Hosting Conversations

“Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us.”

Rosabeth Moss Kanter – Harvard Business School

General Qualities of Good Hosting and Facilitation

 

All facilitators need to be able to listen. They need to listen to and hear the intention behind the dialogue in advance, and be able to listen to and hear participants during the process. This enables the facilitator to be flexible to design an appropriate process, and during the process to mirror back to participants what is going on and to help the group become more aware of itself. Strong listening skills depend partly on the facilitator’s ability to let go of their own agenda.

A strong facilitator needs to be able to understand what is going on within themselves when they are with a group, as much as what is going on in the group. The facilitator is essentially holding the group, and needs to avoid projecting their own issues and insecurities onto the group.

Asking good questions is an art form. The right questions will wake participants up, “light their matches”, link in to what they care deeply about, and make visible their interdependence in finding the answers. They will surface new insights they hadn’t thought of before in understanding the issue in focus. A simple phrasing of a question can determine whether people feel hopeless and despairing or curious, energized, strong and excited.

Being able to assess which method to use in a given situation, or whether one’s preferred method is applicable, requires a facilitator to understand the particular context. Taking a holistic approach is also about being able to see patterns and help the group make connections as they work, and recognizing that multiple intelligences are at work. The more the whole person can be invited in to a dialogue the more successful it will be, and the more equitably people will be able to engage.

A link to Art of Hosting – defined. 

Appreciative Inquiry

 “The question isn’t what’s wrong here and how can we fix it, but rather what’s possible and who cares?”

Appreciative Inquiry is an approach and process which turns problem-solving on its head. Instead of finding the best ways to solve a pressing problem, it places the focus on identifying the best of what already is in an organization or community, and finding ways of enhancing this to pursue dreams and possibilities of what could be.

Appreciative Inquiry can be used in several ways – as an AI summit where an organization, community or any system comes together for 2-6 days to go through the full AI process with the aim to engage in a large scale change or developmental process. It could be strategic planning, community development, systems change, organizational redesign, vision development, or any other process in which there is a genuine desire for change and growth based on positive inquiry, and for allowing the voice of people at all levels of a system to be heard and included. Appreciative Inquiry can also be done without an AI summit as an on-going process of interviews and dialogues that take place throughout a system organization, community, or city.

The World Café

“How can we enhance our capacity to talk and think more deeply together about the critical issues facing our communities, our school, our nations and our planet?

The World Café is an intentional way to create a living network of conversations around questions that matter. It is a methodology which enables people (from 12 to 1200) to think together and intentionally create new, shared meaning and collective insight. The process of bringing the diverse perspectives and ideas together can really give a group a sense of their own intelligence and insight that is larger than the sum of the parts. One can use the World Café with as little as an hour, or convene a gathering over several days.

The World Café is based on a core assumption that the knowledge and wisdom that we need is already present and accessible. Working with the World Café, we can bring out the collective wisdom of the group – greater than the sum of its individual parts – and channel it towards positive change.

Jeff’s - World Cafe Training Certificate

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology allows groups, large or small, to self-organize to effectively deal with complex issues in a very short time. Participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance. An Open Space meeting can last from two hours to several days. When people gather they co-create the agenda of the meeting together, allowing it to be shaped by the passion and interest of the people.

The greater the diversity, the higher the potential for real breakthrough and innovative outcomes. It works particularly well in moving from planning to action, where real action is facilitated by people stepping in and taking responsibility where they care. Open Space is all about handing the responsibility back to people themselves. Two core questions characterizing Open Space are: “What do you really want to do,” and “why don’t you take care of it?”