Echoing Eugene, thank you @jessausinheiler for sharing your Messaging framework with us! I really enjoyed thinking through the wheel and I realized I have a message for my project. Now I want to communicate it and I am feeling clearer about how to.
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Dana
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Dana
Hey everyone,
Yesterday’s bootcamp was really great. Kudos/ kangaroo points to Marie for being so courageous and open to the process. Reflecting back on the difficult conversations exercise I really appreciated that we started off the day by thinking of a time where we felt powerful. It’s easy to go into a difficult conversation and feel powerless or like Marie said already defeated. Thinking of ways to get in your power mode really resonated with me. I liked Jess’ idea of putting on an outfit that makes you feel powerful.
I really appreciated everyone’s comments yesterday, I learned bits and pieces from everyone in the room.
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Dana
Hey guys!
I had an all day meeting with the Delta Dialogues on Friday. It went really well. Eugene gave me a mini assignment to pay attention to power dynamics as much as I could. It was really interesting using the David Cantor technique from Kristin’s blog, I tried to think about who made initiating moves, following moves, and opposing moves. The facilitator did a great job of giving each person an equal amount of attention as well.
At the last bootcamp I asked if anyone knew of any facilitation courses, workshops, or any resources they could point me towards, I would really appreciate it!
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Eugene Eric Kim
Glad to hear the homework went well and that you had a chance to play with the Kantor framework. And, I hope you’ll take the time in the future to simply experiment with your own muscles as well. The Kantor framework is powerful, but it doesn’t take into account things like space and context, all of which are important to consider when understanding power.
I don’t have a specific course or workshop to recommend on facilitation. I’m sure the International Association of Facilitators has some good resources. Can anyone else recommend anything?
My biggest recommendation would be to find as many opportunities as possible to practice! For example, what suggestions might you have for @jessausinheiler on integrating the 100 Questions workout into her workshop?
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Dana
Hey ya’ll,
I am looking forward to our bootcamp today! Yesterday Brooking and I had a makeup session around what it means to be alive at work and we shared specific examples. The part I liked most about the exercise was finding a stranger to interview re: tell me about an experience where you felt alive at work, what made you feel alive. I enjoyed listening to a stranger’s perspective (who had no time to prepare an answer- just gut reaction). It was also fun probing to see how his perspective matched/ didn’t match with my own views.
head/ heart: Feeling alive!
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Dana
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?
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Eugene Eric Kim
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.
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Rebecca
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 🙂
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dana
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?!”
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Eugene Eric Kim and 
Jessica are discussing. 
dana, 
Rebecca, and 
Jessica 5:58 pm on December 18, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
My pleasure to facilitate and to share Holly Minch’s framework with other bootcampers. While I can’t attach an image I took of our white board, here’s a link to a post about using Holly’s framework, for our reference: http://networksguide.wikispaces.com/4-6+Creating+shared+language+and+talking+about+networks+and+network+impact
Re: Eugene’s comment below, had we had more time I think it would have been beneficial to try crafting a message BEFORE sharing the framework (despite the urge to talk theory first). In fact, even the ORDER in which I presented the framework mattered—it influenced how both Dana and I started crafted our messaging, which was entirely different from Eugene (we started with the “ask,” he began with the “vision”). I’ll definitely take his suggestion into account next time I design a learning exercise.
A couple more things I learned about messaging in the course of the bootcamp: it’s totally an iterative process; the channel matters (email vs. in-person), especially for me because I have little patience for crafting (or reading) long email messages; and having a narrowly defined audience and ask is very important.
Eugene Eric Kim 4:23 pm on December 20, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I “liked” your comment already @jessausinheiler, but I just had to add how much I love these insights. Thanks for sharing!