Hey everyone,
Tuesday was my first bootcamp and it was really awesome. As a young person I am often told I don’t have enough experience or enough education, but in bootcamp you’re encouraged to tap into your own internal resources. I love that the answer isn’t in a book. A reflection I had on Tuesday was that trusting my own skills/ knowledge is challenging for me and I hope I can learn to trust myself more.
Similar to Brooking I learned we all have different ways of seeing/ thinking about power. I appreciated the discussion we had and the opportunity to hear the wisdom of the group.
Another reflection I had was in thinking about my project working with a multi stakeholder group. The practice I chose to shift the power dynamic was to create space for participants to feel empowered and take ownership over the process. I am not sure yet how to create that space but am hoping to get clearer. Here’s a general question to the group: how do you get participants not too rely on the facilitator to make the right conversation happen?
dana, 
Rebecca, and 
Eugene Eric Kim are discussing.
Eugene Eric Kim 5:38 pm on October 19, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
So glad you’re participating, @dana, and appreciate your reflections!
Humans are social animals. We all have wisdom about collaboration that has absolutely nothing to do with school or professional experiences. I started my first collaboration consultancy when I was 27 with zero qualifications… on paper. But, I could draw on the experiences that I had working and being with other people in all kinds of contexts — sports, family, friends, hobbies, music, school (not necessarily content from the classroom), etc. Today, I have some paper qualifications, which are useful for getting work, but which actually mean little in terms of actually understanding and being able to practice collaboration effectively.
Putting aside your year at Groupaya and your undergraduate degree in this kind of work (which is more formal education in this space than I have!), you bring experience working in restaurants and in retail. You bring your experience in dance, which to me epitomizes craft and collaboration. And most importantly, you bring your experience as a human being living among other human beings.
At the end of the day, the only things that matter are a desire to learn and constant practice. Bootcamp is meant to help with the practice, but it can’t create the desire. If you bring that to the table, good things will happen. You’re clearly doing that. The fact that you’ve chosen the Delta Dialogues as your project is incredibly bold, and I love it. Looking forward to seeing what your bootcamp experiences unlock in you as you explore this incredibly complex project.
For the rest of you, here’s some context on Dana’s project:
http://eekim.com/blog/2013/02/delta-dialogues/
It’s the knottiest project I’ve ever had to deal with, and it’s only gotten more complicated since I left.
Rebecca 1:00 am on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yeah Dana!! I just want to reiterate Eugene. I’ve learned a lot about collaboration from my work in restaurants. Don’t underestimate that wisdom.
“The practice I chose to shift the power dynamic was to create space for participants to feel empowered and take ownership over the process. I am not sure yet how to create that space but am hoping to get clearer.”
What a great frick’n question Dana. I think you’ve picked probably the most important and hardest question 🙂 I can’t answer it. But this is at the crux of why we invest so much time in thinking through the “structures” that support any collaborative experience. How do you create enough frame to help guide the conversation, but clearly make things ‘hackable’ and emergent?
I think the check-in, check-outs are a big intervention to this end. And in my last process, we decided to make it more explicit, asking “how are we doing as a group?” Just asking this question subtly reminds everyone they have influence over the group without explicitly saying it. This is our responsibility, not just the facilitators.
It’s also a big part of why I try to work transparently (with varying degrees of success). OK, enough rambling 🙂
dana 5:59 am on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Rebecca for your comments! I like your idea of asking a more explicit checkout “how are we doing as a group.” The checkouts seem more valuable when it’s more than just “how do you feel about today?!”