to earn the trust of the group for the rest of the meeting. What went wrong? What were their blind spots and biases in the design and delivery of the meeting?

In this post, which I had the pleasure to co-write with Nancy Settle-Murphy of Guided Insights, we reflect on ways that empathy as we understand it, can actually work against us as facilitators or team leaders, and the importance of checking our biases and assumptions at every step. We were stimulated to think and write together after reading Kaitlyn Greenidge’s recent essay in the New York Times (“The Bearable Whiteness of Little Women”) which reminded us of our white privilege and prompted us to think about shifts we need to make in our own facilitation practices.

Nancy White: I had always thought of “being empathetic” and “walking in someone else’s shoes” as a useful thing, something I valued. But this masked my unconscious privilege as a white person by not realizing if I am not careful, every choice I make in designing group process comes “from my shoes.” I’m asking others to participate through my worldview. I started writing a few thoughts and Nancy Settle-Murphy chimed in.

Nancy Settle-Murphy: Ironically, even though I lead unconscious bias workshops, I hadn’t really considered the extent to which my own biases affect the design of my programs. I’d always hoped that if everyone would just “trust the process,” everything would be fine. That’s because I was looking at the program through my own eyes, rather than imagining how it might feel to others.

Together, we brainstormed some things for us to practice, as facilitators, trainers or team leaders, to work more from compassion than empathy, starting with our understanding of the difference between the two.

  • Distinguish between empathy and compassion. In a Vox.com article, The Case Against Empathy, author Sean Illing quotes author Paul Bloom: “By empathy, I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you’re in pain and I feel your pain — I am feeling empathy toward you. If you’re being anxious, I pick up your anxiety. If you’re sad and I pick up your sadness, I’m being empathetic. And that’s different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it. I care about you, but I don’t necessarily pick up your feelings.” Empathy can be draining, while compassion  can be invigorating.
  • Don’t make others fit into your view of the world.  In her New York Times essay, Greenidge laments the preponderance of white characters in American literature. “When we as black girls read most books, we have to will ourselves into the bodies on the page…and do an internal edit that white readers of the same canon do not necessarily have to exercise.” It’s true that reading fiction can be an exercise in empathy, she says, but, she asks: “Is empathy really empathy if it’s flowing in only one direction? If so, empathy looks less like identifying with the other and more like emotional hegemony.” Indeed.
  • We may think we’re empathizing when we’re really not. We see others through the prism of our own experiences, thoughts and feelings. It’s pretty much impossible not to. But as facilitators (or leaders), we like to think we’re especially empathic people. In reality, our empathy often typically extends only to those people we see as similar or pleasing to us. Says Bloom: “I actually feel a lot less empathy for people who aren’t in my culture, who don’t share my skin color, and don’t share my language. This is a terrible fact of human nature, and it operates at a subconscious level.” The key is to challenge ourselves constantly at critical junctures – when we’re designing our meetings, creating activities, asking questions, or making interventions.
  • Misguided empathy can sometimes be worse than none. We may think we’re being sensitive when we take into account the differences among certain people or groups (e.g. Mindy the Millennial, Bob the Boomer, Asra the Engineer). In reality, making quick stereotypes can lead to flawed assumptions that become the basis for the design of training programs, team assignments, professional development plans and so much more.
  • Design with instead of for. We can view our designs, methodologies, approaches, etc. from other perspectives, either by engaging stakeholders in design, asking others, or by prototyping how others might see this, based on what we’ve learned about their culture. What about our approach might be uncomfortable or off-putting? Which approaches might transcend differences? Or better yet, leverage the power of those differences?
  • Become more aware of our unconscious biases. For starters, we can take one or two Implicit Association Tests (free online). Be open and curious about what we’ve learned Discuss our results with people we trust.  Don’t judge ourselves harshly if our results show that we have a strong preference for a particular culture, religion, gender, body type, etc.
  • Learn more about other cultures, ethnicities, races, religions, demographics, etc. – especially those represented by the people we work with, or those we will support. Read books by authors from those groups, seek articles and books written by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and especially those with lived experience.
  • Seek feedback from people who can observe us in action (whether in person or virtually). It is often hard to see our own blind spots. Ask colleagues or those whose opinions you trust to critically (not judgmentally) observe your actions, words, nuances expressions, etc. in calls, meetings and in informal settings. Especially ask for help from people outside of your usual “crowd” or colleague group. But be wary of asking “representative” members of certain groups to do your work for you. It’s a fine line.
  • Wield your power thoughtfully. The greater the power we have over others, the less likely we are to feel empathy toward them. In an experiment by the Max Planck Institute, researchers concluded that when you are in an “agreeable and comfortable” situation it is more difficult to empathize with another person’s suffering. Participants who were feeling good about themselves assessed their partners’ negative experiences as less severe than they actually were. This has profound implications for both facilitators and leaders, who have a hard time relating and responding to concerns of those they consider to be “lesser than,” whether due to hierarchy, place of origin, ethnicity, level of education, or other factors.
  • Always have a Plan B instead of “Trust Me.” Despite our best intentions and most thoughtful planning, our approach may misfire. If we sense resistance, rather than debating the merits of our idea and asking people to just “trust the process,” we are prepared to change the process. Be curious about why our approach wasn’t working, either in the moment or afterwards. We really can learn a lot from our mistakes.
  • From empathy to compassion. This is probably the hardest to put into specific action steps. We think it starts with self-awareness (the facilitator’s best friend). It may be like the distinction between enabling and empowering by Nedra Tawwab. We start with what others ask for, not what we think they need, even if they haven’t fully arrived at clarity of their needs. This is a delicate, emergent space. But it is the right space for us to focus attention. If we stop pretending, or worse, believe we accurately “feel” what others feel, and instead ask, listen and respond based on that data, we’ll be setting off in the right direction. As they say, this is a compass, not a map.

Summary from Two Nancys

We are not omniscient. Assuming the stance of empathy does not make us understand others automatically, and may in fact get in the way of being compassionate. As facilitators and leaders, we must be critically self-aware of our privilege, power and shortcomings. We must design group process to engage everyone in ways that work for them, not designed to make our jobs familiar, comfortable, or even easy for us. For if it were easy, then who needs someone to support the group process? If we were all skilled at including and unleashing the diversity in each room we enter together, many of our problems would be on their way to solutions. So now is the time to improve our own self-awareness and practices.

What tips can you share? Please comment below and/or send to nancy@guidedinsights.com. Nancy Settle-Murphy will share in a future issue of her newsletter, with your permission. Comments here will just be here!

Links

Finding the Roots of Confusiasm

Over the years, the concept of “confusiasm” has become not only near and dear to my heart, but useful in so many ways that I never expected. It became a rallying cry for emergent, collaborative learning at a professional development project for professors at the University of Guadalajara (UdG Agora Project – confusiasmo! Translated!). It is a term that has been lovingly adopted by the Liberating Structures global network of practitioners. It has had its moments as a meme on Twitter.

Confusiasm is the happy coupling of confusion and enthusiasm. You know, that moment when something interesting is happening but you can’t quite understand it, but it feels really right. The verge of discovery. The hunch that in a messy, complex situation you are starting to see patterns that give you just enough confidence to keep moving forward and not give up.

Carl Jackson

Carl Jackson: the father of Confusiasm?

Because of the value it has accrued, I wanted to go back to my understanding of the roots of the word – when and where it was coined. My memory of it came from a game that emerged at one of the face-to-face gatherings of the KM4Dev (Knowledge management for development) community of practice, instigated by Carl Jackson, now of Westhill Knowledge in the UK. I think it was the 2006 Brighton gathering, but I’m not sure. It could have been Almada, Portugal in 2008. It starts showing up in websearches in 2008 so I suspect our play with the word was in 2006.

Carl has this uncanny ability to create portmanteaus, words. From Wikipedia: “a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phonemes (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog,[or motel, from motor and hotel.” All during the gathering he could coin them faster, and with a great deal more humor, than the rest of us. It was amazing!

So is that where confusiasm was born? I don’t really know. In the true spirit of Confusiasm, Carl wonders if it may have been our KM4Dev peer Ewen Le Borgne who coined the word at Almada. Ewen is that kind of human being too! So it is all possible. Ewen, what do you remember?

The earliest web reference to confusiasm I could find was actually a typo in a reference in a research paper, mispelling Confusianism with Confusiasm. (The paper was cited as Lim, C. and Lay, C.S. (2003) ”Confusiasm and the protestant work ethic”. Asia Europe Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 321-322. In the journal, the title is Confucianism and the Protestant Work Ethic)

Nowadays I see it in many places.

In today’s world, so much is messy and uncertain. Our ability to predict things is, well, paltry. But we have to keep going. So let’s marshal our confusiasm! Onward! And THANKS CARL!

Empathy Flowing in Many Directions

A friend shared a New York Times opinion piece by Kaitlyn Greenidge yesterday that really planted a seed in my brain. First of all, read the piece. Especially if you are a white woman, as am I. It is a tangible, down to earth example to help us understand white privilege. And that is work I am/need to be doing continually. It is an ever changing path; a rocky shoreline.

So when we as black girls read most books, we have to will ourselves into the bodies on the page, with a selectivity and an internal edit that white readers of the same canon do not necessarily have to exercise.

“So what?” one might think. Isn’t reading fiction an exercise in empathy?

But empathy for whom, and for what higher purpose, always complicates this supposedly benevolent action. Is empathy really empathy if it’s generally asked to flow in only one direction? Under those circumstances, empathy looks less like identifying with the other and more like emotional hegemony. – by Kaitlyn Greenidge, NYTimes, 1/13/2020.

The quote I pulled above was useful for me today both professionally and personally. As a group process geek in my work, I’ve always sought to cultivate empathy in any group. Ms. Greenidge helped me see that empathy might also be oppression. Is it right to claim empathy with another when we clearly don’t understand, see or acknowledge their world view and experience?

Though it’s examination of the Greta Gerwig movie version of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” as viewed by women of color, Ms. Greenidge helps me raise some new questions for myself when working with people coming from different contexts.

When designing and facilitating group process, how are we discovering and staying conscious of our filters that may, if left unchecked, render even empathy as a deficit because it is “emotional hegemony?” Here are three starting points for me today.

  1. What values, myths or traditions of my own am I consciously or unconsciously calling on to frame group process?
  2. How am I broadening the range of values, myths and traditions I include to reflect the seen and potentially unseen contexts of people in the group?
  3. How does my language reflect my unconscious frames (and thus biases) and who can I call upon to help me by listening to my patterns and challenge them. Ideally, not asking a person of color to do this. This is not their job!

What recommendations do you have so that when we utilize our empathy, we are not inadvertently rendering it as a weapon? How do we find our path?

Developing a Shared Meeting Agenda

A colleague asked me today about how I work with teams who need to develop meeting agendas – hopefully together. As a facilitator, I’m particularly interested not simply doing this FOR a client, but building the capacity for them to do it.

Most facilitators have some version of this process. It is neither innovative nor unique. But for me it has been useful. Today’s request reminded me it might be helpful to share my process here on my (too) sleepy blog.

Below you can skim the process and see a template you can copy in Google Drive to try it yourself! Screen shot below just to spice things up a bit!

  1. Agree on tangible meeting outcome(s) together. Often I jump start this by asking “by the end of this meeting we want people to think, feel, know and do next…” Get those on the table, prioritized if necessary. Trim down to reality check after the first draft and once drafted, ensure agenda meets these outcomes. It is amazing how often there is not a match! I typically do this on a phone call with the planning team, and work through steps 1 and 2 of this process.
  2. Design first draft of agenda together. I use a table with the following columns: Time (from x to Y), Description/Purpose (what we want out of this agenda item), Process (how we will do it – more on that in a second) and Notes which includes who leads, who is responsible for any artifacts, etc). I like to do this in a collaborative editing space, NOT IN A CIRCULATING Word doc. I set it up before the planning call and share the URL. This online co-editing is not always an accepted practice, but it makes the process visible and participation (or lack of it) apparent. This visibility is critical in moving from us as consultants or leaders doing the work for them, to us coaching, to us being on call only as needed. It is very helpful when there are at least two members rather than one designing (yay co-chairs). They can use their unique talents together and it also is less risky for them individually.
  3. Review the agenda with a lens that reflects the values and principles of the group. Note, there is an assumption that a group has these. If not, this might be part of the step 1 conversation. This step does NOT mean we will have designed specific agenda items FOR these principles, but have chosen processes for the work agenda that leverage these things. One lens I frequently use comes from a Communities of Practice (CoP) perspective. It reflects the three parts of a CoP: community, domain and practice. When reviewing the agenda together we ask:
    • Is there something in this meeting that allows people to get to know/trust/enjoy each other better (community)? This supports the subsequent actions/follow up.
    • Is there something that deepens their domain understanding (domain)? This gives each individual some of their own professional development while participating in a meeting. Value in meetings should accrue in all directions if possible.
    • Does each person have a chance to practice what they need to do to execute going forward?
  4. Reality check against time/resources. Review and simplify where ever possible. I tend to make everything more complicated than it needs to be on first pass. This is where things tighten down.

With some groups there is not a widespread skill set of understanding their process options, how to mix and match them, etc. Good news – a friend and I are running a two day “Liberating Structures Immersion Summer Camp” in July down at Dumas Retreat Center here in Western Washington to teach this stuff. Leave me a note in the comments and I will let you know when the details are released.

Most meeting planning I’m involved in happens in an online video conference room (like Zoom) where we can screen share, see each other and take notes together. Phone is a distant second best. Most people cannot afford the time to do the planning F2F.

In a good working context, one person sketches out the first draft and invites people to review. We have our online meeting to discuss the outcomes, principles and draft. A DIFFERENT PERSON does the second draft with asynchronous online comments. The next online meeting is to prepare execution of meeting. If artifacts need drafting (slides, handouts, share background readings or data) we link those into the agenda so all materials are easily accessed and, where appropriate, shared.

Here is one more tip. While the facilitators’ agenda can be as detailed as you want, only send a summary agenda to participants UNLESS you are trying to build everyone’s meeting facilitation practices. I typically only put general times to avoid the “oh, I can slip out and take my phone call during this agenda item because it doesn’t matter to me.” Uh, no, our goal is that the entire agenda matters to you. If it doesn’t, we are failing.