Moving from mind-numbing to engaging meetings

Submitted by: Cindy Leavitt

London Liberating Structure User Group-www.meetup.com/LondonLS-User-Group/

How many mind-numbing meetings have you attended in the last week? I can say that I have attended a lot over my career and am guilty of leading many of them. Not all of the meetings I attend or lead are mind-numbing. I have tried many different techniques to bring life to meetings and had some limited success. However, consistently holding engaging meetings has been a challenge for me and so I am always looking for new ideas.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend a workshop on Liberating Structures that introduced me to a several new ways to approach meetings and create an empowering culture. Liberating structures are thirty-five simple structured methods to stimulate conversation and thought and unleash the potential of any group or organization.

The workshop was different than I expected and rather confusing at first because there were not a lot of explicit instruction. Instead, the facilitators used many of the liberating structures to teach the group how to use them. As the group gave feedback on what would be helpful, the facilitators modified their approach and added more context about how they had successfully used the liberating structure they were introducing.

(Note: I am going to refer to the names of the liberating structures in quotes throughout the rest of this blog, not to be confusing, but to allow you to look up more information about them if you are interested.)

The most profound series of exercises for me was “drawing together” using five symbols to draw our personal purpose. This was different than other drawing exercises that I have done because it was structured with very easy symbols, which made it less intimidating. Then we used “impromptu networking” to allow people we didn’t know describe our pictures back to us. It was fascinating to me and the feedback helped me clarify my thinking and identify how I could better communicate. This insight came without me talking at all about what I was trying to express with my picture.

The potential of what I learned has been growing in my mind since the workshop. I have been thinking a lot about how I could use these liberating structures more and talking with others who attended to see how they were using them. One colleague told me how she used these structures the day after the workshop to have an energetic and truthful conversation around inclusion and equity. She used “1-2-4-All” combined with “Triz” to have a large group describe how they could create a strategic plan for equity and inclusion that would NEVER be enacted. This allowed the group to have a truthful and brave conversation about the barriers that exist to improving equity and inclusion on campus.

If this blog has sparked any interest, go check out the website (http://www.liberatingstructures.com/) and see if any of the methods might help with your next meeting.