Category: online interaction

Moving Online in Pandemic: Ecocycle to Attend to What is Shifting

This is the second of a series of posts to support anyone working to move their offline/face to face group interactions online. The preamble is here. If you are an online facilitator or finding yourself in that role, join our group g here. If you are looking for resources, check here.

In the preamble, I shared my thinking that  we need to avoid starting with technology, or even the redesigned agenda as we move online. To make progress, we need to pause and pay attention to what is shifting in the systems around us. Use something like the Ecocycle to get a sense of what is happening at a systems level.

Here is a description of Ecocyle Planning from the Liberating Structures website:

Ecocycle Planning – Analyze the Full Portfolio of Activities and Relationships to Identify Obstacles and Opportunities for Progress What is made possible?

You can eliminate or mitigate common bottlenecks that stifle performance by sifting your group’s portfolio of activities, identifying which elements are starving for resources and which ones are rigid and hampering progress. The Ecocycle makes it possible to sift, prioritize, and plan actions with everyone involved in the activities at the same time, as opposed to the conventional way of doing it behind closed doors with a small group of people. Additionally, the Ecocycle helps everyone see the forest AND the trees—they see where their activities fit in the larger context with others. Ecocycle Planning invites leaders to focus also on creative destruction and renewal in addition to typical themes regarding growth or efficiency. The Ecocycle makes it possible to spur agility, resilience, and sustained performance by including all four phases of development in the planning process.

http://www.liberatingstructures.com/31-ecocycle-planning/

By seeing the whole, diving into the details, and then zooming back to the whole helps us discern a direction forward and useful first steps for moving your meetings online and especially when we are in complex contexts.

I find Ecocyle helps me focus and prioritize rather than get stuck in all the possibilities and challenges. Because it is built upon a flow, we can observe  what is moving forward, what is stuck and where we may be over or under-investing our time and resources. If we spend all our time perpetuating our ok-but-not-wonderful F2F meetings with an unthinking transition to online, we may be making a total mess of things. If we pick just ONE way of going forward, we may lose sight of new, emerging possibilities. If we rush to a single solution, we may miss the possibilities of those who think differently, the positive deviants and ideas that need space to emerge. Ecocycle situates our work in flow and flux, rather than a linear to do list or rigid plan.

Just one more note before we dig in to how to do this. Sometimes we need to clear the field a bit. In this case, fear can cripple. Liberating Structures co-founder Keith McCandless’s work on LS started with superbug infection reduction in hospitals. Keith has been reflecting these past few days about the importance of getting past fear. He has created a playful process you might want to consider, a Pandemic Mad Tea. It can be a well spent 10-15 minutes and really get folks deep into their work, right from the start. (If you want to gain more insights from Keith and his infection reduction work applied to the emerging shut down of the SXSW in Austin this month. Check out this sketch.  It was designed for a F2F conversation, but it gives some very specific Covid-19 context.)   

How to Ecocycle Your Move to Online Meetings

  • Don’t work alone. Engage your colleagues.
  • Turn on the camera. Presumably you can’t meet face to face (F2F) with your team, so fire up your video conference software and turn on the cameras. YES REALLY, TURN ON THE CAMERAS!
  • Read about the basics of Ecocycle on the Liberating Structures website. Then briefly discuss your understanding with each other. Don’t worry if it feels confusing, and don’t spend too much time on this step. We are going to DO it together and then things will clarify!
  • Get a piece of paper, pens, post its. Draw the basic Ecocycle structures on the paper and get ready to start writing on it, putting post it notes – whatever. This is for your own personal doodling/note taking. Next you can do it digitally together.
  • Make a copy of this Ecocycle Online template and share with your team.
  • Follow the steps of doing Ecocycle Planning in the template. I’m including the steps here below in case you want to print them out as well.
    • First alone, make a list of all the things swirling in your mind about moving your meetings online. What are your activities? What are your most important stakeholder and collaborator relationships?
    • Place each activity and/or relationships on your list on your paper Ecocycle in one four developmental phases: birth, maturity, creative destruction, and renewal.What are you doing but you feel it really isn’t working. Position those around the “rigidity trap.” If you have already resolved to stop doing those things, put them in “creative destruction.” Things that have been suggested to you or which you are thinking about, but haven’t yet taken any action on, put in the “gestation area.” Note any really terrific ideas that you really think should move forward, but which are stuck (for whatever reasons) and put them near the “poverty trap” box. Finally, locate all the experiments or pilots in process (both before and in response to the pandemic) in the “birth” area.
    • Build your collective Ecocycle. In your web meeting room, share your items with each other. Discuss the placement of each of your items. You can use a shared whiteboard, Google slides (the template) using self made “post its” with the drawing tool, or share your paper artifacts on camera. Notice what you share that is similar and what is different (there is always useful information in noting both!) NOTE: If your team is more than 4 people, you may want to use your online breakout room and start in pairs, then build up to the whole. Yes, it is worth the time. In pairs you can hear and be heard and discern details that might start to get lost as you think together in a larger group. 1-2-4-All can help you tap your collective intelligence faster than a whole group conversation, even as it feels like it slows things down. Don’t worry!
    • Look at the details. Spend time discussing items that you feel belong in different areas. Tip: if something feels like it fits into multiple areas, break it down into its component elements. Things can get clearer.
    • Look at the big picture. Together discuss what you see. What patterns do you see? Where are there many elements? Few? Look on the middle right, in the “rigidity trap.” Your most liberating first step may be to decide what to STOP doing in order to make space for new and more useful meeting practices (online or off!) Too many things in gestation? Start with the great ideas that are getting stuck in the poverty trap. See promising initiatives in birth? What one step could you take to support and amplify those efforts. See MANY things in gestation? Consider gathering those folks and learn how and why they are succeeding taking their meetings online and build on current energy and success. (Consider “Discovery and Action Dialog” as a process.)
  • Decide what the next step will be moving your meetings online. You might want to consider Purpose to Practice which starts with getting clear on the PURPOSE of going online. Dig deep until you hit the hard-rock purpose!

In the longer term Ecocycle offers us approaches and mechanisms to adapt as conditions continue to change. In other words, there is no magic technology, group process approach or perfect online meeting template, so give that up. Right now is time for evolving!

P.S. Really pay attention to Creative Destruction. Don’t take poor meeting practices from offline into the online space. They only deteriorate! In a future post in this series I’ll share some fabulous alternatives!

P.S.S. The use of Ecocycle can help make sense at many levels. This article explores Covid-19 at the global level. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/coronavirus-synchronous-failure-and-the-global-phase-shift-3f00d4552940

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.

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?

Moving Offline Liberating Structures Practices Online

Image by Tracy Kelly of the BC User Group

My lovely Liberating Structures (LS) community of practice has a monthly newsletter. December’s will be around LS online and as I started marking up their draft, I realized it would be a good idea to get my thinking/practices more clearly outlined rather than trying to “think out loud” and potentially make a mess of their draft! 

What I’m laying out here could be extrapolated to other group processes, not just Liberating Structures. My goal is to describe how I think, talk and practice in online facilitation. I’m going to use the LS “Purpose to Practice” as the scaffold. The beauty of a scaffold is that it holds up an ever-evolving understanding of the practice, versus a static set of “best practices” or the like. This first version will stay at a pretty high level, and then it might be interesting to do some future posts digging deeper into each area.

Purpose

Why is this work important to me and the wider community?
Purpose exists on a couple of different levels here. At the highest, the
purpose of this post is to share learnings about how we transfer facilitation of offline group processes into an online space. In this particular instance, I’m focusing on LS and primarily synchronous online interactions using group meeting tools. My ultimate purpose is to use LS online so that people are easily and delightfully engaged and liberated to achieve their own purpose(s).

Purpose from an LS perspective – the integrity of an LS used online or offline – should be consistent with the structure and theoretically is not informed by the environment. 

Purpose informs what structures people use, regardless of environment. 
In practice, people use each LS in different ways. For example, the stated
purpose on the LS site guides us, but our ability to riff and improvise may surface other, unique purposes.

When thinking about the online environment, there may be more than one LS to choose in terms of what that structure enables (its purpose), but one of those options may be more suited to the online environment.  For example, when the harvest of a process is important, an online  environment makes it easy for everyone to type in and capture their input, faster and easier than a wall of sticky notes. The harvest is done by all, not by the facilitator. The data can be quickly organized, parsed and we can bring forth the best of what was produced.

People’s individual experience and practices using LS also vary. Some of us have favorites that we go to over and over. This may bias towards or away from using LS online because of our comfort of using a particular LS and how easy it is to transfer its use online. 

Principles and Minimum Specifications

What rules must we obey to achieve our purpose? What are the minimum specifications, things we must absolutely do/not do?
Again, principles exists on different levels. There are my personal principles as a facilitator/participant which drive my practices. There are  the principles that sit beneath Liberating Structures . (Or whatever processes you use.) There are the principles of the individuals and group involved.  I am excluding my personal principles/generic facilitator principles and will mostly focus on principles that arise from the online environment and which inform minimum specifications and practices. The other levels are very rich areas for future exploration!

Here are my general principles for using LS online:

Practice with others. The online environment can be unkind to multitasking… (Min Spec: Find a co-facilitating friend)

Use the power of alternating individual, small and large group interaction. Don’t fall trap to top-down online meetings, especially since most technologies favor top-down. (Min spec: unless the group is very small, don’t stay in a large group the whole time – a.k.a “goat rodeo”)

When in doubt, keep things simple. From technology, to process – simplicity gives room for experimentation and emergence. For example, while we might rapidly restring our structures F2F, we may not always be as prepared to do that as quickly online without a deeper practice.  From a tech perspective, we might keep our technology set simple. (Min spec: never introduce more than two new tools to a group. One is ever better!)

Be prepared to be surprised (and innovate, use plan b, etc!) Technology (and the supporting infrastructure like bandwidth and even electricity) are rarely under your control. (Min spec: stay cool! Have a backup plan. Set reasonable expectations.)

Position everything as an experiment and a chance to learn, even while focused on real and urgent purposes. Let go of thinking everything can and should be perfect. (Min spec: let go of the identity of an expert.)

People/Participants

Who must be included to achieve our purpose? 
This one is much easier because there is little distinction between online and offline. The main benefit may be that online we might possibly include MORE people than we could if we were limited to a face to face interaction. In general, my overall facilitation principles drive me to include everyone who is engaged/impacted by the purpose to participate. Even if they are spread all across the globe. That is one of the driving strengths of doing things online, despite the challenges.

Structure

How will we organize to distribute control?
Traditional design and use of online meeting tools have centralized control to the person who has administrative control of the meeting software. Sometimes additional people can be given these “host” or “admin” roles, partially or fully. But the central design of these tools has prioritized control over emergence, theoretically to offer a more consistent experience. Liberating Structures, on the other hand, is designed to engage and unleash everyone. So it is super important to figure out how to hack these tools to distribute control. Here are three potential vectors for distributing control. I’m sure there are more. Ideas?

  • Control can be distributed by handing off control of the software. I start by sharing my screen, now you can share yours. Here, why don’t you work on setting up the breakout groups while I review the process?
  • Control can be explicitly shared by identifying and  distributing /switching roles. I’ll facilitate the process, you work on the technology support. Everyone can take notes in the chat. Invite people into those roles early and often. 
  • Control can be distributed by facilitators being quiet for a while. Some of us facilitators have this urge to fill every second of air time. Silence can give others a chance to breathe, think, and then participate in a way that is easier for them. Facilitators, IT IS NOT ABOUT US!! This is also a practice. 

Practices

What are we going to do? 
This is where it gets practical. It is also where it may be more useful to
describe practices through examples of how to use specific LS online. So I’ll start general, then we can dive into specifics in future posts.

For me there are two intersecting sets of practices: the process facilitation and the technology stewardship. I (along with John D. Smith and Etienne Wenger) have written extensively about technology stewardship. You can get the book (free!) on the Digital Habitats book site, and I will  focus only on LS related facilitation and tech stewardship issues. You will also note how these are related to principles stated above!

  • Don’t do this alone. Have one person focus on the technology stewardship issues while the other facilitates process. It can be devilishly hard to do both at one time. For example, individuals with tech problems need one on one private “back channel” assistance that doesn’t suck up the time and attention of the whole group. Setting up breakout rooms is best done with attention, not while multitasking with process instructions.
  • Select and use technology to facilitate the large group/small group/individual levels of participation that are found in LS. For me the profound difference of using LS online and more traditional “web meetings” or “webinars” is that they enable peer to peer, multi-directional interaction versus being the object of a stream of content from one or few people.  
  • Use multiple modalities beyond voice. We humans pay less attention to verbal interactions when we aren’t facing each other. Video can help – a bit – but not resolve our lackadaisical listening skills. So important instructions (how to do a LS, the invitation, etc.) should also appear visually on a slide, whiteboard or chat room. Don’t underestimate adult’s ability to quickly forget the instructions as well, so make sure they are visible in breakouts. Use images, drawing tools – whatever it takes to create a closer cycle of information exchange and UNDERSTANDING.
  • Keep technology choices as simple as possible. For example, if you pair the web meeting tool Zoom with Google Docs, it may seem really easy if you already have a Google Doc practice. For someone totally new to both, it may be enough to learn one tool at a time. For experts, pile it on! Just because we can use a ton of tools doesn’t mean we always SHOULD. A subset of this is “always keep an eye out for new tech” – the landscape is constantly evolving. 
  • Beware of the heaven/hell of harvesting online. Online tools make it easy for everyone to write/draw/contribute. When it comes to
    sensemaking and harvesting, be careful of creating too much useless/never used content. Ask people to ruthlessly evaluate and harvest the best of what is created. 
  • Don’t restrict yourself. Think through how you will use an LS online based on your purpose instead of slavishly following the instructions in a literal manner. Use your imagination and the strengths of the technology you are using rather than fighting the limitations. This is a great place to expand your LS repertoire.  (Again, there should be a whole post on using the LS Matchmaker with an online perspective. Some of us have been trying to capture our current state of understanding of this.)
  • Give most LS a bit more time online, especially when learning how to do them online. Don’t over-pack your sequence or “string” of structures. While I might do 3-5 in 90 minutes F2F, I’d say 3  online! To date, almost all the LS I’ve used online take more time the first time (sometimes a LOT more time). We get better over time, but if you are always working with new people, build in learning time. And in a perfect world, get the chance to do these together more than once. It gets richer and richer. Another perspective is spreading out a string over multiple, shorter online meetings. Most of us burn out after 90 minutes of full on attention online.
  • Reflect on the similarities and differences of a structure/string online and offline. Chances are this will deepen your overall understanding and facilitation practice, and expand possibilities each time you reflect, learn, apply, and repeat! Better yet, reflect with your peers. Use What, So What, Now What? to debrief at every chance. Share your learnings with the Liberating Structures community
    of practice on Slack.

Resources

Updating “Facilitips”

I received a request to grant usage rights to a VERY old piece I wrote years ago – a general set of heuristics for online facilitation called “Facilitips,” first published in 1999. Way back in the old days!

It was basically my distillation of everything I learned from people like Howard Rheingold, Sue Boettcher, and many others (see the bottom of this post). I realized it was full of typos and could use a brush up, so here it is.

Note: these are not unique to online but have been found IMPORTANT in online facilitation!

General Tips

  • Assume good intent. Approach every contribution with curiosity, expecting surprise and wonder. Remind others of this simple trick.
  • Role model the behavior you wish others to use.
  • Practice and encourage active listening/reading.
  • Be as explicit as possible in your communication.
  • Remember not everyone thinks or perceives the way you do. Seek to understand participants’ styles and needs.
  • Don’t automatically assume understanding — ask for clarification as needed.
  • Trust is slow to be granted, easily taken away. Encourage an environment that values trust.
  • Build trust by doing what you say you will do. Encourage others to do the same.
  • Use irony and humor with care as it does not always come across online as you might have intended. This is particularly relevant in intercultural contexts. You can always use emoticons to clarify! 😉
  • Think before you hit the button and a post goes up.

Process Facilitation Tips

  • Make the bare minimum of rules, expectations or norms consistent, explicit and clear. No one remembers long lists of rules!
  • Provide orientation materials and paths for new members.
  • Respond to all first-time participants. Welcome people by name.
  • Use recognizable names or pseudonyms.
  • Use small group activities to build relationships and “get acquainted.”
  • Encourage the use of personal profiles to build relationships.
  • Consider cultural differences of participants.
  • Help members take ownership of the interaction space.
  • Nurture others to help host and facilitate the group.
  • Encourage people to mentor and assist each other. Recognize mentors.
  • Acknowledge and reciprocate participation.
  • Reply to messages that get no other recognition. Even if it is a “treading water reply.”
  • Use (open-ended) questions to encourage participation. (move beyond yes/no)
  • Stimulate input with positive private emails to individuals.
  • Notice if someone is “missing” for long periods of time. Email them and invite them back.
  • Let others know when you will be offline for extended periods of time.
  • Draw out the quiet members.
  • Help focus the chatters.
  • Don’t fan the flames (or the flamers!) (see difficult situations below).
  • Ask members for feedback. What is working for them? What is not? What is missing?
  • Monitor member activity with available tools to gauge participation and alter your facilitation strategy accordingly.
  • Look for participation patterns and changes in conversations.
  • Consider participation from different time zones. The more your time zones are spread, the more time needed for a group to be in sync.
  • Consider time-delimited events or topics to foster activity.

Facilitation Tips for Task-Oriented Groups

  • Make purpose and task VERY clear/visible/explicit.
  • Post timelines and reminders.
  • Agree on process issues up front. Address as needed on an on-going basis.
  • Make roles and responsibilities clear and visible.
  • Use email as appropriate for notification.
  • When activity levels drop, evaluate to ensure you have compelling reasons for participation: real work, learning, shared tasks, personal or professional development.
  • Let divergent processes flow free. Channel convergent processes.

Tips for Dealing with Difficult Situations

  • Don’t be intimidated by challenges. They are learning opportunities for everyone when handled with grace.
  • Help bring learning out of friction or “creative abrasion.”
  • Help people understand how they come across if others are having difficulty with them. Consider doing this offline or privately.
  • Avoid “one-upmanship” and point-by-point defenses which usually only escalate problems.
  • Use back channel (private) email to resolve problems unless the issue involves a larger group.
  • Use your administration tools (i.e., deleting posts) lightly and carefully.
  • Don’t assume a lack of response means dissent or assent. Seek explicit responses.

Structural & Content Tips

  • Frame topic openers clearly and demonstrate the goal or purpose of the topic or thread.
  • Label topic/threads and conference items clearly.
  • Provide ongoing (and often repeated) guidance on “what goes where” in any interaction space.
  • Don’t pile too much into one post. Break it up into small paragraphs or multiple posts, especially if you are dealing with more than one point or topic.
  • Keep “conversations” in their most logical place — social chat in social spaces, content or action specific interaction in their own spaces or topics.
  • Open new topics to support new discussions emerge as needed.
  • Observe the rhythm of topics and close old topics as they grow dormant.
  • Summarize and/or index conversations of value to make them accessible to the group.
  • Provide great links, resources and relevant, stimulating content to foster interaction.
  • Tag materials if your platform allows.
  • Explore the use of color and images as communication and facilitation tools.
  • Respect copyright and confidentiality. Do not repost other’s postings, photos, references or emails without explicit permission.
  • Keep the online space free from “garbage” such as duplicate posts, or disallowed content (i.e.. pornography, advertising or whatever your group norms dictate.)
  • Don’t obsess about typos. Life is too short.

One for the Road…

  • Facilitation is the combination of knowledge and practice. So practice, practice, practice.
  • Read between the lines.
  • Seek to be fair.
  • Have fun.
  • Use common sense.
  • When all else fails, ask and listen. Again. Again.

Sources:

Notes from Uri Merry, Mihaela Moussou, Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz, Margaret McIntyre, Denham Grey, TJ Elliott and others from the Knowledge Ecology Work Group at http://www.co-i-l.com

Online Facilitation Classes from Wise Circle Training, including Kimberly A. Adler of the National Mentoring Partnership

http://www.fullcirc.com (Full Circle Associates)

http://www.rheingold.com (Howard Rheingold)

http://www.wwcoco.com (Sue Boettcher)

http://www.bigbangworkshops.com (Heather Duggan)

The members of the GroupFacilitation, OnlineFacilitation, and ComPrac listservs