Lynn Walsh – facilitator

Last night I attended an event where the opportunity was offered at the end of the evening to converse with others who had just watched the same film.  I was invited by a friend to attend and will admit that catching up with her was my highest motivation.  If we’d been invited to connect with everyone in the room before the screening, I may well have been happily shaken out of that intention and into some new conversations and connections.  This post from Viv McWaters on ways of connecting individuals at a large gathering was a timely ‘nudge’ to be aware of my behaviours as a participant as well as a facilitator.  Here’s an excerpt.

I learnt from one of my facilitation mentors, Antony Williams, that individuals generally come to groups with the need to be seen as an individual within the group (everyone likes to be recognised for being themselves first, a member of the group second) and to understand the connections. One of the first things I like to do when attending an event is to see who else will be there, and who I know, or people I’d like to meet in person. I don’t think I’m alone. Antony helped me understand that individuals are making choices and connections in groups all the time, whether conscious or not: where to sit and with whom, who to talk to, what questions to ask.

And on the same note of connecting, here’s a great question about listening from Kevin at Anecdote.

What do you think is more important when you listen – your ability to listen, or your desire to listen?

Say yes in response to an invitation to spend the day walking and talking.

Show up at the appointed time and place.

Try something new to remember people’s names.

Spend a day without a plan.  Start anywhere.

Make mistakes. Laugh off the signs you miss.

Keep moving. Change your vantage point and refresh your mind.

Pay attention - to names, to stories, to landscapes and weather.

Take care of each other - the small gift of a spoon may mean the difference between breakfast or no breakfast for someone.

Look for ways to play together (and notice the joy it brings to those who may be watching).

Welcome newcomers who drop in.

Be committed – finish what you start and do it with style.

Be average – don’t even think about it.

Wake up to the gifts - of art, of conversation, of each other.

Go home a new way.

With thanks to Matt Moore and Johnnie Moore who made the offer and to everyone who showed up to share the ride.

HT to Patricia Ryan Madson for excerpts from her book Improv Wisdom – Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up.

Craig Freshly from the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (USA) posted this on expectations.  What struck me particularly in this note was  ”expectations are planned resentments”.

The Urban Dictionary‘s take on expectations is “a guaranteed way to make sure that people will consistently disappoint you”.  We hear people say “That didn’t go the way that I expected it would” or “That was disappointing”.

Expectations are funny things.  We all have them.  We bring them to our families, to our work, to society in general.  We are told, or we tell ourselves to raise them, lower them, manage them, be realistic with them. Expectations can be a way to ‘prevent’ disappointment or to motivate us.

As facilitators, we bring our own expectations into a group setting.  Participants do the same.  More often than not, they are unspoken.  I like the idea of naming these elephants in the room and then putting them aside.

Seth Godin talks about opening the door.

“Give people a platform, not a ceiling. Set expectations, not to manipulate but to encourage. And then get out of the way, helping when asked but not yelling from the back of the bus.”

Or is having no expectations the way to go?  Letting them go.  Seeing what happens.  Trusting that we won’t be disappointed.

Further to yesterday’s Perfection sucks, I have found some older and recent posts about failure that I’d saved.

Tom Fishburne  nails fail fear with his Wall of Failure post (and cartoon).  Tom’s blog is routinely one of my go-to reads.  Here’s his post on blame-storming too.

William Hall suggests ways to recover from failure at Improv Notebook.  The conversation thread on this post is worth a read too.

Johnnie Moore is planning to get together for a discussion to explore what failure means in an upcoming barcamp in London.  I’d really like to teleport myself across the seas to be there for this one.  So much to chew on.

Some years ago, I was working with a group of managers in a manufacturing company.  One day, I asked  ”how comfortable are you about saying  ”I don’t know” around here?”

They weren’t.  At all.  Saying “I don’t know” was a symptom of a fear of failure that was endemic in their culture.  That fear paralysed some very talented individuals and was getting in their way big time.  They had lost the ability to summons the courage to have a go, to fall over and get back up again.

I remembered this interaction this morning when I read Garr Reynolds’ post – Before success comes the courage to fail.  “An old Japanese proverb says “Even monkeys fall from trees.” (Saru mo ki kara ochiru — 猿も木から落ちる.) Somehow knowing this allows us to push past fear and to participate more fully as we embrace or own imperfections, even as we work to improve.”

I wonder how much we contribute to the fear of failure in others and paralyse them from acting – looking for the mistakes, ‘helpfully’ pointing out what they could have done better and building error rates into performance management (eg targets).  Perfection sucks.  Really it does.  It’s not achievable.  It is not real.  It is not human.

Last year Alexander Kjerulf posted his Top 5 Reasons to Celebrate Mistakes.  It includes this photograph of a poster in the offices of Menlo Innovations, an IT company in Ann Arbor, Michigan:

Alexander says “Yep, it says “Make mistakes faster”. They know that mistakes are an integral part of doing anything cool and interesting and the sooner you can screw up, the sooner you can learn and move on.”

Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney, Australia

The gems from my reader this morning -

from Johnnie Moore via David Gurteen via Esto Kilpi -(I love how we pass it on)  Confusion is not ignorance.

from Chris Corrigan – Simple instructions for building a question – via Anecdote Circles.

from Seth Godin - “As soon as you work hard to please everyone, you have no choice but to sand off the edges, pleasing some people less in order to please others a bit more.” Could someone please pass this one on to politicians generally?

I often dip in and out of my library resources for inspiration – thoughts that might add a spark or element to a workshop that may or may not be useful on the day.  This morning I opened  Margaret Wheatley’s Turning to One Another and found an extract from a poem.

don’t establish the

boundaries

first,

the squares, triangles

boxes

of preconceievd

possibility,

and then

pour

life into them, trimming

off left-over edges,

ending potential:

A facilitation application?  Of course.  I started thinking about templates as boundaries.  I have found and do find templates can be useful at times** - particularly in large scale – empty and open – waiting to be filled as thinking develops in the room.  These short lines prompted some ‘cautious thinking’ about their future application – a need to understand what one might be preventing by introducing boundaries, however apparently slight.

I went on the hunt for more information about A R Ammons.  Among other sources was a 2006 Poetry Daily item.

David Lehman edited A R Ammons: Selected Poems in which he noted that the long poem –  Tape for the Turn of a Year – was “a diary in skinny lines which he typed on a roll of adding-machine tape, the width of the tape serving as the arbitrary but fixed restraint determining the shape of the poem.”   He apparently stopped writing this daily chronicle when he got to the end of the tape.  Hmmm.  “abitrary but fixed restraint”……

My take?  Boundaries are everywhere.  Notice if  I am applying them and understand their potential impacts and / or benefits.

**  I am reminded of the oft repeated words of Sam Kaner in one of his workshops – “It depends”.

Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney, Australia

I really like this post from Chris Corrigan on giving instructions to groups, and finding that balance between clarity and getting out of the way.

Giving instructions poorly leads to confusion and chaos and can quickly erode the trust of a group.  Being too direct can shut people down and create a sterile meeting.  The art is finding the space between the two.

Chris outlines seven practices for giving instructions.  Here is a taste.

Shut up sooner than you think you have to. …. When I have given the instructions, my role is to get out of the way, cleanly, clearly and fast.

People are more capable to be in confusion than you think they are. ….. Let people be a little confused and they will discover that they can get the clarity they need from each other, and they can get to work on the real sources of fear and confusion in the group.

I find it very useful to unpack how we do what we do.  Sometimes  apparently simple things happen instinctively without us really considering the impacts of our smallest actions.

As Viv McWaters wrote in December, “I’m reading Bill Isaac’s book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together.  He writes: “We need to become conscious of what we are doing so that we can refine and share it. This does not mean that we must make a theory of dialogue formal and explicit, but that we in some fashion make it understandable and usable to others.”

Thanks Chris for doing just that.

Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney, Australia

Last year, I heard and read Viv McWaters talk and write about her “favourite mantra of the moment – conversations, then relationships, then transactions”. It made sense to me immediately and has become one of my key thinking elements in the design and facilitation of workshops.

I have been playing with it – sometimes openly and other times without specifically using the term – and find that it really makes a difference, particularly for groups who want to go straight to the ‘action planning’ piece – you know – “why we’re here in the first place”.   It’s not purely linear.  Some of those conversations can also lead to the realisation that transactions/agreements won’t take place until there is more understanding of x, y or z.

I am also realising ways that its application (or not) applies personally.  I can’t expect others to step out of their comfort zones unless I’m willing to go there too.

Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney, Australia

How good does this  look ?  It feels like the perfect landscape to be spending a few weeks at the end of a busy year.   Tomorrow a journey to Laos begins and with it comes time to relax and reflect.

This year I’ve been privileged to work across a wide range of sectors including education, housing, local government, entertainment, infrastructure, retail, warehousing and many amazing not-for-profit organisations.   I’m also grateful for the opportunity to work in association with Professional Facilitators International aka Shoshana Faire and Alan Bassal.

I’ve been reflecting on holding space and how important it is.  It’s particularly critical when the content is emotional.   For me, holding space isn’t a conscious or necessarily obvious ‘thing’.   Sometimes, though, the circumstances are such that I find myself seeing it happen, almost as if I’m an outside observer.

It was like this at my most recent facilitation.  A trust emerged very quickly as people introduced themselves.  I can’t really analyse it other than to notice I was aware of a stillness and a letting go of any supposed time constraints as each person shared their stories.   There was anger and fear, weariness, cynicism and hope.  Through all of that individually expressed emotion, there was grace.  I can’t explain it in any other way.  Sometimes it felt very difficult and there were views expressed that perhaps everyone might not be able to come together.  But they did.  And this one gathering of many gatherings in 2010 is why I love what I do.

I’m excited about this trip to Laos.  And I’m looking forward to coming home to a new office – a space fresh with new paint and a garden view. I’m ready to hit the ground running in January and open to more offers to facilitate, to collaborate and to learn.   If you’re up for all or any of the above, drop me a note or give me a call.

Cheers till 2011.

Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney, Australia