Part Two of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action
2. Have a good question
One of the most common questions I get asked is “how do I come up with a powerful question?” My answer is “it depends.” There are some great guides to there to making great questions, (like ORID, Strategic Questioning or The Art of Powerful Questions) but when it comes down to it, my own practice is fairly intuitive. Here are a few guiding principles I use when creating good questions.
Know where you are in the process. Good dialogue proceeds from a good question, and a good question is dependant on the context of the work. When we are working in complex situations we can derive questions from the three phases of adaptive action: “What?” “So What?” and “Now What?”
Questions that get at “What?” are questions that help us to see what is happening. They orient us to the context of work. “What is going on here?” can be a perfect question to elicit stories and perspectives on a situation. Such stories and perspectives – especially when gathered from a diversity of voices and experiences – give us a rich set of data from which to ask more questions.
“So What?” questions are all about sensemaking. They ask us to look at data and discover together what it means. Given an understanding of one’s context – even an inevitably incomplete understanding – it’s possible to ask questions about where we want to go, what we want to do, or what needs to be changed. It’s often tempting to start with these questions but in the absence of at least some data, conversations around sensemaking questions devolve into aspirational wish lists or ungrounded conflicts of opinion.
“Now What?” questions are the ones of strategic intent. These are ones that require us to make decisions and to act to respond to the sense we made of our current context and do something about it. Sometimes we need to choose one direction to go in. Sometimes we need to send out exploration parties to discover promising pathways forward. Either way asking “now what do we do?” is a move that can only come after we have made sense of a situation.
Ask a question that no one can answer alone. Perhaps it goes without saying, but a good conversation is not a cross-examination, where one person has an answer and they try to elicit that answer from another. It constantly surprises me how frequently people in power “engagement wash” projects by giving the illusion of curiosity or openness while they hide the fact that their mind has already been made up. In Canada such action is technically illegal when it comes to consultation with First Nations with respect to infringing Aboriginal rights. Resource companies and governments regularly get called to account by the courts for pulling this trick.
At the very least I find this practice unethical and it leads to distrust, anger and apathy. As a professional facilitator I sometimes get asked to lead these kinds of processes and my response is to work with the client to be clear and honest about what is one the table for discussion. In a surprising number of cases I have had clients refuse to shift their stance, and in a couple of cases I have actually had people ask me to lead engagement processes that would lead the participants to a pre-determined conclusion. Those are immensely satisfying clients to fire. I only despair to know that there is often someone out there that will do the work regardless.
Just be honest about what you don’t know and go and find people to talk to that are smarter or more experienced that you are. I guarantee when you approach people with questions like that the honour and respect you afford them will create a great conversation.
Keep it simple and let the group add the depth. There is a romance about the beautiful and powerful question. Think of Mary Oliver’s question “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” That is a beautiful question, aesthetically gorgeous, a small poem in itself. But for me such a question inspires awe and appreciation but not an answer. That may well be the kind of question that you can live into, but it is not necessarily a practical question for strategic work. Don’t get me wrong, as a person with a contemplative practice I love these kinds of questions. They give me a chance to reflect on my life; I can live them in the way that Rilke invites us to live a question.
But for a conversation in a meeting, keep your questions simple and let the group bring the depth. One of the best World Cafes I ever ran was a three round affair in which we asked the question “we are halfway through this retreat. What do we need to talk about now?” Another time, in a deeply conflicted community I asked “What the hell is going on?” These questions had the effect of opening a little space for the real conversations that were already happening to come into our process. The questions were simple, the conversations were powerful.
What are your own reflections and principles on creating good questions?
As the story goes, my buddy Tenneson Woolf sat down with our teacher and friend Toke Møller, and with all the depth of his legendary commitment to simplicity he asked this question: “Toke, if I had no tools or methods, but needed to hold an important conversation, what’s the ONE thing.I could use.”
And Toke thought for a moment and said “Presence. Just bring your full presence to the situation. Oh, and have a good question…oh….and…” What followed was short list of seven little things to stick in your back pocket that you can pull out to use anytime you need to stop and host a conversation.
Over the past few months I’ve been reflecting on these little helpers. They are both a very easy way into the practice of the Art of Hosting, whether you are using it for facilitation or leadership. And as I’m giving some thought lately about how to introduce these ideas in different languages and cultural contexts, I’m returning to the simplicity of these original seven basic tools, but I’m unpacking them and using them as a way to reflect on my practice. I think these might make a very good foundation for a particular kind of facilitation workshop.
So here they are, expanded, in an updated form, and with some new thoughts. This will be a series of seven posts, so please follow along and reflect with me as we go.
1. Be Present
When we are facing uncertainty and especially when the situation is complex the wisest thing we can do is to be still and open our senses to what is going on. This is both a personal and a collective practice. For me personally it means listening, watching, noticing what I am feeling. Becoming present helps me to sense the situation. It allows time to make a connection between our observations of the context and what we know to be true. It also allows us to wonder a bit about what we’re seeing and to file that in the “ask more deeply about this” bucket. As pattern finding creatures we look for the familiar first and when the context is uncertain we need to quickly scan for that which is unfamiliar too. The beginning of this work of Hosting conversations that matter comes from the practice of recognizing the unfamiliar in a sea of things that seem to make sense. It is not what we know that causes us to feel uncertain. It is the new and novel, perhaps even the easily dismissed that calls our deeper attention – a kind of unsettling dissatisfaction with the status quo – into play.
Being present allows us to linger in the unknown for a while and to take time to name it as a space of unfamiliarity. It also allows us to identify in ourselves what is trembling, worrying, disconcerting. My inner emotional landscape can provide a reliable set of signals and warnings, but without being quiet and still for a bit it can also provide a very unreliable set of responses to those signals.
Just as presence is a critical personal practice, it is also one that is important to do collectively. At the beginning of all conversations that matter I take a moment to bring people present to the work we are doing, provide a clear break from one context to another, and invite them fully into the work at hand. We often take a moment in silence to reflect on the work. I create a certain and clear threshold to cross before we begin.
In the work of confronting uncertainty, becoming present helps to ask the question “what is going on?” Which is always the first question to ask to orient a group’s attention to the task at hand. As we gather answers and reflections on that question, we can also look at how those insights work on us as a group, where we have fragility around the situation, where we need to be challenged, or where we are resourceful and clear.
Becoming present is the first tool to use but it is also one you can always come back to. When conversations are difficult, when emotional tension is high, offering a moment of silent presence is a generous act. It allows people to go inward and find their own wisdom in the situation. It can allow people a chance to let the adrenaline flow through their system and bring their senses back on line. It has saved many a tense conversation for me and helped me deal with situations that take me right out of my good mind.
I think we are living in a time when every emotion we are capable of generating is seen as a potential for making money. Our loyalty is co-opted by brands. Our anger is co-opted by politicians who channel it towards groups they scapegoat and then ride in as saviours of our condition. Our sense of reverence is owned by Hollywood, who exploits it for the latest superhero movie. Our love is sucked up by celebrities who are ciphers for the qualities in ourselves we can no longer recognize.
The most disempowering thing you can do to another human being is rob them of their ability to love themselves, not in a narcissistic way, but in an authentic acceptance of who they are, full of gifts and flaws and unique ways of seeing the world. There is nothing more dispiriting I think than being unable to love yourself. You think you are never capable of loving others or being loved. And all the while we tap “like” and “love” on our social media accounts and take the dopamine hits from pixels flying from one user to another through the filter of a money making machine.
So yesterday, when I saw this thread tweet, it stopped me in my tracks:
RuPaul’s been telling us for years, “If you don’t love yourself, how the HELL you gonna love anybody else?”
And we agreed.
But then, Lizzo switched it up in her Tiny-Ass Desk Concert. She said, “If you can love me, you can love yourself.”
And I can’t stop thinking about that.— Angela Mayfield (@pinkrocktopus) July 30, 2019
I was struck by how that one almost throwaway line at the end of the performance became a full on sermon for Angela Mayfield. That’s a wicked perception. And following along a little further, I clicked through to the link of Lizzo’s Tiny(-Ass) Desk Concert and could not stop smiling for 17 straight minutes, which you should do right now.
Lizzo is right. If you are capable of loving someone else, or even shouting out at a concert “I LOVE YOU!” then you are indeed capable of shouting it at yourself. It’s a reminder of me to not be exclusively directed my emotions outward, but instead to notice how love, anger, loyalty, and reverence can be a healthy part of my inner life, and not merely directed outwardly all the time. In an era where we project ourselves into the world through media like this, where our images, words and thoughts are put outside of ourselves first and foremost, thereby separating us from our feelings, Lizzo’s small invitation is a powerful reminder to me to take it all in too.
I’m just coming home from a couple of days in Victoria where Caitlin and I were with colleagues Rebecca Ataya, Annemarie Travers, and Kelly Poirier. We spent two days working on what I can only call “polishing the core” of the Leadership 2020 program that we offer on behalf of the Federation of Community Social Service of BC. We have run this leadership program for 8 years now, putting around 400 people through a nine month intensive program of residential and applied learning. The program has built collaboration, trust, and connection between the Ministry of Children and Family Development, indigenous communities and organizations and people working in the social services sector.
The program has evolved with every one of the 13 cohorts that has come through. Our core team has changed and this new configuration is our latest version. We are playing with a new set of constraints and ideas as we take the core need and purpose of the program and discover other ways we can offer it to meet the demand in the sector for leadership training that strengthens resilience, creativity, and the ability to thrive in complexity.
When we arrived on Thursday morning to begin our work, we had no agenda on tap, but instead had a compelling need. We started talking and discovered the path as we went being very careful to harvest. Our insights emerged in very deliberate conversation. As skilled dialogue facilitators, we are also skilled dialogue practitioners and we have a refined practice of hosting and harvesting our own work. When we get in flow, it feels like ceremony. With attention to a practice, working this way is extremely productive. Here are a few principles that I observed in working this way:
- Tend to relationships. As we were both building a new team and developing new ideas and products for our work, the most important focus in on relationships. We always build in social time in our work, and enjoyed a nice dinner out at 10 acres bistro, an excellent local foods restaurant in Victoria.
- Nourish bodies and minds. Working like this is physically and mentally draining, and we are very careful to nourish each there when we are working. This meant good snacks (bananas, nuts, and chocolate), ample time for tea and coffee breaks, a lovely prepared lunch by Rebecca and physical breaks to walk, or maybe even dance to Beyonce songs a little!
- Don’t silo the conversation, but structure the harvest. Our conversation wandered from program content, to context, to history, to practicalities, to new ideas for structure. We were all over the map. But as we went, Caitlin made good use of our supply of post it notes and we harvested into the Chaordic Stepping Stone categories that we are using the structure the evolution of the program. Sometimes the best hosting is good harvesting, and Caitlin took on that role beautifully.
- Don’t control the outcome. It sounds almost absurd to think that we would have controlled the outcome. Pure dialogue is about following the energy of the conversation and seeing what emerges. There was no facilitation tool used beyond the ability to listen carefully and address the need and purpose of our work. We stumbled on many beautiful ideas over these past few days and we constantly look for ways to incorporate them in our work. This leadership program has the quality of a polished gem, reflecting years of attention to what is needed, and what is no longer needed.
- Stay with the flow until it doesn’t flow anymore. In Open Space we talk about the principle of “When it’s over it’s over” meaning that all creative work has a rhythm and flow to it. When the brains are no longer engaged and the mental and cognitive tiredness sets in, it’s time to stop. Two intense six hour days of work can produce tremendous results, but when the flow stops, there is no point forcing it. Wrap it up, make a date for some next steps and celebrate the work.
Working like this has the feeling of working with the simplest and most ancient way of talking about what to do. For tens of thousands of years, this is mostly how humans have talked about need and purpose in the world. Long before there were professional facilitators and methods for strategizing, decision making and evaluating, there was dialogue.
Sometimes all you need is a powerful need and purpose, solid relationships, a good way to listen, and time. When it takes on the feel of ceremony, you know you’re getting it right.
The Art of Hosting is predicated on a very simple set of practices which we call the Four Fold Practice. This framework emerged from a conversation in the late 1990s between Toke Moeller, Monica Nissen, Carsten Ohm and Jan-Hein Nillson about what patterns make for a meaningful conversation. After talking about it for days, the clarity that arose was that people experience meaningful conversations when they are present, when they participate, when they are hosted and when they co-create something. Simple.
The next question then became, what if these four patterns were actually practices that could be cultivated both by individual leaders/facilitators and by groups? What would that be called?
The answer was, “That would be called the art of hosting.” And so a collective inquiry was born that has spread around the world and been taken up by tens of thousands of people working in all forms of leadership, organization, and community.
I sometimes feel that the four fold practice doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Sometimes people can confuse the Art of Hosting with the methods we use or the way we harvest conversations or the tools that help us design things. But that’s not what it is. The Art of Hosting, at its deepest essence, is these four practices.
Today we are beginning an Art of Hosting workshop with some community foundations in British Columbia and tonight we began by introducing the four fold practice in some depth, because when all else fails, coming back to these practices will at least remind you how to invoke patterns that make engagement and dialogue meaningful. We began by telling the story of the practice and where it came from (you can learn a bit about that here) and then we led people in a simple exercise to explore it.
Getting into pairs we asked people to spend 5 minutes on the question “Which of these practices are you strongest on, and what’s a story about that?” We heard a bit in plenary about what was strong with folks, and there are lots of assets and experiences in the room
Then we asked people to talk about which of these practices they were weakest on and what they were eager to learn about. These learning questions were captured on index cards and placed in our centre where we will use them to focus our teaching and inquiry over the next three days.
It’s a simple way to dive into these practices, acknowledge that there are lots of ways to come into an Art of Hosting workshop, and build on the strengths that people have. And it allows us to discover the learning agenda in the room and tie it to the practice. It’s a rich harvest.