Sometimes, I just need to shut up and listen. When I close peer conferences with a Group Spective, there’s always a moment that is hard for me. It occurs during the Plus/Delta when people are sharing what they’d like to change in the event they’ve just experienced. Participants offer many suggestions, perspectives, and ideas that make the organization’s future activities and events better, and their sharing frequently helps me improve my own work.
And then someone, let’s call them John, comes up to the microphone and says something like this:
“Well, at the beginning of this conference we spent a lot of time choosing the sessions. I think it would be much better if we just asked everyone what they wanted to talk about before the conference. Then we could start the program right away and have more time for the sessions!”
I know John’s intentions are good. I know he’s genuinely trying to help to make the conference better.
Regardless, at this point, a voice inside me is saying:
“Aargh, not again! Do you think no one has ever suggested this before? If I’d found a way during the thirty years I’ve spent designing and facilitating events to create better conference programs by asking people what they wanted in advance, don’t you think I would be using it?
The reason we spent precious time at the start of this event learning about our wants and needs and experience and expertise and then co-creating a conference program optimized from what we discover is that I’ve found that taking this time creates a much better conference than one where the program is somehow determined in advance!”
And so on. I feel sad and misunderstood and disconnected listening to John who doesn’t get the essence of what I’ve spent years creating and fine-tuning, to whom I’ve failed to convey something that I believe is valuable and important.
I feel frustrated in much the same way as when I meet people who insist that the world is really less than ten thousand years old, are sure vaccines cause autism, or believe there’s a scientific conspiracy to falsely declare that recent human activities cause climate warming.
On one occasion I couldn’t stop myself from responding to a participant who said that the initial roundtable and peer session sign-up we had used was a waste of time. I said that in my experience, it created a better conference. The participant, a state legislator, looked at me and said, “This is a time for me to share my opinions, not for you to share yours.”
And he was right.
Yes, it’s hard at moments like this for me to keep my mouth shut.
But it’s important that I do. My job is to facilitate the process that’s going on, not offer my own opinions.
The silver lining
In the end, it turns out that I don’t actually need to say anything. Invariably, other participants respond to John. They’ll come up to the microphone and say things like:
“Actually, John, I disagree, I liked what we did! Yes, it took a bit longer, but I: — got to know many attendees in really helpful ways; —made valuable connections with people who have useful expertise and experience; —learned about interesting topics I hadn’t thought about before; and —enjoyed some excellent sessions, many of which I suspect wouldn’t have been included in a traditional conference.”
And I feel better again.
Which teaches me something else. Though I experience my feelings in the moment as permanent and unchangeable, my feelings are transitory. This too shall pass.
In Part 1 of this series, I defined participatory voting and we explored the different ways to use it to obtain public information about viewpoints and participants in the room, paving the way for further useful discussions and conversations. Now let’s explore low-tech and high-tech voting solutions.
High-tech voting
There is no shortage of high-tech systems that can poll an audience. Commonly known as ARSs, Student Response Systems (SRSs), or “clickers,” these systems combine an audience voting method—a custom handheld device, personal cell phone/smartphone, personal computer, etc.—with a matched receiver and software that processes and displays responses.
Here are three reasons why high-tech ARSs may not be the best choice for participatory voting:
ARSs necessitate expense and/or time to set up for a group. No-tech and low-tech approaches are low or no cost and require little or no preparation.
Most ARS votes are anonymous; no one knows who has voted for what. When you are using voting to acquire information about participant preferences and opinions, as opposed to deciding between conflicting alternatives, anonymous voting is rarely necessary. (An exception is if people are being asked potentially embarrassing questions.) When a group of people can see who is voting for what (and, with some techniques, even the extent of individual agreement/disagreement), it’s easy to go deeper into an issue via discussion or debate.
Participatory voting techniques involve more movement than pushing a button on an ARS device. This is important, because physical movement improves learning. Some techniques include participant interaction, which also improves learning.
While there are times when low-tech or high-tech voting is the right choice, I prefer no-tech and low-tech techniques for participatory voting whenever possible. No-tech techniques require only the attendees themselves. Low-tech approaches use readily available and inexpensive materials such as paper and pens.
Card Voting: Provides each participant with an identical set of colored cards that can be used in flexible ways: typically for voting on multiple-choice questions, consensus voting, and guiding discussion.
Dot Voting: A technique for public semi-anonymous voting where participants are given identical sets of one or more colored paper dots which they stick onto paper voting sheets to indicate preferences.
Hand/Stand Voting: In hand voting, participants raise their hands to indicate their answer to a question with two or more possible answers. Stand voting replaces hand raising with standing.
Human Graphs: See Human Spectrograms.
Human Spectrograms: Also known as body voting, continuum voting, and human graphs. A form of public voting that has participants move in the room to a place that represents their answer to a question. Human spectrograms can be categorized as one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or state-change.
Idea swap: A technique for anonymous sharing of participants’ ideas.
One-dimensional Human Spectrograms: Human Spectrograms where participants position themselves along a line in a room to portray their level of agreement/disagreement with a statement or a numeric response (e.g. the number of years they’ve been in their current profession.)
Plus/Delta: A review tool that enables participants to quickly identify what went well at a session or event and what could be improved.
Post It!: A simple technique that employs participant-written sticky notes to uncover topics and issues that a group wants to discuss.
Roman Voting: Roman Voting is a public voting technique for gauging the strength of consensus.
State-change Human Spectrograms: Human Spectrograms where participants move en masse from one point to another to display a change of some quantity (e.g. opinion, geographical location, etc.) over time.
Table Voting: A technique used for polling attendees on their choice from pre-determined answers to a multiple-choice question, and/or for dividing participants into preference groups for further discussions or activities.
Thirty-Five: A technique for anonymously evaluating participant ideas.
Two-dimensional Human Spectrograms: Human Spectrograms where participants position themselves in a two-dimensional room space to display relative two-dimensional information (e.g. where they live with reference to a projected map.)
This ends my exploration of low-tech and high-tech voting solutions. And what are public, semi-anonymous, and anonymous voting? We’ll explain these different voting types and explore when they should be used in the third part of this series.
I was about to discover the depth of Paul’s craftiness.
After filling my plate with Quebecois goodies, I climbed the stairs to find Diego Ibáñez, Gina Trimarco Cligrow, Patrick Short, and Betse Green lunching together. I told them that Paul had invited me to join the “conversation”, whereupon Patrick explained that the group was planning the hour-long conference closing ceremony, which began at 2 p.m. Paul joined us and, looking at me, said that the closing ceremony typically included some kind of public evaluation of the conference. I looked at my watch and gulped. We had 40 minutes!
Typically, when designing process for a session with 200 participants, I like to have some time—perhaps a day or two—to think about the best ways to achieve the desired outcomes with the available resources.
This occasion was not typical.
I was not feeling the nervous excitement I usually experience in situations like this.
I was feeling fear.
But…I was with a group of great improvisers
People who had spent decades practicing and living improv. Perhaps we could work together and create something good enough, perhaps even great, in 40 minutes?
I have a simple tool for public evaluations, plus/delta, that I’ve used many times. But how could we optimize it for 200 improvisers?
My memory of the rest of the lunch is hazy. (I was definitely outside my comfort zone.) I think that Patrick made the great suggestion that the evaluations be presented as short improvs. Others chimed in. Together, we fine-tuned the process.
Rushing to the barn where the session would be held, we discovered that the local conference organizers were also working on their plan for the closing ceremony. They had already decided to hold it outdoors—it was a beautiful day—and had lit a bonfire. A few-minute conversation determined that we would hold our evaluation in a circle around the fire, and then they would close the conference in their own way.
We started bringing out chairs from the barn. I found three scribes to capture in writing the conference insights that were about to be shared. We arranged enough chairs and set up an electronic organ for Patrick to accompany the improvs, and it was time to start.
There was no more time to plan. Diego and Gina introduced themselves and me, and I was on.
The conference evaluation
Positive experiences
Talking as loudly as I could (there was no sound equipment and I don’t have a strong voice) I explained that we were going to do a rapid public evaluation of the entire conference and gave them an overview of the process. Then I asked everyone to form small groups of 5 or 6 people, and gave them seven minutes to:
Share their positive experiences of the conference in their group; and then
Create a short improv piece about the changes they would like to see in the conference to make it better.
There had been some logistical challenges during the conference—e.g. no coffee was available at breakfast on the first day…oops!—and I knew from past experience that participants tend to concentrate on such issues during the change portion of the evaluation. So I made a point to direct the groups to focus on non-logistical/obvious conference improvements while they were working on their short improvs.
Once the group work was done, everyone returned to the circle and individuals began sharing their positive experiences of the conference. I had never done this kind of sharing in a circle before, so I improvised the idea of walking slowly around the circle with my arm pointing to each person in turn. As my attention swept around the circle, people put their hands up if they wanted to say something, and I stopped for them to share. After I had gone around the circle once, I announced I would make two more circuits for sharing positive experiences. This worked well—different people spoke during each rotation and everyone had three opportunities to share or pass.
What would you change?
Next, we switched to the change portion of the evaluation. One group volunteered to start, and we began to experience a wide variety of creative group improvs that conveyed the changes the members suggested. (Coffee delivery improvements, were, still amusingly incorporated.)
Normally, I am very aware of time issues when facilitating events. The closing session had to end on time, as one bus was leaving immediately to allow some attendees to catch flights back in Montreal. On this occasion, concentrating on the improvised flow, I was doing a poor job of managing the remaining time. Thankfully Gina noticed this, stepped up, and ingeniously coaxed the remaining groups to spend less time on their improvs. I doubt that anyone even noticed she had taken over on the fly. She supported me and made me look good—thank you, Gina!
After the improvs had all been presented and enjoyed, the local hosts took over and ran a brief and moving closing, tying together the Nature theme of the conference with our experiences over the previous three days. The contributions of many people were thanked and recognized in humorous, yet heart-felt fashion.
As the session ended, one last facilitation task remained for me. I found the three scribes and took safe possession of their valuable notes. Later, back at my Vermont home, I photographed the notes and emailed them to Paul so he would have a permanent record available to use for improving future AIN World conferences.
What did I/can we learn from this experience?
We are all improvisers. Every time you have a conversation with someone, for example, you invariably do not know what they are about to say, and you improvise your response. Competent facilitators, leading group conversation and/or process, are improvisers. Despite having a plan for achieving desired group outcomes, they adapt what they do in response to the group experience.
Fifteen years ago I would have quickly turned down the opportunity Paul offered. I saw myself as a process designer and planner, and my fear of “failing” to be highly competent when asked to improvise large group process overrode any perceived benefits. Today, I am more comfortable taking the risk of being less than perfect, of being average, as improvisers like to say. So one thing I learned on that sunny afternoon was that I am willing to step more out of my comfort zone and into the place where magic happens when responding in the moment.
I also learned about the value of trusting support. I would have turned down Paul’s offer if I had had to create the session by myself. Being surrounded by folks trained in improvisation is probably the best support structure you can have! We are all working to make each other look good, because we know that the best things happen when we work supporting each other.
Does improv trump planning?
Does this whole experience mean that improv trumps planning when creating and facilitating group process?
No! My experience with plus/delta as an evaluation technique was gained from ten years of experience involving plenty of planned experiments. This experience made it easy to integrate the core plus/delta process into the unique circumstances of the AIN 2015 conference closing session. As far as I know, no one else present had the expertise to create this form of evaluation. My years of planning plus/delta allowed the group to benefit from an effective process tool.
In addition, my very last act for the session—collecting the scribes’ notes in the hurly-burly of mass crowd goodbyes, and making sure the AIN organizers received them—was reflex planning. Improvisors, improvising in the moment, might overlook this move. (We saw it happen; remember the absent coffee?) As meeting professionals know, a planning mindset is essential to reap the full benefits of creative process at events.
The tension between improv and planning at events
Why did I write this behind-the-scenes look at 100 minutes of terror and wonder at the close of AIN 2015? Because I think it illustrates that there is a natural tension between improv and planning at events. The tension appears because, at first sight, they are mutually exclusive ways of thinking about what “should” happen when people meet to learn and connect. The mythical planner’s goal is to make sure that everything goes according to plan. The mythical improvisor’s goal (well, one of them) is a reality where nothing goes according to plan.
You can’t get much more tension than the difference between nothing and everything.
Yet this very tension provides the energy that we feel at the best events and experiences of our lives. From moment to moment, there is a play between improv and planning. It is the Taoist experience, the energy that arises from the tension of opposites.
And it is a tension to embrace, not fear. That is our challenge.
“I’m 83 years old and have been managing our events for 59 years. I reckon I have a couple more years left before I retire. My community’s events are stale; we’re not getting the kind of engagement we used to. This workshop has opened my eyes to simple and effective ways to improve our events. I’ve experienced some really good techniques here and we’re going to change some things we do.”
Wow! I hope I can stay as open when I’m 83 and for the rest of my life.
Silence during a meeting is often seen as something awkward and uncomfortable, something to be avoided. We may feel embarrassed and think “Somebody say something!” Yet silence is often an essential tool for effective sessions at meetings. Why? It allows participants to think before speaking, notice feelings, rest, and recharge. Facilitators need to be comfortable with silence, as it usually signals something important.
For example, when I run plus/delta—a technique for quickly evaluating a session or conference—I have to consciously remain quiet once participants’ initial responses die down. A long pause, followed by a neutral request for more suggestions, elicits more contributions. I find sharing typically continues for two to three times longer than the time elapsed when the first pause occurred.
Traditionally, silence is generally only acceptable in certain specific group situations (groups of strangers, prayer, performances, etc.) So, when we want to employ it during a meeting, we need to facilitate its use. For example, sometimes we need it so that people have quiet time to think while writing down answers to questions. If we don’t explicitly request silence beforehand, those who finish first tend to start talking to each other. This disturbs those who need more time to reflect.
Functions of silence
What are the functions of silence when we’re together with others?
The first function is linking in which silence binds people together such as a “moment of silence,” a silence during prayer, or a silence after someone makes an inappropriate remark.
The second function is an affecting function in which the silence has an effect on the others in the room that might communicate indifference, dislike, or coldness.
A third type of silence is the revelational function of silence by which people show they don’t know what to say or cannot provide an appropriate response.
A fourth function of silence is judgmental, which may indicate approval or disapproval to what has been said. In group settings, this can be seen as ‘‘silence as admission’’ by not responding to an individual or a type of silent protests.
The last function of silence is activation in which a group member may be silent while choosing words before speaking. The impression might be that a group member is quiet and doing nothing, but in reality the group member is pondering what to say and how to respond.
Any of these five functions could be relevant when we observe silence at a meeting. When we have not requested silence, it’s important to notice when it happens, figure out what might be going on, and respond appropriately. Some of the most powerful moments I’ve experienced when working with groups have been when silence erupts unexpectedly. When this happens, it’s often good to ask the group what they think is going on rather than papering over the silence with words.
Sometimes, letting silence grow for a while is the right thing to do. Not only does this emphasize that something significant may be going on, but it also gives us more time to think about how we want to respond to it. That’s why we need to become comfortable with silence at meetings.
Hat tip to Adriano Pianesi‘s blog post “The silence of the staff. Kiss of death of group dynamics roles or not?” {October 2017: no longer available} which inspired this post.
How do you inspire conference attendees to take action?
This question arose when I was facilitating Vermont Vision for a Multicultural Future, a conference addressing the challenges and opportunities of a more multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural Vermont. Conferences that tackle wide-scope topics like multiculturalism or sustainable business practices are not going to come up with definitive comprehensive solutions to the countless problems discussed. This can demoralize participants who are hungry for change or filled with a desire to “do something”.
One of two common Conferences That Work closing sessions, the personal introspective, gives attendees a chance to explore changes they may want to make in their lives and work as a result of their experiences during the conference. To address the desire for big-picture change, we pointed out at the start of the Vermont Vision introspective that many of the participants had influence in their professional lives (state government, education, law enforcement, faith community, etc.) So we asked each person to focus on what they wanted to work on in their sphere of influence.
Having supported and emphasized the need for personal change during the introspective, we moved to the group spective, the final Conferences That Work session. I often start a group spective by using plus/delta to quickly evaluate a conference. For plus/delta, participants first publicly share their positive experiences of the conference. We list them in the plus column of a flipchart or projected Google Doc.
When all positive comments have been aired, participants list the changes they would like in the delta column. This simple technique provides a quick basis for participants to share experiences. Then we move into a discussion about what the group wants to do next.
An action plus/delta
To transform plus/delta into a tool for action at Vermont Vision, I redefined the two columns as follows:
Plus ==> actions I/we want to work on
Delta ==> issues that concern me but that I don’t know how to address
This allowed us to move from the personal decisions made at the introspective into sharing, discussing, and supporting initiatives to which individuals had committed (the plus column). The delta column then allowed us to explore other ideas and who might be able to work on them.
We found that the plus column was much longer than the delta column. That was encouraging! Even though significant issues in the delta column remain to be tackled, participants came away from the session knowing that many concrete plans had been generated through our time together. Unlike the outcomes of many conferences that work on problems that seem overwhelming, participants left Vermont Vision feeling that we had built momentum around specific objectives that we had a realistic chance of achieving. Perhaps that is why every single conference evaluation asked us to hold this inaugural conference again next year!
How do you inspire conference attendees to take action? Share your thoughts!
What approach should we use to teach participation techniques for meeting sessions? Here’s my answer to this question, illustrated by a story about the power of experiential learning.
With the rise of social learning and the decline in the importance of formal learning, perhaps we should use experiential learning. On the other hand, in the same time we need to experience a limited set of participation techniques we can comprehensively describe many more. Then again, perhaps experiencing a participation technique directly is a more effective way to cement both learning it and truly understanding its relevance. So, if we are teaching participation techniques, which of these two approaches is a better path for learning?
J’s light-bulb moment
Earlier this week I led a workshop at Meeting Professionals International’s World Education Congress (WEC). The 150-minute session covered a variety of techniques that foster and support meaningful participation during meetings. Participants spent most of their time using these techniques to learn about and connect with each other. They also explored questions about their experience at WEC and in the session itself.
As the workshop progressed, and I heard from the forty-six participants, it became clear that one of them, whom I’ll call J, had considerable prior experience with the techniques I was facilitating.
Near the end of the workshop, I ran Plus/Delta (described in Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love): a method that provides a fast, public evaluation of a session or entire meeting. As an advocate for transparency and feedback, I chose the subject of our Plus/Delta to be a group evaluation of the workshop itself. During the evaluation, J commented that he had hoped that I would cover more techniques by talking about them rather than having attendees experience them directly. He then contributed a simple and ingenious way to extend Plus/Delta that was new to me.
My heart sank a little
Here was J, an experienced facilitator of participation techniques, proposing that I should spend the workshop talking about techniques rather than facilitating experiences of them. Could I be going about this wrong?
I moved immediately into the last technique of the workshop, running fishbowl. This is a simple way to facilitate focused discussion with a large group. All participants sit in a large circle of chairs. Only people in the “fishbowl”, a small circle of chairs at the center, can speak. After a few minutes of comments, J entered the fishbowl.
J said that he had read about fishbowls many times before. He understood how they worked, but he had never tried one.
And then, to my surprise and delight, he told us that experiencing the fishbowl had been a revelation to him. Why? Because he had directly experienced the power of the technique in a way that significantly enhanced his understanding of it, which he had previously believed to be sufficient. It was poignant for me to hear J express a new point of view that contradicted what he had said only a few minutes earlier. I admired his courage in sharing his learning with us all.
I too have struggled over the years to define the best balance between understanding techniques through description and understanding them through direct experience. J’s light-bulb moment fits for me; these days I am content to let attendees learn participation techniques, first through direct experience and then, if necessary, via reflection and discussion.
Postscript
At the end of the workshop, J and I talked while I was packing up for a flight home.
He told me that his fishbowl sharing had unexpectedly reminded him of a session he had once attended. It was entitled “One hundred icebreakers in one hundred minutes”, and consisted of rapid descriptions of a hundred ways to introduce attendees to each other.
Brief description: Setting ground rules before other activities commence clarifies and unifies participants’ expectations. When to use: Start of session, workshop, or conference. Helpful for: Setting the stage for collaboration and participation, by giving people permission and support for sharing with and learning from each other. Increases participants’ safety and intimacy. Resources needed: Paper or online list of ground rules.
Technique: Human spectrogram
Brief description: People stand along a line (one dimension) or in a room space (two dimensions) to answer session questions (factual or opinions). When to use: Usually at the start of a session. Also, use as an icebreaker before or during the three questions. Helpful for: Allowing participants and the group to discover commonalities. Also, use to pick homogeneous or heterogeneous groups/teams. Also use to hear a spectrum of comments on an issue and then view any resulting shifts in opinion. Gets people out of their chairs! Resources needed: A clear corridor space between walls (one dimension), or a clear room (two dimensions).
Technique: The three questions *
Brief description: Three questions answered in turn by every participant to the entire group within a given time limit, typically 1½ – 3 minutes.
– How did I get here?
– What do I want to have happen?
– What experience do I have that others may find useful? When to use: Normally, right after ground rules have been set. Helpful for: Learning about each participant, exposing topics and questions of interest to the group, and uncovering formerly unknown useful expertise for the group to share. Resources needed: Question cards and pens, a circle of chairs. Do not replace cards with the three questions posted on a wall or screen.
Technique: Fishbowl *
Brief description: An effective technique for focused discussion. Works by limiting and making clear who can speak at any moment. When to use: During any conference content or topic-oriented session. Also, use for conference closing discussion. Helpful for: Keeping group discussions focused. A plus is that contributors need to move to and from discussion chairs, maintaining alertness and engagement. Resources needed: Chairs, either set in two concentric circles or in a U-shape with discussant chairs at the mouth.
Technique: Personal introspective *
Brief description: A session where attendees privately reflect on their answers to five questions. All attendees then have an opportunity but not an obligation to share their answers with the group. When to use: Towards the end of the event, usually just before the final group session for a short event. At multi-day events, sometimes held as the first session on the last day. Helpful for: Reinforcing learning and concretizing changes participants may wish to make in their lives as a consequence of their experiences during the event. Resources needed: Chairs, either set in small circles or one large circle, personal introspective question cards, and pens.
Technique: Affinity grouping †*
Brief description: A technique to discover and share ideas that arise during the conference and group them into categories, so participants can organize and discuss them. When to use: Can be used at any session to elicit and gain group responses to ideas. Also useful as a closing process if action outcomes are desired. Helpful for: Future planning, and uncovering group or sub-group energy around topics and actions. Can be used to guide decision-making by the group. Resources needed: Cards and/or large sticky notes, pens, pins or tape if cards are used, walls for posting.
Technique: Plus/delta *
Brief description: A simple review tool for participants to quickly identify what went well and potential improvements. When to use: Normally during a closing session. Helpful for: Quickly uncovering, with a minimum of judgment, positive comments on and possible improvements to a conference or other experience. Resources needed: Flipcharts and, optionally, ropes or straps.
* See a complete description of this process in Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, available from this website, Amazon, or any bookstore.
Other resources The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit is a useful list of participative processes that can be used with groups.
When I close peer conferences with a Group Spective, there’s always a moment that is hard for me. It occurs during the Plus/Delta when people are sharing what they’d like to change in the event they’ve just experienced. Participants offer many suggestions, perspectives, and ideas that make the organization’s future activities and events better, and their sharing frequently helps me improve my own work.
In 
How do you inspire conference attendees to take action?
