This 3-minute video explains why registering for one of my upcoming participation techniques workshops could be the best career decision you’ll make this year.
You’ll save $100 when you sign up for my Chicago workshop by September 9th, earn 16.00 CE hours, and — most important — learn how to significantly increase attendee satisfaction at your events.
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Here’s a simple and effective variant of pair share — a fundamental participative technique that fosters connection and learning via discussion with a partner during a conference session.
Malii Brown
It was conjured up the other day by Malii Brown while we were co-facilitating a peer conference roundtable.
To keep participants alert during round-the-circle sharing at roundtables, I break every 20-25 minutes, either for a short bio-break or a relevant exercise involving movement. I often use pair share as one of these exercises (see The Power of Participation for a complete description) by asking participants to stand up and spend a few minutes introducing themselves to someone they don’t know.
On this occasion, Malii and I were alternating facilitation, and she got to introduce the pair share. Malii asked everyone to find someone they didn’t know. Then she simply said:
“Share with each other what’s on your mind right now.”
Here’s a video excerpt of the resulting pair share. (I’ve removed the sound to maintain confidentiality, but you should know that the volume was substantial!)
I liked the energetic conversations Malii’s suggestion triggered, and have added this prompt to my mental toolbox for future use. This is a nice example of the kind of learning that can occur when co-facilitating—thanks Malii!
I’ve written about the myth of the conference curator before. I began with the observation that highly paid sports scouts do barely better than chance at picking great players. Now, Seth Godin has written this:
“We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there’s a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don’t know who they are. That means that the old systems, the ones where just a few people were anointed to be the chosen authors, chosen contributors, chosen musicians–that system left a lot of people out in the cold…The curated business, then, will ultimately fail because it keeps missing this shoulder, this untapped group of talented, eager, hard-working people shut out by their deliberately closed ecosystem…Go ahead and minimize these open systems at your own peril. Point to their negative outliers, inconsistency and errors, sure, but you can only do that if you willfully ignore the real power: some people, some of the time, are going to do amazing and generous work… If we’ll just give them access to tools and get out of their way.“ —Most people, most of the time (the perfect crowd fallacy) by Seth Godin
Do such tools for conferences exist? Yes, they do!
Appropriate participation techniques are the tools for participants to do amazing and generous work—for others and for themselves—at conferences. Give them permission, access, and support for these tools and get conference curators out of their way.
One of my greatest challenges and pleasures is creating “just-in-time” process that meets the evolving needs of an event.
Last week I was invited to consult on a two-day, one hundred participant “turning-point” summit for the US Green Building Council (USGBC) in Washington, DC. A much wider range of organizations were convening than at previous USGBC events in order to explore a major long-term expansion of the green building movement. So, good process was vital.
During the event, we dreamed up a simple yet powerful exercise to uncover and communicate participant expectations for the meeting. I say “we”, because at least three members of the summit working group contributed to what became an effective and dramatic way to expose and share what participants saw as successful outcomes for the event. Here’s what happened:
What would success look like?
We designed the summit around a set of “shirtsleeve sessions”. We began some short stimulating talks by expert “igniters”. Next, participants divided into small groups to discuss three principle goals and formulate key strategies to address them. At a working group meeting at the end of the first day, we had to decide how best to use the thirty minutes that had been scheduled the following morning before the next shirtsleeve session.
Someone proposed that we ask participants to share their answers to the question “What would success look like?” either from a personal or group perspective. The working group liked this idea. I suggested that answers be written on large sticky notes and displayed in a central location during the day. This allowed the group to view all the responses during breaks, rather than hearing just a few of them in the limited time available.
The participants liked this activity. Soon, a large grid of answers was posted on a lobby wall outside the breakout rooms, available for all to see.
During the afternoon, another working group member had the bright idea to review and categorize the sticky notes’ contents. At a subsequent working group meeting, we agreed that during the closing session she would briefly share seven groupings she had devised that covered just about all the definitions of success that participants had proposed:
The seven groupings
A “trail map” for the future. During the event, one participant said the meeting was more like a base camp than a summit. The metaphor stuck. We started thinking of our journey as an expedition that needs a trail map to be successful.
Inclusiveness. As the organization adjusts to working with a broader community of interest, issues of how to expand connections and social equity are important.
Public relations and messaging. Successfully framing USGBC’s messages is key. This helps people understand that choices they make in their home and business can enhance their family’s and employees’ health.
Standards. How do we emphasize and integrate knowledge and actions that improve well-being into existing standards?
Definition and valuation of health and well-being. We need to define and value health and well-being in USGBC’s and the related community’s mission.
Research. What do we know, what are the research gaps, and how can we obtain funding to fill them?
Paradigm shift. How do we get to a place where the green built environment is synonymous with health?
Building a movement at the conference
Providing summary feedback at the close of a “turning point” event is very important. Participants have put a lot of time and effort into their work together. They need to feel heard and receive assurance that what has happened will lead to significant next steps.
At the USGBC summit, the complexity of the issues and constituencies involved, plus the reality that not all key players were able to attend, meant that detailed trail map outcomes would take some time to formulate.
The sharing of participant’s seven categories of success was, therefore, an important way for participants to feel heard and know that others shared their goals and aspirations. As a result, this simple focused sharing of major insights and common agreements became a key ingredient for “building a movement,” a phrase heard frequently during the high-energy closing session of the summit. After offering a next-step communications plan and an impassioned closing speech by Rick Fedrizzi, USGBC’s CEO, many participants shared that the summit was a milestone moment in the development of green building.
Do you have examples of how to build a movement at a conference? Share them below!
Here’s a one minute video about my free two hour workshop at EIBTM 2012, Barcelona, on November 28, where you’ll learn how to transform your meetings using powerful participation techniques.
The best way to learn about participation techniques is to experience them, and that’s what we’ll be doing in the workshop. You’ll experience a variety of ways for participants to learn about each other and to discover and share the issues that really matter to them. We’ll also cover the why, when, and where to use these techniques.
The workshop will be held on Wednesday, November 28, 13:30 – 15:30 in Conference Room 4.1. Session attendance is limited, so arrive early to be sure to secure a place!
Recently I’ve felt frustrated and baffled. No less than three venues (two hotels and a conference center) in the last month told me that I couldn’t post anything on the walls of the room I was meeting in.
I couldn’t post anything. No flip chart paper, masking tape, stick pins, thumbtacks, sticky notes, or wall clips.
That’s a blanket “no”
To add insult to injury, none of the venues apologized or offered any suggestions on alternative ways I could display materials on a vertical surface. None of them had any substitute surfaces, like large portable notice boards or whiteboards available.
One conference organizer wondered if I could use tables instead. Unfortunately, tables are not a comparable substitute for walls for two reasons:
On walls, notes or cards can be placed anywhere in a seven-foot band between the floor and where people can reach. On tables, human reach limits us to a three-foot band.
Many more people can easily see information placed on a wall compared to a table.
Why we need to be able to post on walls at meetings
Some of the most powerful techniques available for group problem-solving require ways to display multiple pieces of information to an entire group. Members can easily and publicly move items around to cluster, list, sort, and map relationships. Schools have used blackboards (chalkboards) for two hundred years to display information to students. Thumbtacks (aka drawing pins) have existed for over one hundred years. Masking tape was invented in 1925. We’ve been using Post-it Notes for over thirty years. These are not new technologies, folks, why are venues banning them from their walls where we meet?
I understand that people use venues for many different purposes. Wall damage, through incorrect use of attachment technology or marker bleed-through, costs money to repair. But “wall work” is an essential component of group problem solving, and for a venue to prohibit its use while offering no alternatives makes it hard to hold many kinds of useful meetings.
In the second part of this post, I’ll cover some of the technologies now available for posting information on walls, including some that you may not know about. Stay tuned!
Have you had venues not allow you to post materials on their walls? What did you do?
