Schuman S. - The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation (2005)(en)

imaginations, taps a motivation for work that surpasses contractual obligations and makes the work its own reward. Doing what you are told often breeds mere compliance. Pursuing a vision engenders involvement and commitment” (Napolitano, 1992).

The facilitator reads the answers on the flip chart to the question, “We’ll know this team has succeeded when we see or hear . . . ” and then asks the group what this means to them. He or she then asks for more ideas, and adds them to the list as they are expressed. Here are some group energizing questions:

“We overhear someone talking about the great job you did on your project. Who is saying what about your project? Who else is talking about what we accomplished?”

“People seek out your group to congratulate us on your great success. What did you do to create this success?”

“A front-page story in your city’s newspaper raves about your great accomplishment. What does the article say?”

“Fifty years from now, you fondly remember this group and project as the best time of your career. What do you remember that made this so memorable?”

Each answer is recorded on the flip chart.

Creating a vision should be energizing and invigorating. The group should stretch their imaginations, and the facilitator should be sure to smile and offer his or her own energy when leading this exercise.

When the list of items is exhausted, the group summarizes their vision for their task. This raw information can serve as a rough vision statement or a reminder of the discussion that you may use, if time allows, to assist the group in developing a formal vision statement.

Reviewing the Charter

In preparation for developing a mission statement, the team reviews their charter for clarity and understanding. Any of their unresolved questions or concerns are noted on flip chart paper. When the list is complete, a member from the chartering body should come in to address their questions and concerns.

Developing a Mission Statement

A mission statement is used to articulate the team’s purpose to its members and to others. It also forces the team to set the boundaries of their project. The facilitator explains that the next step in the Start-Up is to discuss the following questions and answer them by developing a mission statement:

•What is our purpose?

•What is our scope? What will we take on? What won’t we take on?

•How much time can we devote to this project per week?

•How often and when do we present our interim findings to the chartering body?

•Do we have all the skills and resources we need?

The facilitator discusses the flip charts relating to time commitments and how this relates to the team charter. The team discusses and agrees on when they expect to complete their project. Then they review the flip charts representing all of the work the team has accomplished so far.

As an example of a good mission statement, the facilitator can distribute the Star Trek mission statement in Exhibit 19.3, and ask each team member (or in a large group, small groups of team members) to develop a similar mission statement for the team. They should consider all of the work the team has done to date and also any time and resource constraints that exist, write their mission statements on sheets of flip chart paper, and post them on the wall. Then all team members should stroll around the room and review all the mission statements.

Based on the multiple mission statements, the facilitator leads the group in developing a combined team statement. If there is one mission statement that captures most of the team members’ ideas, the facilitator can modify it with the team’s suggestions. If there is not, he or she can ask the team to identify the key words and phrases in each mission statement, marking or circling those words and phrases as they do so. Then he or she can assist the team in organizing the key words and phrases to create a fresh mission statement. The facilitator uses consensus to ensure that the team agrees on the mission statement and then asks the team to post the mission statement at all team meetings.

Exhibit 19.3

The Star Trek Mission Statement: An Example

Here is the best mission statement I have ever heard.

“These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Crew members of the Starship Enterprise know exactly what they are supposed to do. . . . We could do worse than rewriting the Star Trek mission statement for whatever venture we are on. A simple statement. One that spells out who we are, what we are doing, and how we would like to go about doing it. Maybe even deal with the question of why we are doing it. Make the language exact, the goal specific, and even your worst employee will make you proud.

Source: Marianccio (1994, pp. 12–13).

Some teams will not be able to complete the mission statement at this session. If this appears to be the case, a small group of volunteers can develop a draft mission statement that the team can discuss at their next meeting.

Drafting a Work Plan

A work plan is developed to identify tasks that need to be carried out by the team and to assign responsibility and schedules for each of these tasks. The plan can be considered only a draft at this early stage of the team’s development, but as the team progresses, the plan should be revised to include additional tasks and details.

Several methods can be used, but the following method is quick and easy, and works well with a large group. It uses the format of a cause-and-effect/fishbone diagram (Brassard and Ritter, 1994). The facilitator posts a large sheet of flip chart paper (six to ten feet long) on the wall (or several pieces of regular flip-chart paper placed together so they appear as one large sheet) and draws the “bones” of the fish (see Exhibit 19.4).

Process Check

The team members brainstorm on what is going well or what they liked about the Start-Up, as well as what did not go well or needs improvement. Each item is recorded on the flip chart using a plus sign for what they liked and a minus sign for what did not go well. As an alternative, the team members could brainstorm the various parts of the process and use a grading of 1 through 5 of how well or poorly a process went with 1 meaning “needs reworking” and 5 meaning “outstanding; don’t change it.” The facilitator briefly reviews each list and asks the team what could be done to improve the items on the “what did not go well/needs improvement” list.

It is a good idea to conduct a process check at the end of each meeting. This allows the team to identify areas that need to be adjusted in their meeting process.

Closing

The facilitator congratulates the team for their hard work and wishes them well on their task. The flip chart pages are recorded for the team’s reference and pages to be posted at future meetings are prepared for the next meeting.

CONCLUSION

At the beginning of this chapter, Katzenbach and Smith’s team basics were noted as well as their caution that if these basics are not addressed, it would harm the team’s efforts. The Start-Up addresses those basics. Once a team completes the Start-Up, all members know more about their colleagues in the effort. They have a shared understanding of what it is they are supposed to accomplish: knowledge of the various skills and abilities they have to accomplish the task along with a general idea of how the task will be approached. The team learns about itself and demonstrates to itself that they can work together.

From our viewpoint as facilitators, the Start-Up is a repeatable method for organizing and effectively helping a team form. It affords a consistency of approach to working with clients, whether as an internal facilitator or an outside consultant. The consistency fosters efficiency, which is always a concern in today’s world.

Sylvia James

Mary Eggers

Marsha Hughes-Rease

Roland Loup

Bev Seiford

Large group meetings can be powerful accelerators when an organization or community wants to build alignment, deploy strategy, get work done (budget planning, project management, or exchanges of practice, for example), accelerate the way work gets done in communities and organizations, or accelerate and deepen organizational transformation. At the same time, facilitating groups of one hundred

or more participants can seem a daunting task.

This chapter presents ten principles for the design and facilitation of large group meetings based on our twenty years of experience designing and facilitating large group meetings in all sizes and types of organizations and communities around the world. By applying these ten principles, the large group facilitator will feel more confident that the meeting will achieve its intended results. In addition, participants will leave energized to act because their voices were heard, they acted wisely, and

they saw the meeting as worthwhile for themselves and for the group as a whole.

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THE PLANNING TEAM PROCESS

The meeting participants and sponsor are the best sources to ensure that the meeting has clear purpose and outcomes, the right participants, and the right conversations and activities to accomplish the meeting’s purpose. Throughout the planning and facilitation of the large group meeting, we work with a planning team that is a microcosm of the whole group that will participate in the meeting (Dannemiller Tyson Associates, 2004). This microcosm represents the diverse levels, roles, locations, experiences, viewpoints, attitudes (especially the cynics and skeptics), and cultures that characterize the meeting participants. The size of a planning team can vary from six to twenty-five, as long as it is representative. This team works together to ensure that the large group meeting produces the results that the organization needs to achieve.

Our experience is that the process of working with a planning team ensures success by creating participation, meeting ownership, predictability that the meeting agenda will lead to the desired outcomes, and energy (not only for the planning team members, but for all participants) around the large group meeting and the actions that come out of it.

In working with planning teams, we have learned to consider the following:

•Facilitate a design meeting with the planning team, up to two days in duration, to clarify the purpose and outcomes of the large group meeting and create the agenda.

•During the planning meeting, include the quiet voices and the voices of the fringe. These fringe voices make valuable contributions because they espouse views that are controversial and help break paradigms and make the undiscussable discussable. When they believe the agenda for the meeting will really work, there is a high probability that it will.

•Build the microcosm as a team. Help them to create a shared picture by first listening to each other for understanding, honoring that each person’s truth is true.

•After the design meeting, develop a detailed design including logistics, specific task assignments, and related handouts. Review the detailed design with the planning team, and revise as needed.

•Some organizations are so resource constrained that they will not give up people for two full days. Nonetheless, find creative ways to use whatever time you do have to combine the microcosm’s thinking and inform the design.

•If you cannot sit down with a planning team that truly represents the organization in a microcosm, do the best you can. Repeatedly ask the group questions like, “If the people from X department were here, what would they be saying?” The group often does a good job of representing the perspectives of those not present.

The flow of the planning meeting moves like an accordion. The meeting starts with gathering as many data as possible to allow the team to create a common database that reflects the richness of all their perspectives. Then the meeting narrows to agree on a specific purpose for the session being planned, expands again to identify all the possible chunks of the agenda, and narrows again to specify next steps needed for a successful meeting.

The planning team process is a key ingredient and underlies each of the ten principles for design and facilitation of large group meetings.

TEN PRINCIPLES AND THEIR PRACTICE

Principle 1: Develop a Compelling Purpose Statement to Guide the Meeting Design

A fundamental design principle that contributes greatly to the success of large group meeting facilitation is having a compelling statement of purpose for the meeting. This statement not only reflects the interests of the diverse stakeholders who will be attending the meeting but conveys an optimistic prediction about the result of bringing these stakeholders together for conversations that “unleash widespread creativity and inspire new levels of motivation” (Gerard and Ellinor, 2001, p. 2). Without a clear and succinct purpose statement, we find that it is almost impossible to create an intentional design for the right conversations and activities.

Developing a compelling purpose statement is a generative process involving the exploration of a wide range of possibilities for addressing complex and sometimes controversial issues. First, the planning team members work together to surface different perspectives and interests of the groups they represent and offer their own desires for the future. With data coming from many sources to inform the team, the facilitator’s challenge is to enable the planning team members to see the interconnectedness among diverse perspectives and create shared meaning. Based on the results of this discussion, the planning team is ready to agree on the meeting outcomes. As a microcosm of all the participants who will attend the large group meeting, these outcomes will reflect the interests of the whole group.

Once the planning team has agreed on the desired outcomes for the meeting, the next step is to agree on the purpose of the large group meeting by asking, “If these outcomes are met, what will be different at the end of this meeting?” Bunker and Alban (1997) suggest that many large group meetings fail because the purpose “is unclear, too broad, or too narrowly focused” (p. 218). Cady and Dannemiller (2004) advise that the purpose needs to be “broad enough to allow for flexibility and innovation while providing focus and direction for the identified objectives” (p. 560).

Developing a compelling purpose statement for a large group meeting can take a long time, and the struggle to agree on the purpose is vital to the success of the planning. Here are some tips for keeping the group moving toward the purpose statement:

•Let the design team brainstorm as a whole group any words or phrases or ideas that anyone thinks should belong in the purpose statement.

•Divide the team into subgroups, and have each group draft a purpose statement. If there is not one draft that the whole team accepts as a first draft, find and circle words and phrases common to all drafts. Ask them to use those to create a common draft.

•Explain consensus, and describe behavior that will help the group move to con- sensus—for example, “Instead of saying what you don’t like about the purpose draft, suggest what you want to add, change, or delete and why.”

•Be patient. People will drop out, come back in, get bored, and get frustrated. Stay positive, and keep encouraging.

•Be mindful to facilitate to consensus, not advocate for particular words or a purpose. The power of purpose comes from the planning team reaching consensus on the statement.

Principle 2: Think Converge/Diverge as a Design Framework Toward Consensus and Action

A large group meeting involves a series of conversations that allow people to come together and move apart to create and sustain change. Managing the flow of these conversations is a critical element of design. A critical design component is having the participants sit in groups at round tables, usually eight people at a table; each table group is a mix of diversity in the whole group (for example, location, function, and length of service with the organization).