Here’s @dana’s exit interview:
Talking to @brooking tomorrow; will post next week!
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Eugene Eric Kim
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Eugene Eric Kim
Hope everyone had a good Veteran’s Day weekend! I posted @jessausinheiler’s exit interview yesterday. @dana’s goes up tomorrow, and @brooking’s next week.
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Eugene Eric Kim
It was a fun little group dynamics exercise for me to watch you all talk about the possibility of continuing to meet, actually picking a date, and then exploring what you might want to do together on that date. Rather than simply enjoy the exercise in silence, I thought I’d also try to contribute something useful. 🙂
First, my meta-observations: @jessausinheiler showed a lot of leadership in not only proposing a date, but also by making an offer. To me, that was classic do-acracy. @brooking showed a lot of leadership in committing to the date, then advocating for her interests. When there was conflict around what to do on the 10th, Brooking then showed skill by noting that there wasn’t shared clarity around what all of the individual goals were for continuing to meet.
There’s a spectrum of ways to get that clarity. On the one hand, you can have a discussion, get all of your interests on a table, then try to come to consensus on a meeting goal and design for the 10th. On the other hand, you can let the person who organizes decide. If people aren’t interested in following, they won’t come.
I would lean towards the “let the organizer decide” part of the spectrum. And, I’d like to step out of the observer role to make a suggestion and an offer.
I would like to see two things happening at scale. First, I’d like to see people doing workouts on their own. Second, I’d like to see people doing “jam sessions” on their own. By jam sessions, I mean coming together and practicing by playing. That could mean making up the workout on the fly, or it could mean having one person pick the progression they want to try playing.
One of the things on my list to do is to create “workout cards,” so that people can easily download and do these workouts on their own. I’ve started doing some of this to support @anna341bc and @lauren, but I want to push them all out sooner rather than later.
I’d encourage you all to commit to meeting for five weeks, not just one. Since Jess organized the first session, I’d let her decide what she wants to do. She may choose to solicit input, or she may choose to do her own thing. Since Brooking has shown strong interest in a specific experiment, I’d let her have the second session.
The rest of you can pick the remaining days. If you’d like to use one of my workouts, let me know, and I’ll prioritize pushing out the appropriate workout card.
Finally, my offer to all of you is: 1. to come to all five sessions as a participant rather than a facilitator; and 2. to offer support and feedback for anyone who’d like help designing a session.
How does that sound?
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Jessica
Eugene, I think my reply to your comment here got lost in the shuffle…
…maybe I can solicit your and @marie and @eekim ‘s help in turning @marie ‘s “narrowing” challenge into our next bootcamp exercise (yes team … I’m “it”):
1. Using a deck of “calling cards” by Richard Leider. The deck of cards showcase various “callings” (e.g., thinking critically, connecting to others, writing) and requires you to quickly identify what your core interests are. Would it be interesting to go through an exercise of narrowing down a set of skills to think about what you might be passionate and/or good at? (I have a sense that @brooking might have done this before)
2. As part of a community of practice of which I was a part, we had Holly Minch present a “persuation framework” (see this link: http://networksguide.wikispaces.com/4-6+Creating+shared+language+and+talking+about+networks+and+network+impact) that helps you think about crafting highly targeted/relevant messages.
Does anyone have a particularly negative reaction to either of these two?
@impact hub? @eekim and @marie, you interested in helping a changemaker create a workout around either one of these?-
Eugene Eric Kim
Responded here.
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Brooking
Belated reply but Jess I am totally down and excited to do this calling card thing in our 1st session!
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Eugene Eric Kim
Fun, fun, fun to see bootcampers — old and new — pop onto the water cooler this week! I had a long day yesterday that was packed with meetings, but it was re-energizing to peek here afterward and see all of this activity!
My exit interview with @eugenechan is now up:
I’ll post @jessausinheiler and @dana’s next week and @brooking’s the week after.
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Renee Fazzari
Hey folks – wow! There is a lot to catch up on since my last visit to the Water Cooler. I look forward to perusing a bit of this! But for now, a quick question for you all – does anyone have experience with fishbowl sessions at a conference that have worked well?
For me, the fishbowl – where you have 3-5 presenters in a circle with empty chairs that people can filter into and ask questions – is that mythical presentation descriptor on any session planning worksheet, that begs me to pick it but I never have the guts to give it a try. I’ve heard lots of warnings against fishbowls, but they seem so great in theory! The small group conversation in the large group format. We’re considering this for a conference of about 90 people in December. Any tips or warnings greatly appreciated!
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Renee
And to answer my own question: a post-back from my Facebook crowd-sourcing question on this same topic:
From Stephanie Syd Yang (a Bootcamper in spirit!)… aha! i have a lot to say!! (and hiii renee!) so, i am on the side of not liking fishbowls, as they can be performative and well, annoying as an audience/observer/person on the outside. however, i also admit that i have participated in them many times over the years and am coming around to appreciating then benefit in allowing pthers to be witness to a dynamic that is difficult to “describe” or is too easy to “theorize”. that said, fishbowls i have appreciated are ones that stay on point (as much they can) and are not too lengthy time wise. personally i find the richness of fishbowls in the reflections and conversations afterwards, and the questions that are then generated
so, where i get frustrated wth fishbowls is the following:
1. folks in the circle take the opportunity of the fishbowl to take up A LOT of space — to air other thoughts, frustrtions, ideas etc as if there has been no other space to be heard, thus not allowing for shared space and eating up so so so much time
2. people going way off topic
3. those who tap in to the fishbowl having to wait a really long time to contributw because othrs on the circle are taking up a lot of space and/or moving the discussion into other or unexpected directions
4. ways that the fishbowl can get very self-focused by those in the bowl and thua moving it away from being a tool/technique to elicit questions and deepen reflections on a certain topic and / or dynamicok! i will stop now happy to share more if you’d like.
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Eugene Eric Kim
I love fishbowls! And there’s definitely an art to doing them well.
Once you get beyond about 20 people, the dynamic definitely shifts. 90 people is a lot. I’ve done one this size once, and it worked well, but there are definitely some additional factors . (A nerdy aside: A “fishbowl” where you essentially structure the space like a panel only with empty chairs, it’s actually a “park bench.”)
Stephanie’s feedback is excellent. Here are some additional thoughts:
- Establish groundrules. One of the risks, as Stephanie points out, is that people go up and start taking up space without participating in the spirit of the discussion. Establishing appropriate groundrules empowers everybody to be a facilitator. This actually happened at a large park bench I facilitated several years ago, where one of the panelists did a beautiful job getting an audience member to get off his soapbox.
- Prep the initial participants. Spend some time explaining the dynamic and offering suggestions on how to engage, including permission to facilitate.
- You still have a facilitator if you need one! If you have a facilitator as part of the original group, then you have a built-in backup plan, because if the conversation starts to get unruly, the facilitator can always get back in the circle and take care of it. In other words, the worst case scenario of a “facilitated” fishbowl should be that it essentially becomes a panel discussion.
- Be intentional. As always, you should be clear about why you’re doing this and whether you’re setting yourself up for success. For example, if you were to try to plug a fishbowl into a traditional townhall meeting, where the dynamic is that it’s generally the only space for community members to air their grievances, the fishbowl will probably not succeed (or it will be just as bad as any other townhall meeting). As always, being clear about intention matters.
- Choose the variation that works best. You can customize fishbowls in lots of different ways. If you want to be really safe, you can have a moderator just stay up there the whole time. The number of empty chairs shifts the dynamic. I like to do the musical chair version, where if one person sits down, another person has to leave, so that you always have empty chairs, but you don’t have to do it that way. I prefer more open designs in general, but if you’re not comfortable with that, you can refine accordingly.
- Give it time to work. The biggest mistake that people make with more open, participatory designs — especially with lots of people — is that they bail when things get awkward. Generally, things will start off awkward, even with a skilled, acculturated group. Give it time for norms and a rhythm to develop.
As always, let us know what you decide to do and how it goes!
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Renee
Thanks Eugene! These are great tips. I’m a little concerned because we only have 1h15m for the whole thing, which would include setting the ground rules, introducing the conversation, and doing the fishbowl.
But I’m still really leaning towards the format because there is a dynamic within our group that only a few select people are really “in the know” and other more ancillary people are often left out of inner circle information. It would be nice to draw some of that out – which I think happens better in a conversation than in a panel presentation. Plus we just want to experiment with something different.
I’m also including another post from my facebook request, below. I will report back!
Hey Renee Fazzari – I agree with Stephanie Syd Yang. I am a huge fan of fishbowls when there is a conversation in the group that needs to be had by some ppl and everyone needs to witness it. It works well when you prime the fish! The first fish should embody the perspectives of different “camps” in the group, and have an intimate dialogue with each other in front of everyone about the decision or issue at hand. Sometimes passing note cards w ?s into the center circle works. Sometimes the tapping thing that syd describes is great – as the somatics of stepping into that center circle to speak can really be powerful. It can also work in an anti oppression conversation – for example, women talk in the center circle about experiences with sexism, men listen and hold that outer circle. Where it doesn’t work is when it’s really like a panel discussion – ppl in the center each going on about their thing, whatever it is, and everyone else passively watching. Good luck with your convening!
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Eugene Eric Kim
1h15m is more than enough time. I’d be more concerned about the size of the group.
I like your underlying motivation, and I also like your friend’s feedback about physically modeling an inner and outer circle. I did an exercise with about 140 people where we broke out into nine fishbowls, with one leadership team member per fishbowl. The feedback we got from a few participants was that they liked the physical act of stepping into the inner circle, which felt symbolic of stepping into their own leadership.
Regarding having multiple fishbowls: I like doing this for large groups, largely for group physics reasons, and there were some other advantages with the above meeting. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for your gathering. It’s logistically a lot more challenging, and you have to give very clear instructions, most likely multiple times. You can’t afford to be too open-ended in your instructions, because it will just confuse the heck out of people. Doing one large fishbowl / park bench seems like it will be an interesting enough experiment for you all!
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Jessica
I like Eugene love fishbowls. I’ve seen them work really well with 25 and even 40 people.
Things that have worked well include everything that Eugene mentioned, particularly prepping participants and having a facilitator.
I’d make two additions:
TIMING: I’ve found them to work really well at the END of a long day, when people are tired and may appreciate the opportunity to sit back and listen a bit.
WILD CARD: Spicing up the inner circle with a wild card–a person who asks provocative questions–has worked wonders to get the conversation flowing in a different direction, organically.Hope this helps!
Jess
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Renee
Thank you Jessica and Eugene for all of the advice. I’m sorry to say that we decided to scrap this idea, this time. We just don’t have the time before the conference to think through all the logistics. Also we don’t have enough time (or flexibilty with space) to make a fishbowl feel like a safe space for people to participate. We worry that without really setting up a different feeling space, it will feel pretty hard for people to march up on stage and join presenters, thus creating an exclusivity component that would only have very confident voices join, rather than really tapping the wisdom of the whole room.
That said, I’m totally committed to doing a fishbowl soon and will keep all this advice in my back pocket for the next time around. Super grateful for everyone’s advice and time!
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Eugene Eric Kim
Those sound like wise reasons for not doing it. Thanks for reporting back, as always, Renee! Looking forward to hearing how it does go.
How did your GEO presentation go? You were a tweeting machine! 🙂
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Brooking
Hi group.
A quick reflection to honor my commitment to post this week, and knowing it’s now or never as I’m traveling tonight/tomorrow.
My reflection is really that I am sitting with this question about the different ways that practice can be practiced. Asking questions about the role of structure in practice, the role of frameworks and guidelines. Thinking about children and what we can learn from them in this regard – give a kid a tool as multipurpose and flexible as play dough, e.g., and they’ll just play. (have you noticed i like play dough!?!?). Give a kid a board game, and they can just play with the board and pieces willy nilly, maybe make up a fun new game, but they may be missing out on the fun of the game the board was designed to facilitate. There’s a place for that creative play and there’s a place for teaching some rules of a game so the group can play in a particular way together.
So in thinking about what it really is to have an effective community of practice, these sorts of questions come up for me. And I’m truly just sitting with questions, curiosities, and enjoying the possibility of using this group and our future monthly-ish meetings to explore different ways we might come together and “practice”, and the different values of different levels of structure, facilitation/guidance, frameworks & content/knowledge support, etc. Thoughts welcome, and most of all glad we’ve set the clear intention of continuing our momentum together.-
Renee
Hey Brooking – So, Eugene will be shocked : ) but I’m a big fan of having some theory or framework to hang my practice on. This doesn’t have to be from an expert – this is what I really learned in Bootcamp – that we all have an immense amount of expertise, but we need the right process to draw wisdom from the group. But whether it comes from someone who “does this for a living” and has advice to give, or from the wisdom of a group, I like to be reminded of the purpose and the goal of the practice and then have a learning space where I can measure how well I (or the group) is doing on the practice we’re attempting.
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Eugene Eric Kim
I’m totally shocked by @renee’s comment. 🙂 Renee, you’ll be happy to know that I led with framework in my redesigned “Designing Meetings” workout. It’s the only one where I did that, although I have some ideas for a few others. I’ll let the other bootcampers describe how they thought it went.
@brooking, the child’s play metaphor is a fantastic way to think about different ways to structure practice. The only other thing I’d offer now in regards to our previous discussion about continuing momentum is that, at the end of the day, the best principles is forward movement — putting a stake in the ground, trying something, and learning from that.
Generally, I’d prefer to let you all organize however you see fit without my intervention, but I have some ideas as to how to best support you in all of that, which I’ll offer in a post later today.
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Lauren
This is a long awaited post for me! Hello fellow bootcampers!
My name is Lauren Rodriguez and I was part of the Changemaker bootcamp training earlier this year with the fabulous @renee, @natalie and @anna341bc. Over the last couple of weeks,@anna341bc and I have been practicing changemaker bootcamp exercises on our own at the lovely Jazz Café in Downtown Berkeley (sometimes there live music!). We practice on Fridays- a great day for the both of us and meet half way between our homes in El Cerrito and Oakland. We decided to practice together for various reasons. For me, it was that I had reached my yearly professional development training budget at my org, having recently gone through Rockwood’s Art of Leadership.
My bootcamp project is geared around a research publication project for my organization, having been tasked with conducting the initial research and analysis. And my goals are to practice my critical thinking, synthesis and interview skills. Having this project in mind, practicing with Anna has been a great experience. Anna and I are both women of color and our workouts have been a very safe space for me to open up about parts of my professional growth aspects that I want to work on. Elements of our bootcamp sessions have been tailored to discussing issues that are particularly relevant and challenging for us as we work out such as identifying power/group dynamics in the room. We have also created the space to share stories about some similar struggles and have practiced having difficult conversations throughout our work-outs.
One of the biggest learning edges during our initial work outs with Anna has been to practice and weighing the pros and cons of having a difficult conversation with my management team at work. Anna and I both bring a racial lens to our work and this has been incredibly empowering for me. I am having this difficult conversation on Friday. Thanks @marie for sharing your difficult conversation since the theme is overlapping and it was helpful to read what works for you to build up that courage!
A reflection so far is realizing how much more confident in my work I have grown since the last bootcamp round. In the first bootcamp round, I voiced a concern about being the “youngest person is the room”. Working with Anna has really helped me understand the value that I bring to the table and become more confident in my skills as a researcher- and having faith that I AM capable! For me, working together in a pair has a deep value since you get to dig deep earlier.
I hope to post every week of our work ours from here on out! Thanks to all of you for sharing your experiences and tools! Reading these have been very beneficial to me!
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Jessica
Lauren, my name is @jessausinheiler & I’m part of the latest class of bootcampers. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the blog — at our last bootcamp (was it just yesterday??!!) we talked about wanting to connect with previous bootcampers, so it was fortuitous to see your post pop up in my mailbox.
I can certainly identify with being young and being colorful. I too have appreciated being in an environment (bootcamp) where both of those things — but particularly the former — are valued. And I’ve also appreciated speaking openly of power dynamics, as it’s made me more aware of the power that we all have.
Anyways, post on and keep us posted on Friday’s conversation
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Renee
It is so awesome that you and Anna are practicing together, Lauren! I’m impressed with both of your follow through and its really fun to come back to this space and realize how much it has grown! Congratulations on building that courage. I’m so curious about your experience with Rockwood after our discussions about it. Feel free to ping me offline if you don’t want to post here.
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marie
Difficult Conversation Follow Up
Well, I had the conversation with Chad this morning. I picked my power outfit (I’ll spare you the fashion details, but it’s one of my favorite dresses), and I felt like even more of a badass in it after biking to work – never thought I’d be biking anywhere in anything other than some sort of spandex gym clothes or jeans I don’t care about.
The conversation started to go down a similar path as in the past, which is to say, avoidance of the giant elephant in the room that I’m doing a completely different job than I was hired for with no acknowledgement in any way. So, I called it out.
2 things that stood out for me that were different than before:
*First, I was better able to express my frustration in a positive way – that I want to be able to add the highest amount of value to this company by prioritizing the right tasks and having the time to do them well.
*This seemed to allow him to open up to me and be more transparent than he had been before by acknowledging that he was (and has been) struggling to convince the upper management of the value of building community internally versus the value of staffing a more robust marketing/business development team.
I remembered your comment from yesterday @Jess about being able to see the situation from the other person’s viewpoint and I really clearly saw/felt that today.
I didn’t reach my epic goal (new title, new salary stated/signed off on in the meeting), but I pushed for a concrete follow up plan. He is meeting with the Finance Director tomorrow and promised to follow up with me directly afterwards. At a minimum, he assured me we are posting to hire for the part-time person by Friday of this week. Once hired, I will be directly managing this person, which is exciting for me!
My new challenge/assignment: narrowing down the top 3 priorities/projects I’d like to focus on moving forward so that we can better redefine my role. Caveat – my priorities/projects should take into consideration revenue earning potential as a way to sell it to the management team – game on!
Overall, I walked away from the conversation feeling a lot better than I have in the past, and regardless of what happens moving forward I’ve got my BATNA – thanks for the acronym Eugene Chan 🙂 So grateful for all of the feedback/support Bootcamp team – more to come! Looking forward to hopefully seeing you all and working with you all again in the near future.
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Eugene Eric Kim
Thanks for sharing, @marie! So glad to hear your meeting went well. In particular, I loved that you:
- Put on your superhero costume. We want pictures.
- Rode to work in your supervehicle.
- Made the move to break past patterns.
- Reframed your frustration in a positive way.
- Got good outcomes as a result. The specifics around the part-time person is a big win, as well as concrete agreement to followup. You’re usually not going to hit your epic goals — that’s why they’re epic — but all of these seem like great results.
What does “BATNA” stand for?!
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Eugene Chan
@marie: thank you for the report. you went into the difficult conversation on your own terms. this is inspirational!
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Eugene Chan
BTW, narrowing the projects/priorities seems like a perfect candidate for a bootcamper exercies – either solo or in conjunction with others. (I am happy to offer feedback or be an active listener.)
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Rebecca
Agreed! Narrowing would be a great bootcamper exercise! And something I’d love to practice. Count me in! & Marie, if I can be of service at all from a long term member in helping you play with that narrowing, don’t hesitate to reach out!!
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Brooking
Awesome! Thanks so much for the update and glad it went well with clear follow up in place. This part:
“my priorities/projects should take into consideration revenue earning potential as a way to sell it to the management team – game on!” seems like great learning – in smaller organizations where justifying entirely internal roles can be difficult, it seems smart to link the work you love with work that aligns with profit/biz dev goals. Look forward to hearing more please do keep us posted! -
Jessica
Marie, thanks for the report! I was totally empathetic throughout the whole description, having had my own set of tough conversations recently… (and apologies for the delayed reply… I was paying attention to exit interviews and must have missed this email)
Re: narrowing, and this may be a bit tangential, but two things come to mind… and maybe I can solicit your and @eekim ‘s help in turning this into our next bootcamp exercise (yes team … I’m “it”):
1. There’s a neat exercise that involve narrowing down a deck of “Purpose” cards (e.g., thinking critically, connecting to others, writing) to identify what your core interests are. Would it be interesting to go through an exercise of narrowing down a set of skills to think about what you might be passionate and/or good at? (I have a sense that @brooking might have done this before)
2. As part of a community of practice of which I was a part, we had Holly Minch present a “persuation framework” (see this link: http://networksguide.wikispaces.com/4-6+Creating+shared+language+and+talking+about+networks+and+network+impact) that helps you think about crafting highly targeted/relevant messages.
Does anyone have a particularly negative reaction to either of these two?
@impact hub? @eekim and @marie, you interested in helping a changemaker create a workout around either one of these?-
Eugene Eric Kim
I think both are interesting, and I’d be happy to help.
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Eugene Eric Kim
I just posted our first exit interview (thanks @marie!) on the Changemaker Bootcamp blog.
Looking forward to speaking with the rest of you over the next week. You’ll be able to watch the aggregated set at:
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Eugene Eric Kim
Y’all are a powerful looking bunch! 🙂
Thanks for being such a wonderful group. I’ll post more thoughts on possible followups later this week. Until then!
Brooking, 
Eugene Eric Kim, and 
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