Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 was an extraordinary event filled with insightful sessions and meaningful connections. On February 6th and 7th, we hosted our annual facilitator summit, featuring a diverse range of speakers who shared their expertise and experiences. The theme for this year’s summit was COMMUNITY, emphasizing the importance of community in learning and growth.

The summit provided an invaluable opportunity for facilitators to learn, connect, and grow. We were privileged to hear from a diverse group of speakers who shared their experiences, insights, and strategies for facilitating impactful meetings and events.

Overall, the Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 was a remarkable and enriching experience for all participants. We eagerly look forward to next year’s summit and the chance to further hone our facilitation skills and strengthen our community. Read on for a summary of each of the workshops delivered by our facilitators.

Liya James

Relational Attunement: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

In Liya’s session “Mastering Inner Dialogues,” she explored the significance of our internal narratives in shaping our facilitation effectiveness. She provided practical tools for identifying and managing these inner conversations to improve self-awareness and decision-making.

Through techniques like mapping dialogues and practicing mindful reflection, facilitators can achieve greater clarity and presence. This session emphasizes the power of internal dialogue in influencing external interactions and offers strategies to harness this for more impactful facilitation.

Durell Coleman

Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders: Current State/End State

During “Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders,” Durell Coleman shares strategies for navigating the complexities of achieving consensus in groups with diverse interests. He emphasized the importance of understanding each stakeholder’s perspective and aligning on common goals.

Durell introduced practical techniques such as active listening, open communication, and structured decision-making processes to foster collaboration. He also highlighted the role of a facilitator in guiding discussions, managing conflicts, and ensuring that every voice is heard. By applying these methods, facilitators can help groups reach mutually beneficial agreements and drive successful outcomes.

Ozay Moore

What’s in the Soil?

In “What’s in the Soil?” Ozay Moore explored the metaphor of soil to illustrate the foundational elements necessary for effective facilitation. He likens healthy soil to a fertile environment where ideas can grow and flourish. Ozay emphasized the importance of creating a supportive and nurturing atmosphere for participants, drawing parallels between the nutrients in soil and the essential components of a successful facilitation process.

He discussed the need for facilitators to cultivate trust, encourage open communication, and provide the right mix of structure and flexibility. By understanding and enriching the ‘soil’ of their facilitation environments, practitioners can foster more productive and engaging sessions.

Dirk Van Onsem & Erik Skogsberg

Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems

During “Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems,” Erik and Dirk dove into the power of system mapping to drive organizational change. They explained how visualizing complex systems helps identify key leverage points for effective interventions. They highlighted the benefits of using system maps to understand relationships and dynamics within an organization, enabling facilitators to guide strategic planning and decision-making more effectively.

By mapping out these systems, facilitators can reveal hidden patterns, foster collaboration, and create actionable insights that lead to sustainable change. This approach empowers teams to see the bigger picture and align their efforts toward common goals.

Solomon Masala

Using Art and Conversation for Convergence

“Using Art and Conversation for Convergence,” found Solomon emphasizing the synergy between art and dialogue in facilitation. He explored how incorporating artistic elements into conversations can break down barriers and foster deeper connections among participants. Solomon highlighted techniques such as visual thinking and creative exercises to enhance engagement and idea generation.

By blending art with structured conversation, facilitators can create a more inclusive and dynamic environment, encouraging participants to express themselves more freely and collaboratively. This approach not only stimulates creativity but also drives convergence, helping groups reach consensus and achieve collective goals more effectively.

Lily Chong

A Design Thinking Deep Dive on Rapid Ideation

In Lily’s workshop “A Design Thinking Deep Dive on Rapid Ideation” she focused on harnessing the power of teams for innovation, and participants delved into a variety of hands-on activities and practical exercises. The workshop effectively demonstrated valuable techniques for facilitating ideation sessions, enabling attendees to unlock the creative potential within their groups.

Through this engaging experience, participants learned how to generate a wide array of innovative solutions to challenging problems. The session equipped everyone with the necessary skills and mindset to drive impactful change through rapid ideation, fostering a collaborative and creative atmosphere.

Erin Warner

Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action

In “Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action,” Erin Warner discussed the importance of engaging in courageous conversations to refine ideas and take decisive action. She emphasized the need for creating a safe space where participants feel comfortable sharing honest and bold perspectives. Erin introduced techniques for facilitating these dialogues, such as active listening, open-ended questioning, and fostering an atmosphere of trust.

By encouraging daring dialogues, facilitators can help teams move beyond surface-level discussions, uncover deeper insights, and embrace bold actions that drive meaningful progress. This approach not only enhances idea generation but also strengthens team cohesion and innovation.

Susan Wilson-Golab

Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audience

In “Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audiences,” Susan emphasized the power of storytelling in facilitation. She explained how crafting compelling narratives can amplify the voices of specific audiences, ensuring their perspectives are heard and valued. Susan introduced practical techniques for creating these narratives, such as understanding the audience’s needs, weaving in emotional elements, and maintaining authenticity.

By focusing on these aspects, facilitators can enhance engagement and connection, making their sessions more impactful. The session highlighted the transformative potential of storytelling in creating meaningful dialogues and fostering a deeper sense of inclusion and understanding among participants.

The Facilitation Lab Summit 2024 was a testament to the power of community. Each session offered valuable insights and practical tools that facilitators can apply in their work. We are excited to see how these learnings will shape our community in the coming year and look forward to the next summit with great anticipation. Thank you to all the facilitators and participants who made this event a success.

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At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem delivered a thought-provoking workshop titled “Facilitating Change Through Systems Mapping.” The session was designed to help participants understand and leverage the power of systems thinking to drive change within their organizations.

The workshop began with Erik and Dirk highlighting the significance of seeking truth rather than being right, emphasizing a systems-based perspective. They explained that true understanding comes from recognizing the interrelationships among various elements within any context, challenge, or opportunity. This approach is crucial for effective facilitation and leadership.

The session was structured around five key elements essential for creating a compelling change story:

1. Future Vision: Participants were encouraged to articulate a clear and compelling vision for the future. This vision serves as a foundation for others to buy into and support the change.
2. Personal Connection: Erik and Dirk stressed the importance of understanding and communicating personal motivations for caring about the change. This personal connection helps build trust and emotional resonance with others.
3. Current State: Through systems mapping, attendees explored the current state of play, identifying the relationships and patterns that define the present situation. This step is crucial for grounding the change story in reality.
4. Stakeholder Engagement: Participants learned to map and understand the motivations and interests of key stakeholders. This step is essential for building a coalition of support for the change effort.
5. High-Leverage Interventions: By combining systems and stakeholder mapping, participants identified high-leverage interventions that could drive meaningful change.

Participants engaged in mapping exercises to visualize system relationships and dynamics. Dirk shared a real-world example from the sporting goods industry, demonstrating the practical application of systems mapping. In group activities, participants integrated their maps and shared insights, emphasizing understanding over perfection.

Erik and Dirk’s workshop showcased the value of systems thinking in facilitation. Participants left with tools to navigate and influence complex systems effectively.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Erik:

So I’ll give you just a moment if you haven’t already soaked this in a little bit. This willingness to seek the truth rather than seek to be right. And a core part of seeking that truth in many ways is taking a systems-based perspective, really understanding the relationships amongst all the things, all the people at play in any one context or challenge or opportunity.

Dirk:

Yes. And so just for anyone who hadn’t noticed, we knew we were coming right after Jose, who is an MC and who was an amazing DJ. So Erik and I were brainstorming what do we do to go after such a performance, so the only thing we could figure out was let’s make sure we match up.

Erik:

You see this system here?

Dirk:

I know we were subliminal, but we just wanted to point that out. It’s all in the detail, all in the detail. So just as a brief sort of connect between facilitating change as a workshop and what we’re going to do today is this belief that facilitation is a very core leadership skill, which I’m sure all of you agree as you are facilitators, but also a very, very important way in our view to really drive change. Facilitation of change is actually a core leadership skill and we do believe that actually a big part of that is having a story that other people can buy into. So the workshop that we’ve designed is actually a workshop that helps tell your change story in a way that brings others along. And the five elements that are part of that are on the screen.

The first is what’s my future vision, very much connected to what we’ve heard just now, the future state. Can you articulate in a compelling way the vision that you would like people to buy into? So that’s a core element of that.

The second is who am I and why do I care. The soil exercise we’ve just done is a way of doing that, obviously. But there’s multiple ways to try to understand who am I and why do I specifically care about creating this future. Why is that important? Because when you can touch others in a chord that touches their heart, very often it’s because you share vulnerably why you care. So the notion of digging in personal mastery and understanding this is why I care about this is actually a way to connect to others.

The third element is where are we today, which is bringing the state of play or the current state as we’ve just again today referred to. And this is the area that we’ll dive into today with the systems mapping. Then why should you care? We heard a lot about stakeholder mapping, convincing stakeholders. So why should you care is part of your change story, is identifying those important stakeholders and understanding deeply why do they care and how can I connect to them.

So then lastly, if you have mapped both the system and the stakeholders, you can identify high leverage interventions and make suggestions of what should be done. And if you would narrate those five topics in one go, you actually have your change story by which you can in a more confident way convince others to drive the change with you. So that’s sort of a little sort of setting on how we came up with facilitating change as a concept. And then within that, again, where are we today, the systems mapping is what we will dive into.

And systems, we hear a lot of people say it’s a systemic problem, it’s a system. But sometimes the word system or systems thinking can be a bit confusing or intimidating. And again, most, I assume many of you are familiar with it, but just to ground us in one of the definitions, and there’s multiple ones, but Peter Senge is obviously the person that started the academy for systems change where both Erik and I went and met each other actually the first time. This is his definition. It’s a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things. Seeing patterns rather than seeing static snapshots. And it’s actually very much looking at the space in between two things and the interrelation and the correlation between that.

And so the problem statement or the problem that we’re going to address today and tomorrow, we actually are going to have our first exercise today on trying to see the interrelationships, really trying to see the patterns rather than only the statements of what maybe is happening.

Erik:

So a couple further ways to provide some context and why behind seeing things systemically are so important. And as Dirk mentioned here, we’re oftentimes paying attention to the in-between, what’s happening in connections amongst different relational pieces. Because oftentimes when we’re working with complex problems, which a lot of us are, in fact most everything we talked about today is systemic, multi-layered here. And when we’re talking about systems, there’s oftentimes a delay, sometimes a pretty long delay between cause and effect.

So anytime you may have gone to, say, quickly try to solve a problem that’s actually systemic and find that actually your solution came back to you with something that’s actually making the problem even worse, that’s where understanding things systemically is really important because there’s this delay and a complex relationship between cause and effect.

Give you a couple of quick examples here that hopefully are recognizable or familiar enough. So a couple of basics here. And we’ll tell you this multiple times because we see it a lot when we first introduce systems mapping to folks, the point of today is not creating a perfect systems map. All right? So we can geek out on this stuff and it’s interesting to dig into. Take what is helpful for you. The most important thing is that we are starting to better understand the relationships amongst a bunch of different things.

So I’ll give you an example here of a really common loop that oftentimes comes up when we’re talking about systems. So feedback loops here can either be reinforcing or balancing. So an example of a reinforcing loop here would be like interest in your bank account. All right? So you have money in, interest is being accrued, and that continues to add money to that account.

A balancing loop here would be an example of a thermostat. So you have something set, a desired temperature, and ultimately there’s a gap between the desired and the current temperature. And that then responds to balance things back out, to bring things back into a balance to what you have ultimately set here. And this plays out in a lot of different systems, whether things are reinforcing and continuing to grow or ultimately trying to bring things back to some form of balance.

In systems work, we talk a lot about system archetypes, because there’s some pretty common ones that come up in complex systems, and one of those here being fixes that fail. So a good example here of where you ultimately try to implement a solution to fix a problem and that solution ultimately makes things worse. All right? So an example here of the problem, maybe there’s high interest on a credit card for example, and an initial fix being to balance that out. We’re going to take out an extra credit card to start paying on that. Uh-oh, we’ve got more interest coming. That creates more debt, more debt, more debt, and we ultimately don’t fix the problem. And again, these play out in a lot of different ways across the systems in the different challenges and opportunities in our lives.

Dirk’s going to take this a step further here with some examples from Nike.

Dirk:

Yes, exactly. So about three years ago in the job I’m in now, when I started that job, which was being responsible for sporting goods for EMEA. And the sporting goods industry, so basically Dick’s Sporting Goods is I assume a retailer that many of you know. So you could think of the equivalent of Dick’s Sporting Goods, but then in EMEA. And so I was handed over that team and that responsibility. It was the time that we were in this course, so I used that new job to try to understand how can system mapping help. And I want to talk you through that one example just to make it a bit more tangible and practical rather than maybe the theory about archetypes.

So what I found, and this is what we’re going to ask all of you to do as well later, you just start to write down things that you notice, not necessarily thinking about links between them, but what are the things that you notice. You know when you start a new job or a new assignment, you just ask questions. You interview people and you just start to, “Hey, that gets repeated. I’m going to note that down.”

And so basically I ended up having things like, okay, there’s low profitability. All those retailers have a tough time making money. That was one of the elements. For the sake of the time, we’ve put it straight away in a map today. So you will see how things are interlinked straight away. But another thing that I noticed actually was there was a lack of investment capacity. Someone else was telling me they just don’t invest in their stores, these retailers. They don’t invest. But obviously there’s a clear link between if you have no profitability, you have very little to reinvest in your business.

On top of that, they have very low digital capabilities. Again, linked to these lack of investment capacities. But the comment of low digital capabilities was a comment I got again from someone else. But if you map them, you can then see, well, if you have low digital capabilities today, consumers shop first on their smartphone. So if your websites aren’t great, and if you’re not really investing in digital capabilities, guess what? You don’t attract the consumer. If you don’t attract the consumer, you need to drive promotions to get people to your store to bring them in. Now you can imagine if you need to drive promotions, you have low profitability. So this is a typical reinforcing loop.

Now then as a company, we thought we were really, really smart, which happens very often if you’re inside of a company. So what do you do? Actually we say, “Wow, we need these retailers so we’re going to give them more discounts.” Because if we give them more discount, they’re going to be more profitable. It seems quite logical. They buy from you, you give them a higher discount so they can create more money. The thing that happened is actually as a result, many of the retailers that should have gone out of business because they were actually not doing a proper job in serving consumers, they actually stayed in business. What’s the result of that? Way too many competition. So what do they do? They need to promote to attract the consumer.

So this is how you see, even if you have actually think you’re doing something that makes sense. The moment I started to see, and this is only one very small section of the map that I created with my team, but just for sake of example, we realized we were doing this to ourselves. Or we had a very big role that we played in keeping this system turning in a way that wasn’t helping the overall consumer experience. So it’s by mapping and all of these points that are on here came from different interviews, and then we did the exercise of mapping it. How is this linked? Because now it seems very logical when I tell this story in this way, but it wasn’t when I started the role. So that’s just an example on how that works.

So obviously our role or what we want to do with you today is actually show how this process of mapping and again linking it to the facilitation summit, how as facilitators we can have ways to map complex systems with a large group actually and get to insights that we maybe didn’t have before doing this exercise. So obviously the core question, “How might we raise national awareness and adoption of the ACC Digital Fluency micro-credentials and certificates for military spouses?” That was the task or the prompt that we were given by the organization we’re working with. And so what we’re going to do today is map. What do we know of that system as a collective?

Any question before I hand over? We’re going to give a prompt in a second, but any questions on that intro first before we move to the next part? No? So I think we’re first going to give the prompt, right?

Erik:

Yep.

Dirk:

So the starting point is we’re going to replay the video. It was called out this morning. We are very sure all of you watched the video. We are a hundred percent sure. But just in case or just for your memory, we’re going to-

Erik:

Just a refresher.

Dirk:

A refresher.

Erik:

A refresher.

Dirk:

We’re going to replay the video that was sent out. That is also at the same time your solo time. So we were going to give you anyway solo time to reflect, so we’re going to play the video at the same time. If you’ve seen it, feel free to jot things down. What’s important is based on what you’re hearing or what you know about the situation or based on the workshops we’ve done already this morning that gave you additional insights, write down things that you notice that you think are part of the system of the issue. Important is to do one per sticky, so don’t list them on ones. We need one idea or one prompt or one thing you think is part of the system per sticky. At the moment, don’t try to find links in between. Just what you hear, note down what you think is important and relevant. And from there, we will go further.

Erik:

Yeah, cool.

One thing I’d say here is you’re diving in because for many of you, this is a new process. So I’ll just tell you, if you’re doing it right now, you’re doing it right. Don’t worry about creating a perfect map. Okay? The point here is that we’re starting to think more systemically. All right? And that gives us an opportunity to then have a conversation together. Back to Donella’s words, this allows us to build a collective truth together. Because then when that’s out in front of us, we can make better decisions together. So just start. All right? And I’ll keep coming back to that as a reminder.

So I’m going to pop up a video here in a moment, actually from some of the research that has been done with these military spouses about their needs and the challenges that are coming up in their lives and accessing some of these resources. And you can just note as you’re listening.

Speaker 4:

We were researching kind of how users currently find different resources on installations and what pain points that they may have been seeing. So we interviewed a lot of different people and surveyed several hundred more. And what we found was that people would just get stuff by word of mouth or via social media and it wasn’t always completely accurate information. We also talked to services and we use that to inform the features that we decided to put in our MVP launch for My Army Post.

So I think the biggest thing that we learned was that there’s not enough childcare providers on the installation to effectively provide childcare for every Army family. A military installation is ran by any of the military service, whether it’s Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and it’s where all of the buildings are that are the federal government property and that’s where all the services lie for families to access.

And that was where a lot of the issues come in because it is cheaper on the installation for military families because it’s a little bit subsidized. So if there’s not a space for them on the installation, they have to go off-installation, which is a little bit more costly. And that’s where there’s not a little bit of a gap, a large gap that makes it difficult for them to find careers as the family member.

Something that is hard is finding those careers that can transfer to different places wherever we get stationed. And then building the community is hard. It’s the longer you’re in, kind of the harder it gets I feel like. I think some of the things that we saw in our research and that I’ve seen is that we are pretty good at getting training for spouses or for service members that are getting out of the military, but most jobs now require experience. And where can they get experience if no one is willing to hire anybody without experience?

Actually, you facilitated a little exercise at our kind of fair. I thought that that was an awesome program and I thought that it could benefit a ton of people. And the main person that came to my mind was my mother who is in her sixties and has a job that uses digital tools like Excel and Outlook and I’m just her tech support and she just calls me to get that information. But if she was able to get some sort of micro-credential that could help her understand it, whether it was actually getting that micro-credential or just the knowledge, I think that that could be very helpful and I can see how that would be helpful to military families as they’re moving throughout the states.

Speaker 5:

I also enjoyed it. I thought it was really, really cool because I was like, “Well, maybe I could do some of these things.” Because some of those skill sets transfer to a wide variety of disciplines. You can use it for a lot of different things.

Speaker 4:

I think the biggest thing that we saw as a huge pain point was advertising. The Army doesn’t necessarily have a large advertising budget to be able to market these different things. And so if ACC could take advantage of a way to market these better, I think that that would reach a lot more people.

Speaker 5:

For example, I was telling Celeste, I was like, “Hey, did you know there is a virtual internship for the federal government?” I did it for my master’s program. And she’s like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah, you really just have to be a student and you apply at the US gov jobs, but then you get experience with the low-threat internship at the federal government working for almost every agency known to man.” But if you can scaffold on that and actually then, well, I worked for the VA virtually and then I’m going to apply for this job to build your resume up and say, “Hey, but I learned these skill sets along the way because I knew I was weak in some of these areas. ” I wasn’t really good at spreadsheet management per se or Excel, but through my internship and a program through ACC with building my digital literacy, I had another skillset.

When I actually applied, I had somebody who would vouch for me as a reference who already works in the industry and I have the skill to back it up. And I’m using veteran preference because a lot of jobs have that for spousal preferential positioning. And to leverage all those things into one to apply for some of these jobs I think could be super useful. And I think people underestimate how valuable those small state or federal organizations actually have impact. There’s a lot of job offers that come there. They say, hey, we need a public health person.

The job fairs are so important. Even if you are not actively looking for an actual job, you’d be surprised what you can land on and what you can find that can kind of fit the things you want to do by just asking people and just talking to them. I just think the whole scaffolding thing is the most important thing. So even if after they do their micro-certification, if there’s a way for them to connect with companies even for maybe just a week trial or two weeks and to say, “Hey, just let me walk around and just intern and see what I can learn from just being here on ground.” It’s low threat to the company because you’re an intern and they don’t have to pay you. But it also gives people experiences and to build that bridge and of course targeting people who are actively looking for people.

Erik:

Nice to hear the voices of folks closer to this challenge and opportunity. And I’m going to add a few more details here from another person very close to this challenge who unfortunately we were going to be doing an interview but unfortunately unable to be with us today, but I wanted to share her answers here with you. So just asked what they noticed is going on right now in this problem and opportunity space in and amongst this challenge. And she said, “Unemployment has remained the top concern for military spouses, especially since military families relocate every one to three years. And there’s been a real shift in the working world post-COVID. Employers have moved a lot more toward remote work.” And so that presents both opportunities but also challenges if you didn’t already have some of those digital skillsets, right?

I asked, “Why do you think things are working or not working at this point?” And she said, “This is a great opportunity for military spouses, especially for those that are looking for remote work. This allows them to focus on becoming more proficient in the digital skills they need in order to succeed in remote work environments.”

And finally, “What elements of this prominent opportunity space do you hope we, all of us here, most focus on?” And she said, “Since unemployment is a top concern nationwide for military spouses, how can we get national military organizations to subscribe to the micro credential digital skills program here at the college.”

Speaker 6:

I was also at the military families center ribbon cutting. And there’s one thing I noticed that I thought might be helpful to share which was a military spouse that had been invited to speak about her experience and she said something that was quite, it made sense in retrospect, but never hearing it before. I was never exposed to it. But the fact that as she moved around with her husband on different deployments into different installations, there would commonly be a really vibrant and strong and tight-knit military community that would be very supportive. So then they were to move somewhere, they would instantly have a lot of resources around them and they could lean on that and learn to depend on it. But not all installations are created the same.

And something that really was surprising for her when they came to Austin because her husband is actually attending the software factory, which is the software bootcamp for the Army. So these are active duty Army, they’re learning how to be software developers and UX designers. And so he’s attending that. They come here, Austin’s very widespread. There’s not a centralized base here. So everyone, while there is a vibrant community, it’s very spread out and it’s hard to tap into those things. And that’s one of the things the Military Family Center is striving to provide is that hub, that central spot. But she also spoke of, she first experienced it here, but there are other installations around that are more distributed so that centralized nature doesn’t exist. So that really spoke to me when I heard it, so I wanted to share that just in case it’s stoked any thoughts for y’all.

Erik:

All right, thanks.

Dirk:

Yes. So we’ll give you one more minute solo just after absorbing all of that and then we’ll go to the next section of that. So just one more minute to maybe finalize some of your thoughts, some of the things you noticed.

So we would like to move to the next part, which is pairs. So at your table, we’ll make it easy to start with, just look at your neighbor and together share the stickies, the things that stood out for you. And you start to create, if you see connections between some of the things you do, you start to create a very small map in between the two of you on the table. So that’s why we also asked to try to clean the table. So if there’s still a lot on the table, just try to move that a little bit. We’re using the resources that we have and if you see connections, if you see connections, you can also use a sticky in between the two points to draw an arrow. So we’re going to be creative here. So if you see a connection between two things, use a sticky to make the connection. So you get 15 minutes together to create one map with the two of you.

Erik:

Okay, move yourself to a pausing point. And then please direct your attention back up here. If you’re right in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of a question that you’re still wrestling with, that’s a great sign. That’s the kind of conversation we are hoping that you’re having. And if you’re coming in to have figured this all out in the next 90 minutes, you’re going to be disappointed. But hopefully you have some new understandings and some better questions and we have a better sense of those truths out there that we can operate with.

So in a moment, we’re going to shift to creating a group of four. So pair will join a pair right next to you and you’re going to then be integrating both the maps that you’ve created. And it’s going to feel a little messy. That’s the work. All right? Now if, and hold on one moment before … I know as soon as I said four, it’s, “All right, let’s get going. Let’s get a jumpstart. We can get the answer key down. This is going to be great.”

So as you move into your fours, you’re obviously going to have to integrate pieces. There’s probably going to be some duplication. So it’s like, “Yep, we’ve got this piece here.” You can bring those together. This is similar. Do we want to bring those together or keep those separate? Also too, this is the point, and I see some great examples here. We even have people tearing stickies to create arrows. It’s fantastic. No, it’s fantastic. So if you haven’t already started to think about the nature of those relationships, start to draw those arrows, which ones are particularly connected? Which one do you see may be acting on another? Are there potential loops here? And again, it’s not about perfectly identifying them, it’s starting to surface the nature of those relationships.

I’m going to share one thing that I always find really helpful when especially first engaging in this process here. So have a great colleague of ours in this space who has spent years doing systems work and systems maps. And so oftentimes, and we’ve asked what’s the step and are we doing this right? And she always returns us to, Darcy Winslow is her name, co-founder of the Academy for Systems Change, and oftentimes returns us to this quote from Alice in Wonderland in terms of the instructions for this. So as you’re doing this, begin at the beginning, and go until you come to the end, and then stop. That’s how to do it. So give yourself that grace. All right?

Now move to your group of four. We’re going to take the next 10 minutes in your group of four to start integrating those maps and thinking about the nature of those relationships.

Okay. Our final or almost final turn here. And again, the point is not to have these things absolutely complete, but as I’m listening across groups, it’s fantastic to see the nature of the conversation or witness the nature of the conversation. Each of you posing questions of one another. Well, here’s how I see this. How do you see this relating to this piece over here? Or is this really like this or should it be over here? Again, co-constructing a truth and an initial map that then we can gather around and further merge together.

Lilly, did you have-

Lilly:

I have a question.

Erik:

Yeah.

Lilly:

So really quickly, our group, I felt like at times as we were trying to create our map, we were also thinking of solutions. And I was curious, should solutioning come into this first pass of mapping?

Erik:

We’re not solving. We’re trying to understand. Okay? So it’s not that those solutions may not bubble up, but set them to the side for now because we’re not even necessarily clear on what the nature of the map is and the potential problem and opportunity space. So again, as is a hallmark of design thinking and in a lot of the systems work, let’s make sure we’re solving the right problem before solving a problem. Because that can then … If we were talking earlier about again, those solutions or fixes that fail, you could end up doing something that then ultimately makes your problem worse. And we’ve seen that in a lot of complex systems-based challenges out there.

Jimmy also asked in the back there about should we be mapping just the things that aren’t working or the things that aren’t working and the things that are working. Both. And in fact, I was mentioning back there, systems are working in the way that they were oftentimes designed. They’re working. They just may not be working to do the things that we want them to do. And so that’s where having the full picture, like these things are working, they’re working the way that we want, but that leads to these things over here not working. So let’s get the full picture.

Our final turn. I’m going to throw down the gauntlet here. It’s 10 minutes. Now, you’re going to have a facilitator at your table. And here’s how we’re going to side that. So whomever at your table has a birthday closest to today is going to be the facilitator for this final turn. Now, before you go to figure that out, here’s what I suggest. All right? Quickly have each group of four share briefly the story that’s there, and then you can be starting to combine things. We have that, let’s get that in the center. And again, clear the table. I see so many drinks out here. I don’t know, you’re going to have things spilled. All right? So make sure you have space in the next 10 minutes. Facilitators, help your group come up with a collective table map. Go.

Okay, move yourself to that pausing point and I’ll ask you to direct your attention back up to the stage here. Have a chance to hear from groups. I know it’s at the end of the day, and it’s so great to see people standing up around table … You’re leaning in, right? No, this should go, no, I think this is actually the nature of this. And this is for some of you a challenge that hits close to home. I know we have some military spouses in the room, people from military families. But also some of you, this is a problem that’s not even that closely necessarily connected to you and you’re leaning in, you’re building a sense of truth and surfacing something that people can work around, that starting point.

Key thing that we didn’t mention earlier, this process helps to surface what in systems mapping is called mental models. It’s kind of an internal ways that we view and order the world that until we oftentimes can externalize them in a way like this with our colleagues, it’s a filter that we’re not aware of, our colleagues aren’t aware of. And so this gives us an opportunity to surface, “Well, here’s how I’m seeing this. Okay, I’m seeing it this way. Let’s bring that together so that we can collectively act.”

So I’d love to hear from a group or two, hopefully from everybody. And facilitators, you’re particularly on the spot here. Would love to hear, I know you just did so much work on this. What did you notice as you facilitated this process? So there’s a couple of different ways into this prompt. Either you could talk about the process itself, here’s what it was like to facilitate that integration of ideas, and here’s what I noticed. And or wow, this new breakthrough surface, we didn’t realize this one piece and here’s what we’re thinking could be really important for us to think about tomorrow as we start moving to solutioning. So a couple of different either process or content or breakthrough.

Speaker 9:

I’ll be happy to go first. This is an awesome table because it’s humbling to facilitate masterful facilitators because you all facilitate yourselves. And as somebody that’s trying to step back and allow the dance to happen, what was really interesting is just understanding for ourselves what really is the place to start. Where’s the beginning? And I think we have this really interesting dichotomy or juxtaposition from what really is the beginning of this system between awareness, advertising, lack of budget. Is that the place to start? Or is it really the underemployment as the place to start? So it was very fascinating to see the differences and a little bit of the dance, but also some arm wrestling of where is it really going to go. And I think even though we didn’t fully combine what we wanted to do, I think just stepping back, observing and helping to facilitate that, I think we got a better awareness of, ah, I hadn’t thought of that perspective or hadn’t thought of it this way. Or ooh, there’s some commonalities, how do we bring this back together?

Speaker 10:

With the data we had, I found that there’s just more questions or hypothesis to prove out. We started creating assumptions. It was like, “Is that real or is that just what we think?”

Erik:

Yeah, which is a great outcome of an exercise like this. And obviously, people spend multiple months on these and in these kinds of conversations. Ultimately get to, Dirk’s map as a starting point, if he were to share other iterations, I mean multiple months there, but then that’s a powerful way for a group to move forward. And it does. That’s a really powerful outcome there. Wow, we don’t know about that. We need to know more. Okay, let’s go out and talk with some more folks that, again, surfaces that gap in a way that until that was out there wouldn’t have been apparent.

Dirk:

Absolutely. It starts the inquiry. It gives direction on where to inquire further and not just, again, to those mental models think that now you’ve mapped the truth because it hasn’t. So if you identify additional questions, that’s amazing. And to the point of where does it start? One of the core things of a system map is it doesn’t really matter where it starts. It actually doesn’t matter. When it’s mapped and you see the correlation, wherever, it’s all interconnected anyway. So just as an extra add-on.

Speaker 11:

Something that really surprised me was I started to get really wedded to the model that I was working on. And then when we had to join most recently, the whole table, I was like, “No, don’t cave, Phil. That’s the right one.” And I was like, I thought I was kind of an evolved human being, but it kind of surprised me and it took me back to the quote that you had about it’s more important to find the truth than to be right. And I’m still struggling with that right now because it really blew me away that I experienced this. I am just curious if other people had that too.

Erik:

It is bringing us full circle. Thank you for sharing. It’s bringing us full circle to our work with Leah this morning in a lot of ways as to what truths, how tightly we hold onto them, what does that mean about the different systems within us. Right? Other teams, would love … Yeah, Leah.

Leah:

Well, just on that point, it was a growing of the system in the group. So it started out with two, and then going back to what Ann said, you had maybe your attachment of the pair, and then the four, and then to the whole table. And yeah, it’s an interesting exercise of looking at the system and then being a part of a system trying to solve or trying to notice the differences and the differences of perspectives and not holding on too tightly.

Erik:

Which whether we have or recognize it or not, we’re kind of doing that every day in our companies and our organizations. We just are doing it with oftentimes a pretty blunt tools and hurting a lot of people in the process. So this just surfaces it in a way that can be more constructive. Others?

Speaker 9:

I was going to add on that. When we were merging the four of us, we said, “Well, we still have a gap.” But it was when we brought the eight together, we were like, “Ah, you filled the gap.”

Erik:

Cool, cool. There was here from a-

Speaker 12:

Okay, so I had the challenge to facilitate our table. Good reframe.

Erik:

So we had the cool table. That was the challenging table. We got the-

Speaker 12:

So what I noticed is that we, in terms of the elements in the system, we were almost identical, the two different groups. So I thought, okay, that’s a good starting place. Then though the relationship that the two groups of four had identified were … Well, we didn’t have a lot of time to actually process how similar or dissimilar the relationships were, but they definitely weren’t as similar as the elements were. And then to Ann’s point about wanting to be right or wanting to find the truth, I think our group was a little quick to gloss over the differences and just say, “Oh, it’s pretty much the same.” Which I think wasn’t like a deep commitment to finding the truth of the system.

Erik:

Was that a little shade there? That sounded like a little shade.

Speaker 12:

I wrote that as a facilitator because that was what I was hearing them say. I’m not necessarily endorsing that though.

Speaker 13:

Or we said because they’re so similar, just pick one because they’re both right. So we’ll just pick which one we were going to present as our map.

Erik:

Which I think is another good reminder here of not losing sight of the verb for the noun. Because in that example, you choose one, you’re going to follow that verb through, and if you’re truly seeking at the end of the day, the truth you’ll bring back in those other pieces. So again, don’t confuse the verb for the noun there. Yeah?

Speaker 14:

Yeah, I will probably just echo some of the comments you’ve heard. I’ve heard some labels for tables, and I do have a label over here as well. We have a lot of enthusiasm, and the great thing about being with a lot of design thinkers is the willingness to share ideas. So I’m going to call us the fun table.

Erik:

Perfect.

Speaker 14:

You want to come over here for some fun in building some systems. And really I think what we had in really seeing the connections evolve, and I think I kind of heard that throughout. But it’s really seeing the different connections between the different pieces and hearing the different perspectives and seeing how connections that you may have missed or didn’t know were there suddenly come up. So the system ended up changing and combining in a way that we think overall improved and gave a good overview of what we were looking at.

Erik:

Cool. I’m looking at our time here, and we’re just a minute over, just a minute or two over. So a couple of things.

This isn’t the end, obviously, in 90 minutes to have completely figured it out. I always tell folks in my sessions this is a launch. If you come thinking that this is the end, you’re going to be disappointed. So let’s get real about what we’re able to do if we’re actually going to tackle things in the ways that we need to. Hopefully you’re starting to see some ways to build some truth into the complex systems that you are a part of each day, and that you can take a lot of what emerged in this space into further building to the truths and solutions into our work for tomorrow. So thank you for your willingness to dive in and to seek that truth with each other, to develop this very scarce but important resource. Thank you.

The post Facilitating Change by Mapping Systems appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Erin Warner led a captivating workshop titled “Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action.” Erin, known for her unique blend of movement and facilitation techniques, encouraged participants to engage physically and mentally throughout the session.

The workshop began with a lively introduction, where Erin emphasized the importance of community, movement, and holistic well-being. She shared her journey of integrating diverse experiences into her facilitation practice, highlighting the power of books like “The Art of Gathering” by Priya Parker and “The Joy of Movement.”

Erin’s session was structured around two core elements: trust and emergence. She introduced participants to the concept of embodied decision-making, explaining how our bodies can provide valuable insights into our levels of trust and enthusiasm.

Participants were invited to stand in a circle and make eye contact, gauging their trust levels with each other. This exercise was both meditative and revealing, helping attendees understand the importance of trust in group dynamics.

Erin then guided the group through interactive decision-making activities. One such activity involved physically moving to different areas of the room to express preferences for various ideas. This embodied voting method highlighted the significance of commitment and authenticity in decision-making processes.

Throughout the session, Erin encouraged participants to reflect on their experiences and share insights. The workshop concluded with a discussion on how to maintain a safe and productive environment in facilitated sessions, emphasizing the continuous nurturing of trust and openness.

Erin’s workshop was a powerful demonstration of how movement and embodied practices can enhance facilitation. Her approach left attendees inspired to incorporate these dynamic methods into their own sessions, fostering deeper connections and more effective collaboration.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Erin Warner:

Hello, everybody. Great to see you. Hope you had a good lunch. Very excited to share, yeah, those diverse things that I bring to facilitation with you all today. Thank you, those of you who danced with me yesterday, hope you had fun. I’m going to bring a little bit of movement into this session as well. Is anyone afraid that I’m going to ask you to dance? Is there anyone who’d be excited if I said, hey, we’re going to get up and dance? Okay, cool, well, we’re not going to do that, but we are going to move a little bit.

So just a few words about me. Where I am now really is the result of taking all these very disparate strands that seem unrelated and experiences and then weaving them into something coherent. So community is something very, very important to me. I absolutely treasure it, and this picture right here is actually the summit two years ago, and those are people that I went through the certification with. Of course, it was all online and that was the first time we met each other in person, so it was a really special way to deepen the community that we have with each other. These are the people that I danced with at the gym, and I always say it’s more than just a fitness class. We are really building emotional wellness and social strength through coming together and doing our physical fitness.

Some of my favorite books, of course, The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. I was talking to someone last night who hasn’t read it, and if you haven’t read it, I highly suggest it. It’s just a really beautiful book and very applicable to what we do. The Joy of Movement, it’s about, again, the three-dimensional benefits of movement, both on your physical well-being, but your cognition as well, your creativity, your sense of resilience, your sense of belonging, so it’s very holistic. I also facilitate a racial healing and racial justice book club. I feel just as an American, that’s part of our responsibility to educate ourselves and engage with those issues. So those are some of the books that we read together.

Yes, I used to be a lawyer and I’m going to talk to you all today about decision-making processes, and as a former lawyer, that’s just something I’ve thought about a lot. I think it’s really important and it’s the practical side of me. I have the fun dancing, all this, but also I really like results. I really like driving things forward, so I’m going to try to provide that today.

And lastly, this picture of colorful vegetables. I am really passionate about produce, fruits and vegetables, for so many reasons, but I’m just going to leave that there. If anybody’s curious about that or if you’re passionate about fruits and vegetables too, let’s talk. But I won’t go into that quirky side of myself, but I’ll just leave that there for anyone who’s intrigued.

The title I gave to my session is Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action, and those are nice things to aspire to, but it can be daunting or scary. So we’re going to look at some things that support being able to actually follow through on that. And I wanted to give you an overview of what we’re going to look at today, and I called it Our Flow because I am very inspired by nature. And we may not get there in the way that I think, we’re going to go co-create this, but the water might go around that hill, it might come around it the other way. There’s even a little waterfall trickling over the top. But one way or the other, we’re going to explore these things. We’re going to flow through.

First, what I consider secret ingredients for successful group decisions because as we know, group decisions are very differently made than individual decisions that we just make on our own, and there’s different dynamics you have to take into account. We’re going to look at how we can bring our bodies into what they can tell us, how we can bring that into the picture. We’ll do some interactive demos of two exercises and we’ll reflect and share. I hope you all are on board for that.

So food is one of my love languages, so I like using the metaphor of secret ingredients. I like being able to share yummy things with you, like star anise or vanilla or cinnamon. This is what I consider two essential ingredients for successful group decision making. Well, actually, sorry, first of all, I wanted to define what I think is successful, because there’s the outward looking and then the inward looking. So it’s successful if it’s moving the organization towards its goals, right? Simple as that. But also when we feel strongly about something, we’ll engage in debate, but there could also be hurt feelings or I feel like I wasn’t heard, I wasn’t respected, they didn’t understand what I was saying. And then there can be, and I’ve seen and experienced this when I facilitated, there can be grudges, wounds. They’re not really surface, they’re just held. And so I think a successful decision making process protects the cohesion and the rapport within the group so that it can then continue towards its mission. So those are the two vectors of success that we’re going to be trying to work towards today.

We’ve been putting ourselves in the shoes of the user, and I want us now to shift to the point of view of the ACC decision makers, because they’re the ones eventually who are going to have to say, how are we going to promote this program? And there’s a lot of ways that we already know about how decisions are made. So I wanted to first just surface some of them. What are some standard ways that groups make a decision that we already know about? Just popcorn style. Sorry?

Speaker 2:

Voting.

Erin Warner:

Voting, yes, and then there’s so many kinds of voting.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible 00:06:43].

Erin Warner:

There’s majority rules, right, 50%, 51%? Thank you.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:06:50].

Erin Warner:

Yes, stacked ranked voting. Yes. What else?

Speaker 4:

[inaudible 00:06:56].

Erin Warner:

Yeah, decider, decider. That’s nice and simple. Cool. Anything else? Yes.

Speaker 5:

Consensus.

Erin Warner:

Consensus, yeah. That’s always the holy grail if you can … Has anyone ever seen it. Jimmy? Consent, yes. Can you explain the difference? And Nellie’s bringing you a mic.

Jimmy:

Decisions by consent are like, I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I can consent to this.

Erin Warner:

I’m not going to veto it or block it. Thank you. Thank you. Monica?

Monica:

Not deciding anything.

Erin Warner:

Who’s seen that and experienced that? Man, that’s frustrating. Cool, thank you. So the next thing is, so we know these because we see them and we experience them, right? So does anyone want to make a case for which one is the best one?

Speaker 8:

[inaudible 00:08:00]

Erin Warner:

Yeah, and if you don’t want to make a case, would anyone like to talk about why you don’t want to say this one’s the best one? Over here.

Speaker 9:

I can make a case for having a single decision maker such as a boss or a manager, assuming that they have heard all of the feedback from everyone else in the group and they’ve taken that into consideration and answered questions, but generally having that single person helps present churn. And then of course you can be iterative, so if it turns out to not be the right decision, you can revisit it with the group later and pivot.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Thank you, and then I think your neighbor over here had an idea.

Speaker 10:

I don’t think there really is a single best one. It depends on the circumstances and the whole group dynamic. In some situations you might need to get a consensus, you might need to get the majority of people to agree on it. Or if you just need quick action, you might need just one person to say, we’re doing this, go. Even if it’s wrong, we have to go and do it, so it really depends.

Erin Warner:

Yeah, thank you for that. It depends, I think is where I come down on it and that’s why I want to give you these next two tools that no matter which decision-making process you’re going to use, there’s two secret ingredients to get back to that that will support the success of that decision-making process and one is trust and the other one is releasing that inner narrator. There’s always at least one perfectionist in a group usually, or maybe it’s in all of us, and allowing space for emergence. So if you have those two factors in place, then it really frees you up to do those things I started the talk with, which is bold actions and giving yourself space to refine your ideas.

And the reason why those two matter is even if you do disagree with the ultimate decision, if you trust the intention with which it was made, then it’s a lot easier to consent to disagree and commit to get on board if you trust the intention. And also if you trust and you know that it’s part of an emergent strategy, it’s going to be revised, it’s going to be checked, then again, because the thing is if we knew the right answer, it would be easy. And so all of us admitting that we need space to discover for a right answer to emerge will take a lot of pressure off. How are we going to decide?

So we’re going to look at those topics in two activities that will get us up out of our seats and into our bodies, but we hear that word embodiment a lot. I just wanted to see in the room what that word, what you think it means. So again, a little popcorn style, when you hear embodiment, anyone want to speak into that? Over here?

Speaker 11:

Mind and body connection.

Erin Warner:

Beautiful. Can you say more?

Speaker 11:

I think of embodied as an experience that you’re feeling inside of your body and then understanding it more from a mental capacity.

Erin Warner:

Beautiful. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Right now I’m feeling like energy in my body, everyone’s looking at me. I can feel like the blood coursing. Maybe you’re feeling something else because you just had lunch, but how is that affecting your experience? [inaudible 00:11:34] She’s bringing the mic.

Speaker 12:

The word that comes to mind when I hear embodied is becoming or to become.

Erin Warner:

Interesting. Can you say more about that? Because I’m curious.

Speaker 12:

Yeah, I think to embody something or a concept even in our earlier practice where we were to become or to embody the solution we had in mind with making the shape with our bodies of what this concept was, I think it provides a different layer or experience or a way of thinking about something when you internalize it that way and think about different aspects of the piece and how it translates to your physical body, so yeah.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Yeah, it definitely is another layer that we’re recently becoming more conscious of and trying to receive whatever wisdom or information it has for us. Yeah. Does anybody else want to talk about embodiment?

Speaker 13:

You could also think about not only do they say they’re willing to lean in and do it, but do they actually do it? So it’s actually attaching the willingness, but also the action, so you can actually see it. I’m not just saying it, I’m going to show you that I’m bought in and I’m going to be supported.

Erin Warner:

Absolutely. Yeah, I’m going to come back to that and underline that. Thank you.

Speaker 14:

When I’m thinking about embodiment, I’m thinking about giving form and shape to something that otherwise would be abstract.

Erin Warner:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. So this very much aligns with the way I’ve summed it up, so thank you very much. You guys are really tuned in. So when I use the word today, embodied, I am really looking for congruence between what the mind is thinking and what the body is either feeling, experiencing or expressing. So it is taking the abstract of just what’s going on in your head and making it more concrete. I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name back here, who you said about … Yeah.

Speaker 15:

Diana.

Erin Warner:

Sorry?

Speaker 15:

Diana.

Erin Warner:

Diana, about actually enacting what you say you think or feel. So that’s how I’m using the word today, and that takes me to our first activity. So I’ve seen and experienced this being very powerful and it has to do with the secret ingredient of trust. And we’ve been doing a lot of, I think, activities in day one with the different facilitators building trust among us as a group. And I just want to invite you to look at trust now with fresh eyes as not just a team building thing or thing that has to do with morale, but that’s actually integral to decision-making that it actually frees up a group to be able to make a decision.

So I want you all to imagine that we are the ACC decision-makers, okay? So we work together on this project over time. We’re not going to just see each other today and tomorrow and never see each other again. We are a team. So imagine that, we have relationships, we have a history, and we also have a goal that we need to do together, right? So to embody or to examine the level of trust that we have, what I’m going to ask is actually for everyone to stand up and we’re going to make roughly a circle. It’s going to be similar to what Solomon had us do earlier in terms of a line, but it’s going to be a circle shoulder-to-shoulder. The key is that it’s an uninterrupted shape, whether it’s squiggly, awesome, where hopefully you can pretty much see everybody eye to eye if you were to look around the room. Beautiful, beautiful.

Okay, so imagine that we’re all in this team together and you’re about to make a decision together, and the invitation is to slowly look around the circle and look at people in the eye and feel into what’s true for you. Either you look at that person and you feel, I trust that person, and you believe it, you feel it. And if you don’t feel that, then I invite you to feel, I want to trust that person? Either it’s a question or it’s a statement. I want to trust that person. Those are the two options.

And if you feel I want to trust that person, then ask yourself, what would make that possible? Is there a rupture that needs to be healed? Is there just something you need to get off your chest or is it like I just don’t really know that person. We haven’t connected, so I don’t know. I want to, but I don’t yet. So this can be really powerful in a smaller group where you literally can look every person in the eye. This group is a little bit bigger, but I’m just going to give you the time to literally do that and listen to your body and what it’s telling you. It might be uncomfortable. That’s okay. Take a deep breath, shake it off.

Okay, now go ahead and go back to your tables. Thank you very much for trusting me to do that. Now I recognize that trust is something that’s built. Some of us know each other, but not so well as a whole group. But imagine doing that with your team, a group of people who you know maybe as well as dear family in some ways. I know yesterday I was asking some people to dance and I was like, they don’t have any reason to trust. They don’t know me very well. They don’t trust me well enough to do that. And then maybe they would again in the future if I asked them again. But having done this very simple activity that I’ve witnessed and experienced to be very, very impactful for groups, I’d like you to just, solo, take down your reflections on how that felt for you, good, bad, and ugly, and then we’ll share. So how did it feel to evaluate trust from an embodied perspective? What did your body tell you? Does anybody want to share how that felt for them? They could imagine using it if they had resistance to it.

Speaker 16:

I think I’m more willing to do it here, looking at people who are here for a shared purpose, with people I know less well than I would be back with people outside my team at the place I work for. Within my team, whom I know very well, I’d be okay, but with other people at my company who I know a little bit, I think I would feel more uncomfortable. I was more comfortable here among people I know less well. I don’t know why. There’s an inner narrator in there, I am sure.

Erin Warner:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 17:

I trust very naturally. That’s just my general inclination is to trust, but I also recognize it can get derailed when I start to judge. I’m like, that dude seems pretty opinionated or something like that. So that’s where it gets sometimes in the way, and I need to go back to my defaults and start with trust.

Speaker 18:

I mean, in going around the room, I think for me it was a big difference of people who I’ve had a chance to engage with and people who I haven’t. And so primarily it was like I trust this person, I don’t know this person.

Erin Warner:

Yeah.

Speaker 18:

And it sounds funny, but there were a number of faces around the room that also felt like it was the first time I was looking at them because we are all at our own tables and they’re just like, oh, I didn’t know that person was here, and so that was very interesting for a group who doesn’t really know each other here. But something that it brings up for me is in an organization that I was recently a part of where a lot of trust had been broken and going through really difficult leadership transitions, if we were to do that activity, it would be a very high risk activity, and so I’m wondering how you move that. That is a very engaging moment that can have a lot of vulnerability in it. How do you actually move it to a place of trust when it is clear that there is so much distrust in that space?

Erin Warner:

Thank you for surfacing that because I think actually fully intended to share the context, at least where I’ve seen this be really powerful, because it was a similar situation where there was a lack of trust based on some experiences that had happened. So we used this after doing a really vulnerable unpacking where everyone got to say their peace and not be responded to, just be heard and received. And that was quite emotional, but also it surfaced the reason why there was emotions because everybody cared so much, right? So I think it surfaced that unity of purpose, disagreement about methods and not always communicating with the care, and then after that facilitated conversation, having the trust reflection.

And again, you’re not sharing it with anyone else and you’re asking yourself if I can’t honestly say I trust this person, the option I gave you is not, I don’t trust this person. I mean, you’re autonomous humans, you can make that choice, but the option I invited you to was I want to trust this person and what would make that possible? And again, you’re not sharing it with anyone, but now you have that knowledge. They’re like, I’m not so sure about her. Why, and what can I do about that? Taking responsibility also for trying to meet them. Yeah. Thank you. Anybody else? Julie.

Julie:

I want to tell on myself a little bit here. I found it awkward, but I also found it meditative and I was very sad when the exercise ended that I hadn’t been able to catch everybody’s eye. And something that hit me personally was if you had asked me to do this exercise 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it would’ve felt extremely dangerous to be in a room of so many people I don’t know, and make eye contact and set out that good intention. So I guess I just want to reflect that this practice of facilitation as a human being I think has changed that for me in a really powerful way.

Erin Warner:

Wow. Thank you. Thanks, Julie. Anybody else? Yeah, I definitely understand and expect that it can be awkward and some people might really love it and be touched by it. Some people might be like, there’s no way I would ever do that. I’m okay with that. It’s like the dancing, I did a little poll at the beginning of this session. Some people would totally cringe like, no, that’s not happening. And then other people are like, yeah, that’s for me. So I think that is as expected. Yeah, Leah?

Leah:

Thank you. I’m curious to learn more about when you do this exercise, because I saw you define trust with unity of purpose, and so what I noticed about this is first and foremost, to trust others, you have to trust yourself and so just how that shows up, because in the embodiment piece, it’s how do you trust your own body and trust your own thoughts? So I’d just be curious to learn more about if that comes in to these kinds of experiences.

Erin Warner:

So first about the unity of purpose. You can define trust in many different ways, and that’s the one that I think is crucial to being able to make decisions, and again, that disagree and commit. If you trust that their intention with which the decision is made, it’s easier to get on board. And then yeah, I think the embodiment comes into play because your body will tell you if you trust someone or not because probably, well, possibly you might think, well, I should. That’s your mind. And then I wanted to bring up the unconscious biases that we have too. We all have them. Again, we try to override them cognitively when we’re aware of them. So maybe actually you “should trust a person.” But some unconscious bias is coming up that maybe by sitting quietly, looking in their eye, you can notice that and say, oh, actually I have some work to do to not let that dictate my relationship with that person.

So the next secret ingredient is making space for emergence, and I’m very much inspired by Adrienne Maree Brown, who wrote the wonderful book Emergent Strategy. I mean it’s a concept that I think it’s expressed in many, many different ways, but what I found really resonated with me in her book and her perspective is two things in particular. One, she’s very, very inspired by nature and very clear on the fact that we are nature. So we’re not separate from it. Whatever we can learn and observe in what we say is nature is generally true on some level or in some way about us as well, and she’s also very inspired by science fiction in a very optimistic way that I love.

So basically if we can imagine and dream an alternate reality that we would like to see become reality, then we can work towards it, but it is an act of creativity, right? It doesn’t exist, so we have to dream it first. That’s the first step, so I love that about her. And just some axioms from her book that I think applied to the decision-making is moving at the speed of trust, again, to keep the health of the members of the organization, the rapport. Never a failure, always a lesson, we all know that one, small is good, small is all. The large is a reflection of the small, so it’s not insignificant, the small steps. It’s like the fractals and the microcosm. What you pay attention to grows, so we’re going to come back to that in terms of enthusiasm, and then change is constant, be like water, always be flowing, always be looking for a different path, and there’s multiple ways to get to your destination.

And another way of saying it that, I am very grateful to the certification process because I came up with this working on my portfolio and the certification process, is that small is better than not at all, direction is more important than the finish line and enthusiasm is the fuel. So we’re going to move into actually evaluating the ideas that you all generated in the previous session using this lens, this framework, especially, we’re going to focus on enthusiasm.

So I had to collect from you all high level the ideas that you all generated in the past session, and there were nine tables, but it seemed like there were basically five big ideas and I wrote them on the pieces of paper. So if you have the block paper on your table, could you just stand up, one person from each table, and say what your big idea was, very high level, what pain point you were solving for and what your idea was? And listen for these because I’m going to ask you to express your preference and your enthusiasm in a minute here, so it’ll be a form of voting.

Speaker 22:

So the pain point was geographic and cultural diversity, and what we came up with were gatherings, convenings, community gatherings at installments because, well, the spouses know where their spouses work and they go there every day. And how about creating community there as a way to share about these things in the way the military shows up and offers convening and gatherings and luncheons as a recruiting method?

Erin Warner:

Thank you.

Speaker 23:

So we focused on building a personal connection and what we landed on was partner with universities for belonging and prestige, so universities that carry a lot of clout in the business world, the Stanfords, Harvards, those kinds of universities. Not only could that help bring attention to resumes, but you also would start to feel a belonging with that university, like I’m part of Stanford or I’m part of Harvard, and so it helps build a community that’s global and really easy to plug into.

Erin Warner:

Thank you.

Speaker 24:

We focused on lack of trust and we thought that could be ameliorated by storytelling of the individuals who were in the program. So I started out with the same problem you had in terms of feeling lonely, not having childcare, and through this program I was successful. Also, on the employer side, I’m an employer. I hired these people and they were super successful in my organization, and so that kind of storytelling would help build trust if it was success stories.

Speaker 25:

So we started out with competing messages. As we started building this out, we’ve realized it might’ve touched on another. We were focusing on that one as our pain point, but we thought we would partner with a national corporate sponsor, for example, a big IT like an Oracle or a Google because they could help us with communication, outreach. They have the name notoriety, they have the bandwidth within their own company. They know how to do this well in terms of communications and branding and that kind of thing. And they also could help with funding with scholarships for the spouses, providing internships and potential job opportunities as they complete the program.

Erin Warner:

Thank you.

Speaker 26:

So we were focused on lack of trust and one of the ideas that we came up with was to create listening circles between the military spouses. So hosting some sort of event where it’s like a family night or something like that where people can all come together and share their pain points and what has been their process so far with their job search or whatever pain points that they might be going through.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Fantastic, and so I consolidated it to five because I heard a few similar ideas about partnerships and that kind of thing. So hopefully I captured most of the genius in the room. So again, we’re going to have to use our imaginations onto accounts. One, we’re going to imagine that we are the ACC decision makers and we’re going to do something to promote this program and it’s going to be one of these ideas, and we also are going to imagine that we’ve had time to really engage with these five ideas. So we’re really fast-forwarding to, after all that debate, conversation, exploration has been had. But I would like for you all to take about one or two minutes to reflect on these five ideas and which one you think is the coolest.

We’re just going to use enthusiasm along these three vectors if you think there’s potential here represented by that bud, that flower bud, or if you think it’s moving the organization towards its mission or if you just think it’s cool, you’re enthusiastic about it. So I’m going to go back to the five here because in a minute we’re going to get up. We’re going to move around the room and express our preferences by physically locating our bodies. Reflect on these five ideas and where your enthusiasm is and why.

So wait, wait, wait. So we have community gatherings and installments and listening circles. Is everybody who’s standing here saying I’m on board with both of those or should we keep them separate? I think let’s keep them separate for now. I’m going to ask you to choose, so Jenny [inaudible 00:34:05] further away.

Speaker 27:

Jenny, I’m over here.

Erin Warner:

Jenny, stand over here. Spoiler alert, you might get a chance to combine ideas, but work with me. Okay, thank you. So I would just like to hear what you all are noticing so far both in terms of what information you have from just being able to see how the people are distributed. And also I saw some people walking like, I guess I’ll go over here. So what is your body telling you about your true level of enthusiasm or what is it telling you? Does anyone want to respond to either of those questions?

Speaker 28:

My body brought me here even though this was our idea, over here because I remembered that we said we were supposed to be thinking about her, so immediate, something that’s immediate and personal, and I have personally benefited from these kinds of what it would be as a support group.

Erin Warner:

Nice. Thank you.

Speaker 29:

To be honest, I was thinking about it when you asked why I came over here and I think that I still feel somewhat disconnected from the purpose, and so I’m hoping that storytelling will help me feel more connected to it. And yeah, I mean I was thinking that even yesterday when we were doing the system mapping, more information, and so I enjoy hearing a story to learn more about why it should matter.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Okay, so we have five ideas and I’m now going to give the people who voted for the smallest group to now vote for one of the top three. Now I would like to invite the people who just cast their second vote, one person who did that to say why. So someone who’s at storytelling who was not there initially, would one of you please share why you decided to give your second vote to them?

Speaker 30:

You had me at purpose.

Erin Warner:

Is there anything from your original vote, any element of that that’s important to you that you would like to propose to fold in and add to this one? Margaret has her hand up.

Margaret:

So the two things are, one, we wanted it to be national, so it had to be something that could be broadcast and storytelling can do that via different media. The other one was, we can start this tomorrow. Our media students here at ACC can take these stories and film them or gather them. We can make an experience for the students too. So it’s immediate and national, which were two of the original goals.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Actually, could someone scribe that add to what Dan’s holding, just the immediate and national so that we’re capturing the new hybrid idea? Thank you. So someone who initially did not vote for corporate sponsor partnership but now has gone there, could you please share why?

Speaker 32:

As they say, follow the money.

Erin Warner:

Very good. You guys are both very concise in why you changed your vote. And was there anything from your original camp that you felt was important or special that you’d like to embed into your new camp?

Speaker 33:

I think the only other thing I’d want to bring is when we highlighted prestige, what I was thinking is if these people don’t have a lot of experience, they’re probably lacking confidence, and so just a name brand with some teeth that can make them feel more confident going into those job interviews and make them feel like they can really get this job.

Erin Warner:

Thank you, and then someone who was not initially at community gatherings, but who was there, what brought you over there?

Speaker 34:

Yeah, so I was just saying, yeah, with the community gatherings it is something that is low touch, high impact, whereas some of the other things like building out a partnership with the university or sponsors can be high touch, high impact, but it’s going to take more time. So yeah, this is grassroots, similar, you can get it started-

Erin Warner:

Similar to what we heard over there.

Speaker 34:

You can get it started immediately.

Erin Warner:

And someone who wasn’t initially in this camp, could you say where you were initially and something, an element of that you’d like to fold in?

Speaker 35:

In partnership with over there, it’s immediate and regional, but has the same spirit going, so regional and national has a nice partnership. Let’s get together. [inaudible 00:38:38].

Erin Warner:

Exactly. Exactly. Beautiful. Thank you. So you see how we could do this again until we got down to two or one, but we’re down to three, which I think is great. And you see how the process works, how you are able to build a hybrid proposal, bring in the elements that were appreciated and the ones that didn’t rise to the top and how you can build consensus. You can’t always achieve it completely, but you can build it a little bit and let everyone feel like their voices are heard. So I would suggest that we have come up with three really great ideas that could be a provisional, advisory opinion that we could provide to ACC for them to evaluate.

So that was really beautifully done. I’m actually really moved with the fact that we have … The lawyer in me is very gratified by the concreteness of what we just did, that we had ideas, we collaborated. They can of course be fleshed out. You all used your imagination and trusted me to go through this process that was a little bit sped up. And so the outcomes that we have is not two but three ideas that I want to hear your feedback, but the intention is that they’re selected inclusively, transparently and with consensus building. So is that landing? Do you think that’s what you just experienced or how did your experience differ?

Speaker 36:

Excited, to be honest. At first I thought maybe we missed the mark on the messaging and I was thinking through in my head, should I have elaborated more in some areas? But I think there was enough overlap with the idea we ultimately merged with that it made sense and it broadened the scope and the reach of what we originally wanted to do.

Speaker 37:

They were all generally really good ideas and we were able to let go of our ego.

Erin Warner:

Yeah, I think that’s right. There wasn’t too much attachment, but the idea of the process is that when there is attachment, that whole part of getting to say what you want to keep alive though from your initial idea can help go to assuaging any feelings of disappointment, loss. Exactly. So we did an embodied process of allowing ideas to emerge and co-creating ideas that weren’t there in the room initially, and I wanted to ask you to just reflect on how that felt. Again, we’re not super attached to this, but would it feel vulnerable to go and actually walk across the room when it’s more controversial, and I’m here? If it does feel vulnerable, is that a good thing in some ways and a bad thing in other ways? Just what does it mean to express yourself with your whole body?

And how did it feel if your idea didn’t become one of the top two? Did you feel included? I said inclusive, but that’s my aspiration. Does it feel that way to you? And yeah, how do you think trust is implicated in this experience? So if you all would take just a minute or two to gather your thoughts, because again, I want this to be useful for you. You won’t do it exactly the same way, but what here can you take and use? So our final share out debrief, and again, I would love to invite anyone who hasn’t shared to the whole group, we value your voice here. So we’d love to hear from anyone who hasn’t yet taken that plunge what you want to share. Go ahead.

Speaker 38:

When you were talking about when there is significant weight to the decision being made, there can be loyalties along team lines, and so it all goes back to that trust. If you didn’t have it in the first place, it doesn’t help to not have it toward the end, because you’re not going to vote authentically or really speak the truth if you know eyes are watching and you’re going to have to pay for it at some point, and it really reinforces for me the key critical importance of trust here.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Thank you for that, and that goes back to there’s no one best way to make decisions. So you obviously wouldn’t use this in every situation and that’s why there’s such thing as secret ballots. I mean that is very important to have secret ballots or to go in reverse hierarchical order when you express your opinion. So yeah, thank you for that. Hi.

Speaker 39:

As somebody who gets really sleepy after lunch, I really appreciated that we got to stand up and move around. And I think just in general in facilitating classes and that kind of thing, I’m always looking for that, an activity to do after lunch to get people up and moving around, so this was a great way. I mean, sure we could have done it still seated, but it was great that we were up and moving around.

Erin Warner:

Fun. Thank you so much. I’m glad that helps you. Go ahead, Mimi.

Mimi:

So something that I felt very challenged by in this on a personal level was just this desire to come to the true right answer and a desire to want to debate the merits of one idea versus another idea and go from five to three to one. Really, I wanted to stand for my idea and why it’s superior to all the other ones, which is probably also inner narrator stuff, but I think that thinking about using this strategy when you have to make a decision and you have to make a decision where you take it from there or where you sit with ambiguity, sit with a continued space of variation and iteration and when you have to get to the closing point or it seems like the push and pull there.

Erin Warner:

100%, and I think, yeah, this was a very truncated version. You could expand on this quite a bit, and one thing you could do is when people are doing their second or third vote and maybe they’re reluctant at that point, they’re like, no, I don’t really love this idea, and you can invite them to bring in something that’s important to them, it can be a time box on it or something that makes it iterative, something like, let’s try this for so much time, or let’s only invest this much money in it, that kind of thing to help them get on board to make them feel more comfortable or safer with it. Yeah, there’s a lot of ways you could go with this.

Speaker 41:

Erin, what struck me about this versus other voting mechanisms, and we’ve encountered people who were like, can I split my vote? Can I tear my sticky? Or I guess I’ll raise my hand for that, is that there’s a whole self-commitment. You cannot separate yourself from your body. So when you go to a place, you are there and it’s visceral, and I think someone mentioned the word authentic, which I also wrote down.

Erin Warner:

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Phil:

On a quick yes hand on John’s commitment for our projects, when we get to those decision moments, we’ll talk a lot about, we want commitment over consensus. So I like you’re merging with this group and people know you’re coming in from the outside and you’re bringing something with you, but it’s like what makes you willing to commit to trying this? And if it doesn’t work, we’ll go back and we’ll try something else. But that diffuses, am I fully agreeing with this or am I just willing to do an experiment?

Erin Warner:

Yeah, thanks, Phil.

Speaker 43:

To add on the things that have been said, I also like the prompts of checking back in with your body because I tended to realize when you didn’t give that prompt to stick in my head and then start to argument why I would go left and right versus truly feeling, how does it feel to now stand here or leaving the idea you had at first and go there? So it’s one thing to use going somewhere to vote, but then to also maybe even suggest people to close their eyes and say, how does it feel? So I think there’s maybe even room to play with the embodiment.

Erin Warner:

Definitely. Yeah, add another layer.

Speaker 44:

Having people move was helpful because you get to watch people’s bodies as they move and you can see the manner in which they are voting because you’re asking them to check in with their body. You’re like, oh, that person is just moving along. But that’s helpful data for the facilitator to see, oh, there’s a lot of bodies that either they don’t give a shit right now or they’re really about this vote and they really committed. It’s interesting to be able to watch the story of voting happen as opposed to just, here’s the outcome.

Erin Warner:

Absolutely. Thank you for that. Yeah, and you can inquire into it. I literally noticed someone … I think they were undecided between two and their body literally was … They were going like this and like this, so that’s something I could have inquired into. It seemed like you were torn about which direction to go and it really … Yeah, there’s a lot of information there for the facilitator. Yeah. Thank you.

So thank you very much for trusting me and going there and knowing something a little different. Just to recap where we’ve been, and I don’t know exactly how we got there, but I introduced what I consider the secret ingredients for successful group decision-making, trust and emergence. We talked about when embodiment is, and then we experienced it. We did some interactive demos with the trust circle and expressing your preference with your body and we reflected and shared, so thank you all very much. I just want to remind you that I’m Erin and I would love to keep in touch. Community is such an important thing to me and that’s actually what I love so much about Voltage Control. I feel such a part of this community and now I’m so glad to be in community with you all. So please keep in touch. Thank you.

The post Daring Dialogues: Refining Ideas and Embracing Bold Action appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Solomon Masala led a dynamic and energizing workshop titled “Using Art and Conversation for Convergence.” Solomon, a renowned facilitator known for his vibrant and hands-on approach, guided participants through a series of activities designed to foster teamwork, creativity, and deeper connections.

The session kicked off with an interactive drumming exercise using colorful boomwhackers, immediately engaging everyone in a rhythmic and playful atmosphere. Solomon’s mantra, “Drumming is not a spectator sport,” set the tone for active participation. The room quickly resonated with synchronized beats, illustrating the power of convergence where individual contributions blend into a harmonious whole.

Solomon emphasized the importance of choosing activities that align with the workshop’s objectives. He introduced the concept of “FUNN” (Functional Understanding Not Necessary), highlighting that while fun is a key component, each activity must have a clear purpose tied to the desired outcomes. He shared his experiential philosophy, where activities serve as a vehicle to surface and practice essential behaviors relevant to the group’s goals.

Participants then engaged in a variety of exercises, each meticulously designed to balance didactic learning with kinesthetic experiences. One notable activity involved participants organizing themselves in a specific order without visual aids, relying solely on verbal communication and active listening. This exercise underscored the significance of clarity, trust, and collaboration in achieving collective success.

Another highlight was the “Five-Pointed Star” challenge, where teams had to draw a star using a contraption with strings, requiring precise coordination and communication. This task not only tested their ability to work together but also provided a rich debrief opportunity to discuss observed behaviors and strategies for improvement.

Solomon also delved into the concept of perceived risk, illustrating how creating controlled, safe challenges can enhance learning by pushing participants slightly out of their comfort zones without causing distress. He emphasized the value of reflection in experiential learning, encouraging participants to think critically about their experiences and draw meaningful insights.

The workshop concluded with a creative tableau exercise, where teams used their bodies to create a still image representing solutions to a real-world challenge. This activity fostered innovative thinking and a deeper understanding of the discussed concepts.

Solomon’s workshop was a testament to the power of experiential learning in facilitation. By immersing participants in hands-on activities and fostering an environment of trust and curiosity, he demonstrated how kinesthetic experiences can drive profound personal and collective growth. The session left attendees with practical tools and renewed inspiration to incorporate these dynamic methods into their own facilitation practices.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Douglas:

You never know what meaningful, experiential adventure awaits, and there’s always a promise of some fun. Solomon.

Solomon Masala:

Good morning. Drumming is not a spectator sport. You have on your table instruments. Those are tubes that are colorful. Here’s a quick lesson. Take the tube and hit it in the other hand. You are all now master boomwhacker players. If you don’t actually have a tube, there are some tubes that have strings that actually aren’t instruments. If there aren’t enough instruments there, I have placed some of those transparent cups so you get a pen and get one of those cups or anything else at your table.

And I want you to notice that without me having to say anything, we are in the beat. Let’s do a little call and response.

Hey.

Audience:

Hey.

Solomon Masala:

All right. Let’s explore. Where’s Durell? Durell used a really cool term yesterday to start us off called stoke. So we are stoking right now. All right. If you have a red boomwhacker, your part goes like this. Join me. All right, red, you are the pulse keepers. If you have an orange boomwhacker, your part goes like this. Yellow, with me.

Yep. Keep that going. Green. Keep it going. Convergence doesn’t mean that we lose the individual power of the perspectives. What it means is that as we come together and share our parts, that we create something we didn’t even know existed before, and that thing is greater than the sum of the parts. You can hear it right here. Keep it going. Let’s take that tempo a little faster.

And a little faster. One notch faster. And you can play whatever you like. On three, we rumble. One, two, three. Yes. All right. Good morning. Better than coffee. It’s always a delight and a pleasure to be in a room with facilitators because there’s this shared sense of commitment to moving things forward. There’s a shared sense of willingness to hear others. There’s this shared sense of we are serving. So thank you for coming together. I appreciate the opportunity and the honor to be in and amongst you all here today and the opportunity to even share something.

So hopefully, working my inner narrator here. Hopefully, what I bring to you here today, there are some gems that really serve your work in some way. As Douglas mentioned, experiential. So I’ve discovered that I really like when people are doing things. And in fact, in my earlier years as a facilitator, people would say, all right, Solomon, we’ve done enough. Can we just talk? So I recognize that there’s got to be both. There has to be a mix of the didactic experience and the kinesthetic. However, the kinesthetic really offers something quite powerful, so that’s where I’m going with us today as far as bringing us into convergence.

So a very quick wrap up, a summary on what I believe is important about when you’re doing anything kinesthetic. So the first thing is that you choose something that actually hits the objectives. Now, there is something called FUNN, functional understanding not necessary, warm-ups, getting folks ready for the day. However, if we just use those and then go, hey, wasn’t that cool and we just took an hour, we’re missing the point, I believe, of getting something experiential into the mix. So the first thing is always, what are my objectives?

What am I trying to get this group to do, and how does this experience actually call that forth? The second piece then is the behaviors. So what are the behaviors that are connected to? And this for me is the critical part. What are the behaviors that are connected to those objectives? Sure, we’re going to do X, but if I think about breaking that down, what goes into X so that I can actually successfully and functionally in a relational scenario meet that objective? So how does my exercise, my activity, actually get those behaviors to surface so that we can talk about them if they’re not functional?

And so that we can practice them if they are functional, so that we can create a kinesthetic reference point for the people we’re working with that says, yeah, when y’all did that, let’s talk more about how we want to do more of that in an appreciative way? The next piece then is immersion. So we want to have an experience where the intellect and the physicality as well as the emotional experience can be engaged. That’s part of what makes something a robust and valuable activity as far as putting it into the mix on your agenda. And this gets tricky.

Because as soon as you say, all right, we’re going to do a team building exercise, what’s the first thing everyone does? They roll their eyes and they think you’re going to do a trust fall and all these kinds of silly things because what has been lost is the meaningfulness around the experience. So if we bring that in and we demonstrate we are doing this because you all are saying you want to do this as a group, as a team, as a collective, and in order to do this, we’ve determined that these behaviors are necessary, let’s practice them.

I become who I practice being. The next piece then is, all right, how can experiment? How can we iterate? How can we innovate and how do we have the experience of diving in to do the thing that engages with all of these elements of learning? We want to have that present in whatever the experience and the activity is. Risk and failure must be somewhat baked into the experience, I feel. I think it’s important to set it up. So yeah, you could fail at this. However, the safety element is that it’s not emotionally or physically unsafe.

And I always ask my participants to join me in a commitment to that and sometimes we expand on what that is so everyone in the room knows what that is. So risk, yes, failure, yes, and especially perceived risk, that’s really good. So if you get people to stand on a cement block that’s only two inches or so off the ground and they’re moving a piece of wood that feels like, oh my god, perceived risk that truly they could just step off and be safe in the process. So those kinds of things are wonderful and can be brought into an experience because it heightens the learning process.

Again, not putting people in the crisis zone, we’re keeping them in the learning zone and the learning zone is outside the comfort zone. It feels a little bit uncomfortable, but that’s what happens when I’m engaged in my learning process. Like, oh wow, something else turns on. If we go to the last few, I think it was John Dewey that said something like, you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience, something to that matter. The reflection is critical. So being able to ask those good open-ended questions, I can never assume that just because we did this experience, the people in the room go, oh, look at that connection.

So the questions are part of what get them there and part of what deepens. This is where the critical thinking and the complex thinking process can get stoked up a little bit more. And then as much as possible, if it can be fun and it’s not always fun if there’s failure happening. So as a facilitator, I need to be able to hold that man, this group is not in a good happy place right now, but they’re learning. No one’s getting hurt. Harm isn’t being done to the individuals. They’re not happy about what they’re doing right now, but this is potent.

That being said, if we can bring fun into the experience, it also tags the learning with that much more of the neurochemical that helps me go, oh yeah, I remember that because I really enjoyed that experience. Thoughts, questions, comments. What questions have I generated thus far?

Speaker 4:

How do you match an activity to what you want to achieve?

Solomon Masala:

Good question. The question is how do you match an activity to what you want to achieve? You get a really big toolbox. What’s wonderful is our good friend, the internet. If you just start looking for exercises like I want to do this, that typically something will arise that even if it doesn’t meet it exactly, the more you experiment and play around, you’ll be able to modify it and customize it to your needs. So then the other piece is just talking to people. We have these hubs now. What a fabulous place to get on and like, I’m looking for this kind of activity.

I’ve already pulled a few off of it myself. So those are the ways, and then if there’s nothing out there, design one.

Speaker 5:

Hi, I was hoping you can speak a little bit more about perceived risk.

Solomon Masala:

Perceived risk.

Speaker 5:

It’s perceived, so.

Solomon Masala:

Sure. Perceived risk as in as I mentioned with the little cement block. So there’s one exercise, the classic exercise that comes from adventure learning. It’s called, what’s it called? It’s acid river. How many people have heard of it? Yeah, acid river. So the experience is I’m really only stepping up off the ground about this high, but because I’ve set it up of you can’t step off the block and you can’t drop the thing in the middle, I don’t tend to go with cheesy metaphors unless I’m working with fifth graders because they love that kind of stuff.

With adults, I’m just like, it just can’t drop it in there. It’s not acid. So you set up the parameters so that there are constraints. The constraints help make something as little as standing on a block feel like, whoa, this is really risky. That’s what I mean.

Speaker 6:

How do you in your experience set either the objectives and why you do the exercise upfront or you let them first experience without prompting too much, so the learning comes afterwards because you’ve embodied it versus already thinking about the learning? So how do you-

Solomon Masala:

Great question.

Speaker 6:

… Balance these two?

Solomon Masala:

Great question. I use both, and it depends on what I’m trying to do with the group and the nature of the group. So there are situations, most of the time, if it’s a group of adults, if it’s a corporate scenario, we are clear about the objectives. Because I feel like I have to hit them here first, get the intellect engaged so they feel that this is worth their time because now I’m making them think. And then from there, we set up, okay, this was what we talked about didactically, we’re working on more clear communication. Now let’s go practice it.

These were the elements we discussed. Let’s go practice it and see how we do. On the flip side, there may be groups where I have discussed with some of the folks coming into the room leadership, this is what we’re trying to have the group do, and then we do the constructivism approach where we put them into the experience and then through the debrief we go, what did you see happen? What did you see happen? Why did you think that behavior was there? How does that impact us as a team? How does this relate back to what we’re doing in the work world?

So, it really depends on what I think is going to be the, what’s the culture of the group, who’s in the room, those kinds of things. All right, one more question and then I want to move on to get to our experiences.

Speaker 7:

I was curious about if there are times you decide to share the objectives with the participants or not share the objectives. Do you want them to discover the objectives? Are there distinctions as to when you do that?

Solomon Masala:

Sure. Similarly, here, I am pretty transparent about objectives so that folks know why they’re in the room. And I think for adults that’s really … For all ages, that’s pretty important. I may not necessarily tell them the specific objective of the actual activity that we’re going to do, but the overall reason that we’re in the room, I like folks to know that so that it helps their amygdala calm down. Yeah. Good question. All right, let’s move on. Wonderful questions, y’all. So in the spirit of why are we in the room, here’s what we’re doing.

So I’ll pause for a moment so you can read. This is what we’re focused on. We’re wanting to converge today around this. Start coming up with some ideas, start iterating, start suggesting. So check me on this. How important are the skills that I have listed up there to that as our goal, which skill is not necessary, if any?

Speaker 8:

Finding alignment is not necessary.

Solomon Masala:

And please say why finding alignment is not necessary.

Speaker 8:

You can come up with solutions that may contradict each other that are valid.

Solomon Masala:

And they are valid. And how if they’re contradictory and still valid, how do we move forward with them?

Speaker 8:

Empirical. Put a hypothesis out, test it, like that.

Solomon Masala:

Totally. I’m with you on that. I’m totally with you on that. My reasoning for having alignment up there is with that I still have to go, okay, let’s try that. I have to get enough on the same page with you to feel like I can see, even though I’m coming at it from a different perspective. We at least need to be aligned to say, all right, let’s run it and see what happens.

Speaker 8:

I wouldn’t sacrifice it, but it’s the one I would throw out if I had to.

Solomon Masala:

Cool. I appreciate that. Thank you. I can see that. What other thoughts?

Speaker 9:

So I wonder about perspective taking because isn’t that inherent to fostering listening and curiosity?

Solomon Masala:

Yes, and cannot be assumed.

Speaker 9:

Okay. Well, we all know that assumptions make an ass out of you and me.

Solomon Masala:

Right. I mean think about our exercise yesterday again with what we did with Durell that there was a good bit of perspective taking that I needed to have in order to get a feeling for why would you come at this from that perspective. Let’s move into it. So here’s what I’d like you to do. I want you to have a 30 second, facilitators 30 second conversation with your elbow partner or partners to answer this question, what mindsets bodysets? When I say bodyset, what am I going to have to do physiologically? Like what’s the mood? What are the emotional elements I will need to engage?

What’s the spirit I will need to engage in order for this to be successful? So have a 30-second conversation with your neighbors. Go.

We’re going to jump into our first exercise. Some of you may have done this before. I’m hoping that it’s new to many people. If you’ve done this before, what I’d like you to do is use it as the experiment. This is a lab after all. I want you to notice what you’re seeing in the group think process and the individual personas that come into the room that either support or inhibit success. So if you’ve done this before, you get to study the people who are doing it. If you’ve done this before, I’m going to ask you to withhold information and just participate as a regular participant.

And at a certain point I will say, if you have prior knowledge, please go ahead and share your prior knowledge now. So here’s the task. In a moment, I’m going to distribute some cards. These are the cards. When you get your card, you’re going to hold it somewhat like this. You can also hold it like this. I’ve laminated it so that it’s foldable and can spread out again. The reason is under no circumstances should you show anyone your card. They should not see it. So that also means from an integrity standpoint, as we start milling around the room, if somebody’s holding their card and you could get a little glance at it, avert your eyes and remind them to hold the card close to the chest, as they say.

All right. So you won’t share your card by showing it to anyone. However, you can say anything you want to about it because your task as a group is to get yourselves in the correct order. That is your task, to get yourselves in the correct order. You may share whatever you like. You just may not show your card. That also means you can’t take a picture and digitally send it to someone. That would be the same as showing them the card. What questions have I generated?

Speaker 10:

So I’m able to share what my experience is of what’s on that card?

Solomon Masala:

Yes.

Speaker 10:

Okay.

Solomon Masala:

Yes.

Speaker 10:

Any way I want?

Solomon Masala:

Yes.

Speaker 10:

I could?

Solomon Masala:

Any way you want, just not visually.

Speaker 10:

Just not visually.

Solomon Masala:

Right.

Speaker 11:

Can you repeat that for the group?

Solomon Masala:

Yes. So the question is, question was I’m able to share anything I want about the experience of what’s on the card and the answer is yes.

Speaker 10:

Yeah, so we could directly describe what’s on our card?

Solomon Masala:

Yes, you can.

Speaker 10:

Okay.

Solomon Masala:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I would say let’s not draw because I’m sure there’s good artists in here. That would be kind of giving it away visually as well.

Speaker 12:

Will the meaning of the word order be obvious when we get our cards?

Solomon Masala:

It should become so and thus the challenge.

Speaker 11:

Yes.

Solomon Masala:

That’s what we’re working towards. Good question. Good question. What other questions? Okay. Because I need to distribute these cards, I’m going to start here in a moment just handing them out. Once you get your card, you may look at your card, but again, under no circumstances do you share your card with anyone. In order for this to start working as easily as possible, and we’re going to move around the room, let’s go ahead and stand where we are and make the best line we can around the periphery, which is probably going to cut in front.

Question?

Speaker 13:

Is there a clearly defined correct? How’s correct defined?

Solomon Masala:

Good question. Correct is correct. This is not up for debate. There is a correct order. That is a good question. There is a correct order. It is correct. If it’s not correct, you will see that is not correct. Cool. All right. Here we go. You can already start by just studying people’s faces as they receive this. What information are they receiving? Here you go. You have 15 minutes. Go.

Speaker 14:

Barnyard animals. Any barnyard animals?

Solomon Masala:

Let me have your attention for just a moment. For clarification, when I say correct order, I mean the whole room. The whole room. So, everyone in the whole room just in case there was a question about that. We have 30 seconds remaining. 30 seconds. Go ahead and take your final positions to the best of your ability. All right. Let’s see how we did. Let’s just see how we did. What I’d like you to do is you’re going to take your card, just set it down on the ground in front of you there, the way you look at it. And then we’re just going to have some folks, some folks can step inside to look and some folks can step outside.

Let’s go clockwise. Let’s move in a clockwise direction. A clockwise direction to see how we did. Clockwise direction. Yes, clockwise. We’re going to be moving this way. As I look around, I see this went pretty well, team. Nicely done. Nicely done. Let’s go ahead and gather around one of the tables with a giant marker in the middle. About eight to 10 people, about eight to 10 people. So there’s so many places we can go with the debrief on this. I’d like you to just turn and talk to your table or your table mates really quickly.

How did we do practicing the skills we discussed were necessary for success in the exercise we just did? How’d you do and what did you see happening that demonstrates that these skills were important? All right. Thank you. As we move to our next exercise, just a quick gentle reminder, we’re continuing to build and develop and work with those specific skills in this moment as we walk towards convergence. And to clarify bodyset, it was a question that came up earlier. So for me, bodyset like mindset, how I’m thinking, where I’m putting my thoughts, the processes I’m using.

Bodyset, same thing. How am I feeling, what am I doing so that I can be perhaps more present and engage in the room, the feelings and emotions, the somatic experience that I’m having also bodyset. Both of which I do have some control over. Let’s move to our next exercise. All right. In the middle of your table, you have one these contraptions. Here’s how this works. Each person at your team will hold the end of one of the strings. If you don’t have 10 people, you can decide which of the strings are not going to be used. You must hold the end of the strings.

Some of the strings have a little marker dot that show you you shouldn’t hold it past that. Some folks are going to do this. That ain’t right. You can’t do that. You have to hold the very end of the string. What clarifications do you need on that? All right. Everyone will be holding onto a string. When you feel ready to draw, your task is to draw a five pointed star as a team on the flip chart paper that’s in the center of your table. So you’re working together to draw the five pointed star. All forms are allowed. All forms are and are highly encouraged.

You’ve got 10 minutes. One more minute. One more minute. Remember to hold your strings at the end. Remember to hold your strings at the very end.

Speaker 15:

You get excited about the line with started to pull too far.

Solomon Masala:

Well done. Well done. This activity is based on all the numerous versions of being able to direct and work together and feel and sense. So again, lots of richness involved or available as far as the debrief goes. And this version just happens to work if you’re in a conference room rather than having to take people outside and do the big things. Home Depot, Office Depot, y’all. Pretty inexpensive. The main thing is get this kind of slippery stuff as far as the cord goes because when you wrap them up, then it won’t knot up.

If you use the cotton stuff when you’re packing this up and traveling it, you will have to start all over again. And to keep the strings where they’re tied from sliding down, you just put a little drop right on the knot, little drop of super glue and that keeps them there. There you have it. How did we do? Let’s turn to our neighbors and talk again real quick. We’re practicing skills. How’d we do? What did you see happening? Here we go. Our last exercise for the morning. Again coming into convergence, this one will give us an to really work with some of the specific things we’re talking about with respect to our ACC and military family challenge.

So here’s how this will work. You can work in the circles, tables where you are right now. That should be fine. And at a certain point, I’m going to have you get up and do something. So you’ll just do your best to find the openest space, the most open space in the room for your group to do your build. So if you need to scoot the table a little bit over or find some open spots, I trust we can problem solve that one pretty well. So the first step in this process, we’re going to do it two times. The first will be as an example. The second one will actually apply it to our content.

So the first step in this is you’re sitting in your circle. I want you in your circle to think about something that has wings. Think about something that has wings. You’re just thinking at this point. You’re not actually sharing any information. You’re not talking at this point. You’re just thinking. So think about something that has wings. I’ll give you about 10 seconds to come up with something in your mind. I’ll let you know when it’s time to share. In the spirit of total physical response, this is something that’s used in schools, when you have your thought at your table, go ahead and just cross your arms like this so I know you’re complete and your colleagues know you’re complete with your thought as well.

All right. Next step in the process is share. So here’s how this will work. When you share, you’ll basically just uncross your hands and say, I was thinking, and you’ll just share. We’ll go around the table. I was thinking. I was thinking. I was thinking. You got about 10 seconds. Go. Now we have to decide. So we’re going to spend about 10, 15 seconds in a group deciding. We’ve heard all of the things that everyone has shared. However, we can’t build all of those. We have to converge. We have to determine which will we build or how will we innovate based on what we were hearing.

So you’ve got 10 seconds. What are you going to build? 10 seconds. Discuss. Go. Now because we have so much alignment around your circle, if I was to come and point to somebody in your circle and say, what are you going to build? And then ask somebody in the other side of the circle where they’re going to build, I should hear the same answer. If you don’t think that that’s possible, I’m going to give you three more seconds to ensure you have that. Go.

Speaker 16:

Quit it.

Solomon Masala:

All right, here we go. We have what we’re going to build. All right. Now that you know what you’re going to build, the next step, we’re not actually building yet. So you don’t have to get up and do anything. The next step is what are the things we’re going to need? So for instance, if in my group we were going to build a wasp, I would say, okay, we need antenna, we need the head, we need a thorax, we need legs, we need a stinger, etc., etc. Right? So that’s all you’re doing at this point. We need. We need. We need. Go. 10 seconds. All right.

Now that you know what you need, the next step is to determine what part each person in your group is going to play. What part will they be as we get ready to build? So that’s all you’re going to do at this point is I’ll be the, I’ll be the, I’ll be the. You’ve got 10 seconds. Go. Here’s what’s going to happen next. We’re moving to our build phase. We are creating what’s called a tableau. For those of you who know what that is, this is a picture. It’s a still picture, and we’re using our bodies to create the tableau.

So in a moment, when I say go, I’m going to give you about a minute to create your picture because you have the thing you’re going to build, you know what parts you need and you know who’s playing what. Here are your constraints. First of all, time. One minute. Secondly, in your tableau, you cannot have everybody standing and you cannot have everybody down on the ground. You must have people at different levels in your tableau. And by the time I count down to zero, when we get to zero, you must be frozen in place. Nothing can be moving, not even your hair, and you can’t use any props.

When I get to zero, everybody has to be still and frozen in place. Nothing moving, not even your hair. You cannot use any props. You have 60 seconds. Go. Five, four, three, two and one. Freeze. Freeze. Let’s see. Let’s see. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Well done. Well done. Nicely done. Woo. All right. Well done. That was fantastic. All right, so that was our practice round. Now let’s put this into experience with our content. So let’s think about some of the ideas that emerged yesterday when we were doing our process maps.

Let’s think about the challenge that we’ve been faced with. What are some of the things that we’re considering that we’re thinking about? So we’re now in think mode again. What are we thinking about that might be a way for us to help get people knowing more about the micro-credentialing process and certificates for military spouses. So I want you to think. I’ll give you about 10 seconds to think. When you have your answer, again, fold your arms so we know that you’ve got something in mind. The question is, we’re moving towards what are some of the things we think could make this happen?

What are some of the things for our challenge, for our challenge of … Pardon me?

Speaker 17:

National awareness.

Solomon Masala:

National, exactly. Our prompt is the national awareness around the micro-credentialing process for military spouses. We’re thinking, what are some of the things we would now start suggesting that we think, hey, we think this could help, we think this could support? As you have your thoughts, you’re bringing it and holding onto it, letting me know. I will know that you have your thought because your arms are folded and your teammates will know. All right. Next step is share. I was thinking, I was thinking, I was thinking, I was thinking. Go around your table.

You’ve got 10 seconds. Go.

Speaker 18:

What are the thoughts?

Solomon Masala:

We are going to move to decide what are we going to build. You’ve got 15 seconds. What are you going to build? Let’s move forward. Now that you’ve decided what you’re going to build, what will you need? We need, we need, we need, we need. That’s what the conversation is now. 10 seconds. Go. Now that you know what you need, you have to start assigning your parts. So again, remember, as you build your tableau, you have to have people at different levels. I saw that happening around. You can’t use any props. So anything other than just your, including clothing.

Clothing’s not a prop, so it’s just the body representation. And remember, when I count down to zero, everyone is frozen in place. Nothing moving, not even your hair. You’ve got 60 seconds. 60 seconds to build. Go. Five, four, three, two, and one. Freeze and hold. Let’s get some pictures of these amazing tableaus. Wow. And relax. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Come on back to your seats, everyone. Come on back to your seats. I have reached the completion of my session time. One of the things that could happen from here is we get a chance to spotlight each of the tableaus and hear what the group was thinking and creating.

However, because this discussion is alive in our room, you can cross-pollinate, share with each other. What were some of the things you came up in your tableau? What were you trying to represent? How easy, how hard was it to represent that? And some final considerations. These are going to be rhetorical questions given the time. Thank y’all so much for your participation. I love working with facilitators. Thank you.

The post Using Art and Conversation for Convergence appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Susan led a deeply impactful workshop titled “Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audience.” Susan, a seasoned educator and facilitator, guided participants through an exploration of their own identities and experiences using storytelling as a powerful tool for connection and empathy.

The session began with Susan sharing her personal journey as an English teacher and the importance of storytelling in her life and work. She emphasized the vulnerability involved in sharing personal stories and how it can lead to transformational change. Participants were encouraged to reflect on their own stories and identities, setting the stage for a profound and introspective workshop.

Susan introduced the concept of “narrative transport,” where participants immersed themselves in their own stories to uncover new insights and perspectives. She provided an example of a “Where I’m From” poem, showcasing how sensory details and personal memories can vividly bring a story to life. Attendees were then invited to write their own “Where I’m From” pieces, focusing on the tactile, sensory, and emotional aspects of their experiences.

Following this individual reflection, participants engaged in a constructivist listening exercise. They shared their stories without interruption in pairs, creating a safe and supportive space for deep listening and empathy. This exercise highlighted the importance of truly listening to others without the urge to respond or self-promote, fostering a sense of trust and connection within the group.

The workshop then transitioned to a group activity where participants created character profiles based on real-life stories of military families. Susan had gathered these stories from a friend with extensive military experience, ensuring the profiles were authentic and grounded in real experiences. Participants worked in teams to represent these profiles visually, capturing these individuals’ hopes, dreams, and challenges.

To deepen the understanding of these profiles, Susan introduced the “Think, Feel, Care” framework from the Agency by Design initiative at Harvard’s Project Zero. This framework encouraged participants to consider the systems and emotional responses affecting their characters, as well as their values and motivations. Through this exercise, attendees developed a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of the military families they were representing.

The workshop concluded with a gallery walk, where participants viewed and reflected on each other’s profiles. This exercise allowed them to identify common themes and patterns and to consider the broader implications for community engagement and problem-solving. Susan wrapped up the session by inviting participants to share their insights and takeaways, emphasizing the importance of empathy and deep listening in facilitation.

Susan’s workshop was a profound experience for all involved, encouraging participants to look inward and understand the power of their own stories. By fostering a space of vulnerability and trust, she demonstrated how storytelling can be a transformative tool for personal and communal growth. The session was a highlight of the summit, leaving attendees with a renewed sense of empathy and a deeper connection to their own identities and those of others.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Susan:

Really, as we think across these last two days, we really started a little bit in understanding ourselves. We’ve been looking at the soil and the place and how that impacts us, culture. We’ve been looking at those challenges of design. We’ve been thinking about the entities, in terms of university, those who they want to serve. And we’re going to bring it a little closer, well a lot closer. And I belabored and really thought about this for a long time. And I think Erin said we’ve had time to build trust, because where I’m about to take you is not something I would step into blindly with a group because there is some vulnerability to when we start telling our stories because it’s our identity work.

So storytelling, I’m an English teacher, high school teacher by trade. I usually try not to say that because then people think they have to talk perfectly grammatically correct and that I’m going to pull out my red pen at any moment. Grammar was not my jam. Writing creatively was, and storytelling was so important to me. When I reflect back, even in my work in the classroom, it was always about seeing and knowing each child. I left the classroom about 17 years in and I felt like it was a vessel that kept getting filled with liquid because I would in a year have about 120 different students and I wanted to know their stories, but I never let go of their stories.

So it took longer and longer for me to learn everything and I felt like my bandwidth was filling up, but I realized how important was for me to see them and for also to share something about me. So who am I? If you talk to anyone from Michigan, we’re going to pull out our hands, tell you where we are and I’ve already done it a few times. Some people called me out and say, “Oh yeah, Michigan.” They put their hands up first and they really knew where I was located and it wasn’t like a really well-known town. I was very impressed.

Usually when I’m out of state, I tell people I’m from the Detroit area. I am really an hour north of Detroit, but Detroit has a lot of identity for Michiganders and I, on the other side, just finished my doctorate. And what you see on the floor there is 33 years of journaling. So my dissertation was a study of myself, it was an autoethnography and it was about identity. So I was looking at my stories and how my stories changed across my professional life and what that meant. And there were some eras of me that I didn’t like so much and I was happy to get over those again in my study. But I am very much about transformational change and that’s what you see in that far corner. And a lot of that work is very intimate because you need to have all the voices in the room and you need to make space for trust and vulnerability.

National Writing Project is one of those biggest transformational change agents for me because that’s where I learned to do this hard, vulnerable work. And then I started leading it with adults and that led me to being a consultant in a region. And that led me to meeting Eric and setting up lots of what we call beloved communities where people could come and just like we’re doing here, we’re learning from each other. And we feel like, I’ve heard several people say, “I’m with my people, I found my people.” So as an educator, we’re notorious for freestyling and putting things together. So as I’ve been experiencing the two days, we might have gone through a cycle. So I remember early on a mentor saying to me, I did teaching in my bones. And she said, “You’re really a strong teacher, but you also need to learn how to name what you’re doing.”

And I almost feel like I’m learning that again in this community because I will do things in my bones as a facilitator, but translating that into like, so what did I just do and why did I just make those decisions? And so I bring that up because I found this book, just recently, that’s really like oh my gosh, that’s exactly naming what it’s taken me 30 years to really refine and do, is to create these transformational learning experiences for people. And a lot of that is tinkering with people’s identities, which can be very delicate work, and it’s usually over a long span of time. So I really was drawn, and I still haven’t finished all of this, but I said to Eric, I raised my hand. I said, “I got to come lead the session because this is like I finally found what I am. I’m a transformational change agent.” And it is through storytelling that you get there.

So narrative is a big part of this. So I also know that we are in that beloved community where we’re trying to learn from each other. So the way I thought about this is, we’re going to step in, we’re going to step out and reflect, and we’re going to step back in and it’s going to be this cycle. So we’re here also, and like Douglas said, I very seriously took the challenge of why we’re here. So what we’re doing is in service of finding something that we can offer back to ACC as we wrap up these two days.

So we’re going to do that through something called narrative transport. And I like this, you maybe have heard about in facilitation about immersion. You can do an immersion through a narrative, put people in the doing of it, don’t necessarily have them experience it from someone else, but immersion is where you have to build… In your safe space, put that down on paper for yourself. And if you think back to the title of my session, it was not about making meaning, but meaning making. If you get into writing, it’s through the act of writing that you, many times, see something you didn’t know before you started writing. And so writing actually gets you to seeing something you would probably not have seen before. So to me, that is really embodying narrative transport.

So in a minute I’m going to ask you to be also thinking about telling your where I’m from story, but I wanted you to see an example of one way you might be thinking about how would I tell that story? It’s going to be a little bit different than all the things that we’ve done up to this point, but some things might flow into it.

Speaker 2:

I am from cow print, tea kettles from Windex and allergy shots. I’m from the two-story white house with red doors built identical to the one next door but with a basketball hoop out front. I’m from cloud painted ceilings, fully stocked bird feeders, and the backyard rope swing. I’m from midwinter confused daffodils and dad’s front porch roses that he would insist we go and smell before we leave for school. I’m from lazy Saturday mornings dedicated to making M&M pancakes, sometimes shaped like animals. I’m from a tall father and a short mother. From thrift store lovers, beach snobs, ice cream addicts, and family dinners. From Maynard, the National Geographic photographer, and Susan, the Vietnam War military wife, and way too many Uncle Johns. I’m from brainiacs and goody two shoes. I’m from hats off during the anthem and generations upon generations of US military from Air Force to Navy with devoted patriotism.

I’m from Yorktown, Virginia, an area filled with military brats, always coming and going and yet I can never fully relate. I’m from don’t talk back to me, and go ask your mother, and if you ever need to leave a situation, just blame it on your parents. I’m from Vacation Bible Schools and Caleb Christian Radio. From long car rides of listening to the Chronicles of Narnia and from cheesy pre-meal prayer songs. I’m from Mom’s chicken pot pie and Dad’s perfected chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’m from annual family beach weeks with endless amounts of white Florida sand making dribble castles.

Attending grandma’s afternoon tea parties with evening line dances and sunsets, always fishing with my father. I’m from (singing). And from daddy daughter dates, from sister fights, from learning baby talk to get my brother to love me the most. I’m from Mr. Rogers, Veggie Tales, Barney, and sneaking in some Sagwa the Siamese cat. I’m from the Teletubbies are silly and Arthur talks back to his parents too much. From princess books and Polly Pockets. I’m from Easy Bake Ovens and Hip Klips. I’m from a family who believed in curfews and believed in grace even more.

I’m from Tickle Monster games and hide-and-go-seek in the dark. I’m from the land of half-winded hurricanes where everyone ran outside to watch the branches fly. And I’m from short-lived snow storms that leave an inch of snow on the ground and the whole town is shut down. I’m from the smells of the coast and seafood festival and the noise of Busch Gardens roller coasters. I’m from endless Christmas gifts from sunrise Easters and special birthday plates and from brokenness and broken people and yet there is beauty.

Susan:

I’m not expecting you to feel like you’re going to become a poet in an instant here. In the center of the table, which might be hard to find, we’ve got a lot going on these tables. If you have a notebook, you can use a notebook, but find some paper and this is what I invite you to do. Now you could start, like she did, always with that reframe like I am, I am am. You could write narratively if you wanted to, or you could draw pictures, you could map it out, whatever symbolizes something about where I’m from.

Now you notice that she did lots of different things, like things that were tactile. I can taste, I can smell the sounds, the songs, little phrases. It can get as small as that. So you’re bringing it down, and you’re not censoring, and you’re not trying to be perfect. So what this is called is a head-to-pen, which means you have to keep moving that pen across the paper, and not stop and start perfecting and letting the voices stop you from getting some ideas out. I’m going to give us three minutes. I’m going to ask that you do this by yourself and give everybody that silence around them to be thinking about this.

So you will have a chance if you want to add or freestyle in your own pieces. This is not as soon as that pen goes down the end of what you could be crafting. So I want to note to all of you, I didn’t say stop. So especially when people are in a writing flow, and I think you heard Eric do it earlier where you say, “Can you find a pausing spot?” And letting people have that moment to finish out that last thought or just finish out your last thought, your last line, and be patient because especially when people are putting something down so personal and vulnerable, it feels like a [inaudible 00:13:34] when you cut them off. So we’re about to step into, you’re going to be pulling this with you, a constructivist listening protocol. So I think we’ve done a little bit of that across the two days.

But a constructivist listening protocol is something that I picked up in some of the work I did with the National Equity Project and it really especially is designed for very vulnerable conversations. And when you’re really trying to have an inclusive sense of belonging, constructivist listening is really about holding space for the other versus thinking of how you want to self-promote or add on. Have you ever been to that event whether with friends or family where you feel like people are just listening to get the hook for the next thing they’re going to say, that’s the next topper to the story? That’s not what constructivist listening is. So you are going to be taking with you in a minute your notes, but I’m going to give you, and I appreciated what Solomon shared with us today with experiential learning about you can push but give safe space.

So here’s the safe space. You can take with you, your notes I’m from, but you can determine what you want to share. You don’t have to have them see it, and you don’t have to read verbatim everything that you just wrote. You could do any way you want to tell something that came out of that thinking time work. But you’re more than welcome to read it as well. The hard part about constructivist listening is, and I think we’ve got an even number now, we were odd. We should have just dyads, two people, and each person gets three minutes. So that person will introduce themselves because I’m going to make you get up and move, to mingle around the room. You’re going to introduce yourself, decide who wants to go first. Now when that person is having their time to share, you have to give them three minutes without, “Uh-huh, yeah, and.” You can nod, you can smile.

You don’t want to look too stoic because that’s also very awkward. But you cannot start asking questions or engaging them to tell you more. And here’s where it gets really awkward. They have three minutes. If they stop talking at two minutes, 30 seconds, you continue to wait until the three minutes. Because in that silent space, you’re giving them more time to think and they probably will add on, but they might not. But you have to stay there, quiet to that end of that three minutes and that is the hardest part I’ve ever seen adults have doing this activity.

All right, so I’m going to tell you when to switch because we’re going to do this, well, we’re going to do this once, but I’ll tell you when to switch to the second partner. So stand up, find somebody in the room, meet up and get ready and I’ll tell you when to start.

Okay. However… Rock, paper, scissors, who touches their nose last, however you want to figure out who’s going to go first. And I’m going to start the clock. Now remember listening partner, you’re listening, completely lost in their story, not about thinking about, “Now, what am I going to say later?” Right? I’m listening and holding space for you to tell me your story for three minutes. Yes.

Speaker 3:

Does the story start with the piece? [inaudible 00:17:37].

Susan:

It’s wherever they want to start and whatever they want to add and delete. All right, go ahead and get started.

All right, thank your partner and now it’s time to switch. All right? So second partner.

All right, thank your partner. I had the beauty of watching across the room and I’d like to invite, if anyone’s willing to share, anything about the experience of what you just went through.

Speaker 4:

So first, these two days have been way heavier than I expected it was going to be. But I think how significant creating a safe space can be. I felt so much more comfortable saying these things. I just feel like it does feel like a very genuinely safe space to do this stuff. So it’s not as terrible as it could be to get into all this stuff with people, some coworkers I barely know, versus a ton of strangers. It was very educational in that way.

Susan:

Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 5:

I can go because technically I’m part of the conference too.

Susan:

You are.

Speaker 5:

I don’t just work here. I’ll say I hope my partner doesn’t mind that, like, she ran out of things. And it was interesting to see what came up when she had to come up with the more on the cuff, digging deeper. It was really, really cool to see that. Anybody else want to go?

Speaker 6:

So I will say from the experience, one thing that was interesting was I was still looking for a response, some type of feedback, maybe it wasn’t the word, but the head nod, a smile, something that told me that at least what I was saying was landing and was somewhat interesting.

Susan:

Yeah, it’s amazing how much we look for affirmation.

Speaker 7:

The flip side of that, though, is I was dying to jump in and say something because she would say something, I’d be like, “Oh yeah, I like that, too.” So I was dying to connect with her in that way.

Susan:

Yeah, the first few times I did this, and I did this in my work environment and it is, it’s a little unnerving, but it does get really quickly to a trusting community and it makes you realize just how much you’re not really listening when you’re in conversation. The image I had up earlier, you’re already like, “Okay, I got to sound even smarter. What can I say?” Especially in those professional settings, you’re feeling like you got to show up and represent and win those brownie points. And so to honor really listening and giving space to each other, as it said, it allows in that vulnerability. And I did see vulnerability and thank you for those who really let those raw emotions show, that’s powerful. So what I’m going to ask you to do is go back to, whether it’s in your notebook or it’s on your paper. Now think about whether it was on paper or what you said, what did you self-censor out of your story or maybe ad lib into your story?

Now, this is just you. You get to keep these to yourself. So this is not, I’m not going to make you put it up on the wall and have to confront, “Yeah, that’s what I did.” What did you maybe ad lib or self-censor? And as you really think about that, and think about the stories that you do tend to lean into telling, what kind of patterns are you noticing about yourself, and the stories that you are sharing out, or that mean a lot to you? Okay, now this is safe. It’s all in your paper, it’s not going anywhere but with you. So be honest with yourself.

So after you finish that last thought, I want you to shift, keep your pencil or your pen moving. How do I want to be seen? What holds a lot of importance for me? Again, find a pausing spot. So we’re going to have to be really efficient in our space and time. But it’s super important for us to have cross-pollination in the room. So that’s why I’m going to stay true to this, even though we are running a little bit short on our time.

I made this up, the two-step mingle, but maybe it’ll become a thing. But it’s a layering of how you have people meet up in the room and carry what comes from one conversation then into the next conversation and then maybe back to a home plate. So what I’m asking you to do is to go back to that constructivist listening partner.

Now you don’t have to tell them exactly what you put in your write. You get to share what you want to share. So the question is that you’re going to talk about, and I’m not going to make you stare at each other, three minutes, three minutes. I’m going to truncate that. So we’ll just say it’s about three-minute time that you’re together. So you’re sharing with them, “What came up for me on this? What am I realizing?” Because I’m just going to be up front. I’m asking you to do identity work. So what are you learning about yourself, and how you see yourself, or how you want others to see you? All right? So go find that partner and then I’m going to ask you to come back to your table for the next round.

Okay. I’m going to ask you to pause. Jazz hands. Before you go back to your table, let me give you the next step. So you know as soon as you sit down, what you’re set up to do. You’re taking those conversations that you just had back to your table and what, as a table, you’re trying to figure out is at least in this shared team, what seemed to be in common experiences that we have? What are things that we really highly value? What is it that binds us together?

Because in a minute or a few minutes after that, that’s going to come into play because that’s the lens through which you’re creating something, are those things that you bring in through your identity. So you’re going to go back to your table and as a table in about two, three minutes, do a quick share around to get a sense of, okay, so what seemed to be common experiences that people can all circle up around in this room?

We can just wait.

Okay. Hopefully you got a chance to get at least some idea of some commonalities. You’re going to hold on to that. So why did I do all that? Why did we do all that hard work? Because what I was thinking of as we wrap up these two days is, imagine the people we’ve been talking about solving issues for are standing in the middle of your table. How do you bring their voices into the room? We’re not talking about them. We want their voices in the room doing the talk. And so I needed to first start with you grounding yourself in what’s my identity lens in terms of the things I feel I know, the things I feel I value. But it was also then to flip it and say okay, so at your table, you know what those in common experiences are, but you probably have some blind spots.

You don’t have all the experiences of some of the profiles that I’ve now put on all your tables. It’s not your story, it’s not your background. So what we’re trying to do is to step outside of our identity, but be very self-conscious and aware of how we try and pull what we know into how we’re trying to solve and build out a voice of these profiles. So you’re taking a stock of what is it that I know I bring into and it’s the lens I look through life. It’s the things I think are really important, but what I think is really important might not be how someone else views what’s really important. What I have as my background experiences maybe very different than background experiences of someone else. So first knowing who am I and being very conscious of what are the things that I lean into and sometimes I need to set that aside.

Does that make sense? Okay. So what I’m asking you to do is in teacher language, it would be a character profile. But at the center of your table I gave, and you might not have enough copies for everyone to have one, but you can share in between. When I heard about the challenge, I reached out to a couple who are long time friends, we actually went to college together. He was in the ROTC program and went on to be a lieutenant colonel in the army and just retired. And she was the wife that traveled, they did overseas, but I lost track how many times they were stationed at different places. And I said, I want to know the real stories. And so what I asked them to do was to, I created, some of you have a profile of a spouse, of an enlisted, and some of you have the enlisted member.

Something they taught me was, if you’re an officer, almost 100% of the time, you probably went through your undergrad and came into that position with a bachelor’s degree. But if you came in as enlisted, it’s very likely that you came in right out of high school, or you might’ve been in some trades. Now that was from them telling me this, is that 100% always the truth? No. But that was important for me to hear when I was thinking about the enlisted and the enlisted spouse. Now, it doesn’t have to be the spouse of enlisted, it could be a spouse of an officer. So I asked them, thinking of all the people they’ve met over the last 20 years, if they could create profiles for me, they might’ve taken pieces from different people, but what you’re seeing on that paper are real people that they met. These are real stories because I did not want to fictionalize that. It was very important that it was the real stories.

So you’re looking at that profile, and on one of the big posters, and you have some markers, however you want to represent the story because there’s going to be a point where there’s going to be a gallery walk and you’re going to be moving around. So we need to make it visible quickly. How do you capture that person? What are their hopes, their dreams, what’s some important back story? And you can add on, I just gave you some bare bones so you have enough, and that’s where I said it’s like you’re creating a character profile off the basis of someone real.

So that’s okay to add those fictional embellishments. If you want to have some favorite quote they say, whatever. You’re bringing them to life and you’re trying to represent that on the poster. So you don’t have much time to do this. Let’s just see where we’re at in five minutes. Any questions? You really can’t do this wrong, it doesn’t have to look like that. On the one large Post-it, make a character profile, however you want to represent it, it encapsulates this kind of information.

Okay, pause. It’s okay, it’s not a clean ending. I know that you’re in the midst. Then there’s a hot debate going on here. I love it, love it. Because if you’re debating, that means you feel empathy for these profiles. They’re real people. That’s really amazing. There’s one more step we’re going to take and thank you, thank you for that hard cognitive lift at the end of day two.

So for about the last two, three-ish years, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the principal investigator of Agency by Design, that’s out of Harvard’s Project Zero. If you’re in the education world, that’s one of the meccas of learning. But something I’m learning is that the things I’m learning over in the educational world definitely translate over into a non-education-based audience. So I wanted to share this with you, and we’re going to lay it on top of our profiles.

And this is, you can go to their website and find a whole lot of protocols, but this one’s called Think, Feel, Care. And the Agency by Design is really, especially, would be a facilitator’s delight because it’s a hands-on way of putting people into what could be very difficult conversations and realizations. So you’ll definitely want to check that out. But this is what you’re doing and it’s okay if you want to add it onto another poster, large Post-it poster, or if you want to just layer it on with some Post-its on what you already have drafted because we’re going to get up at the end here and travel around and see what other people’s profiles have. But now you’re embodying that person and you’re saying, “Does this person understand the system and their role within it?” So the system being the military.

So when I think back to Dirk and Eric, there’s all those systems nested together. So however you want to take it, you can. What is this person’s emotional response to the system and to their position within it? And our challenge has been about having an opportunity to get employment. So you’re probably going to have that wrapped somewhere in there. And the care, what is this character’s values, priorities or motivations with regard to the system they find themselves in? What’s important to this person? So we’re going to do a little bit speed round here. So I’m going to give you about four minutes, and then we’re going to get up and we’re going to roll.

Okay. If we were facilitating with a longer… This would take longer. So I’m taking us through the steps and unfortunately we only get to put up to ankle height and the depth of water, more time is definitely needed. I do recognize that. But I do want to show you the full arc of what I was trying to walk us through. So last step. There were I think eight profiles in the room. Four were of a spouse and four were of enlisted. I am inviting you, you don’t have to go with your team, but find at least two other profiles. And I’m not going to… A gallery walk, I would’ve had where we would’ve had Post-its where you’re also putting in a chalk talk element to it where you can have conversations going on, we just don’t have the time, but it’s still important for you to see at least two others for what we have to do at the very, very end.

So you’re going to go and find at least two other profiles. On your own, you’re going to be thinking about these questions. What’s striking me now as I think about the one we created and then these other two I’m seeing? Are there patterns that are emerging? What questions are really starting to burn that maybe weren’t burning earlier? And what next steps or recommendations? Does our profile, or back to all of the profiles, what would we say? So you’re going to have about four minutes to do that travel and think work. All right, ready?

Just so I know when you’ve been able to get to at least two others, just get back to your tables and we’ll wrap this together. First of all, I want to thank you for respecting and bringing to life the real people that are on these pages, and for us honoring their voices in the room and in the conversation and in the problem solving.

I’m going to collapse a few things, but I think it’s important for us to at least have some kind of voices in the room. If we had the time, I would’ve brought you back and because what I was doing was trying to get you out and about so that you came back and had really an idea of all the variations to see the patterns and get down to okay, there’s some repeatables here that are really important. There are the themes that are covering all the stories. But I’m going to shift that and I’m going to ask you to think about what you just experienced, what you just put together in your profile, and what would you want to share back? If this is our last moment to speak for these individuals, what do we want to leave in the room that’s important about their story, and what we’re trying to solve for and with them?

Speaker 7:

Trying to maintain relationships and family within a system that spews people around.

Susan:

So trying to maintain family and relationships because you’re always popcorning in all over the place.

Speaker 8:

Military have the responsibility to support these families.

Susan:

The military has-

Speaker 8:

And the country.

Susan:

And the country.

Speaker 8:

Because of the service these people give, there’s an obligation to do more.

Susan:

Thank you. One more.

Speaker 9:

They recognize the personal sacrifices they make themselves and their families and they do it anyway.

Susan:

So last, now we’re going to step back out of that. So I just put you in a total immersion experience and you’re stepping back out and now thinking about it from your facilitator identity, what is, if anything, that you’d want to share about how you went through that experience and what you’re starting to think about?

Speaker 10:

So I think it is really important to keep the complexity of the individuals who we may be discussing in any workshop, or any kind of project, that if any problem we’re trying to solve, or any solution that we’re trying to get to, inherently has individuals who are affected by it. And I think before this exercise for the military families, in my mind, we’re very straw men, not very complex, not very rich, not all of those pieces.

And so by personalizing and bringing in these much more rich profiles, that it also brings back to, I think for the participants and as a facilitator, that’s like this is not someone outside yourself, we’re so different from who you are. And so that you understand your own complex inner life, and stresses, and the other people you’re engaging with also have these complex lives and entanglements and all of that. And that has to always be center of mind in thinking about communities.

Susan:

Thank you. I couldn’t have said it any wiser, thank you.

Speaker 11:

Thank you, Susan. This was just very, very deep work at its finest in terms of the empathy part of design thinking. And it really reinforces that at least I feel like we skip over the empathy very quickly in that. And it’s really important to… I wonder if we’d done this first thing yesterday, what would’ve been the result? And at the same time, I appreciate where we are in this of realizing we went through this whole process and now we have this opportunity to challenge all the assumptions and the decisions that we made about because we’ve learned so much in this last hour with you. So thank you.

Susan:

Well, thank you. And thank you to everyone and thank you Douglas for letting me have a few extra minutes. And thank you for being my first group to facilitate where I’m transitioned. Thank you.

The post Developing Narratives that Bring Voice to Targeted Audience appeared first on Voltage Control.

At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Ozay Moore brought a unique blend of hip-hop culture and facilitation to his workshop, “What’s In The Soil?” Ozay, a respected figure in the hip-hop educational sphere, guided attendees through an exploration of community and cultural resources with a dynamic, music-infused presentation that resonated across a diverse audience.

The session began with a lively icebreaker where attendees mapped their hip-hop knowledge and experiences on a Y-axis chart, creating a visual spectrum of engagement that sparked lively discussions among participants. This not only set a fun tone but also emphasized the universal reach and relevance of hip-hop as a tool for connection.

Diving deeper, Ozay shared his journey through the cities of Seattle, Portland, and Lansing, drawing parallels between his personal experiences and broader community dynamics. Each city’s unique cultural “soil” served as a metaphor for understanding how local environments shape communal and individual growth.

The core of the workshop involved a practical exercise in resource mapping, where participants used sticky notes and mobile research to identify Austin’s assets that could support the military family facility at Austin Community College. This activity highlighted the potential for grassroots community engagement and the importance of local insights in resource development.

Feedback from the session was overwhelmingly positive, with many participants appreciating the innovative approach to combining music, culture, and facilitation. Ozay’s ability to weave hip-hop into the fabric of community planning and resource mapping provided fresh perspectives on how to leverage cultural assets for community development.

In his closing remarks, Ozay emphasized the importance of staying curious and proactive about community engagement. He challenged everyone to think about how they could apply the workshop’s insights into their professional and personal lives, fostering environments where collaboration and innovation thrive.

Ozay Moore’s workshop was not just an educational experience but a call to action, urging attendees to think creatively about community resources and engagement through the universal language of hip-hop. His session was a highlight of the summit, leaving a lasting impression on all who participated.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Ozay Moore:

All right. All right. How’s everybody feeling? You guys doing all right? Fed, inspired, tired? Nah. Ready? All right. So I’m going to vibe out for you all just for a bit here. While you’re enjoying the tones, I would like for you to weigh in on our Y-axis chart over here. As you can see on the left-hand side, dictating or expressing your experience in hip-hop. So the higher you go up is like, yeah, I’ve been around hip-hop for a while. I’ve experienced quite a bit, or I haven’t experienced at all on the lower part of the chart. And then to the right and left your knowledge of hip-hop. So I would like for you to weigh in with your little stickies on your tables, and as you feel so led, and as you do a little bit of introspection and kind of think of why I would even ask this question, you can make your way up to the front and put your point on the map, so to speak. All right? That’s it. Your knowledge in hip-hop and experience in hip-hop. There is no right or wrong answer, just weigh it in.

All right, well done everyone. Cool. A little chaos, a little organized confusion here. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for being here. Now I need to see, I’m curious. I can’t see your answers. Whoa, we’re all over the spectrum. You said it’s better than you thought it would be. Isn’t that interesting? What’s beautiful about that is something we forget. I mean, hip-hop is everywhere, and we all have some kind of relationship to it. Today as we kind of explore what’s in the soil, soil being a metaphor to the ecosystem of experiences and opportunities that kind of inform who we are. So when you hear soil a lot, that’s what I’m referring to, whether it’s personal or collectively, our society, our community, and hip-hop. I’ll talk more about what I mean because I think sometimes there’s a visceral reaction or a reaction nonetheless, when the word hip-hop comes up.

We all have our ideas of what it is and what it isn’t, and it relates to us, and it sometimes in a lot of cases informs how we view folks, communities, behaviors, trends, et cetera, et cetera. So in today’s talk and conversation with you all, we’re going to talk about resource mapping through the unique scope of hip-hop culture and community. So there’ll be some nuggets in facilitation there, as I believe facilitation is a part of hip hop culture is just kind of in it. But also hopefully as we think about the unique needs of Austin, Texas and here in this community and the resources provided by ACC with the military family facility, be brainstorming different ways in which we can tap into the resources locally and explore what those are and how we can suggest them or come up with some ideas on how there can be some strong collaboration between the college and the community.

Thank you for that. Makes some noise for yourselves being across the board in terms of hip hop knowledge. That’s not important. Okay, moving right on. But what is important as we talk about soil is I would like to ground the conversation in the reality that we are here right now on this soil that has a history. So if you wouldn’t mind, just close your eyes for a moment. We’re coming off of lunch. We’re coming from some real robust conversations and some stretching and some critical thinking, a lot of it, and the vulnerability and the shared purpose to grow and to push conversations forward in this room, it is electric. It’s beautiful to be in a room with so many mindful individuals. There’s something special about vulnerability and centering yourself in the moment here. And as we center ourselves, I would like to just acknowledge the folks who were here before us.

I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the indigenous lands of Turtle Island, the ancestral name for what now is called North America. Moreover, I would like to acknowledge the Alabama, Coushatta, Karok, Keresan, Kamokurro, Kwalhioqua, Kamanche, Kickapoo, Lipan, Apache, Tonkawa and Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, and all the American Indian and indigenous peoples and communities who have been or have become a part of these lands and territories in Texas. It’s important to me that we reflect on the past so as to not erase history and culture, but also unrelated to just acknowledging and really understanding there was caretakers of this land before and will continue to be part of that rich heritage. We also aren’t recognizing history, and especially in hip hop, I have a lot of conversations around hip hop culture and the importance of preserving it. Not to be held hostage by the way things were, but to inform what they could be and knowing that we’re building on top of a narrative and an ecosystem and a reality and a truth.

My name is Ozay Moore. I am the founder and executive director as Douglas so graciously put for a nonprofit organization in Lansing, Michigan called All the Above Hip Hop Academy, where we mentor youth through hip hop culture. So essentially what we do is we center this culture, this beautiful culture, and we find local practitioners to create spaces for elders in the community and young people in the community to relate, to congregate, to build, to ideate, to strengthen community and relationship and bonds.

It takes a village, we believe that truly. So as I talk about how I got to the place, it was never my goal to end up a nonprofit ED, founder and executive director. That was never the goal. It just by happenstance and kind of going with the flow of things and recognizing needs and where I was in that season of my life, seeing an opportunity to add to what was already there, because I think in resource mapping, you discover what’s there, but if you do it well, you also discover what’s not there. And for those of you, we have room full of facilitators and brilliant folks. You can start to ideate and come up with ideas. So this isn’t here, these folks. And so if you do the math, you’re like, well, there’s a group of people here. This is what the interest is. There’s this need and a lack of a resource here, or there’s a part of a resource here. Maybe we need collaboration, maybe we need a brand new idea altogether. But we’re going to talk and explore some of those ideas as we go through this session.

So I’m from Seattle, Washington, born and raised. And as an MC, who’s from Seattle. Who’s that? You? All right, let’s just weigh in real quick. Let’s see where folks are at. All right, who’s from Austin, Texas for respect, make some noise for the Austin, Texas folks. Okay, Texas. Make some noise for the Texas folks. Right on just Texas. All right, so that means a large portion of us traveled to get here. Just by show of hands, just so we kind of see who traveled to Austin, Texas to be here for this amazing summit. Wow. Make some noise for yourselves too, right? So we are sitting in a room full of, I mean, primarily we’re all strangers to one degree or another, and we’ve been able to go incredibly deep quickly.

I have this philosophy, actually it’s a borrowed philosophy from the writer, Daniel Coyle, who expresses in the Culture Code book that in order to have healthy community or culture, you have to have one, vulnerability, two, safety, and third, a shared purpose. And that is here just by default, it feels like. For the most part, the shared purpose is to grow as facilitators and to also support the work of this institution. There’s a vulnerability because as facilitators, we recognize the power of that. And I also want to name that I recognize as where I’m going to ask and invite folks to get vulnerable.

You share what you feel comfortable doing and that is enough. But I would say overall there is just a overwhelming sense of openness in this room that I think is really beautiful. So just acknowledge that for a moment and know that we are among friends, we’re among comrades and folks who want to drive ideas forward to see a better world, a better community. So that is something we can center our conversation and experience. And we’re on the same team here, which is beautiful. But in true MC fashion, which I have a real love for words, I have a love for wordplay, I have an addiction for simile and metaphor, inferences and that sort of thing.

So as I kind of talk about these different places, the tale of three cities and how it kind of informed my approach, I will use the metaphor of what naturally grows in the soil of these locations as a metaphor to what was happening in my life that I took inventory on that shaped how I view things now. Seattle, this was my community growing up, culturally diverse, rich, green. I’m not going to lie, Seattle’s beautiful. I’m just looking at the, yeah. I remember a time where I was driving through or traveling and folks didn’t even know where Seattle was. They’re like, isn’t that in Canada or someplace?

But this was my community, solid, consistent. It wasn’t really flashy, it was just grounded and culturally diverse in terms of the hip hop scene. When I say hip hop, I’m not saying just rap or dance. And let me just clarify this term, hip hop. Hip hop is based on five components, five elements we like to say. So first element, the DJ. Second element, the MC. Third element, graffiti art. Fourth element, the breaker or the b-boy, b-girl, breaker. Fifth component is this knowledge piece that’s like you arrive built into hip hop culture is this sharing of information. We have this philosophy that’s each one teach one, which this is hip hop to me. Even this facilitation lab, this is very hip hop to me. You wouldn’t know it, but check the data though. You know what I’m saying? It’s super hip hop.

But because built into it is this idea of let’s get better together. Let’s share information. Let’s collectively move the needle. Contrary to popular belief or a more commercialized approach to hip hop culture, where again, let’s just just weight it in the room. When you hear the word hip hop, what’s a word or two that come to mind? And I would like for you to be honest, truthful. I want the folks who maybe don’t have a whole lot of experience in hip-hop. I want you to be honest about that because I think this is an opportunity for us to maybe talk about or at least express and move the needle, a nudge a little bit. I guarantee today will be a different experience in hip-hop culture than you might’ve had before. But yes, rhythm. You think of rhythm when you think of hip-hop. Excellent. Yes. Edgy, yes. Provocative. Sure. Yes, two.

Speaker 2:

Wild style.

Ozay Moore:

Ooh, wild style. A reference to a classic. And yes, wild style for sure. Any other ideas? Yes. Yeah, fashion, expression. I know I got you running around. I’m like over here, over here. So I need to come down the line instead of… We focus on answers over here and move here. All right? Yes.

Speaker 3:

Authenticity.

Ozay Moore:

Love that. Authenticity. For sure. For sure. Yeah, poetic. Love it. Anyone else?

Speaker 4:

Aggression.

Ozay Moore:

Aggression. Yes, yeah. Let’s talk about some of the ideas that come to mind that, hey, you might have been like, I don’t really understand this, but this is what I see. And it may not be so flattering.

Speaker 5:

Vulgar.

Ozay Moore:

Vulgar. Yes, a vulgarity too. Yes. Anyone else?

Speaker 6:

Anti-establishment.

Ozay Moore:

Yeah, anti-establishment for sure. Built into it. I love it. Anyone else?

Speaker 7:

Flashy consumption.

Ozay Moore:

Flashy.

Speaker 7:

Money.

Ozay Moore:

Yeah, money. Flashy. Yep. Yep.

Speaker 8:

Black culture.

Ozay Moore:

Black culture. Thank you. Yes indeed. Black folks, please. Thank you.

Speaker 9:

I would say like flexing.

Ozay Moore:

Flexing. Flashy. Yeah. Flex like, yeah, I got it. Check it out. Yes.

Speaker 10:

Not safe for a white person to do.

Ozay Moore:

Not safe for a white person to do, be a part of or be. What do you mean by do?

Speaker 10:

Like it would be like an impersonation.

Ozay Moore:

Oh yeah. There’d be a lack of authenticity. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Anyone else? Oh, this is really rich. It’s good. Thank you for sharing and being honest. So this was my culture though, and it was full of folks from all over the world. Literally from the Pacific Islands to South America, Middle Eastern countries, European continent, all over the world. And somehow hip hop has been able to be a global thing. We want to explore a little bit about that too. While I was in Seattle, the evergreen though, the evergreen was the thing that grew in Seattle that grounded me to my experience there. It was consistent. It was green. It was year-round. So even through the seasons, it was steady. It was solid. Now granted, I was a certain age. I hadn’t experienced a whole lot of adulting and adulthood and understanding the ebbs and flows of life. I was pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and just ready to go rap my way through life for real.

But the evergreen state, that was it. It felt very grounding to me, consistent. Then I moved to Portland, Oregon, also my scene, also the city. So in Portland though, they have this beautiful, every year the cherry blossoms bloom downtown, and it’s remarkable. It’s beautiful. It’s very seasonal though. And at that point in time of my life, I was experiencing being a full-time musician and the ups and downs of that rhythm, that rhythm. And it informed me to think about the future a little bit different, to plan and move through my day to day, a little bit different. But if there was one thing, and it also had their evergreens, it was solid. It was a good scene. But at that point in my life, I was really experiencing what it was like to go through these seasons of lush and beautiful growth. And then seasons of, okay, I guess it’s hard to sustain that. Then Lansing, Michigan, where I currently live, Lansing, Michigan was a trip. For me being from the West Coast, having this green around all the time, it’s very deciduous. Like the plant life there so seasonal.

We have these long spells of gray skies and sticks erected into the sky. These trees that once were full of foliage are just now sticks. All over cold, gray. And then you have these beautiful summers and a short-lived, incredible spring, snowy winters, real real seasons. And I want to talk a little bit about why this place was really what I needed and really has shaped who I am today as difficult as it was. I think when I first got to Michigan, I was ready to leave within the first week. I was like, let’s plan our escape, shall we? Let’s maybe cool for a second, but we can’t stay here. But it’s amazing what happens when you get curious about what’s there and you decide to adopt the idea that the grass is greener where you water it. There’s something to that.

I think as facilitators, as visionaries and folks who are doing work in our community, it’s easy to recognize, oh, this place may be better. But truly there’s this opportunity where there is a void to water, to plant, to seed. And you might say, that’s not my bag. I just want to get in and be a part. That was me. But as I started to fall in love with this city and the people in it and started recognizing some of the unique scenarios it was facing and going through over the course of 10 years. And I was there mind you, my partner is from Lansing. We met in Portland. So the reason why, I mean, you’re probably asking why did you go to Lansing? I went there because my partner’s there. And I was like, hey, let’s try it out. Start a family and let’s do it. And we’ve been able to build something really beautiful there, and it’s all centered around community.

But one interesting thing about living in a city where you don’t fully recognize its potential and it’s kind of unfolding as you live through it, is it’s hard to really value what’s already there sometimes. When the deficit feels so big and so key and so crucial and not really understanding that there’s a reason why. There’s a history to why it is the way it is. Lansing, Michigan is an automotive town. Again, it’s all hinged on this resource mapping. So I had to kind of understand the soil I was working with to make it the home I wanted to be by understanding what was there and what the history was.

But it’s an automotive town. It’s a college town semi. It’s also the state capital. So you have government, you have the automotive industry that wasn’t necessarily serving the community as it once did. And then you have in East Lansing, which is not the east side of Lansing, it is a separate city with a separate mayor. And even in East Lansing, campus is its own city. So unlike other college towns, there was not this kind of cross-pollinization of culture and ideas in and out of the college. It was really insular. So I’m moving to Lansing, Michigan. I’m like, well, I’m new here, what is here? As a musician, I wanted to tap in. So I was serving, I think, who remembers MySpace? Remember MySpace? All right. Yeah. So I was on MySpace, on the MySpace trying to figure out who’s who and what’s what in Lansing. And I found some rappers, I found some promoters and whatnot.

And not only did they offer me opportunities to get involved, they would sit and talk with me as I asked questions and got curious about, so why is this place, why is it like this? Am I tripping? It feels weird. It feels like really disconnected. The scene doesn’t seem to be thriving, but the automotive industry, it just seems like it’s just depressive. It feels like folks are in a bad place. And it’s like, well, there’s layers to this. But one reason is the automotive industry at one point in time was providing white collar wages with blue collar work. And the community wasn’t really centered or designed for people to live, play, party, hang out. There was no centralized location for people to meet and congregate and spend time. So what folks did naturally in Michigan, and those of you from Michigan might notice, but when you ask somebody what you’re doing for the weekend, they say, we’re going up north, we’re going up north.

Had no idea what was up north. But I found out people were buying beach houses or lake properties because at one point in time, the family made up. So we had this beach home or this lake property in our family forever. And so that’s what we do for fun on the weekend, but the money wasn’t being spent in Lansing. So you see this kind of interconnected like conundrum where you have the college sees no reason to get involved in Lansing, so they’re not spending money and they’re not really engaging. There’s nothing happening there. So there’s a missed opportunity. Awareness. There was this kind of idea that Lansing was dangerous, so folks didn’t want to come across 127 and spend time in the community. So there was a lot of pieces that played into the misinformation and the idea about this city that I know different, but nonetheless missed opportunities and a lot of ideas.

So for the last 10 years, or no, 17, but for 10 years, I just was getting really, I was just curious. I was fascinated by this. Talking with folks in the indigenous community and they had terms and ideas about, well, this has always been like a ceremonial place. Yes, there’s folks and caretakers of this land, but it’s always kind of been a place where people congregate for a moment and leave, congregate and leave. It’s kind of built into the idea that the name was Nkwejong and that’s the river that runs through Lansing, Michigan and it connects. It connects right in Lansing, goes and disconnects again. So historically, this space was celebrated. It was a ceremonial and ancestral place. Folks would come do festivals and then leave. It was kind of built into the idea.

But now you have a community. You have a city that’s trying to retain talent, trying to retain people, trying to retain alumni from MSU and can’t do it, struggling. And so hip hop, to me, by nature, hip hop is very DYI, very do-it-yourself. Quick hip hop, who has, let me see. What do we see on knowledge of hip hop. So we have some folks who understand some his… Whoa. Now I need to meet this person. Where you at? Just by a show of hand, where you at? Who is this? My man. All right, quick quiz. Quick quiz. Quick quiz. No, I got you. So we just celebrated how many years of hip-hop?

Speaker 11:

77.

Ozay Moore:

That was a great guess. It was a great guess. We had it in the back. 50, 50 years of hip-hop. Now I understand. So again, clarifying. No, listen, that was not to call you out, sir, because when we talk about hip-hop I think when you think of this word, you may be thinking about a piece of hip-hop. You may have a wealth of knowledge in the music. You may have a wealth of knowledge in the dance and the fashion, but we talk about hip-hop as this kind of philosophy, idea, culture. I celebrate hip-hop as a verb. Hip information, hop action, move. So you get the information and you act on it. That’s hip-hop to me, that’s how we celebrate it.

So the reason why it kind of translates and is global is because it provided a platform by which young people experiencing the pressures of life regardless of your race and ethnicity. If you know pressure, having a blueprint by which you can get creative and express yourself, and you see it modeled from folks from the South Bronx or from the Bronx, New York who were undergoing some of the most pressures in our country at the time. Quick historical fact. You say like hip-hop is 50 years old, give or take. You talk to people from the Bronx, they say, ah, Disco, so-and-so was the first original DJ, and he don’t even get talked about. He was the actual person. That’s 10 years before you even started talking about hip-hop. So actually it’s 60 years old. That’s the local narrative. And you have to respect that. I don’t weigh in as the aficionado expert on hip-hop everything, but I can bring it to you in a way it was like it’s a complex concept, but it’s also a global phenomenon in the way that people across the world relate to. It is beautiful.

My profession has afforded me opportunities to see hip-hop in other languages in Japan, Amsterdam, Norway, Germany, Spain, all over and all over our country. And it is articulated and expressed in very different ways based on the region, based on the region, based on that local piece. There is something beautiful about tapping into local resources, the identities, the differences of each community and allowing it to inform. I tell people like this, hip-hop to me is like rice and chicken. There’s a million different ways to prepare rice and chicken. It’s still rice and chicken. It’s the protein and the rice. But you travel across the world and you see it expressed different ways, but at the core of it, there’s a respect for it being rice and chicken. Thank you for bringing up. This is black culture. This is black and brown culture. Black and brown youth of New York in the seventies, building community around the shared pressures of their environment, getting creative about how to resolve conflict through dance.

That’s history, truthfully. Breaking was used as a form to not fight, to check your bats and your knives and your guns at the door and have a safe neutral zone where we can get creative and express our angst, but not get violent. That’s built in. That was youth coming up with that idea. Young people figuring out how do we stop? And again, New York at that time, there was hundreds of gangs on every corner. You ever seen the movie Warriors? Anyone remember this movie. Okay, Warriors, that’s an old reference, old relatively speaking. But yes, if you’ve seen the Warriors, it was a depiction of the Bronx at that time.

So why and how hip hop? Well, because hip hop isn’t good or bad in and of itself, it’s very malleable. But built into it is agency and advocacy and justice and forward motion as a culture, recognizing the needs of a community and figuring out how to get it when folks aren’t giving it to you or providing access to you. That’s the beauty of hip hop one of them. So as I think about facilitation and I think about mapping local resources, it’s kind of guerrilla in my mind. It’s like I don’t do well with bureaucracy and a lot of the bureaucratic, I mean, who loves bureaucracy? Who loves it? Just by a show of hands if you love it. I mean, if you’re an admin and you’re like, hey, hey, you got a checks and balances. You got to have it. I get that. I get that, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous. You know what I mean? I get it, but man, can you just cut the check already?

How many departments does it have to go through? And we already missed the opportunity, you missed the season. But somebody had mentioned over here that hip hop is anti-establishment. Was that you? Yeah. And there’s something so rugged and beautiful about that, especially when their needs aren’t being addressed. What do you do? You go get them. You make them happen. You create the opportunity. One fun fact about graffiti art. So graffiti art obviously demonized in a lot of spaces and ways. And you think about wow, vandalism, vandalism, vandalism. Let’s think back to New York when graffiti was kind starting to emerge. And graffiti, just so you know for historical context, it’s from Philadelphia. Started through tagging and writing your name and your street on different places. But think about the human need.

Somebody mentioned earlier being seen, heard and validated. As an artist with a non-traditional medium who finds access through aerosol paint and finds their canvases just on walls people aren’t looking at. Dilapidated buildings and whatnot, that’s my canvas. You will know my name. I’ll put my name on, even though it’d be a moniker, I will be seen and heard. And furthermore, I will write my name on the train that circles around my city and stand on the rooftop with my friends and be like, there I am. Check it. That’s me. So-and-so from the Bronx, that’s me. That feeling of I’m seen, heard. You see, you might not know who that is, but I know who it is and everybody here knows it is, and you have to see me. You have to. That energy is in hip hop. But what does it say about community and people?

So you can’t separate this culture from the people who lived it and built it. But it’s taught me a lot about being resourceful and in resourcefulness to innovate through constraints. They say some of the best innovations are with constraints. Timelines or limited resources, limited access. You really have to get creative about what you’re building here and what you’re trying to develop. Taught me how to collaborate and network with other folks and really figure out, hey, we’re better together. But that’s kind of built into the ecosystem of hip hop culture. Funny concept is when DEI work in 2020, all of a sudden DEI just started popping up everywhere. Everybody had a DEI policy and program, and now a wing at your company. We had talk about DEI, the world’s on fire, America’s on fire, we need to talk about this. And so one of the funders was like, so what’s your DEI policy? They’re like, what?

We live this DEI policy. You just freestyle a policy to you right now because it’s built into what we do. So to collaborate, network, to scaffold everything that’s part of that resourcefulness. It’s like, I see this opportunity. I’m automatically making connections about how that person needs to meet this person. And if we do this, this event will be a little bit better because nobody’s giving you a blueprint on how to do it. You’re just figuring it out as you go. So you have to develop these abilities in order to drive your idea forward and to apply the knowledge. That’s the hard part, act on the knowledge. And then the philosophy of each one teach one, sharing information. So all of this, these were things that were developed in me in my time of Lansing saying, this is a place where this shouldn’t work. But I see an opportunity to really work with young people to help work with local businesses. To maybe drive and push and boost and strengthen our economy by attracting young professionals here, by creating these cultural events that people can relate to.

These are all concepts and marketing and ideas and strategies in urban design that were just kind of birthed out of the hip-hop in a way of being and philosophies. Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s just do it. Cut the middle man and make it happen. And another quick funny story is I remember we did this mural festival, and in the mural festival there were some developers in town and they were curious as how we were able to activate 11 large walls with high-caliber quality mural art. Artists from all over the world came to Lansing and painted our town. And they were like, in this particular developer has been called a gentrifier, quite honestly. And their practices aren’t always sound, how they develop and how they push folks out of communities, but he had a particular interest on activating unused spaces with murals. He’s like, so how much does this cost you? Like 500K or? Like 500K?

You don’t understand that we would do that just because, that’s not equitable. So yeah, we got the money and we paid everybody really well. But your idea, you’re just way off of what it took for us to activate these spaces because we were scrappy, we were resourceful, and we knew how to generate and foster community. Community being as the glue of what attracts people to come and be a part and participate and collaborate and engage and ideate and build and drive things forward. Healthy community does that, and it’s fascinating when you prioritize healthy community, what the benefits are. So I don’t want to just plug into the audio, but just a quick, I’ve talked a little bit about the organization we run, and I promise we’re going to get into doing some things. I got some activities for y’all to go deep with each other and discover what’s in the soil at your own table.

But yeah, this is a little bit of who we are and what we do in Lansing, Michigan, All the Above Hip Hop Academy, boom. We’ve been a nonprofit organization since about 2017. We started in 2012 just building slowly, incrementally, but really intentionally to make sure that whatever we were doing would be sustained. Because one of the things we discovered in our community was that our scene was largely supported by the university. The university had a revolving door of people who were interested for about four years, then they would take off and we’d be left at ground zero starting over again. But this is some of the community and spaces that we’re generating with young people, with adults, with the broader hip hop community, but spaces. At schools, with creative folks, with organizers, with principals, with government, politicians, small businesses. All seeing and validating hip hop culture and seeing the power of it and how it can drive and push things forward in our own community of Lansing, the least likely place for something centered in hip hop to work, at least as folks knew it to be.

It’s a whole principle right there. He was turned, super turned. But what does that do for young people to see their principal enjoying himself and participating? That same principal greets his students every morning outside, he shakes their hands and says, welcome, welcome to school. We expect greatness from you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Just engaged. These are folks who are like, when you talk to him about hip hop, he has a serious reaction to his history and how he was informed by hip hop and that community building piece.

So what we’re going to do here as we talk about soil and what’s in it, I just shared a bit with you about how getting curious about what was in my community led to innovation and ideas on how I could better serve the community. Right now, we’re sitting at tables where we don’t really know each other. So I would like to, for the next, about 15 to 20 minutes, spend some time at our tables giving folks the opportunity to share what’s in the soil of their own lives, to share what’s in their soil. What is in the ecosystem that made you who you are? What are the experiences, what is the upbringing? What is the cultural climate that made you who you are?

This is meant to be reflective, and it’s meant for us to build that community at our own tables and get to know the folks around us. So I know we kind of have disproportionate in terms of how many people are at each table, but I would say three to five minutes, each person just share a bit of who you are, what was in the soil that made you who you are, what were some of the experiences you’ve encountered growing up that really informed you? I’m not talking about omit from sharing, I’m from Nebraska if you can’t identify why that really matters is what the challenge is.

So find reason in these pieces that you identify in your soil, and let’s just focus on those things. So let’s take about five minutes just to reflect first before we move into sharing, but let’s reflect on what is in your soil personally that has built you to be who you are. For the sake of time, I’m going to give everybody about five more minutes. So we make our way around our table. I know some of our tables are a little bit larger, so I know it’s good. We’re going to wrap up this exercise of discovering what’s in the soil at your table. But as we engage in that, what came out for some folks there? Were there some things that you realized or identified in trying to pinpoint certain parts of your soil that really made you who you are or informed who you’ve become? Anything that stood out or came to the surface for folks, it was like, oh, I guess I never really made that connection. Or it’s a new discovery.

Speaker 12:

The question allowed for that to be able to be part of what we talked about instead of saying really sterile things like this is what I do and why I like it.

Ozay Moore:

Yeah. All right. I love that composting. Yeah, that’s taking some stuff that might be the scraps and be like, Hey, it’s useful too. In fact, it might be fertile or to help with the fertility of what else I’m trying to grow. Scaffolding again, that concept too. Yeah. Anyone else? Yeah.

Speaker 13:

I was just present to through struggle and obstacle, not just my own, but my lineage that could become such resources and beauty and gifts in my life. I was present to that. Thank you.

Ozay Moore:

Yeah, beautiful. Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that. Steve, we are so richly complex as individuals, as a society, as a community, we’re just complex layers. And sometimes just curiosity as to why and how, while affirming people’s humanity through the processes it’s beautiful. Anyone else would like to share a discovery in this process, in this exercise? Let me get one more. Yes.

Speaker 14:

So of course Portland is right next to the Willamette Valley where some really great wine is made and wine is kind of a hobby of mine. And so I kept thinking about how much the soil can influence the flavor of the grapes and what it’s able to produce. And there’s different varietals and they’re all great in their own way, but they’re all made based on what the earth offered them to start with.

Ozay Moore:

Oh, snaps. Oh, snaps. Compost. Oh, wine,

Speaker 14:

Mic jaw. Oh, mic jaw.

Ozay Moore:

I think of coffee, same thing. The regions, the elevation, the earth. Literally what’s there working in collaboration with the farmers. Oh, wow. Beautiful. Good. Well, thank you for taking time to do that introspection. But that same concept can be applied when we’re thinking, when we’re resource mapping or mapping the opportunities in what a region or a community has to offer. So in lieu of the need here at the school. And I have this whole thing, I get all nerdy rap about it, like, oh, the metaphor for potassium. So there’s three things in soil that help plants grow the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and then trying to relate it to whatever. That doesn’t matter. We don’t have a lot of time to get that, to nerd out about some rap stuff, but just if you want to talk about it, I’m open.

Let’s do it. We’ll catch a bench outside and do it. But while we’re here, yeah, I think it’s healthy to acknowledge that yeah, we all have, if there were three components, I mean there’s multiple. But the basic needs, community support and development opportunities. What kind of local resources might Austin offer this school and the military family center around basic needs, community support and developmental opportunities for the families of folks who are in the programs, the youth, the kids. People are moving from across the country. They’re kind of uprooting and coming to be a part of this resource and to take advantage of this resource. So I would like to take some time, maybe about 10 minutes, 10 to 15 for us to use the sticky notes on our table and our phones as researchers. And maybe just what we know about Austin in general.

I won’t lie. I came here, I didn’t know a whole lot about this community outside of South by Southwest as a musician, but I know it’s grown exponentially over the last 10 years, big thing. How is that? Why is that? What does that say about the economy? What does that say about the locals? What does that say about resources? And right, you can get curious to the point of like, wow, let’s really dig into this ground and figure out what’s here. But what I would like for folks to do is let’s use these sticker notes or sticky pads. On one we can create, I guess silos or columns on our table with the sticky notes, basic needs, community and development opportunities.

And as you drum up or think of ideas, just set them under one of the three categories, basic needs kind of things like housing, child care, transportation, et cetera. Community, activities, interest groups, sports, et cetera. Development opportunities, training, schools, internships. What kind of resources does Austin have currently, or what are some that you discover that don’t exist here that maybe they would benefit from having here? So as we have these many libraries in our phones, I’m going to encourage you to one, draw from what you know, but also do some research. Let’s Google, let’s get some ideas down on paper in this kind of guerrilla form of resource mapping just by using this wonderful device we have in our pockets.

And I’m interested to see what folks come up. With that though I would like to just give a shout-out to my sponsor, a sponsor. It is a local organization here in Austin, Texas. CreateLab, the brilliant Rafael Travis. He is an educator at the university. He does a lot of work around hip-hop ed and hip-hop community work. And I met him in New York at a hip-hop ed conference, and I found out that he lived in Austin. So knowing I was coming out this way, I reached out and was like, hey, I’m doing a presentation or I’m doing a workshop here. Is there a way that we can collaborate? He says, do you want better? Do you need some equipment? I was like, absolutely. So the DJ device, that’s my laptop, but that’s his DJ device, his turntable, his speaker. And they gave of the resources they have at the Creative Lab, my fault. They’re on campus where they really serve young people or the college demographic and the broader community with services centered around arts and creativity and music to do a variety of things centered around social and emotional health and wellness.

So it’s a very particular spin on that. So as we’re kind of thinking about what’s in the soil here and thinking broad and thinking deep and thinking holistically about how they may really connect to the unique individual needs that we know we have and that we can surely believe that folks coming to this new community would like support in. Think that way. Unique opportunities. What are some unique programs, unique resources that may go overlooked or unrecognized. So get curious. Let’s spend the next about 10 minutes exploring, but you could start with this one. I encourage you to dig in. That’s the QR code. You could see a little bit more about what they do around health and wellness and hip hop. But yeah. Without further ado, spend some time. Let’s dig in the soil. What’s here in Austin that would benefit the military family center here?

I just want to say we got about two minutes left. Thank you so much for ideating and coming up with some ideas. I know the college really appreciates it. We’re going to go ahead and wrap up this activity. So I’m curious as to what folks discovered here that maybe was interesting or unexpected. A resource around basic needs, community and developmental opportunities. If there’s anything that was surprising that, oh, that’s here. Wow, that’s incredible. Or in your research, your brief research, discovering I guess a unique quality about Austin that lends itself to some unique resources that are very specific to this community. Anything, yes.

Speaker 15:

So we learned Austin has a really cool library that has some really great kind of community and meeting center things. Darrell mentioned a rooftop, so there’s possibly additional ways to utilize that space as kind of meetups and maybe study groups for kids who are struggling to keep up as they keep moving around and that sort of thing.

Ozay Moore:

Also, this unique opportunity to gather at this, you said a rooftop garden, a roof?

Speaker 15:

I think so, yeah. It would be a fun space.

Ozay Moore:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s cool. Yes. You, sir. How are you, my friend? Yes.

Speaker 16:

Yeah, I live here and I was aware there were startup supports and accelerators, but I was actually very impressed with how many in the various entrepreneurial support systems that are in place that I didn’t even know about.

Ozay Moore:

Isn’t that something? It’s wild. It makes you feel good about just how many people care. And I’m sure a lot of these resources them being nonprofits and whatnot where they genuinely care about a need. Sometimes where you find a nonprofit work is that not all the time do they collaborate. So the success life and the lifespan of a nonprofit sometimes is short-lived because they have this idea, but they were unaware that it exists and they could have just collaborated and made something together. But yeah, really unique find. Anyone else? Yes.

Speaker 17:

So I’m also an Austin resident, and some of the things that I think is unique about Austin is we do have a large tech community, and that tech community does like to kind of try to give back. One example, a friend of mine runs a nonprofit called Brave Communities, and they sponsor tech girls from around different, each year they focus on a different area of the world. And those girls, we had someone from Jordan come and stay with us, and she was able to go meet people from Google and Apple and kind of be able to fuel her passion for technology. You see similar things in the music space as well. And one of the things about Austin growing so much is you get more and more people coming from different areas.

When I first moved here, one area that’s reflected in is the ethnicity of foods, because when I moved here almost 20 years ago, it was Tex-Mex, and that’s in barbecue. But now you can go and get so many different types of cuisines and there’s just a richness of community because of all the influx of people from different areas that we just didn’t have before. And I think that that’s something that could be tapped into to help those families that you’re talking about, the military families.

Ozay Moore:

Well done. Right on. Thank you for that. Got time for one more question. Thank you. You put it up first. Oh, okay.

Speaker 18:

Yeah, I was just thinking about just that motto. There’s an app for that. And through this exercise, you could easily just say there’s a service for that, just through that line of inquiry. So I was like, I don’t know if anyone’s struggling to get a PC or a computer, which these days, I don’t know if that falls into a basic need or not, which is really sad. But yeah, I mean, I looked it up and there is one, there’s a nonprofit called AustinFree.net, and it’s a community PC program. So I think that just that line of inquiry that we have about does this exist? What are these possible things and assembling that. It’s amazing how you can easily map out what’s in your community.

Ozay Moore:

Yes, thank you so much for that. Yeah, some would argue that Wi-Fi is a basic need now. We had folks doing school online a couple of years ago, and without Wi-Fi, it was drawn. It came to the surface that, hey, we actually need this. It’s an access issue, not a luxury. Folks, thank you so much for digging deep in your own groups, for thinking about this community. Carry this information with you through the rest of the conference, and I know we’ll have some more opportunities through today and tomorrow to ideate and think critically about how we can support such an amazing resource here on campus. But my name is Ozay Moore. Thank you y’all so much for your time. And I say just stay curious, y’all. Just stay curious. Keep asking why. Appreciate you. Peace.

The post What’s in the Soil? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Durell Coleman followed up our first session at the 2024 Facilitation Lab Summit with his dynamic workshop, “Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders: Current State/End State.” This session focused on building consensus among stakeholders with diverse perspectives, a timely theme that resonated deeply with attendees from various sectors. Durell, known for his innovative approach to human-centered design, engaged participants in a series of activities designed to illustrate the power of collaboration in a fragmented world.

The workshop kicked off with an invigorating activity dubbed “Enemy Defender.” Participants scrambled around the room, assuming the roles of electrons in a chaotic dance of movement. This exercise was not just about physical activity but served as a metaphor for navigating the unpredictable nature of human interactions. As Durell guided everyone through this imaginative scenario, he laid the groundwork for a deeper exploration of consensus-building in complex environments.

Durell’s talk delved into the essence of effective facilitation, emphasizing the need for empathy and inclusivity. He drew on his extensive background in design thinking to discuss how these methodologies can be applied to real-world challenges. Durell highlighted the transformative potential of inclusive dialogue by sharing examples from his work, such as initiatives to combat multi-generational poverty and enhance community engagement through strategic design.

One of the key highlights was the group activity centered around defining “current states” and “end states” for specific societal challenges. Participants were grouped by persona—ranging from district attorneys to community leaders—to debate and define the desired outcomes of social interventions. This exercise illuminated the diverse viewpoints within any community and underscored the importance of every voice in the conversation about change.

Feedback from the audience was overwhelmingly positive, with many highlighting the practical applications of the lessons learned in their professional lives. The workshop’s interactive format kept participants engaged and fostered a sense of community among them.

In his concluding remarks, Durell reflected on the broader implications of the day’s activities. He reiterated the powerful quote from John F. Kennedy, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” and challenged participants to consider how they might act as catalysts for such a tide in their own spheres of influence.

Durell Coleman’s session at the Facilitation Lab Summit was more than just a workshop; it was a call to action for all attendees to think critically about their roles as facilitators in their communities and organizations. His engaging delivery and thought-provoking content set a high bar for the rest of the event, leaving participants inspired and equipped to bring about meaningful change.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Durell Coleman:

Hello. Hi everyone. Well, it’s great to be here and good to see all of you. I’m really looking forward to getting to know all of you better, and I’m excited for the next 90 minutes that we get with each other. Can you all hear me okay? Wonderful. Love it. The title of my talk is Lifting All Boats. As you know, this is really about how to build consensus amongst stakeholders with different perspectives. How do you bring people together in a world of difference?

But before we dive into that, I want to dive into an activity that I really love to start with, which in my background we call a Stoke. What I would love for everyone to do is to push, stand up if you can, and push your chairs in, move your bags in. We’re going to be moving through this space. We are going to need trip-free lanes. What I want you to do right now is I want you to begin moving around the room in a sort of unpredictable pattern. We’re a little bit constrained because we’ve got the tables, but I want you to imagine right now that you are an electron. You move randomly in your electron cloud.

Why don’t we just begin doing that? Everyone scramble. Go. All right, so you’re moving as if you’re an electron, but you’re actually, you’re a human being. I want you to find someone out of the corner of your eye, but I don’t want you to let that person know that you found them. Find a new person. Keep going, keep moving. Don’t let them know. Don’t let them know you found them. Keep moving. You see them out of the corner of your eye. They don’t know that you found them, but you’re watching them. As you go everywhere in this room, you keep your eye on that person. Keep moving. Keep moving. See if we can pick up the pace just slightly.

Okay, yeah. This is our New York pace now. I like it. All right. The reality for you is that the person you found out of the corner of your eye is actually your deepest, most mortal enemy, and you want to keep your eye on this enemy. Keep on moving, please. Yeah, keep your eye on that enemy. As you walk around, notice where they go, notice how they move. And now I want you to do a challenging task. Your enemy doesn’t know that you’ve chosen them, that you’ve found them. I want you to find another person out of the corner of your other eye, and I want you to keep your eye on that person. Go ahead and find someone. And again, don’t let them know that you found them. So you have your eye on your enemy and you got to find someone else too.

The person you’ve just found is your guardian angel. They are your hero. Your job is to keep your hero between you and your enemy. Go. Our patterns become a little bit less unpredictable. And scene. All right, stop. Freeze. Everyone, please point to your enemy. Some people are… Okay, and please point to your hero. Is anyone standing right next to their enemy? I got a few people. You’re standing right next to your enemy. Raise your hand if you’ve managed to keep yourself away from your enemy by keeping the hero in between. Raise your hand if your enemy is in close striking proximity to you. All right. All right.

That activity, we call it Enemy Defender. It’s just a fun activity. It’s a Stoke activity, and it really feeds into the mindsets of human-centered design, design thinking as a methodology, but also I think creative problem solving. We are here as facilitators to help encourage and guide people through processes of creative problem solving. As I believe with most activities, they’re not complete unless you do sort of a debrief on it. My question for you is how does that activity, we just did relate to the state of our world right now?

Audience:

The unpredictability around you and how you navigate through that.

Durell Coleman:

Yeah, great.

Audience:

Irrational.

Durell Coleman:

It’s irrational?

Audience:

Yeah.

Just the very framing of enemies and non allies, I guess.

Durell Coleman:

Yeah, great. So the framing itself is tied to the way that our world works.

Audience:

So of course, my enemy didn’t know that they were my enemy and I ended up being her hero.

Durell Coleman:

Oh, wow.

Audience:

I feel like there’s a message in there somewhere.

Durell Coleman:

I feel like there’s a deep message. What do you think the message might be?

Audience:

I mean, you just don’t know how others are perceiving your actions and how their intent perhaps, like what’s behind it. It’s all through your own filter.

Durell Coleman:

Right. Right. Wonderful. We’ll give you… Oh, [inaudible 00:05:30].

Audience:

It’s really superficial. It’s very superficial.

Durell Coleman:

Yeah.

Audience:

I was going to say having to be reactive more than proactive, and a lack of control.

Durell Coleman:

Tell me more about that.

Audience:

I can’t predict where my enemy or my hero are going, so I’m just having to react to where they’re moving and it’s not always in the right space, and it’s not always within my control to produce the result I want.

Durell Coleman:

Yeah, great. There’s a variability here, and we can’t do it all by ourselves.

Audience:

I actually did not like how much attention I was paying to the enemy, and I wonder how that plays out and how much emotional energy I’m actually expending in those negative relationships.

Durell Coleman:

Yeah, yeah. We might focus in on our enemies. Yes.

Audience:

I felt like before you asked us to find an enemy or a hero, there was a flow in the room and then it felt when the divisiveness started, there was a repelling energy with everyone around me. Everyone sort of was just repelling from each other.

Durell Coleman:

This level of having an enemy and then choosing who your defender is or whatever the thing is that’s supposed to save you from it, created this sort of… We had this silo here that jockeyed back and forth, definitely a lot less free-form, free-flowing movement, a lot of intentional positioning. Maybe there’s some abstract elements of that that relate to how we relate to one another when we’ve decided that you’re my enemy and this is my hero and this is my ally, and that’s the bad guy and that’s the good guy, and all of those things. Thank you all for that.

I’m going to ask you in a moment to return to your seats, sort of. What we are going to need to do is form tables of five. I’m going to ask you if you’re at a table with more than five, please find a few people at that table who are willing to get up and go join a new table. There are some free tables that no one’s been at just yet. If you are at a table with less than five, then invite somebody to come join you. Thank y’all.

All right everyone, thank you so much for engaging in that Stoke activity. I want you to keep some of those mindsets in your mind as we move through the rest of this activity today. We’ve got some fun activities here, but also I took the conversation into a more serious direction in some ways. Some of our conversation today is going to move into that direction. The title of this talk is Lifting All Boats. There is a commonly known quote, which is that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” As I was thinking about the origin of that statement, it was made popular by John F. Kennedy, and he was fundamentally talking about how policies that improve outcomes for a group of people in Michigan or Alabama actually are things that can help all of us. There are things that can benefit the state as a whole. It can benefit the nation as a whole.

What I thought was really interesting though as I thought about this was that a rising tide only lifts all the boats that are in the water, all the boats that are close to the water, all the boats that are included in that economic system using John F. Kennedy’s example. I actually think that we are in a world where we are not always including all boats in the water. We are not always making sure that that rising tide touches everyone. I want to talk today a little bit more about how we can go about moving through this world, facilitating conversations that include everyone, that bring everyone along so that everyone is truly lifted to the place that they need to go.

As I thought about this talk and this session that we’re going to have, I will be honest with you that I was in a state of deep reflection about our world. I look around us and I feel in many ways that we are facing a crisis of leadership. I look around at inflaming war in the Middle East, I see the fall of DEI, I see conflict about what’s happening out at the southern border in the United States. I see just the discourse and the division between political parties here in this country that we are in right now. I’m a believer that we can exist within a world of difference and sameness at the same time, but we have somehow inflamed difference to the point where we are on the verge or we are in the midst of war and conflict and strife all the time.

And so as I’ve looked at these conflicts around the world, I wonder, where are the leaders who can de-escalate these conflicts to design solutions that benefit everyone involved, that benefit as many people as possible? Today, my hope is that we can go through an exercise that we use at my firm to do that type of work. I can introduce it to all of you and then we can have a dialogue about how that might apply to the world that we’re in, how that might apply to the facilitation work that you all do going forward, and any other thing that comes up along the way.

I want to tell you a little bit about who I am and what my company does. My name is Durell Coleman. I’m the Founder and CEO of a company called DC Design. DC Design, our mission is to eliminate multi-generational poverty and uplift black, brown and low-income communities. We really look at the opportunity to help the country as a whole rise as something that we can engage in if we really focus on the areas that have not received the level of support that they need. We want to go in and we want to work with organizations as we do to help them address the root causes of multi-generational poverty.

We partner with social sector organizations, governments, foundations, and nonprofits to do a number of things, but primarily to help them succeed at their missions, to help those who are trying to fulfill their purpose and potential in life, but who are often challenged by the structures around them. Some examples of our past work, I want to give you four quick examples just so you understand how we apply this. The first is around housing. We worked with the City of Newburg to help them recognize that their process of code enforcement, which is the process of condemning buildings, was making 12 families homeless every single month.

They didn’t know this because often we think about the actions that have to be taken. You can’t have people living in condemnable buildings, the floor is falling in, the roof is falling in, there’s no hot water, the windows are broken, there are children living in these locations, it’s unsafe. But often, we don’t consider who’s most impacted by the actions we might be taking. This unknown was something that was unearthed through the course of our work together, and then we help them come up with a plan for how to repair and restore low income housing as well as secure $776,000 from a state-led grant. That grant came in the form of payments from those who had paid for the housing crisis back in 2008 to be able to address this problem.

Another example was working with the City of Newburg, New York, I’m sorry, not Newburg, the City of New Haven Connecticut to help them decide how to spend $53 million of the American Rescue Plan funds. Really the goal here was really around saying how do we invest these funds in a way that benefits our community, that uplifts those who are at the lowest socioeconomic conditions in our community? How do we help close the racial wealth gap by making sure that as we distribute these funds across the entire town and everyone benefits, that we also make sure that we benefit those who haven’t always benefited from previous measures.

One of the things that we learned was that in the City of New Haven, 41% of high school graduates don’t go to college after leaving high school, but there’s no viable business that can support that many non-post-secondary educated folks in town. So you have a lot of joblessness, you have a lot of low employment, and there’s a number of other social challenges that come when you have joblessness and low employment. One of the strategies we helped them develop was the creation of systemic pathways for vocational and trade-based jobs. How do you really set up the systems to help people become those vocations, the plumber, the construction worker, the other jobs that are desperately needed in New Haven and which are very hard to find right now, but that there’s no pathway for? We help them think through that and design the basics of that system.

Last two examples I’ll give. One is the Milwaukee Boss platform really focused on wealth creation. We worked with a number of CDFIs in Milwaukee. These are credit unions who are focused on increasing the flow of capital to under-invested business owners. One of the things that they really wanted to do was increase funding overall. When we went and talked with the entrepreneurs, we learned that their primary challenge was figuring out how to incorporate their business. It was figuring out how to get into a brick and mortar, how to shift from selling their shirts out of the back of their truck to a more established form of business.

The quote that I think really stuck out to me was, “I don’t want more debt bondage, but I need someone who can walk with me to help me on my journey. I don’t know where to find the resources I need. I don’t have an example of a positive role model who’s done this before.” And so in response to that, we created the Milwaukee Boss platform, the one-stop shop for Milwaukee’s entrepreneurs of color to find the resources needed to build, operate, scale, or sustain their business. It is a place where those who have the service, who have the specific course that is able to help you figure out how to incorporate your business or how to get the loan that you need or how to move into a brick and mortar can put their services and then the entrepreneurs themselves can actually go and use this platform to find those as well.

The last example, which is going to be relevant because we are going to do an activity today that engages with this topic was around criminal justice reform in Santa Clara County, California, really focused on helping figure out how can this county not build another jail but instead reduce the number of people that they have incarcerated? We worked with leaders across the criminal justice system to understand what their needs were and help develop a strategic plan which they’ve been implementing for the last five years to success.

I wanted to give you these examples mostly to say these are the types of challenges that the work that we’re going to go through today, the session we’re going to go through today is useful for. I think we are in a state of conflict frequently around challenges like this, things related to the human needs of different individuals where we’re trying to prioritize what does this person need, what does this person need? What does that group need versus this other group over here? I believe that we can actually create systems that serve everyone.

What is our agenda today? We did a Stoke activity. Thank you all for that again. I talked a little bit about the state of our world and I didn’t mention you as the solution as fully as I wanted to, but implicit in the statements I made before was the idea that I believe facilitators are what is needed to address a lot of these challenges, people who can wade into these challenging conversations and help guide us to a narrative and an outcome that really speaks to the inner voices that everyone has and it enables those people to come to the table to find positive solutions.

Did a little introduction. We talked about what is design thinking, and then we’re going to dive into an activity together on current states and end states. We’re going to move through a scenario and a prompt, and then you’re going to get a chance at your tables to really use this process itself. Okay, so what is design thinking? I’m in a room full of facilitators. I imagine there’s a lot of people who are like, “Of course we know what design thinking is. We’ve got this,” but maybe there’s someone in here who is also like, “I don’t know what design thinking is.” So can someone throw out a definition for design thinking for me? A tangible visualization.

Audience:

Yeah, that’s all.

Durell Coleman:

Wonderful.

Audience:

That was my guess.

Durell Coleman:

Yes. Yeah.

Audience:

It’s a way to collaborate and solve complex problems.

Durell Coleman:

Great.

Audience:

Designing, beginning with understanding the end user.

Durell Coleman:

Wonderful. These are all fantastic, fantastic definitions, everyone. Those are all true and there’s a lot of ways that you can define this process. I define design thinking as a way to solve complex human problems that have many possible solutions. It’s a human-centered approach that utilizes empathy and experimentation, understanding a user correctly from an issue and creating an innovative solution. The way I think about it is we use design thinking when we are trying to solve certain problems and not others. If we want to figure out how long it takes for a spaceship to get from here to the moon, that’s not a design thinking problem. That’s a math problem and a physics problem.

If we want to figure out how to design the conditions for the astronauts on board, where should the bathroom be? What’s going to be the easiest flow of work for them while they do what they need to do? Where should they sleep? How should they sleep that’s going to make it comfortable for them? Those are design thinking problems. As we think about that, we recognize there’s not one way to lay out a spaceship. There’s not one way to design that solution, but what we do need to consider are the specific individual human needs of the people who are going to be on board. We might even need to consider the range of different professions and roles that those astronauts are playing while they’re on board in order to truly design something that’s accommodating of that group of people.

I think the more stakeholders you start talking to, the more complex this gets. But that approach is a little bit more of what we’re going to be doing today. We’re going to be thinking about how we can consider the needs of multiple stakeholders at the same time. At the same time.

This is a version of that process. If you’ve seen this before, you’ve probably seen it laid out in hexagons. It may have been five hexagons in a sort of pattern. We like to put it in this circle here, but the main pieces are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Iteration is an implicit element within this, which means that you constantly cycle through it. Empathy is about understanding the people that you want to design for, and we’re going to be using some of that today. Define is about defining clearly what the problems are that you want to address. What are the problems that those people have? What are their needs?

Ideate is about coming up with as many ideas as possible for how to address the challenges that you’ve defined. Prototype, it’s about building something tangible and real. Testing is about figuring out is the thing I built, does that work or does it fall apart? If it doesn’t work, I get to iterate and I get to go back to any of the previous phases to figure out what to do next. I give you this again as a background framing. We’re going to move beyond this design thinking frame into application current state and end state.

One of the things that I learned when I left the design school and I went to try to apply this to really complex issues is that there were some additional elements that needed be brought into it in order for it to work in an equitable way and in a way that really addressed the needs of everyone that we were working with. Current state and end state is one of those developments, so I place it as a natural follow-on from this. I want to give you an overview real quick and we’re going to move from the section where I talk to you a whole bunch into the section where you talk to each other a whole bunch very soon.

This is the overview of current state and end state. This process answers a question, how do we set goals in a way that helps the world transition from its current state of existence to its desired end state? We know that we live in a world full of challenges and I imagine if I just went around the room, we could all list off a number of challenges that we’re facing. But we also know that we have visions maybe as individuals or as groups of what we want the world to look like. What do we want it to feel like? If you’re familiar with the design thinking framework of a “how might we” statement, it’s useful because it gets a lot of people on the same page asking, how might we solve this problem? How might we approach this? But it doesn’t create consensus amongst people.

It gets a lot of ideas flowing, but it doesn’t build a common narrative of what we’re aiming for in the end. The purpose of current state end state is to do that, is to build consensus amongst a number of different people in order to get them on the same page about what world we’re trying to build. Defining these statements, current state is a statement written in the present tense that describes the current situation including its challenges and is juxtaposed with the end state, defining the status quo.

Here’s an example from work we did in Cincinnati focused on black infant mortality or infant mortality as a whole. Infant mortality as an issue affects women all across the board, affects families across the board, but statistically it affects black women and families at twice the rate of the rest of other groups. So twice the national average, about 10% compared to 5%. In Hamilton County with a predominantly black population, that is the framing for this statement. Black babies are dying because mothers and their families are disproportionately affected by systems steeped in racism.

A lack of equitable access to information and care is producing negative health outcomes for black mothers, fathers, infants, and communities. This statement is one that we worked on in collaboration with a powerful organization called Cradle Cincinnati that has already reduced the infant mortality rate by 42%, and was working with us to figure out what to do for the next five years. How do we go further into that? Where can we go deeper? The end state is a statement written in the present tense that describes the status quo. It describes the status quo and the hypothetical reality that you want to create. This is your goal.

If we look at our end state for this statement, whereas the current state describes what’s happening right now, there’s a lack of equitable access to information and care, which is producing negative outcomes for these groups, black mothers, fathers, infants, and communities. The end state which was developed by this community, was every black pregnant woman feels joy and safe because they honestly expect that the people they will encounter will echo that in their performance and interactions, and that they will honor and protect them. Black women are not worried about resources, access, quality care support for child-rearing. Black trauma is no longer a topic because it does not exist. And ultimately, black babies live to their first birthday. That is the goal with this end state here.

I see some snaps from folks in the audience, which I appreciate. This is an example of a current state end state. I want to give you one more example of a current state and end state as well and we can circle back to any of these examples. The main point here is that this reality does not exist right now. It is not true in almost any place in our nation, unfortunately. And so it’s something worth continuing to work toward. Once it’s true, we will know we have arrived at the place that we want to be. We will know that we have produced the outcome we want to produce.

As a second example using the military families work that this conference is here to support, I developed a current state and an end state that is not complete, but is an idea of how it could function. The current state, finding connections for military family members in locations, that lack of military installation is difficult to do, resulting in a lack of child care, employment, emotional, social and emotional support for military family members. Statement about the current state. That is the challenge that we learned about in many ways. We know that the micro-credentialing process is meant to address part of that.

It’s a solution to some of the challenges faced here, but it’s not the entire solution, because we can recognize there’s a number of things in this current state, a number of challenges in this current state that still would need to be addressed for military families to have what they ultimately need. And as an end state for that, military family members have the resources and support needed to thrive. They actively receive family support, employment, educational, social and emotional support from their surrounding community. They feel valued and cared for when moving to new locations.

In some ways, a flip side of our current state, but in other ways, there’s other things we want to add in there to characterize how the end state we’re trying to build feels. Is this making sense to everyone? Yeah. Awesome. I love it. Great. The point with these examples is that the end state can be written about anyone. There’s a lot of turmoil right now about terms in this country, about which groups we’re talking about and which groups we’re not talking about. I think there are a lot of groups… Actually, I think everyone should be included in our vision for the future. At times, we have to focus in on one group. We focus in on another group. So in the previous example it was black mothers. In this example, it’s military families, but we can also build statements that include everyone in them. We’re going to work on moving more toward that again today.

On your tables, there are a set of personas. Yes, they have orange banner at the top of them. What I want you to do is I want you to pick one at random. I want you to just pass them around to folks at your table and I’m going to walk you through very briefly what they are. Don’t get overly choosy with them, just kind of randomly distribute them to people. There’s a number of personas here, and the reason I didn’t have you read through each one is I kind of want your identities to be known, but I want your values and your belief systems to be held by you. So you’ve got your persona. You can say what your role is, but I want you to kind of protect a little bit the information that you have in front of you.

We have six personas. We have our district attorney, an incarcerated person, the leader of a community-based organization, a public defender, a leader of the local church and a sheriff. Now your table, as I see people are exchanging, they’re like, “I don’t want to be this person. I want to be this person.” Your table only has five people at it, so someone’s not going to be in your conversation, and that’s okay. I don’t want you to optimize too much for that. I want us to discuss that at a later point. Each of you should now have a persona in hand. There’s also on your table a prompt. I will read the prompt to you up here on the screen. You have it on your table so that you can return to what our activity’s ultimately going to be about throughout today as well.

The prompt here is this. The United States incarcerates 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. This is a true fact in case you didn’t know that. Of all the people in the world, 25% of them are incarcerated in America. Due to a new law, many people who are incarcerated at the state level are being sent back home to the county jail. Your local jail does not have the capacity to incarcerate these additional individuals. Your jail is not big enough. It doesn’t have enough space for everyone who’s coming. Your town has decided to try to reduce the number of people in your jail rather than building another one. But you have to decide what must change to make that happen.

The personas that you have are all local personalities. They’re all local individuals and they’re pulled from real examples based on real people that we’ve encountered throughout the course of our work. We did a similar project to this in Santa Clara County as I mentioned before, but we’ve also done other work in criminal justice overall. Each of these personas has a different perspective about what has to change, what’s important, what matters to me, why do we have so many folks incarcerated in the first place? Those are some of the conversations that I want you all to have at your table.

Your persona, your paper in front of you, gives you some details about the perspective I want you to embody. I think that the activity that we just did before where we learned a little bit about inner voices is something that we can think about as we engage this work. What are the inner voices of the persona that you have in front of you? What are they thinking about? What are they aiming for? What are they trying to accomplish in their own lives as well? What I want to do is I want to give you a moment to read over that and then we’ll have a moment where we center on those personas and then we’re going to move into the activity itself. Everyone take a moment to read through in depth the persona in front of you before we move into the next activity. You’re going to want to grab some Post-It notes as well, and a Sharpie from your table.

Here’s what we’re going to do. Current state, define the current state so that you can eventually define the end state. You’re going to have a chance to do this in your groups, but you are going to start by really sinking in to our persona. I want everyone to close their eyes for a second, and I want you to think about your persona and I want you to imagine embodying them, thinking about their experiences. Think if you can recall having a conversation ever with someone who is that persona, think about what some of the inner challenges that you might be facing having lived your life as that person. We’re going to dive in. Thank you all.

There will be places here where you find yourself reaching, you find yourself adding things, making up things, you’re not completely sure. My request is you try to stay as authentic as possible to what you think someone might be thinking or feeling. But recognize also that in this role play, we can’t be perfect embodiments of anyone else and we’re not trying to. We want to be honorable and be respectful of those roles so that we can represent them as authentically as we think we can now. We can reflect on where there are gaps in our knowledge and understanding later.

All right, so first activity. Spend the next three minutes thinking from the perspective of your persona and writing on Post-It notes some of the existing problems that you see leading to your county’s high jail population. Given what it says there on that sheet, some of those answers are written already on the sheet itself. You can write those out on Post-It notes. Others might be things that come to mind for you, and I’m sure you have thoughts on this already. Try to add those to Post-It notes as well, again from the perspective that you might be embodying. Okay, go.

I see some of you’re still writing, which I love. You’re still generating ideas, perspectives, content. Some of you have finished. That’s perfectly okay. What you’re going to do now is you’re going to enter into conversation. As a group, I want you to spend 15 minutes sharing your individual perspectives with one another and building on each other’s thoughts to come up with one current state. You should start by essentially sharing what your perspectives are. Go around your group and share a little bit more about these causes. What is it that’s driving your current jail population being so high? What are the challenges that are being faced in the current system? Listen to your fellow table mates as you think through this and take note of any areas of overlap or commonality and perspective that you’re hearing.

Okay, about 15 minutes, I’m going to circle around as well and sort of just see how those conversations are going. All right, ready? Go. If you haven’t yet, go ahead and start thinking about how you want to craft a current state. How can you describe it? Know that the current state can be four sentences, it can be five sentences. It’s okay to have more than one or two within that. Begin to write that statement. Think about how you can bring in these different perspectives you’ve heard at the table. All right, I’m going to call attention and we’re going to hear some current states from folks before we move on.

Give me one word to describe that activity. I would love to hear from some different tables.

Audience:

It’s difficult.

Durell Coleman:

Difficult. Give me a few other words. We got difficult.

Audience:

Real.

Durell Coleman:

Real. Others?

Audience:

Emotional.

Durell Coleman:

Emotional.

Audience:

Hard to stay in the persona sometimes.

Durell Coleman:

Hard to stay in the persona. That is a challenge for sure. The point being that we are different people and we’ll have different perspectives.

We heard a number of current states difference, but with overlapping elements to them pulled from these personas. I also heard that it was difficult at times to find the commonality. Well, we’re going to ramp that up just a little bit more as we talk about the end state now. Our end state, we want to remember that this is the outcome we’re trying to achieve. What I want you to do is spend three minutes really quickly, again, thinking about from your perspective, what is the world that you want to live in that your persona wants to live in? What does that look like? How would you describe that if things were solved?

Example, jail is a last resort form of criminal punishment. Someone might say that. There’s probably a few different statements that someone would discuss, that someone would put down from their perspective. I want you to spend three minutes writing those down. Think about your current state as well. Some of them will be counters to the current state, some of them might not be. They might just be different ideas. Okay, three minutes. Go. Think personally, what does this persona care about? What do they want to protect?

All right, I know you’re still writing a little bit on that, which is okay. You can bring it in through discussion as well. Now you’re all experts at this. We’re going to go back to our group conversation and share a little bit more about what we think the reality we’re trying to create in our town is. Realize that you are all bonded together. You live in the same community. Go ahead and craft that vision. Really aim toward creating that one to four sentence end state as you move forward. Go.

If you shared, work toward writing one end statement now. Write one end state. You have five minutes as a group to come up with and agree on that statement. If you have done that already, then awesome. If not, try to get something succinct. Three to four sentences max. We’re almost there. We are moving into the final phase of our activity, and so I would love to hear some end states from folks. Which table would be excited to share their end state? Okay, we got volunteers right here in the back.

Audience:

Yes. So our end state is a safe and thriving community where we prioritize the needs of the least resourced as in that way we built the equity to offer liberty and justice for all by giving support to the people that were incarnated through better legal representation, having more flexible options for legal enforcement than only reincarnation or for adequate housing and job support so that they feel more valued and can contribute again to that community.

Durell Coleman:

All right, thank you.

Audience:

Foster a sense of community where individuals feel safe and supported while implementing robust programs aimed at both assisting individuals post-incarceration and preventing incarceration altogether.

Durell Coleman:

Powerful. Great. Great job. In those statements, something I’m hearing, I’m hearing these elements of what a solution would need to entail. It doesn’t say exactly what the solution is, but what I’m hearing is there’s a focus for some on post-incarceration and release. This was not a conversation you all had with each other before coming in this room, but I’m hearing this idea around maybe we should create ways for people to exit jail appropriately and be able to live. Then I’m also hearing things around reducing the inputs, the entry, which is actually called no entry as well. It’s a very descriptive name. There’s another table.

Audience:

Our community sees the end state. Our community sees the incarcerated as valued members of the community and not as a threat. Our community believes rehabilitation is a human right and that we’ve all failed and deserve a path to re-enter society. Our community has created an effective and holistic rehabilitation system free from inequalities that starts during incarceration, rooted in the community, includes child care, mental health, career, substance treatment, funding, housing, legal and spiritual support.

Durell Coleman:

Wow. All right. Snaps around the room. Let’s get one more table. Yes?

Audience:

We choose and work to welcome each person back into our community with honor and dignity. We understand the systemic nature of this problem and allocate funds and resources more strategically to provide housing and transition support. Law enforcement options are a combination of proven alternatives with incarceration as only one in the last resort. We believe the strength of our community is shown by the strength of our network solving this challenge.

Durell Coleman:

All right, thank you. Let’s talk. I want to talk realism real quick, and then I want to talk your thoughts, your reflections on the activity that we just had. In your statement, it was interesting because I heard incarceration as only one of the solutions. I’m curious which persona pushed for that piece of it? The DA. Okay, that’s powerful. We often find people have their biases in certain directions. I thought you actually were going to say the sheriff as one of the possibilities for who that is as well, but the DA, that also tracks in a lot of ways.

What I have found having grown up here in Texas, the conservative bastion of America, having lived for 12 years in the Bay Area, California, the liberal bastion of America, having great people in my life from both those places, I have yet to meet people, when you meet them one-to-one… I don’t know if I have yet to meet people, but I have not met very many people, I should say. .001 maybe percent of people who don’t actually want good outcomes for other people, who don’t want other people to succeed and thrive if possible. I find that often we characterize the sheriff or the DA or these certain people in ways that removes their point.

I’ll give you the story is I was in a room with a community leader who said “People with mental illness shouldn’t be incarcerated.” Then I had a sheriff say, “My job is to maintain public safety.” But the reality was, when we broke the conversation down, they were just talking about their individual roles and their beliefs. They weren’t actually disagreeing with each other. The sheriff wasn’t saying, “Yeah, we should lock up way more people with mental illness.” He was saying, “I don’t have alternatives to incarceration.” And so I think the job of a facilitator, and in using an activity like this, is to get past some of the preconceived stereotypes about people to understand where we can actually agree.

Where do we have a commonality? I have these conversations frequently with people with varying political views, and we often find in those tabletop conversations, points of commonality, points of commonality, points of commonality. Differences remain, but there are things we could agree on that could actually help reduce some of the tension that I see elsewhere. I want to hear any final reflections from all of you before we close here. What are folks’ thoughts? Yes. Oh, here comes your mic.

Audience:

I have no personal experience with any of this, and so all my ideas just come straight from things that I read or other opinions on the matter, and I found that a little bit disturbing.

Durell Coleman:

Reflecting on your own personal-

Audience:

Just putting things down on paper that I am thinking could be the problem, even from the personal of a fictional reverend, because I don’t know. I have not had any personal experience with this topic.

Durell Coleman:

Yeah, I think it’s a really powerful point. There’s a discomfort in an activity like this if we don’t feel like we have a personal basis to speak through this. It was interesting though. I walked around to certain tables and I heard so many words that I have heard in other rooms before as you embodied these characteristics. I heard from over here this element around not knowing what to do when I’m released, not knowing where to go, not knowing who to talk to and where to get resources.

I heard a bunch of things about reentry solutions that I’ve heard in rooms with other people, and you might’ve just been playing off the personas, but there’s things in these end states, I did not put in these personas that you all pulled together. There’s two things to this. I think one side of it is it’s uncomfortable and can be challenging to engage in. I appreciate you for stepping into that. I think the other is any space that is really tense like this where we don’t have those personal relationships or that personal empathy, those are opportunities to go meet people, talk to people, learn from people directly to see what are their perspectives.

It’s not like it’s necessarily your job to go do that all the time, but if you have the chance to bridge some of those gaps going forward, then that’s an opportunity that you can take up as well.

Audience:

I am considering bias here and I’m considering from a facilitation standpoint how I hold that bias, because as our work was unfolding here, I’m making the assumption, check me table mates, that we are pretty biased towards what we consider the beneficial outcome is here, the end state. As I consider my bias as a facilitator, it seems this might be one place where I can leverage whether it’s optimism or intention in the room to support finding common ground. That that’s where I would lean in as a facilitator.

Durell Coleman:

Right. I think yes to that. Our biases do come into this and I think that’s a safer place to lean in. Did anyone at their table not have a sheriff as a persona? Any tables not have a sheriff? Anyone not have an incarcerated person at their table? Those biases are also extra prevalent when we don’t have all of the right stakeholders in the room. There’s an activity we do before this called Stakeholder Mapping where we figure out who are the right people to make sure that we have a rounded perspective. We also think about who are the people with veto power. People who, if they’re not included and they learn about this six months from now, all that work was worthless. The sheriff is one of those people actually, generally. They have the power to raise enough political pressure against what you’re doing to cancel it.

And so anyway, that’s a really important point. I think leaning into points of commonality is helpful. One move we also make is to take the end state, even if we didn’t develop it directly with people, and take it to all of those stakeholders to get their buy-in and help them shape it. In this work that we did before, we took the end states to the Department of Corrections. They made one change, which was to add a line to alternatives to incarceration that said, while maintaining public safety. And that was it. But that was enough to get the buy-in from the entire Department of Corrections for the entire plan moving forward.

This process works really well if you can enter into a frame of collaboration. It’s not always a frame people want to enter into. It is a frame that leaders can put people into. If you have a certain amount of power, for example, you can say, “Look, we’re going to do this differently,” because you have the power in that system to call for collaborative solutions. But to your point, how do you elevate the voices of folks who are often left out? I think as a facilitator, it’s your job to think about and understand who those people are.

When we did this work before, we originally started with 27 leaders in criminal justice, and it was the sheriff, the DA, the public defender, all of these different people. These are, like I said, based on real folks. At the end of that exercise, when they had talked about what’s gone well and what still needs to happen, I asked them this question. I said, “Who’s not in this room? Whose perspective is missing from your answers?” And it was a move toward exactly what you’re talking about. The answer they said was, “Well, we actually don’t have incarcerated people here.”

So had one of your tables not had that perspective, I would’ve been asking you who’s missing? I’ll come back to the sheriff in one second as my final closing comment. Basically, it’s a way. I think it’s important for you to hold those voices in mind. If you forget them, you likely will not have good solutions. You likely will not have something that actually works, and that’s foundational to human-centered design.

I think my closing questions or things for you to ponder, throw out a quick answer. What’s the difference between this activity and running it as a facilitator? Running this activity. You were at your tables, you are all facilitators, versus you stepping into a space where you’re facilitating another group through this. And they’re not playing personas. They are those people. Separate question, where do you think this approach could be useful?

Audience:

Wherever divergent perspectives exist.

Durell Coleman:

Wherever divergent perspectives exist. Awesome. I guess I want to close it, just bringing it back around to Leah’s point earlier, which is if we want to make peace, we have to look at the source of our wars. I think this is an activity that helps us move past some of the reflexive or reactive reactions that we have that create those wars, create those tensions, keep people from getting the resources they need to actually bring them to the same page.

All right, so hopefully this was helpful for everyone. Thank you so much.

The post Building Consensus Amongst Multiple Stakeholders appeared first on Voltage Control.

Liya Jamies led the first session at the 2024 Faciliation Lab Summit entitled “Navigating the Inner Narratives: Enhancing Relational Dynamics.” Liya encouraged participants to explore and manage their inner voices. She emphasized how these often-overlooked internal dialogues significantly influence our perceptions, actions, and relationships. The workshop blended theory with practical exercises, helping attendees recognize and harness their inner narratives to foster better communication and empathy.

Her approach was personal and engaging. She shared her journey of self-discovery, illustrating how confronting internal dialogues can lead to profound personal growth and enhanced interpersonal connections. Her experiences as a leader dealing with conflict and miscommunication provided practical insights into the power of self-awareness and empathy in facilitating change.

Key workshop activities included interactive sessions where participants examined their internal narratives, role-playing exercises to demonstrate how different “inner narrators” affect communication, and group discussions on relational attunement—the ability to sync with our own and others’ inner dialogues. This concept was likened to bird migration, where coordination and responsiveness within a group are crucial for success.

Liya also highlighted the impact of these narratives in a professional setting, using a marketing campaign brainstorming exercise to show how different internal perspectives can influence teamwork and creativity. Participants learned to identify and adjust their inner dialogues, promoting more effective collaboration and decision-making.

In her closing remarks, James stressed the importance of continuous self-awareness and engagement with our inner voices. She advocated for viewing internal dialogues through a lens of curiosity and compassion, emphasizing their role in shaping our relationships and personal well-being.

Watch the full video below:

Transcript

Liya James:

Hi everyone. I am so excited to be here today. This topic is so dear to my heart. When I first became a leader, a people manager, I was very young, and the idea of conflict disagreement was anxiety provoking for me. Now, as facilitators, leaders, we’re managing relational dynamics all the time, right? So the invitation that I want to make to you today is think about relational breakdowns, like miscommunications, differences, as a doorway. As a doorway to get to know ourselves better, as a doorway to get to know each other better, and as a doorway for more compassion and benevolence to towards ourselves and each other.

Relational breakdowns are a part of every day, but how do they start? It starts within us. It starts with a voice. Sometimes it’s projecting into the future and saying, “Ooh, are you sure you want to do that?” Sometimes it’s advice, it sounds like my mom. And sometimes it’s trying to be helpful. “Hey, if you just put this person’s needs first, they’re going to show up for you later.” And guess what that does to my relationships? I would do things for people when they didn’t even ask, and then they don’t show up for me when I need them, and I resent them. And guess what? I lose a friend. I lose a colleague that I actually want to be in relationship with.

So this inner voice is coming up with strategies on how to get me what I want, but a lot of times it doesn’t work out. Today we’re going to call this inner voice our inner narrator. Studies show that about a quarter to a half of our waking lives, we’re talking to ourselves like this. When we’re not aware of them, they take over. So I’m about to show you a clip from one of my favorite comedians. It’s called the perfectionist ends a call.

TikTok clip:

You know, I was going to tell you yesterday after I… Oh, sure. No problem. Bye. How did that feel? Okay, except for the ending. Well, you know how we like to end a call? Casual, affectionate, and cool. I know. The call is behind us. Now, what’s our course of action? Do over? Bingo. Okay, let’s stick that landing. Stick the landing. Hey, it’s me. I was just wondering if I could say goodbye again. Stick the landing. It was really great talking to you and catch you later. Bye. How did that feel? I don’t know. It was casual, but not very cool. Should I apologize? I think that’s your only recourse. Okay, stick the landing. Hey, I just want to apologize. What? Casual. No, I just mean… Give me the phone. Hi. Listen, what we need to do is put… What happened? She hung up. Oh no, this is hard. What do we do? Delete her from your phone.

Liya James:

So I said relational breakdowns start within us, right? This is how the inner narrator works. We’re just going about our lives. Having a meeting, talking about a project, having a good time, calling my friend. She didn’t pick up. And then the inner narrator starts developing a story. “She never picks up. She doesn’t care about you.” And then the story sometimes contains what I call a distorted threat. For me, someone not caring about me brings up my 8-year-old inner narrator. You guys are getting to know me really well today. Growing up, my mom was really busy, not available a lot. I have this memory of stomping on my bed trying to get her to come, and she just can’t come because she’s busy. And at about eight years old, I developed this strategy. I have this inner narrator coming online, and this inner narrator is like, “Just be helpful and she’ll pay attention.”

So this friend, I’m helping her a lot, but she’s not picking up. She doesn’t show up on time. So I start to be like, “she doesn’t care about you.” Now I have a distorted threat that says, this person is not available. When I was eight and I didn’t have much resources, that was a threat. When we let our inner narrators perceive threats, they might be greater than what that threat really is to us today as grownups. Because when the inner narrators were first formed, they weren’t as resourced. The fact that mom wasn’t there for me used to be a huge threat, but as a 40-year-old, friend not calling me back, not that big of a threat. What happens though is if I don’t check that, I get activated.

And so I’m going to give you an example and I kind of need your help. I want you to get involved in this one. So I’m in a session with my client, Tom, and he’s brought a really anxiety-provoking situation to my attention, and we’re working through this, okay? I’m going to give you a snippet of that conversation. So I want you to help me figure out what those potential threats are in his story, all right? This is an important concept. I want to make sure you really get it. So it’s causing him a lot of anxiety. I’m just going to give you a minute to take it in. What’s the potential threat in his story? Anybody have a guess?

Audience 1:

Is it the perception of performance of his job?

Liya James:

Yeah, yeah. He’s perceiving a threat to his job, the way he makes a living. Yeah, that could be a big threat, right? Thank you. Anybody else?

Audience 2:

Failure.

Liya James:

Yes, failure. Lots of talk about failure here.

Audience 3:

And it sounds like he’s perceiving that she’s doing it to him.

Liya James:

Oh, purposefully. So there’s a mal intent in the story, and he’s not in control of it. Oh, we’re not in control. That’s really hard for some people, right? Yeah. Anything else?

Audience 4:

He doesn’t feel heard.

Liya James:

Say again?

Audience 4:

He doesn’t feel heard.

Liya James:

He does not feel heard. I’m going to come back to that. You just nailed a big one there. He does not feel heard. I love talking to facilitators. You just went way here. You got us to the bottom of it. All right, lots of threats. Right? Now, we call it a potential threat because we don’t know, right? This is really personal to Tom. We work through that. But when we perceive that there is a threat, our nervous systems get activated. There are two pathways running up and down our bodies who’s responsible for a timely reaction to threats. And it’s not just neurological, it’s not just cognitive, it is physiological. Because in the olden days, our timely reaction to a threat meant life or death. Our hunting and gathering environments have changed a lot, but our nervous system functions about the same.

Now, the perceived threat, how we perceive it is very different depending on our lived experiences. Me and you could be in the same meeting, the same sequence of events are happening. I am activated. I’m about to flight. Actually, my default is fawn. That makes me a really good consultant, really good listener, but it gets me in trouble. So I am activated and I’m about to respond to whatever this inner narrator is saying. And you’re not. You’re calm. Nothing’s happening. We’re just having a meeting. So this reaction is very personal, depending on how we grew up and what the messages were, how our needs were met or not met. So relational attunement is about being in relationship with these inner narrators, not in a way that pushes them away or shutting them up. We have to be in compassionate relationship with our inner narrators if we want to be in compassionate relationship with ourselves and with other people.

And so relational attunement is about getting to know these parts of us and how they behave and what they want for us so that compassion is accessible so we can be attuned with ourselves and others. And when we can do this, we’re more like these birds. These birds migrate from one side of the world to another. This beautiful motion is created simply with one bird saying, “I need food right now.” She goes down to get food and another response. And it’s with this responsiveness that they’re able to go from one side of the world to the other without a plan, without a leader, without any strategies and keeping each other safe while they do that.

Imagine what’s possible if we can be more like this, if work can be more like this. And it comes down to every single one of us doing this work, being attuned. Being attuned with ourselves and others. But we can’t do that. We can’t travel with a common purpose because we disconnect from that purpose when our inner narrators are online, because we get drawn to address their concerns. We disconnect from the group. Sometimes we disconnect from ourselves. Now, here’s a really important thing to remember. We all have inner narrators. It’s part of our survival mechanism, and they all have good intentions. The most important thing is to remember, “They want something good for me, and I want to know what that is, and I want to move toward that good thing.” Some of my inner narrators just want me to belong because I had experiences moving to this country where I didn’t feel like I belonged. It’s really important to me that I feel belonging.

And when I work with clients, I get them through this exercise where they check in on which needs are being threatened. We’re not going to go into that today. I’m not going to have you do this in public with a bunch of strangers. The thing I want you to remember is no matter what those needs are, all of us are stumbling toward wanting to be seen, to be heard, and to be loved. Even the bully, even Tom’s colleague who he thinks is going around him and threatening his job, even her, just finding her way back to love and connection. So here’s some common inner narrators that I think most people are kind of familiar with, right? Yeah, maybe a little bit? Okay. Not just me? Okay, good. Thank you, thank you. I’m not just up here talking about my voices. Okay. All right. So I want to get you guys working with me on this. Let’s start with an easy one. I think the perfectionist we’re all familiar with. So what’s the perfectionist’s good intention? What’s the perfectionist want for us? Anybody? Yeah?

Audience 5:

A job well done.

Liya James:

A job well done. Do a good job. Yeah. Go ahead.

Audience 6:

Preserving your reputation.

Liya James:

Reputation, yeah. Look good, right? That can be really important at work. If you want a promotion, if you want to be seen as a leader, good intention. Oh, here’s a harder one. Catastrophizer?

Audience 5:

Never be disappointing.

Liya James:

Yeah, I don’t want you to be disappointed. I’m going to make sure you know what the worst thing that could happen is, right? Yeah. Hira? [inaudible 00:13:32]. Yes, protect us. Protection is a really big job for these guys. This whole cast is all about protection actually. Let’s do one more. What about the pleaser? Oh man, this one I know really well, so I can talk about this one all day, but what about you guys? What do you think the pleaser wants for us?

Audience 7:

To preserve relationships?

Liya James:

Yes.

Audience 8:

Harmony.

Liya James:

Harmony.

Audience 9:

Support.

Liya James:

Support, yes. Connection, harmony, support. Yeah. And just remember, I may have an inner voice as a pleaser. This other person might have one, but they could be fairly different flavors because remember, they were developed and grew up in a way trying to get our unique needs met. So they might sound a little different, but here’s typically what they want for us; really good intentions. All right, so now I’m going to have some volunteers come up and help me act out some relational dynamics. And don’t worry, I have a script for you. You don’t have to make up anything on the spot. This is not improv. I know improv scares a lot of people. Do I have two volunteers? So as we’re getting set up, it’s two people in a meeting talking about an advertising campaign idea. Here’s your script. Person one, who wants to be person one?

Person one shares an idea and person two is reacting. And we do the same meeting twice. And I don’t expect you to be actors-

Person 2:

I’m an actor.

Liya James:

But you are? Okay. I’m like, well, lucky me. But try to take in that what they’re saying and the feelings and get into it as well as you could. Just so you know, who is person one?

Person 1:

Me.

Liya James:

You are person one. So I just want to have their inner narrators kind of just hold it so they know which one you are. And here’s your inner narrator. So this one is the perfectionist. They’re not talking, the people are talking in a meeting. All right? They’re just hanging around. Okay, go ahead.

Person 1:

We could buy billboard ads all over the country and advertise the digital fluency program.

Person 2:

That’s really expensive.

Person 1:

Okay, well, how about radio ad spots? Those should be cheaper.

Person 2:

Do people listen to the radio these days?

Person 1:

Well, where do you think people spend time?

Person 2:

I don’t know. Maybe online?

Person 1:

We could buy online ads?

Person 2:

Ads can get expensive. They don’t always work, in my experience. Why don’t we think of ideas that are more cost-effective?

Person 1:

Okay.

Liya James:

All right. So people were laughing. What did you notice? What was person one doing? Speak up. Speak up. Go ahead.

Audience 1:

“We going to make it work.”

Liya James:

Yeah, yeah. Appeasing. Trying to go with it. Flowing with it. Okay. Anybody else?

Audience 10:

Trying to break through.

Liya James:

Yeah, trying to break through. Trying so hard. Person one is trying so hard. Okay, so I am going to have you do this again.

Person 2:

Thank you.

Liya James:

But now your inner narrators are offline, so I’ll take those from you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your service. Pixie and puff. So now they’re offline and watch what happens.

Person 1:

We could buy billboard ads all over the country and advertise the digital fluency program.

Person 2:

That can get really expensive really quick.

Person 1:

The fact that that’s the first thing that jumped out at you makes me think that’s an important constraint, but it hasn’t come up yet. Can you say more about that?

Person 2:

Well, we spent so much on the last campaign and got no results.

Person 1:

I see. That’s helpful history. What happened?

Person 2:

Honestly, we had these consultants working on it, and I just assumed they knew what they were doing. So I approved the campaign, but I should have asked for more data before signing off on it. I’m coming into this a little more cautious. I just don’t want to make the same mistake again.

Person 1:

That makes sense. Can you think of other experiences or constraints we should consider before we get back to the brainstorming?

Person 2:

Yeah, but I’m not the only one who has perspective on this, I think. Maybe we should get the team together and come up with a list of constraints.

Person 1:

It really is a great idea. That’s a great idea. Sorry. Breaking the fourth wall, is it called? Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’d like your help to come up with a list of people. Sorry. Sorry. I’d like your help to come up with a list of people that have the right background and experiences. Could you help me with that?

Person 2:

Of course.

Liya James:

Oh, thank you. Give them a big round of applause. Thank you so much. The acting was wonderful. First-rate. Thank you so much. I’m going to have you. Okay, hopefully these don’t roll off. Wonderful. So what’s the difference? What did you notice?

Audience 5:

Curiosity was a big part of what helped to diffuse and create more connection.

Liya James:

Oh, yeah. The second one, when the inner narrator is not online, not activated, she was being really curious and asked very good questions. Go ahead. She was. She was validating her concerns, and she didn’t get activated because she felt heard. She felt heard. Anything else? Yeah?

Audience 11:

Can you say it was more about understanding and solving the problem or [inaudible 00:19:36]?

Liya James:

She was engaged in the problem at hand. She was not off solving something else. Another need that she has. To be liked, perhaps. When we don’t have our inner narrators activated, what happens is we can stay engaged with the conversation. And what’s available to us is benevolent curiosity. We are genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. We’re saying back to them, and they feel like we care. If Tom’s coworker were to talk to him like this, Tom would feel like she really cares. Even if we didn’t solve the problem in that meeting, they have a path to the solution. When the pleaser was offline and she was genuinely engaged in the dialogue, the other person senses safety here. So now I can really say what I think. Yeah. Amazing, amazing. Great observations.

All right, so now I’m going to have you guys try to really embody this, what we’re talking about. I’m going to play two games. The first game, really easy. You just have to be yourself. No stuffed animals, no stuffed animals. They’re done. So we’re going to try to get into groups of three. And when you get into a group, just pick a letter, A, B, or C. Doesn’t matter. Just pick a letter. And this is the game. Douglas sent an email out yesterday that we’re all kind of engaged in this next two days on this challenge with the ACC digital literacy program. So we’re going to use that as just fodder for this exercise. Okay? So the ACC digital fluency program is just basically, in case you didn’t watch the video. Of course you all did, right? You all know what this is about. You researched it.

But just in case there’s one person, it’s a program that teaches military spouses computer literacy skills like Word, Excel, things like that. And it’s working really well here, I think locally. Right, Douglas? It’s working really well. And because it’s online, anybody can do it. You don’t have to be in Austin. And so they want more awareness all over the country. And so we’re going to get ourselves engaged in this problem, in this challenge. So what I want you all to do when you get into your groups of three is person A is going to come up with a campaign idea. Just think about a campaign idea. Any idea, it doesn’t have to be good, okay? Any idea.

The exercise is not about the idea, okay? It’s just about the conversation. Going to socialize it with person B. And person B just has to ask supportive questions to tease the idea out. Don’t add your ideas, right? Basically just be yourselves, be the good facilitators that you are, okay? And we’re going to go back and forth for about five minutes. Person C, observing, taking notes. And I just want you to notice what happens when the person’s not activated? What does that space feel like? Okay, clear? Any questions? All right, go ahead, get into groups of three. [inaudible 00:23:04]. All right, so let’s bring you back. What are you present to? Lots of laughter. What are you present to? What are you noticing?

Audience 5:

Authenticity, inspiration, real potentials.

Liya James:

Oh my goodness. Are you going to give this talk the rest of it? Okay. Authenticity, real potential. We did that in five minutes. I did my job. Going home. Oh my goodness. Anybody else? Don’t be intimidated by that. Yes, Hira? [inaudible 00:23:57].

It was intentional. You felt flow. Oh my God, you guys are good. What else? Go ahead.

Audience 11:

I think there’s a lot of vulnerability in providing new ideas, so there was no activation [inaudible 00:24:25].

Liya James:

And I would say that’s a little bit of a voice that kind of was like, “Oh, make sure your idea is good.” But then you had a moment of, “No, this is safe.” So that is the power when we feel safe, when we know that the other people are trying so much as possible in five minutes when we’re calm and regulated and we have a supportive partner. I’m about to cry. So let’s move on and play another game. And now this time our inner narrator is going to be activated, and I want you to play into that. So this time we are doing a little improv. Okay? Same groups. Change your letters, pick a different letter. So we’re going to rotate. Person B is going to open this envelope and you need to share, there’s one for each table. And there’s cards in there, and I’ll tell you what you’re going to do in a minute, but I’m going to need a volunteer again, just one volunteer. And I’m going to need mic C. I’m going to have a volunteer come up and actually help me demo this game. Okay?

Go ahead. Thank you. Not afraid of improv. Yes. I thought I’d have a few. So this is your envelope and you’re going to randomly pick a card. So I’m going to put the instructions up. I’m just going to walk through this and then we’re going to act it out. So game two, inner narrators, fully activated for person B. Person A’s job is to come up with a totally ridiculous, unworkable idea. I’m really good at that, so I’ll show you how that works in a minute. Totally unworkable, but I want you to love it. Really love it. Please don’t let it go. Do not let it go. Love it so much. And person B’s job is to take a card, go ahead and take a card out. And on the card there is these orange letters on the bottom.

If you’re colorblind, it’s on the bottom, that says automatic reaction. And your job as person B is to stick to that automatic reaction. Do your best job that you can. You cannot be too exaggerated. There’s no such thing today. Exaggeration is welcomed, person B. Okay, so person C, same. Observe. Here’s some prompts for you to observe with. Notice what happens. All right? So we’re going to do that right now.

Solomon:

Am I B?

Liya James:

You’re B. I’m A.

Solomon:

So I’m doing doing the…

Liya James:

Automatic reaction. I’m going to come up with the ridiculous unworkable idea that I freaking love.

Solomon:

Okay.

Liya James:

All right?

Solomon:

All right, here we go.

Liya James:

And I actually don’t have the idea yet, so I’m thinking about it. So military spouses, they have kids, probably families. You know how there’s these animal zoos, petting zoos they take around to markets and stuff with rabbits and hedgehogs and things? What I think we should do is on the same day get a million of these zoos and we’re going to send them to all the military families, like around dinner time, so the kids can be playing with the animals, petting, stuff like that. And then we can talk, like Tupperware parties from the 70s. Now we can talk to the parents about this digital fluency program. And they’re going to be so excited because everybody’s doing Instagram, Facebook, that’s just like nobody’s going to notice. So animal zoos, I think that’s it. That’s it.

Solomon:

Okay. All right. So the first thing we need to do then is just start mapping out all of the communities that we’re going to do this and start calling those petting zoos so we can make a spreadsheet. So you can start with a spreadsheet that’s going to get all of these petting zoos together. And then I think what we’ll do is we’ll have Brenda look at where we can get donations for hand sanitizer so that all the parents will be willing to have this stuff come in. So she can do that. She’ll start getting all the donations for the hand sanitizer to come in. And then we probably also need a sponsor.

Liya James:

Can we just talk more about the idea though? I just want to flesh that out some more because I think it’s such an amazing idea.

Solomon:

It’s a good idea. We got to get these tasks oriented because there’s a lot to coordinate here. We have to figure out, all right, in which city, what routes we’re going to have these folks go on.

Liya James:

I just don’t want Brenda to be concerned about the cost. I want to make sure this idea is really awesome and she really gets how it’s going to work.

Solomon:

But we want it to happen, so we need to get people assigned to the various things. Like, who’s going to look at what the traffic patterns are so that the animals aren’t in their vans longer than they should be, right?

Liya James:

Oh my God.

Solomon:

We need to make sure that this is happening because we want the idea to happen, right?

Liya James:

Why are you always such a damper? I just want to talk about how awesome the rabbits are and stuff. They’re so freaking cute and like… Okay, you get it? You’re getting it? Okay. Good stuff. Thank you so much. Thank you, Solomon. Thank you so much. Awesome. That was so good. So it’s not hard. If I can do it, anybody can. So get into your groups of three. A, B, C. All right? And B, randomly pick a card and I’ll give you guys five minutes. [inaudible 00:30:12].

All right, go ahead and wrap it up. Okay, so what’s coming up for you guys? There was a lot of laughing, I noticed. What else is going on? Did you feel any physical sensations?

Audience 12:

Yeah, at the end I said I need a water break. I was the observer in our interaction, and even just my first personal feeling was like, “Where did we decide this was the idea?” This is a terrible idea. She’s running with it, but I just want to be like, “No.”

Liya James:

So you’re the observer and you’re like, “Oh my God.”

Audience 12:

God, I couldn’t hold it in. The activation was just like, “Stop. We have to stop this.”

Liya James:

Are you familiar with that feeling, that voice?

Audience 12:

Constantly.

Liya James:

Constantly.

Audience 12:

I am the brakes.

Liya James:

You’re the brakes. Yeah, yeah. No, the good thing is inner narrators, they make us really talented at things. Some of mine make me really good at certain parts of my jobs, and so that’s why we don’t want to villainize them. That’s why we’re having fun with them and we’re getting to know them, because they’re not bad. They’re not bad. They’re so helpful. They make us so talented. But if we just kind of go with what they want or their concerns, we kind of wreak havoc in our lives and our relationships. Go ahead.

Audience 12:

Well, I thought it was so interesting because I kept, as the observer, I kept waiting for her to give up on her idea because she was so committed to it and she was such an optimist about it. She literally said, “I’m not going to give up on this idea.” Where it was like, it was just breaking the word. And so it was just fascinating to watch that dynamic of I guess visionary sort of mindset of, “Well, I’m just going to commit.”

Liya James:

Admit it, how many of us have been in a meeting where we are observing something and we’re like, “When is this going to blow up? It’s any minute now, right?” The funny thing is, I told you to come up with a really exaggerated idea, but frankly, a lot of times we’re sitting in a meeting and we’re like, “This VP is saying some really ridiculous stuff,” and it just sounds like this ridiculous. Do you know what I mean? And so that can spiral out really fast. And as facilitators, we’re meeting these moments all the time, and if we are not aware that people have these inner narrators and what they’re trying to accomplish and their intentions, what happens is we’re just like, “Oh, what do I do?”

And you feel like it’s your job. So then your inner narrator comes on as a facilitator like, “What’s my job? Do I shut it down or what do I do?” And then you read a manual that has 100 bullet points about what you should do in this scenario or that scenario, and you can’t remember what they are. What’s nice about knowing this, having this awareness, is you can approach the situation with common clarity. It seems like something’s activated and we can change the course of how things unfold just by being present to this phenomenon that is the human condition. Right? Awesome. Go ahead.

Audience 13:

So in the situation, I’m supposed to be acting, right? But then when you have an activated individual, it naturally brings out your inner narrator. So I wanted, even though she was trying to shut me down with her expertise, I eventually became a pleaser because I didn’t want to give up my idea. So I sacrificed on pieces. So everybody gets activated in that conversation, or it could if you’re not aware.

Liya James:

Absolutely. That’s what happens when the person’s inner narrator comes on, you actually, there’s a part of you inside that’s really good at tuning into that. That’s why we call this attunement. And what we’re tuning into is a lack of safety because they’re not for you anymore. They’re not present to what we’re trying to do anymore. And that disengagement feels unsafe because we’re no longer working on a shared purpose. So then you get activated, whatever your default activations are, to try to save that situation. Because the thing about shared purpose is if we don’t all work together on it, we inherently know it’s not going to work. And if it doesn’t work, it automatically threatens something that we’re really invested in or we need our livelihood or reputation, whatever it might be. Anything else? Eric?

Eric:

I noticed how many potential opportunities there were for a shift. If there’s just one person, “Tell me a little bit more about how to either side,” what that would’ve done, even toward the end.

Liya James:

Yeah. So when I train people on this, they always ask me, “What do I do?” I’m going to have a little bit of that for you guys. So they want to go get training on how do I respond with the correct question. But the most important thing, if we remember to be compassionate with the other person and they’re all trying to be seen, heard, and loved, is to just ask that magic question. “Tell me more.” Amazing. You guys are so good. All right, so what do we do? What if we’re activated? What if there’s a breakdown? What if there’s some unresolved tension with someone? Here are three simple things. This process is pretty complex. Someone might have an inner narrator that’s been there for 40 years and we’re working through, it might take a few months to get into this compassionate relationship I’m talking about. But to start, there’s three things we can do.

Become aware of it, practice slowing down in the moment, slow down the reaction. And the third thing, much harder but doable. You guys did it today. Practice benevolent curiosity. Somebody actually called that out earlier. They noticed when we’re calm and safe, that’s available. So here’s a few things that you can explore when you’re trying to get to know these parts of you. I have people draw their narrators, because it makes it tangible. Each of these inner voices have their own unique physiological reactions. It’s amazing these physiological reactions, sometimes it’s a headache or sometimes it’s energy that moves. Sometimes it’s like a stomach tightening. So getting to know that reaction can help you know when they’re automatically happening. And then if you explore a little bit what their fears are for you, what their concerns might be, they might also have automatic reactions. So when people talk about I have this pattern, that’s what it is.

I’m working with people, they know what the pattern is and they’ve been trying to change it for a long time, and they also are aware of what the results are of that pattern. Like my helper, when people don’t show up for me, I get like, “I helped you so much.” They don’t know. They had no idea I was going out of my way to do all these things for them, so I don’t do that anymore. But that used to be like 80% of my life was doing things for people and they didn’t know and they didn’t know I expected them to show up for me when I needed them. It’s coming back now. I’m having an activation just thinking about it. So very important to be compassionate with yourself. I’m feeling the feeling. So I’m like, “Ooh, compassion.” And very important to know, like I said earlier, what their good intentions are.

“Oh, they’re trying to get me to be supported and feel connection to the people in my life. What are some ways that that’s where creativity and new strategies can be developed? As a 4-year-old, here are my automatic reactions, but as an adult now, what’s available to me?” And I engage with my resources, what’s available to me often is myself, what I’m capable of. But also I can get people involved in brainstorming new strategies. So this is a way to get aware and just to be aware also of when they come online, for some people it’s a physical sensation you can feel. For other people, your brain starts to go and do solutions to get ahead of this problem. So get familiar with that sensation, whatever that is. Slow down. That’s the other practice. Sounds really simple. It can be kind of hard because some of us have been reacting to these concerns for years and years and years.

I was just talking to a client of mine yesterday and he’s like, “I haven’t changed it yet.” And I’m like, “Well, we’ve been at this for about two weeks and this protector has been around for 45 years, so let’s have some compassion for it taking a little bit of time to slow down.” So slowing down. And if you’re not that activated, because a lot of our inner narrators feel like problem solvers, so you don’t necessarily have to be like full-blown reaction mode. And so actually noticing those is really helpful because they are the ones that lead us astray because they show up as if they’re really helpful sometimes. And so checking that and checking the outcomes and the results is really going to help us. And so what we need to do is instead of reacting, breathe. If it’s not super activated, we can just breathe through it.

Don’t engage in the reaction. But if it will really activate it, like my anxious helper is one that I get really anxious and I’m like, “I just want to say yes, I want to take this. I want to do this with a person,” I slow down. I say, “I know this activation is happening. I know I’m about to engage in my helper tendencies. I’m going to tell this person I’m about to do that. I’m actually just going to tell them. And then I’m going to ask for some time.” Then I’m going to go back and I actually do contemplation. Just a quiet meditative contemplation. I bring up the scenario, I bring up the inner narrator and I say, “Let’s have a chat. I see you, I hear your concerns. But if we do this, what would happen?” And I’m actually in compassionate dialogue. And I remind my inner narrators because they’re at a certain age, and sometimes they’re not aware that we’re like 45 years old and not three.

So I’m like, “As a 45-year-old, I have these resources. Here are the support that we can get. Here are ways that we can approach this.” So we engage in creative brainstorming and strategies. So when people will say, “I have this behavior pattern, I want to change it,” this is how you do it. Lastly, if a relational breakdowns happen, we have to reengage with the person. And sometimes that is activating all by itself. How do I reengage? So one simple way we can do that is just go back and reengage with the person and say, “I got activated. But my real intention is to be engaged in this project in a way that can move us forward. That’s really what I want. What I did yesterday doesn’t get us that. So I want to reset.”

So Tom, instead of all those assumptions he was making about his colleague, he can check those assumptions. He can say, “Can you tell me more about your perspective? Why don’t you want this change? Tell me more.” The magic word. And if we are calm and not activated, we can engage like the actors earlier. We can engage in a real dialogue and authentic communication with the other person and really get to the crux of the problem and move the conversation forward. And in the midst of doing that, we can also, by genuinely showing curiosity about their experience, we can express a sense of safety without saying, “I want to create safety.” They just know it, because you care. You want them to be heard and seen.

Real quick, all of you have some printouts on your desks, and you can take that with you because these are tendencies that we have when our inner narrators are activated. We do things like we make assumptions about other people. We might try to change their minds. We might be really engaged in convincing, solutioning. None of that creates safety. However, if you do the do column, you do steps one and two, and then you come back and reengage and you do these ways of listening and asking questions, what happens is that they feel safe. And the data that you need to get that project moving forward, the data that you need to feel a sense of connection to your daughter, the data that you need to create the relationships that you want to create is going to be available to you and you’re going to develop better adult strategies to create the results that you want in your life.

So we’re going to do a contemplation exercise, and we’re just going to have a moment to journal. I want you to think of a recent relational dynamic, a relational breakdown, maybe something you want to redo, a recent relational conflict with somebody at work, in your life. Use that conflict. You could close your eyes and replay it in your head like a movie, relive it. And I want you to just notice what thoughts or voices are coming up for you, what thoughts or voices, and then use these prompts to kind of get to know that voice. We’re going to do this and then we’re going to wrap up. You can draw this, draw the inner narrator if you want, if it is available to you, or you can just write down the questions and respond to it. Okay?

And just a quick reminder, if you’re looking at a question and nothing’s coming up, a really helpful technique is just to close your eyes, ask that voice the question, and let what emerges emerge. Just sit quietly with it. All right, go ahead and come back to us. And again, if you need these templates and things, just drop me an email. I’ll put my email address up in a little bit.

And we don’t have time to do this exercise, but once we slow down, you have this printout on your table. One really helpful thing is just say, “How do I automatically react?” Just circle one. Really simple. “Oh, I make assumptions about them. Oh, I try to fix the problem by jumping to solutions. That’s my automatic reaction. Well, what do I want to do instead?” So on this do column, circle one, and then you go into practice, practice it, and be really compassionate with yourself when you don’t do it right. Okay? Those are available for you.

Any questions, reflections, one or two? Okay, I’m going to wrap up and I like to end with this. Pema Chodron says, “If we want to make peace with ourselves and with the world at large, we have to look closely at the sources of our wars.” I want you to remember that war and peace starts within us, and we’re all just stumbling and wobbling and trying to get our way back to love and connection. So I want you to remember that we all deserve a little compassion and benevolence for ourselves and each other. Thank you.

The post Mastering Inner Dialogues appeared first on Voltage Control.

Comprised of facilitators from around the country and tuning in virtually from around the world, our community provided valuable interactions, feedback, and wonderful connections. We all realized the impact we can have on one another and how that impact can be inspirational and inspire change and innovation.

Insights

From Rose, Thorn, and Buds from our community about the event (we are always striving to be better, grow further, and learn more!) to wonderful and kind messages from presenters and attendees alike, we wanted to share some insights about the event with you all. Let’s start with the award-winning choreographer, Bradley Rapier wrapped up the summit, on February 7th, with a groovy dive into the rhythm we all feel within. Movement, beats, and music are a wonderful way to connect, and this last exercise of the day wrapped up Control the Room 2023 with energy, and great vibes! Check out the insights about the conference Bradly shares below!

Our Community never disappoints, especially when we all get together, virtually, or in person! This group shares insights about how facilitators collaborate, how we work to immerse one another, and how we can boost one another to achieve great things!

As a “frequent facilitator” in my multiple roles and jobs, I find it is a stress reliever for me to collaborate with other people doing the same work. There is a “meta effect” when facilitators collaborate. The Control Room Summit had just that effect in spades: Expert facilitators, facilitating facilitators collaborating. I loved the immersion, learned a lot, and look forward to more collaborations sponsored by my friends at Voltage Control.

– Eric Olson, PhD, Professor, Industrial Technology Director, Central Coast Lean, Cal Poly – Orfalea College of Business

Life often presents us with career shifts, and opportunities to level up, and throws us curveballs where we are expected to pick ourselves up out of the ashes. Our community always finds support within one another, we find ways to encourage collaboration and peer learning, and we lean into inspiring one another to truly reach our full potential!

This year’s Control the Room was an extraordinary experience that exceeded my expectations. I learned more than I ever thought I could, and now I feel like I can take on the world… or at least the conference room. The conference was filled with amazing speakers and valuable insights that left me feeling energized and inspired.

One thing that stood out to me at the conference was the emphasis on connection and collaboration. It was clear that the organizers had put a lot of thought into creating a welcoming and inclusive environment. This was because attendees could connect with one another and share their experiences. As someone who values community and connection, I appreciated this focus and felt that it helped to make the conference a truly special event.

One of the presenters that resonated with me the most was Renita Smith. Renita’s story and her journey were incredibly inspiring, especially as a person of color in the field. Her words were not only impactful but also relatable, and they reminded me that I have a distinct perspective and valuable contributions to offer.

Overall, one key takeaway from the conference that meant the most to me was the importance of seeking out a mentor to help support and sponsor me as a growing leader. A mentor can provide invaluable guidance on how to navigate the challenges of leadership and can act as a sounding board for creative and innovative ideas. The mentor talk was particularly impactful for me, and it has motivated me to actively seek out a mentor who can help guide me in my career. I guess it’s time to start a mentor search, so wish me luck!

The community at Control the Room was supportive and inclusive, and I am honored to have been a part of it. I connected with fellow attendees who shared similar interests and challenges. These connections have inspired me to continue collaborating with others and seek out new opportunities for growth and development. I left the conference feeling more connected and empowered than ever before, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

– Joshua Johnson

Community members flew in from across the nation, and we love seeing everyone in real life! The energy ran high, the vibes were positive, and true networking was seen happening across the room, and within our virtual rooms!

So enjoyed being part of this gathering — thanks to you, Douglas Ferguson, and the entire Voltage Control team for hosting such an engaging learning experience!

– Kellee Franklin

It was such a privilege to present alongside such amazing, talented facilitators. What a fantastic experience and thought-provoking event!!!

-Zach Montroy, SPHR

“There’s a freedom you begin to feel the closer you get to Austin, Texas.” — Willie Nelson

It was a great visit this week in the vibrant City of Austin.

Thanks to Douglas Ferguson and the Voltage Control team for hosting the 5th Annual Facilitator’s Summit where I met and reconnected with many amazing professionals doing transformative work across the world — J Schuh – PBA, PSM I , Taylor Cone, Jimbo Clark, Benjamin Herndon, Ph.D. , and Lloyd Dangle — and so many others!

Three important reminders about the significance of the leadership skills showcased at the summit for me were that effective facilitation: Creates connection, Builds community, Inspires innovation.

Kellee Franklin

Control the Room 2023 Conference was FANTASTIC this year! Huge shout out to Douglas Ferguson and the staff at Voltage Control for showcasing world class speakers again this year!

Learning, reflection and fun was had by everyone who attended.

J Schuh

In a time when companies are seeking leaders who can bring their people (in-person and virtual) together, design a shared vision, and reimagine business possibilities — it was wonderful to see the diverse talent that are helping and supporting others in achieving these ambitious aspirations and business necessities.

Virtual Speaker, Marisa Davis, shared valuable insights, favorite quotes, and key takeaways with the community, you can read her full recap here.

What a wonderfully fun and engaging day with this incredible ‘Zoom Crew’ of virtual participants at the Control the Room Facilitation Summit. Thank you to my partner-in-collaboration Mark Tippin for co-piloting this virtual/hybrid experience, helping to build our interactive summit Mural space, and connecting the many dots and impacts from all of our speakers today!

It’s so much fun to be a part of an event with facilitators – my favorite part of our virtual session was the attendees’ willingness to jump in and co-create the experience with Mark and me. One example of this was when we built out a new Mural section to allow everyone to share emerging topics they wanted to discuss, then launched a choose-your-own breakout room segment for those themes over the lunch hour. We hadn’t specifically planned it, but together, we made it happen.

Thanks for an impactful day and I am thrilled to connect with so many new facilitator friends!

Shannon Varcoe

Our #ZoomCrew was amazing this year, as it always is! Our Vice President of Programs, Shannon Varcoe, and Mark Tippin, the Director of Strategic Next Practices at MURAL, were the perfect hosts for the occasion. As a longtime Voltage Control collaborator, participant, and friend, Mark brought a wealth of experience and expertise to the event.

Huge shout out to Mark Tippin from Mural and Shannon Varcoe for their online collaboration at the Control the Room conference lead by Douglas Ferguson and the Voltage Control team!

This was an amazing event both in person and online.

J Schuh

We have an amazing team here at Voltage Control, and our Executive Assistant, Jamie LaFrenier stood out from the crowd for her dedication, her empathy, her hard work, and overall making the event a wonderful experience for our guests! We have captured a few thank yous here, and we have so much appreciation for Jamie! We would not be able to do it without her expertise, her kindness and humility, and her spirit!

Jamie,

Fantastic job this week.  For those of us participating the event was flawless.  You and the team kicked ass. I hope you all give yourselves a few day’s rest to celebrate and breathe with ease again. Warmly,

Amy Luckey

First off, THANK YOU SO MUCH for making the magic of Control the Room happen. It was my first time speaking at something like this and I was terrified, but y’all really did the most to make it such an incredible experience. Thank you times a million!

Robin Arcia

Thank you again SO MUCH for all the work you and the team did to make yesterday such a success. It’s such a wonderful community and I was honored to have time on the stage and among the group in the room.

Taylor Cone

At Voltage Control, we are constantly working towards expanding and diversifying our community, while also prioritizing equity and inclusion. We understand that in order to truly foster growth and innovation, we must create an environment that values and celebrates the unique perspectives and backgrounds of all individuals.

We are thrilled to share that our Control the Room was an event to remember, and we are excited to see how much further we can go in the upcoming year. With each passing day, we are gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to create a truly inclusive space, and we are committed to continuously learning and evolving in this regard.

As we look forward to the next iteration of Control the Room, we can’t help but feel a sense of anticipation and excitement for what’s to come. We know that our community will only continue to expand and thrive, and we can’t wait to see the incredible ideas and perspectives that emerge as a result. We are confident that with our shared commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we can make a meaningful impact and create positive change within our organization and beyond.

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Get Our Work Now 2023

After going remote during COVID-19, many organizations continue to offer remote or hybrid options to workers in higher numbers than ever before. This survey is a snapshot of that work, offering snapshots of the lived experiences of both hybrid and remote workers. Of the 210 individuals we surveyed, most or all identifying as leaders in remote or hybrid workplaces and teams, we share herein the stories from the data that will help readers understand the current trends in remote and hybrid work and, even more importantly, what the future holds for hybrid and remote workers.

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The post Control the Room 2023 Insights appeared first on Voltage Control.

Control the Room 2023 was a remarkable occasion that presented many valuable opportunities for connecting with others. Beginning with the annual facilitator summit on February 7th, the event featured a week-long series of virtual speakers. This year’s summit was centered around the theme of IMPACT, prompting us to consider the ways in which we impact our clients, our professions, and one another. Overall, it was an unforgettable experience.

This year’s event saw the return of our virtual space, which was once again seamlessly integrated with our live space. Our Vice President of Programs, Shannon Varcoe, and Mark Tippin, the Director of Strategic Next Practices at MURAL, were the perfect hosts for the occasion. As a longtime Voltage Control collaborator, participant, and friend, Mark brought a wealth of experience and expertise to the event. Together, Shannon and Mark formed the dynamic “Zoom Crew,” guiding our live audience through reflections after every three speakers. This allowed for a deeper connection between the audience and the speakers, which made for a more engaging and interactive experience for all involved.

Throughout the event, both the virtual and live audience were engaged with a variety of prompts and activities. These included sharing impactful resources with each other, connecting our unique superpowers, and even sharing our set-up selfies. The result was an atmosphere that was both collaborative and inclusive, with participants feeling a sense of belonging and connection to each other. For those who missed the event, the full MURAL is available to view online.

Read on for the recordings of each reflections section, and the full transcript accompanies each.

Reflections Round 1

Transcript:

Douglas:
Reflections will be coming up periodically through the day with Shannon Varcoe, the VP of Facilitation
Programming here at Voltage Control. Awesome, Shannon, and a long-term friend, Mark Tippin. He was
actually a guest at year number one of Control the Room and has been with us ever since. I think he has
not missed a summit since.
Back by popular demand, we’re doing Reflections with Mark and Shannon’s going to be helping. We’ll be
doing that in a Zoom. We’ve got the QR code up there. Sorry, we’re going to be doing that with the
Zoom folks in a Mural. If you want to follow along on a laptop or a device, you can. That’s the QR code,
but we’re also going to have the Zoom folks up on the screen. You’re going to be able to hear them.
Anyone that wants to talk with folks in the Zoom, I’ll be passing this microphone around. If you want
them to be able to see you, there’s a camera right there by that TV. You can walk up to it and actually
have an experience with them. With no further ado, we’re going to switch over to the Zoom. Mark and
Shannon, let’s take it over.
Mark Tippin:
Hey, great to see everyone. Oh, that was probably very loud. We’re joining you from either edge of the
United States right now. I’m in Portland, Oregon, and Shannon is …
Shannon Varcoe:
Here in North Carolina. So excited to be on all ends of the country with everyone today. It’s great.
Mark Tippin:
We’ve had an incredible lively discussion online, and we have some plug and play ways to bring focus to
this moment after the three speakers. This one, the theme that seemed to emerge for us is around self-
impact. It’s a great place to start. Everyone’s been asking us to be curious about ourselves, to
understand the voices in our head, and how since we can observe them, we’re not actually the voices in
our head.
I would invite you, there in the room, if you have a device, come and check out the Mural because it is
chock-a-block with books and recommendations and observations and insights, and it’s an asset that
you can take with you.
I wanted to say, Shannon, what was one of the things that really stood out for you from our three
speakers?
Shannon Varcoe:
I think just this theme around, as you said, thinking about impact and the impact that things we choose
to do have on ourselves, I thought was a really interesting thread. I think about impact that our actions
have on others or the external has on ourselves, but I think there is a really interesting thought going for
me about, it’s actually also the impact that my own thoughts, my own actions have on myself. That was
definitely something that really stood out for me around the impact we can have on ourselves, just as
much as we can have on other people. How about for you, Mark?
Mark Tippin:
There was one quote that was shared in Zoom chat and it says that you don’t know what your
authenticity would do for someone else. Even in the process of getting clear with yourself and trying to
do the work of being authentic and getting from a two to a three, or getting from an eight to a nine, that
work and that journey in your personal life, you never know the impact that that conversation or that
struggle you’re having is going to benefit other people.
Shannon Varcoe:
It’s so true. I think Renita mentioned Lizzo, and there was a lot of love for Lizzo in the Zoom chat and in
Mural. I think about that. Even just what you’re saying is that Lizzo, we use her as such an icon for the
impact that she’s had on body positivity in the world and on so many women, but also I can imagine that
didn’t just come easily for her. The impacts that her own authenticity for herself and the thoughts that
she has and the way that she presents herself into the world allowed her to be able to impact everyone
in this large way. I love that.
Mark Tippin:
Absolutely. I’d love to see a show of hands in the room, because I’m not currently screen sharing, but for
those of you that don’t have a device in front of you, if you’d like, I can share the Mural just so you get a
visual sense. Show of hands, would that be of interest? All right, Douglas.
Here, allow me to. You tell me if you are able to see. Everyone in the room, okay, cool. I just wanted to
give a shout-out. I don’t know if this is 100% from the folks online, but this is what I’ve learned over the
years, Douglas. This is an artifact I come back to, year after year, and reference. I’d encourage people, if
you are taking sketch notes, upload those things into the Mural. Feel free at any time to come in and
add your own observations.
People are sharing things, like when we were talking about time management, Pomodoro technique and
timers, and books, and we’re playing along online as well. That’s a reminder, for those of you, that our
speakers are going to be taking the stage this afternoon. You have a vibrant community of 130 plus folks
here as well that are having a whole parallel, amazing conversation online, and we are just here to try
and bridge that gap.
Also, just wanted to offer the opportunity, if there’s someone on the Zoom side, if you had something
you wanted to share, feel free to unmute and share. If there’s anyone in the room that wanted to ask a
question to the virtual community, feel free.
Douglas:
Any questions or any reflections on the talks that anyone wants to share? I saw Kaleb’s hand first.
Mark Tippin:
Awesome.
Kaleb:
I just wanted to say the comment about… You said it. Self-care is being selfish. I had a family member
recently pass away, and she didn’t do enough self-care because she felt like it was selfish, and it’s just
really powerful. So, be selfish. I’m selfish as hell. Be selfish.
Mark Tippin:
Do we have anyone else in the ground?

Jay:
Yeah, zoom crew. Boom, go. I’ll say that, you guys rock. I got to get on Zoom the last couple of years,
though I’m now in person, but one of the things that we’ve been talking about… We went to dinner last
night and we talked about identity. That was the thing that we talked about and how people define us
by the things we do. I had an opportunity to have the universe intervene with me and a wise person in
her seventies. PhD from education who used to be a principal told me, “Sometimes we get so locked in
human doing instead of human being.” As facilitators, we’re always doing, doing, doing, and sometimes
we miss the things beside us, because we’re going so fast and getting things done as opposed to being
with the people and around the things. We miss the peripherals and we miss opportunities, so that’s
something to just throw out there.
Mark Tippin:
I have to ask, was that my friend Jay? Certainly sounded like him.
Douglas:
Yes. Disembodied Jay for all the Zoom people.
Mark Tippin:
Fantastic. Last call for anyone on the Zoom crew that has a question or observation to share. Remember
to unmute.
Shamay:
Hi.
Mark Tippin:
Hi.
Shamay:
My name is Shamay Lucas and I just wanted to say thank you to Miss Renita for seeing me. Something
small about a shared or lived experience can go a long way, so that humidity with these edges, yes. Then
I wanted to thank Matthew, wherever he is right now, for wearing his pronouns, they as well. Small
things go a long way in your different experiences. Thanks.
Shannon Varcoe:
Fantastic.
Mark Tippin:
Thank you, yeah. How are we doing on time, Douglas? I don’t want to overstep.
Douglas:
We got 10 minutes, if you want to fill it. We could also go to break if you want to, so you got 10 minutes
should you choose to use it.
Mark Tippin:
I was going to say I would love to huddle with the Zoom crew online and figure out how to prepare for
the next wave of speakers, but if anyone there in the ground has any questions, feel free to hop in
Zoom, in the chat. Other than that, we can give some time back, I think.
Douglas:
All right, great. We’ll be back from break and I guess we’ll now be… What’s the official time? We’ll be
back from break at 10:40 Central.
Mark Tippin:
Sounds good, thank you.
Shannon Varcoe:
I’m going to mute the room.
Mark Tippin:
Thank you.
Shannon Varcoe:
We’re good. Okay.
Mark Tippin:
Awesome.
Shannon Varcoe:
Awesome. Zoom crew, hello.
Trish:
Hello.
Shannon Varcoe:
Everyone, thanks for jumping in. I know the beginning was we didn’t get a chance to huddle up right at
the start, so just so glad that everyone is here. Thank you for joining us and hopping into the chat and
into the Mural and all of these things. We’re just so glad everyone is here and hope you enjoyed the first
segment of speakers.
Mark Tippin:
I’d love to hear any and all feedback so far, especially anything that we might need to communicate and
bridge to our friends that are co-located there on the ground in Texas. Can you hear the speakers okay?
I saw a comment about trying to share the slides as well. I know they’re trying to do some camera
switching, Shannon.
Shannon Varcoe:
I know there’s a couple questions about trying to get slides shared, but it’s sort of like either it stays on
slides the whole time and we never see the speaker or we can do the shifting. I think we’re going to try
and do the shift and then hoping to just grab screenshots of slides where we can and just drop them into
the Mural so that you can see them in there, I hope, but everything’s …
Trish:
I have some thoughts and questions about that. Is it possible to just ask the speakers who are coming up
… Hey, it’s okay if your slides change, but can you just share them in Mural or in a Google Doc or
something like that. We don’t have to wait until the presentation to see the slides, but if they really feel
like they want to wait, then maybe you can immediately be sharing them on the fly as opposed to
waiting until afterwards when we’re not connecting with them as much. That’s one thought. Should I
pause and listen because I have a totally separate thought.
Mark Tippin:
Oh, no, I just wanted to acknowledge and thank you because you’re reminding me last year we actually
had them in advance and I had a separate Mural with all of the slides dumped out, and then I pasted
them as the speakers were going.
Trish:
Cool.
Mark Tippin:
So you, you’ve reminded me of lost knowledge from last year.
Shannon Varcoe:
I can see if I can see if that’s still a possibility. We could try to make that happen over this break.
Trish:
I know sometimes speakers want to keep changing their slides or feel self-conscious about that, so
whatever you can do, it would be helpful. I want to be empathetic to how it feels to be up there.
Mark Tippin:
Absolutely, thank you. We’re on that. Trish, what’s your other contribution?
Trish:
One of the great things about attending in person is those relationships that we build over lunch, et
cetera. Last year I attended and I felt like we hadn’t figured out the whole hybrid thing yet because a lot
of us were online last year. Now the group is smaller. I would love to have little breakouts or ways to get
to know the people here. Tim, Jeff, Mike, Jose, I see your names, Jonathan, Andrea, Nancy, and then I
see some initials, Matt, G P G P B.
I don’t know who any of those people are, but if we could just create some norms that work for this
group, maybe sharing LinkedIn profiles or having some quick little sub breakout groups, where we can
start to meet some people. Or having a space in the Mural where we can create your own little profile
where you put a happy face and I’m into innovation or I’m into fostering diverse conversations or
whatever someone’s into that we can be attracted to each other and find each other in the same way. In a different way, actually, maybe even in a better way than we would in person because we have the
luxury as virtual attenders to maybe be able to multitask a little bit.
Mark Tippin:
That’s right.
Trish:
Let’s use that to our grand advantage and discover each other.
Mark Tippin:
Again, thank you, Trish. I will point out that on the Mural, there’s an area almost all the way to the right
that says let’s make an impact together. I see people are already throwing in links to their social profiles
and things there. You’ve also made me think there, we might be able to open up breakout rooms
randomly if that’s something maybe in the chat, if we could see. Yes, if that’s something you’d be open
to do, just let us know. We could create an arbitrary number of breakout rooms and then leave them
open and bring everyone back to plenary before the session starts.
Trish:
I like that.
Shannon Varcoe:
I’ll jump in there too, Trish love the ideas. I think to your point, it’s also just we have this opportunity
that is different and so where we can maximize that, I just love that concept. I think, so lunch is actually
a spot where there’s not any programming for us virtually. I think that would be an awesome time for us
to do some breakouts. We can have those lunch tables going within Zoom. We’ll use that time.
The other thing I wanted to mention just kind of as a high level thing is that feel free, jump in, jump out.
We disabled the waiting room so you won’t get caught into a waiting room if you need to leave or come
back. I think for lunch, if we can have people who are on and want to be a part of breakout rooms and
then if you’re not, maybe bounce for a bit and then come back for the next speakers and we can do
some of those breakout times over the lunch break.
Trish:
I have a thought. I’m sorry to keep throwing stuff out, but to make your life simpler, if it’s possible to
give people the freedom to go in … Set up a bunch of breakout rooms and let people freely go into
whichever ones they want, but in the Mural, maybe create a series of boxes with just numbers for the
breakout rooms and if people have a topic they want to put into a box, then you can see. Maybe we can
put names and say, “Hey, I’m going to go into that breakout with Broom with you over lunch.” Just a
thought. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, by the way, as you can tell. I’m looking to create
communities doing this kind of online connecting and networking. I haven’t figured it out, but I’m just
throwing out some possibilities to put a little lubricant in the muffin pan there.
Shannon Varcoe:
Thank you for sharing your ideas. We are all about experimenting and trying new things and giving
things a go.

Eric:
Can I point out something here?
Shamir:
I had one more.
Shannon Varcoe:
Hang on, sorry, we’ve got too many people talking at once. I think, Shamir, you had your hand up. So I’m
going to go to you next and then Eric, you’ll go after him.
Shamir:
Thank you Eric for that. Yeah, I just wanted to mention I had an idea around the presentation slides
because being able to see it clearly is quite helpful. I think what’s happening is because it’s sending
through the video, what happens is Zoom normally reduces the quality of video. But when we share
screen, it makes sure that the quality is clear. If you could share the video that’s coming in from the
stream from Texas over the shared screen, they have an advanced feature that’s content from second
camera, it normally sends it much better quality from there.
I don’t know if it’s possible with the tech team, if you could have a word with them to do that, then
probably the slides should be, my assumption is that it should be clear. Maybe that will work. Just
wanted to throw that out there in case it’s possible.
Shannon Varcoe:
That’s helpful. I’ll pass that note along. I’ve got a text start going with the people on the AB side, so I will
shoot that over.
Shamir:
Thank you.
Shannon Varcoe:
Thank you.
Mark Tippin:
Cool. On the board Shannon and I are putting together, you’ll see some hexagonal shapes. I’m going to
give them numbers and we’ll set this space up and feel free to … I’ll drop numbers in each one. Not sure
how many breakout rooms we’ll have. We have 130 people. I thought I’ll air on the side of more than
less, but feel free to drop a suggested topic maybe on a note in the middle of one of the rooms. I’ll drop
some numbers in here. I have some handy dandy numbers I can use.
Shannon Varcoe:
Lindsey, go for it.
Lindsey:
Hello, I just wanted to thank y’all for opening this up and welcoming feedback. This has been great so far
and I wanted to give a little bit of feedback about that. It was kind of frustrating that one of the in-

person activities was designed without offering the Zoom people access to the phone number. If it was
meant as a demonstration of what inaccessibility feels like, then I understand that. I just wish the
speaker had explained that afterwards, but if it wasn’t intentional, then I just wanted to reach out and
ask that It would be great to keep Zoom access in mind going forward for any other activities. Thank y’all
again. I really appreciate it.
Shannon Varcoe:
Lindsay, thanks for sharing that. I think it’s a great point, and we’re definitely trying to find those ways to
bridge the gaps between in-person and remote, so definitely appreciate that thought. I think it’s
important for our speakers to be able to think about both too. So yeah, thank you.
Eric:
I could throw out sort of another thing. I found it a little disconcerting. I couldn’t hear the clapping when
the speaker was done. That’s kind of a little weirdness.
Shannon Varcoe:
I sent that note over actually to the team. We were like is it happening? You can see it, but you can’t
hear it. I don’t know if we can try and get them to hold the mic up just so we can at least hear little or
we have to, maybe I’ll do a virtual clap track.
Mark Tippin:
Hit the right one here.
Shannon Varcoe:
Got to get that, because I agree with this a little bit. Are they there? Is it happening?
Mark Tippin:
Thank you Eric for that.
Okay, cool. I see a topic being suggested already, so that’s great. I think one of the observations is we’ve
been in a pandemic and remote so long. I think as Douglas said, at the top, it feels good. It feels like
we’re back, but part of moving forward is not actually going back to the ways we used to forget
everyone that wasn’t located in the room and those centers of power and influence that we broke free
of and got into this new space of collaboration. That would be an interesting topic actually to go into
some is how do we actually pull the whole conversation forward, taking what we learned as opposed to
suddenly just getting back into old habits?
Shannon Varcoe:
Yeah, so agree with that. I so agree with that. Couldn’t agree with you more.
Mark Tippin:
I know. Folks in the Zoom crew may not know, but Shannon could be there in person and she willingly
volunteered to hold down the fort virtually and stay here and not be part of that community because
this community is as important. I certainly appreciate that.

Shannon Varcoe:
I love, I think it was Erin’s comment, but we want to create the FOMO for people who are in person
here. I experienced that last year. I’m not going to lie to you. I spoke last year and I remember feeling
like there’s this whole world happening on Zoom that I’m not a part of, and I was excited about it. I was
excited to join this year and help make it happen. Rachel.
Rachel:
I just want to say thank you because it was so fun last year and also what you’re doing is exhausting.
Both of you, I really, really appreciate you being able to be on the screen all day to facilitate this space.
Shannon Varcoe:
All good. Also a good thing to note is that important, somebody said too, is that important to take
remote breaks as well? I know we’re going to be joining back for the next speaker at 10:40 Central.
Want to make sure that people take a break, grab some extra coffee, grab a snack, whatever you need
to do to get yourself ready for the next segment. Also too, the day on Zoom is really long, and so we
don’t necessarily expect everyone to join for the entire time. If you are joining, you’re going to get
videos of the speakers and things. Feel free to do what you need to do, take care of yourselves as we
heard from our speaker first, do what you have to do, take care of your day, your energy. If you want to
jump in, jump out, do whatever you need to do. Greg, question?
Greg:
It’s not a question. I just wanted to applaud the Zoom crowd. I’m finding that what is being put on the
Mural board and what’s being put into the chat is actually elevating the content significantly. One of the
side conversations I’ve been having with my team is, wouldn’t it be nice if everybody in the room was on
a tablet or something taking notes on the Mural board like this group is? I think that there’s an awful lot.
I’ve noticed E.J., who is an amazing source, a fount of reference material and rec book recommendations
and insights. I just think there’s so much brain power and lived experience in the room, virtually all of
the rooms that we’re sitting in and the room in Austin. I just wanted to applaud the group and say thank
you for all the content that you’re providing. That’s sort of meta level of value that’s being added. So
thanks for that.
Shannon Varcoe:
Thank you, Greg, appreciate that. It’s so true, right? It’s not just the speakers that are the ones that are
the experts today. It’s also everyone here and everyone has amazing resources and things to share.
We’re glad that we have a space to do that. So, thanks Greg.
Mark Tippin:
Thank you. I couldn’t agree more. I do a lot of this for a living, but I am so humbled every time I show up
in this community. When I was there in person in 2020, I was telling Douglas, I feel light-headed. I feel
like I’m breathing pure oxygen because everyone I talk to is in this zone on this journey. As you said,
there’s so much, not only resource knowledge, but lived experience knowledge that it really is
something. I come into intentionally beginner’s mind and blank slate. It’s the thing that manifests online
in the chat on the Mural board, that’s magical. That’s why I love facilitation. I don’t have to have all the
answers. I just create a space and I’m always blown away.

Shannon Varcoe:
Totally.
Mark Tippin:
I’m guessing now would be a good time. We’ve got about 10 minutes. Now would be a good time for
people to get some fresh oxygen, stretch your legs and refill coffee and or water. I’m going to do that
and I’ll be back in probably about five minutes and we’ll strike up the conversation and get ready for the
next round of lightning.
Shannon Varcoe:
Excellent. Excellent.
Mark Tippin:
All right.
Shannon Varcoe:
Be back in a bit.
Mark Tippin:
Back in a bit.

Reflections Round 2

Transcript:

Douglas:
All right, we’re getting close to lunch. We have a few more reflections here. So we’re going to turn it
over to Mark and Shannon. Mark and Shannon, are you out there?
Mark:
We are indeed.
Shannon:
We are here.
Mark:
So share my screen. Always blown away by the journey that a lightning round can take us on. I just
wanted to share my screen, and again, let people know that this is a resource that’s being built, and it’ll
be available to everyone from here on out.
But I just… There were some interesting points between the three of these that I wanted to stitch
together. And this lens that we were going to use is looking, really, at the conditions for impact. And the
Zoom crew has already been sharing their observations around impact. But just one by one, I wanted to
say that Taylor’s points resonate with me as someone who’s been struggling in design, and product
management, and development for so many years. And how many times have you done a retrospective,
almost robotically, and there’s a sadness there because what you’re doing is acknowledging all the stuff
that didn’t work right? And what potential there is to use the gifts that we have around being present on
the teams where we’re working, to bring that presence to observe what’s happening now and try and
influence what will happen next to improve the ability for those outcomes. I just really wanted to thank
Taylor for that.
Benjamin, I appreciated AI as a topic that I’ve been curious about. And it just seems like in the last year,
it went from an interesting thing, to almost consuming the world faster than software consumed the
world, and these other waves from Alvin Toffler and Future Shock and Third Wave back in the day. It’s
just these waves are now coming so quickly.
I just want to thank Benjamin for highlighting, especially, looking at the conditions for impact there is
understanding where our conversations happen. In his talk, it was observing if AI is seen as a technology,
and it’s thrown into a tech area, that’s not really looking at it for the strategic impact that it has. And I
think that’s a lesson that we certainly resonate with every time we’re trying to lead a powerful
conversation, and we find ourselves not close to any centers of power. Having amazing conversations
with passionate people that are there and willing to have them, but not being seen for the strategic
potential it has, to create the connections and the community and bring the imagination, increase the
imaginal capacity of an organization. So that was something I wanted to thank Benjamin for.
And Yvonne, so many things. I mean, this board is… Our observations around the conditions are littered
with things just at the flurry at the end of your speech. And appreciate, especially, again, hitting on
authenticity, but also vulnerability. And every time I find I’m not being effective in my role is usually
when I’ve put up a wall and I’m not being authentic, I’m not being vulnerable, and I’m not really putting
my energy back on the crowd and focusing out there. There’s something where I’ve pulled it back for
one reason or another. And I think that vulnerability is a quick way to put the energy back in the room
and ease back into that supportive role.
Shannon, I wanted to invite you as well. Some of the things that we’ve seen in the chat, or some of your
own observations.

Shannon:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Mark, and appreciate your thoughts on all of those. I think as we were
imagining around conditions for impact, I also think about, especially when you’re talking about the AI
and just that whole presentation and just the impact that the technology has had so quickly. Thinking
about what conditions were in place for so many users to start using AI technology as soon as it was
launched, I think there’s some interesting, I don’t know the exact statistics, but number of users that
were using ChatGPT was just absurd compared to how quickly other users were using other
technologies that have hit the market. And I think about, what conditions were in place for that to have
the impact that it had? And what conditions continue… Do we develop to allow people to use those
technologies in new and different ways? And also, how are we communicating those?
And then I think too, just around this topic with facilitation, just thinking about, what conditions are we
setting for our participants to be able to fully participate and be impacted by the things that they’re
learning, the conversations that they’re having, the people they’re connecting with?
And then on the flip side of that I’ve also been thinking about too, with all of these connections and
things that are happening with participants here in the Zoom Room, but also participants in the room, is
that, what are the conditions for us when we’re a participant? Not just as a facilitator, but what are the
conditions that we allow ourselves to be in to be impacted, to listen, to hear those stories, to get that
information? What conditions are we, in a learning environment, or in a conference, showing up as, that
allow us to show up as great participants?
So we’ve got some really amazing participants in the Zoom Room too, so I want to shout everyone out.
And if there’s other reflections or things that people are thinking about when we think of the conditions
for impact, curious, in the room and also in Zoom, if anyone wants to jump in with your thoughts.
Mark:
Douglas, any questions from there in the room or observations?
Douglas:
Scanning the room for hands. I haven’t seen any yet.
Mark:
What a hungry faces there, staring at you. We stand between them and food.
Douglas:
I kind of have a question both for Ben and Yvonne, just listening to this notion of audience deserve to
feel the facilitation. What’s your facilitation story? And Yvonne talked about… Or I’m sorry, and then
Ben, we’re talking about some of the artificial intelligence to say, “This isn’t how I would’ve done it as a
human,” in terms of what the AI says. And for me, I was thinking instantly, is that not diversity? Is that
something that kind of takes us out of our… And I’d be really interested to sit around a campfire with
Ben and Yvonne and ask the question, “What is AI for diversity? What might AI for diversity mean? And
what might AI do for realtime facilitation story development?” Ben and Yvonne, I’m just going to call an
audible. Let’s meet over here at the camera and do a little quick little roll with that.
Mark:
Rock and roll, Doug. Thank you.

Douglas:
Over here at the camera, if y’all would, yeah. Ben and Yvonne. Yeah, let’s do it. Awesome. So just some
comments on what [inaudible 00:07:31] had to say.
Yvonne:
Okay. Where am I facing?
Douglas:
Camera.
Yvonne:
Camera, okay. Yeah, at the camera. Yeah, that thing. Right. So do you want to answer initially from an AI
perspective, and then I will jump in?
Ben:
Yeah. I think from an AI perspective, I think it’s important to think about what we mean by diversity. Is it
a different kind of cognition that we need to open our minds up to if we’re going to accept it as a
partner in our work? Absolutely. But like any other partnering or human collaboration, you have to
assume that it’s not going to be perfect. It will be biased. It’s incumbent upon us in those partnerships to
be mindful of where that bias might arise and what it might look like.
The other thing I want is with AI, we obviously all believe that encouraging diversity is critical for
ourselves, for our organizations, for our communities. I don’t think we need to go out of our way to
bring in AIs necessarily, but it can challenge us to think in different ways, which is, I think, part of the
value of diversity.
Yvonne:
Thank you. I think that’s absolutely correct. I will also say that I’m glad you brought up bias, because as
human beings, every single one of us alive is biased. Whether that’s based on current, or past lived
experience exposures, or lack thereof, there’s bias in all of us. And those programming AI, those
designing for AI themselves are biased. So I think it’s incredibly important to be responsible to try to
mitigate bias as much as you possibly can. And one way of doing that is to engage in community and to
expose what you’re trying to build to others so that their vantage point is thus included, because they
have a better understanding of the potential pitfalls and harms that can occur if their perspectives aren’t
included. So I think that that’s critically important. Yeah.
Speaker 6:
All right. I’d like to add something as someone who studied AI in college to that perspective about
diverse perspectives, if that’s okay. If we think about where AI comes from, it comes from whatever
learning sets it’s been fed. So while we might in some cases think of the AI as a different perspective, it
could actually help us with diversity in innovation by recognizing that in a lot of cases it’s the common
perspective. So it could help us to question, “Hey, if that’s the common perspective, or that’s what
emerged from the learning set, how might we think about it differently than the AI came up with?”
Yvonne:
Yeah, I think that presents a very interesting dialogue. I think one of the things that myself and my team
are focused on, especially when it comes to AI and the dialogues on it is, what are we doing to ensure
that not only there are multiple perspectives and voices at the table and the design work, but also to
make sure that we’re not upholding continued systems of oppression and marginalization that have
occurred in our society that are kind of like the pillars in many respects of our society. And how can AI
help to overcome those barriers and those challenges, but not feeding into the existing systems,
creating more challenges and barriers that we already have?
Ben:
Yeah, that’s a really great point. I mean, I think, again, back to the initial conversation and my talk,
there’s very real sense that this is dangerous and this is threatening. There’s a very real sense that this
represents an opportunity, and I think that’s what we’re talking about. It’s really both at the same time. I
think our biggest enemy with AI is urgency. I mean, there’s such an urgency to do something impactful,
to do something big to get ChatGPT out there that sometimes we don’t stop and think about, where
might we be making mistakes, or taking advantage of people, or instilling biases. And I think a lot of
times, with our clients, I tell them, “We have to slow down to speed up.” Because if you push a model to
market too quickly and it’s got some problem with it and it hurts somebody, that’s oftentimes
unrecoverable. So yeah.
Yvonne:
Yeah. It’s fiduciary responsibility 101.
Mark:
I wanted to extend an invitation to Taylor. I mean, if he also might have anything to… Or questions for
Taylor as well.
Taylor:
I was getting my product placement out.
Douglas:
There you go.
Mark:
There you go.
Taylor:
So the one thought that I had related here, when it comes to measurement and the things that we’re
trying to turn into metrics that dictate the outcomes that we’re looking for, when we begin to list out
what we want to measure, we have to be really aware of, are those things are on our list because
they’re just assumed to be the things that we should measure? And put another way, is there sort of
inherent bias in the things that we believe we should be measuring as opposed to what truly, A,
equalizes and, B, actually leads to the outcomes that we’re looking for? So as we reflect on the activity
that we did, or if you are going to go back and do it again, maybe with your team, each of the
measurement pieces, each of the metrics that you list, make sure you challenge yourself to say, “Okay, is
this measurement, is the assumption that this measurement is based on an inherently biased
assumption?”
Mark:
Wonderful. Thank you very much, Taylor. Yeah, great talks. Just real quick, I just wanted to draw folks
attention to some activities that you can check out. If you’re doing sketch noting, some people are
already sharing some of their visual sketches. We have a place for you to drop them there. People’s
social media connections, that’s happening, so there’s community and connect.
Shannon:
Hey, Mark.
Mark:
Oh.
Shannon:
You’re not sharing your screen, just real quick.
Mark:
Oh. Oh, yeah. Here, sorry about that. There we go. Just drawing your attention over here on this side, if
you have any sketch notes you want to share, if you want to drop your social media connections in here,
and maybe even flag a note specifically with your name, if there’s someone in particular you want to
connect with. We also have an area here to share your setup selfie. So if you are remote, we’d love to
see your… If you want to share, what are your setups? What do you use? What’s critical? And if you’re
there in the room, what’s your mobile setup for when you go into these spaces and try and capture all
this wonderful knowledge?
I also wanted to do a shout-out that at lunchtime, Zoom Crew is going to be hosting some virtual
breakouts, and the topics have been suggested here. So feel free, once you have your lunch, if there’s
some time left, there will be some breakouts if you want to jump in Zoom, and we’ll get you situated in
one of these impromptu unconference breakout rooms. Okay, that’s it, Douglas. Back to you.

Reflections Round 3

Transcript:

Douglas:
And that brings us to another Reflections with Mark and Shannon. We can see if we can get Mark and
Shannon back on the screens. Are you all there?
Mark:
We’re here. Oh my gosh. We’re here
Shannon:
We’re here. We are strong. We’re confident.
Mark:
We’re confident. The Zoom crew. We can do anything. I’m going to share the screen, but I’m going to …
Shannon, would you mind kind of kicking us off? You’ve been the inspiration behind this particular focus,
ripples.
Shannon:
For sure. Yeah, thanks Mark. So let me make sure I can see what you’re sharing. I can see it.
Mark:
Oh, yep. And here and share.
Shannon:
I’d say what a kickoff of three speakers to bring us out of lunch. I think in the chat somebody had said
with the box activity, even though we weren’t able to fully participate with boxes on our own heads, we
had some people with the different masks and things in Zoom and trying to create our own version of it.
But it was certainly fun to see a room full of people with boxes on their heads, even from afar. So really
appreciate getting to interact with that and just keeping the energy alive post-lunch sometimes can be
difficult. So just appreciate being able to feel that energy coming from the space in Austin.
But yeah. So we’re going to jump through and talk a bit about this concept of ripple effect. And so this
was something that, as Mark and I are planning some of these debrief sessions, we were just talking
about the different kinds of impact and what can happen when we think of impact, what comes up and
ripple effect was one that came to mind for me is this idea of that kind of classic image of a drop of
water and the ripples that come from the impact of that drop onto the water surrounding it.
And so we wanted to use this as an opportunity to have everyone share what impacts were these last
three speakers on you, what impacts existed for you there, for those in Mural, jump in and just kind of
drop some of those initial impacts in the middle of the circle. And then think about what are the ripple
effects of those impacts on you, on others, and how they often start to relate and kind of build on onto
each other. So we’ll pause there, Mark, happy to have you share some more thoughts too, but give it a
chance for people to drop in. And if those people in the room too have some thoughts and impacts,
we’re happy to add those as stickies into the mural for you, if you aren’t able to join in Mural in person,
but want to think about what are the impacts, immediate impacts of listening to these talks and some of
the takeaways and then how those might turn into the ripples that happen today, tomorrow, next week,
next month from the things that we’re learning and the ways that we’re connecting today.

This transcript was exported on Mar 03, 2023 – view latest version here.

Mark:
Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to share a little bit about what might be missing there in the room is
some fantastic authentic responses and some of them quite humorous. Like some people saying, “Be
right back, I’m signing up for eHarmony after Corey’s amazing share.” But again, the conversation that’s
blending the real time synthesis has been so impactful. We even had someone holding down the
shouting on our end. Most of us were muted, shouting to our significant others and family in our space.
But we’re following along here. Yeah, I’ll zoom in right here, as people are adding and to see Douglas,
are there any observations from there in the room? Those with just three amazing speakers back to
back.
Douglas:
I’m looking for hands. Kaleem.
Speaker 4:
So the box, Mr. Clark. Yes. Like lean on me, Mr. Clark. Something though for me though about the box,
probably a little bit opposite of what a lot of people were feeling, but for some reason I felt like we were
all the same. I felt like I could do some silly shit and no one would know it’s me. So it was kind of a really
cool superpower. So I don’t know if you want to try to throw some of that in there, but especially I grew
up in Maine for some of you that don’t know, so it’s the whitest state in the country. Sometimes being
the same is super, super helpful. When you’re looking around, we all have boxes on our heads, so it was
really cool. Thank you.
Douglas:
Was there a hand? All right. We got another one.
Mark:
All right.
Speaker 5:
Hi, I’m Liberty. I took notes on Jimbo’s talk because I was so just invigorated by just the demonstration
that you did and the energy that came off of it. So I just thought that you did such an incredible job of
integrating all of the things we’ve heard today and really having that interaction. It’s one of the first
times I’ve seen interaction go so well in a space like this, so I feel really jazzed about how I can
incorporate that. But just connecting the dots that we’ve all been seeing. And then it was built on by
Corey and Matthew, and so thank you for inspiring us. This has been an incredible time and I really
appreciate all the effort that went into that box activity and getting us all to interact, so really appreciate
that.
Douglas:
Awesome.
Shannon:
We’ll open it up to anyone here from Zoom that wants to share impacts or thoughts, feedback,
questions.

Douglas:
I think we got another one in the room here.
Mark:
Okay.
Speaker 6:
For me, when Matthew said to change how we talk to our children about what success means, and
instead of telling them what success means, asking them what it means to them, that hit so hard home
for me. Because I think a lot of us, I know in my group, a lot of us said that we thought success is trying
to make our parents happy and doing what we think our parents want us to do. And so much of our life
is built inauthentically because we’re trying to make other people proud of us and other people happy.
And I think that’s the biggest sin of life, is abandoning our own truth to make others happy. So thank
you, Matthew.
Shannon:
It’s such a great share and I think such a great element to bring up too is the power of changing the way
that we talk to our children about what success is, is about asking. And just thinking about, and again,
back to this ripple effect is like what are the effects that then has on how they imagine success, how
they talk to others about it, right? So they’re just the ripple effects of those things, and they have impact
on us just even reframing those things. But also the impact of changing the way that we do something
can have for a long time, and on people.
Mark:
That resonates so much with the talks that we’ve heard today that are about getting your own kind of
mental house in order, in the way that you deal with a momentary conflict or a big disruption in life. But
that being selfish and taking the time to actually give yourself the space to deal with that, you are also
demonstrating that behavior to everyone around you and making that possible, whether you realize it or
not. And certainly presenting options.
So many things have been said today that hit each of us in different times in different ways, but
something that wasn’t even in our imagination suddenly we’re made present of that, like changing the
way we talk to our kids, something we weren’t really thinking about or thinking about how we got to
this space today and how things are going to go and then suddenly we elevate our consciousness around
these things and realize the impact that we all have throughout a day. Even in moments, you don’t
notice, ways you manifest frustration or not, or deal with adversity in the line at Starbucks or something.
These are all ways in which you’re getting yourself in order and then making other ways of being
possible for other people.
Shannon:
So true. And I think about that, especially as facilitators, how the ripple effects of choices that we make
and how we’re showing up, how we’re caring for ourselves in how we show up in those spaces and
when we’re facilitating, to your point too is. But also it made me think when you’re saying that too, is
how the ways that we talk to our participants or when we choose to add a thought or add a comment
here or there, just how that can also change the way that they’re thinking about something or how they
might move through an activity or move through a learning experience, that even something that seems
maybe small can also sort of have these ongoing effects from them, in good ways and in bad, right? I
think there’s always kind of the positive side of that too.
Mark:
Yeah. Well, once again, we created a space. I think we were trying to be organized coming in and have it
all planned and mapped out, but we created a space and it’s been filled in incredible ways.
Shannon:
Yeah. And it looks like Alexis has her hand up, so I want to give her [inaudible 00:10:17].
Mark:
Oh yeah, please.
Speaker 7:
Yeah. I just wanted to share. Thank you so much. These last three sessions were wonderful. Something
that really stood out to me was the vulnerability that started off with Jimbo’s talk and he said, if I have
to see through to you, I have to let myself out. And even just opening the eye was so powerful, and I
think that that just started to ripple from his talk down to Corey’s talk and then the vulnerability of that
conversation onto kind of this curiosity in the last conversation. I thought just the way that everything
flowed also really hit me, so I thought it was great. Thank you.
Mark:
Yeah, thank you, Alexis.
Speaker 8:
So I was joking with my table and saying that I didn’t know that we were going to have a therapy session
today, but I appreciate the last three speakers because Jimbo, you created a moment where every …
you’re right in front of me, of sameness, so I appreciate that. Corey lived experience through abuse, had
to gather, still trying to gather those experiences and those feelings and what it means. Matthew, we
have a shared experience as well. And one, I realize that I’m down the street from this man. He lives in
Winston-Salem, I live in Greensboro, so thank you for making that connection. And then two, you helped
me realize that my experience similar to yours in elementary school. Woo. Sorry y’all. Is a double edge
sword because without it, I wouldn’t be sitting right here.
Mark:
Thank you.

Reflections Final Round

Transcript:

Shannnon:
Well thank you all again just so much. From the Zoom side of things, we just appreciate everyone for
being here, hanging with us all day long. And I was just amazed. I should just say one quick thing was I
was amazed at the end in mural how quickly people were putting things in. I was about to do something
and add a book to the board and it was already there, and I was just like, “This crew is on it.” It was
amazing. Just so appreciate everyone being here and just diving in and being part of our team today. It’s
been amazing.
Speaker 2:
Can we all come off mute and just give a big woo-hoo?
Shannnon:
Yes. Yes. And also if you want to come off-
Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:00:37] at each other.
Shannnon:
If you want to come off camera too, I can take a screenshot, get a little picture of us. So if anyone wants
to jump on camera quick.
Speaker 3:
No [inaudible 00:00:52] is needed now.
Mark:
That’d be great. Off camera.
Shannnon:
So if you want to join on camera, even just for a minute, I’ll just quick snag a pick of everybody.
Mark:
For the board.
Shannnon:
Join us, join us. Everyone good?
Mark:
Good.
Speaker 3:
How about we do the proper audio applause?
Speaker 2:

Oh yes, go Shamir. Do it.
Speaker 3:
No more fake applause. Unmuted myself-
Mark:
It’s being recorded. It is being record.
Shannnon:
All right, ready? Everyone smile. Three, two, one. All right, excellent. Okay. I’ll do another one too. We
can make funny faces or whatever.
Mark:
[inaudible 00:01:36] too late.
Shannnon:
Too late. Yeah, with a box on your head.
All right, ready? We’ll do one more. One, two, three. Awesome. All right, thanks everyone.
Mark:
Yeah, thanks. I’ve been with Mural for what, seven years now and this is what good remote
collaboration looks like. I mean this is really one of the best examples I’ve seen of a cohort just jumping
in and making stuff happen.
Speaker 2:
So Mark, are we all… you dub us official Mural designated content curators? We can put that on our
LinkedIn now?
Mark:
You bet. Yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’ll give you the gold star you can put on. No, but
seriously, this is fantastic and I appreciate it very much.
Shannnon:
Yeah, so fun. Appreciate everyone so much. And I know there’s been a couple questions about feedback,
and so we will definitely be providing a link for some feedback survey stuff. I don’t have it on me right
now but I’m sure you’ll get it by email, so definitely check out your email by the end of this week for that
because we’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback. If you’ve got some top of mind right now, drop
them in the chat. You can even direct message them if you don’t want to post them to everybody, that’s
totally fine too.
But yeah, again, just loved all of the experiments and thoughts and ideas too and just the willingness to
jump in on those. That was, I think, probably one of my favorite parts of working with be today. So
hopefully those will be the things that will kind of be the foundation for how we might plan this next
time, so I really appreciate that. And yes, the mural will be available following… We’ll probably continue
to add some more things to it, so definitely check back and use it as a resource moving forward too.
Cool. All right.
Speaker 5:
Are we doing a Zoom happy hour or was that a joke I saw in the chat?
Shannnon:
Oh I mean, I’m happy to hang. I’m here.
Mark:
I’d love to.
Shannnon:
Brooke’s been up for like 12 hours, but…
Speaker 5:
Well I wanted to respect that. If you’re exhausted, no worries. We can wrap up
Mark:
I’ll abruptly shift from coffee to Jim Beam or something and then catch up with you guys.
Speaker 2:
I put that in there, but it’s like 3:00 PM my time, so all y’all on the East Coast, just enjoy or a nightcap.
Speaker 6:
It’s 11:00 PM here, so onto the nightclub is fine by me.
Mark:
Very good. I am actually going to wind down and make sure I’ve got chat saved and various things end of
day, but please reach out, connect LinkedIn, would love to stay in touch and appreciate this community
very much. Thanks everyone.
Shannnon:
Thank you, Mark.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, Mark.
Mark:
Huge shout out to Shannon. I wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Shannnon:
Teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream every time.

Mark:
That’s right.
Shannnon:
Appreciate it.
Mark:
Take care everyone.
Shannnon:
All right, see you Mark. Bye.
Thanks everyone. Bruno, so good to see you.
Bruno:
Yeah, we’ll see a lot of… Not the last time you’ll see me.
Shannnon:
Yes, for sure.
Arianna:
Bruno and I wondering what we won, Shannon.
Shannnon:
You know, it’s a great question. I [inaudible 00:04:55]
Arianna:
Somewhere at the end sort felt like it was building up to something good.
Shannnon:
Yeah, they’re announcing-
Bruno:
I love the true prize part.
Shannnon:
I honestly don’t know. So we’ll find it out.
Arianna:
I would love to win the AI course if that’s possible.
Shannnon:
I’ll see what I can do. Sounds good. Bruno, how about you, because you won something too, right?

Bruno:
Yeah. Me and Arianna, we are doing everything together. So if you can put this both in the same one, we
are fine with that.
Shannnon:
All right. I’ll see what I can do.
Arianna:
That’s so weird. We’re like voltage controlled twins.
Shannnon:
I love it. That’s awesome. I know, I feel like I do see you guys on a lot of the same things.
Arianna:
I know.
Shannnon:
Except for [inaudible 00:05:32].
Bruno:
You know that we’re even connecting offline without you guys. We’re great behind your backs as well.
Shannnon:
Missing out. Missing out. No, I’m so glad. That’s great.
Arianna:
Thank you, Shannon.
Bruno:
It’s a lot. It was amazing.
Arianna:
[inaudible 00:05:44] Good job. I know how exhausting this is. You just absolutely did such a great job. I
kept saying it, but it’s not enough. You guys-
Shannnon:
I appreciate it. Thank you so much. The part that’s so weird after these virtual things, it’s like you feel so
connected all day and then you close it and you’re like, oh, I’m alone in the room. It’s so weird. But I
appreciate it as much… Just even this couple of people talk, it’s like, oh, there’s real humans over there,
so it’s great.
Arianna:
Hopefully you can sleep for two days.

Shannnon:
Yeah, definitely.
Bruno:
Bye bye.
Shannnon:
All right. Bye everyone. Thank you so much.

Thank You

Big thanks to the community for making each retrospective exciting, engaging, and fun! Thank you to the Voltage Control team for the hard work and dedication, to Mark Tippen for making our retrospectives a unique experience for everyone, AND to Shannon Varcoe for being a master facilitator of fun, creativity, and inspiring memorable conversations.

We hope you all have found value in each retrospective, one of our core values is buliding community, and this event was a shining example of the power of community, networking, and knowledge sharing! We are looking forward to seeing everyone at next year’s event!

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