facilitate

Selecting Shore Parties - Using breakouts - Image courtesy Nextvoyage via Pexels

#049 – Selecting Shore Parties – Using Breakouts

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Creatively organise meetings to utilise the power of different combinations – Structure & equip your breakouts for creative insight & ownership

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The benefits of breakouts

Why take this challenge?

Increase the levels of participation and ownership in your meetings

Raise the energy of group meetings by introducing a variety of approach

Get better outcomes and greater confidence in their delivery

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

We called this adventure ‘Shore Parties’ to reflect the idea of small groups of people going off to explore something on behalf of everyone else.

Most of us are used to breakout groups in events and workshops. Splitting a larger group down into smaller ones encourages more people to speak up. It makes it less likely that the overall output is dominated by a subset of stronger, more confident (more dominant?) voices.

The functionality of software like Teams and Zoom makes it so much easier to organise breakouts in virtual meetings. Unlike physical meetings, there is no need to rent or book extra rooms, or to direct people to them. A few clicks and everybody is speaking to a new smaller group of people.

Grouping does not need to be random, and there can be a lot of power in how you select groupings and how you bring them back together. To get a sense of the range of groupings that are available to you, take a look and the grouping options article in the Pack section below.

Furthermore, using jamboards to capture the output from the breakouts gives a great way of sharing this back between the teams.

But it doesn’t need to be complicated. Even the simplest of breakouts can boost the energy and enthusiasm. How often do you set up breakouts in your own meetings? This week’s adventure is about doing it more.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Glass orb image of man exploring woods in curious stance - metaphor for using questions to understand situations

#029 – Scouting the Terrain (Using Questions)

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Develop your facilitative leadership skills – Provide empowering leadership through your choice of questions

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

The benefits of better questions

Why take this challenge?

Develop more facilitative approaches to leadership through questions

Build greater participation, contributions and ownership from your team

Use normal working opportunities to better grow your people’s potential

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Good questions are the most powerful tools available to us. They stimulate engagement, confront error, energise debate, foster humility, unearth reason, generate insight, build ownership, deliver progress and help us find the right answers. Questions are key to adopting a more facilitative (and less directive) style of leadership. They help us to ensure progress, and to develop our people at the same time. And they enable us to ‘Scout the Terrain’ – to really understand what is going on before seeking to influence an outcome.

But how do we find good questions?

I have been a consultant and a facilitator for over 30 years now, and I confess they still don’t come as easily as I want them to.

I believe that part of the issue is attitudinal – in my heart (read ego) I still like to be the one with the answer. But I also like to help people grow. And I know that an answer provided by me is nowhere near as powerful as an answer discovered by ‘them’.

Something that has been immensely helpful to me is Monitoring my Internal Condition. If I can keep my head in curiosity, questions come much more easily. And if I can focus on my role as a facilitator over my role as a consultant, I can rid myself of the expectation that I should already have the answers.

Also, if I can think through the journey (at a meta-level) that people are likely to be taking beforehand, I have more time to develop the questions and incorporate them in the process I am using.

And there are also sources of good questions available if we have the time to peruse them in advance. Liberating Structures is one such source, and contains a range of question / format combinations that can be used effectively to engage people’s thinking.

So this week’s adventure is to practice deliberately using questions where you might otherwise provide answers.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Glass orb of Girl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

#015 – Facilitating Adventure in Others

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Building confidence in our ‘voice’ and the ‘voices’ around us – Using structure to draw out insight and self-discovery in peopleGirl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Benefits of facilitating adventure in others

Why take this challenge?

  • To think through what it might mean to find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs
  • To develop a picture of the changes we want to see for ourselves and those around us
  • To provide a context for using structure to inspire creativity and self-discovery

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

In Leading by Adventure, our first 12 or so adventures might be best described as adventuring in leadership. They have been largely about us, and who, how and why we are.

They have hopefully been an exercise in moving our perspective out, and seeing things a little bit differently.  Partly in the hope that some of those perspectives we might find helpful, and want to use again. But mostly with the intention of developing a habit of deliberately taking time to test out new perspectives and whatever they may or may not bring.

But what about the adventure we lead in others? How do we facilitate attitudes and habits in others to adventurously adopt new perspectives? After all, the stated aim of our adventuring is to help equip people for a future that is increasingly all about change.

So, as leaders (and we are ALL leaders – ‘Leadership is a choice, not a position’ – Stephen Covey) how are we helping those around us to explore new perspectives? How are we helping them to develop the skill of shifting their view points? And how are we developing confidence in them? That they too are adventurers in change and not the victims of it?

Over the next 12 or so adventures, our focus will be on leading (facilitating) adventures in others. Whatever our relation to them might be. In doing so, our own adventure will be into Covey’s vision for us: To find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs. (See the pack)

We will be using tools and techniques (some of which may be familiar) that ‘draw out’ from people, rather than ‘push in’. Tools that offer people a path to self-discovery of insights, rather than passively receiving  them from others. And to keep it real, and make it sustainable, these are all things that you will be applying within your ‘normal’ work. Your (and their) current needs and situations.

The purpose of this week’s adventure then, is to develop a perspective, a vision, for how you would ideally see their voices develop. You may already have solutions for each of the tracks in place. But if you do, then please take this opportunity to consider how they might be further improved.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Picture of painted face - metaphor for making more memorable meetings

#005 – Disrupting the Camouflage

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Disrupting the Camouflage; Better Embrace Diversity in your Meetings; Make your virtual meetings a visual feast

Why take this challenge?

To redress the effect that web conferencing (Zoom, Teams, etc.) is having on our ability to remember meeting content.

To make discussion within meetings more memorable, and thereby easier to apply and recall in practice.

To increase creativity and diversity in virtual meetings.

 

Virtual meetings have enabled so much to take place through the Covid pandemic that otherwise would not have been possible.

But there are problems, and one of these is that people are finding it more difficult to remember them. The visual similarity between one meeting and the next (same interface, same room) is limiting the cues our mind uses to connect pieces of information together, and this means we are getting more forgetful.

So this weeks adventure is all about creating new perspectives in your meetings to aid people’s ability to ‘connect the dots’ in their own memories.

 

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

 

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

Useful links: