Asking for help

I quite enjoy helping others. I’m not so good at asking for help. From an improv perspective it’s like making offers – asking for help is making an offer to the world. And boy, does it pay back big time.

Those of you reading this blog recently will know I’m in foreign parts designing a biggish two-day event. Those of you who know me well will know that I’m never satisfied, always looking for new (and rediscovering forgotten) ideas. And those of you who know me even better will know I’d give my right arm to have a facilitation buddy or two to hang out with, toss about ideas, egg each other on. Sigh.

So I’ve turned to the next best thing, all you good folk in internet land. Some of you I know, some I’ve never met. I’ve no idea how many of you read my blog (I know, I know – there’s something I could do with google analytics to find out and, well, I really don’t care that much and I’ve never been that big into numbers. Are you out there Stephen?). If I’m only talking to myself, that’s quite okay – it gets my thoughts out of my head and on to the screen where at least I don’t forget them.

I try stuff. I like blogging. I like twitter. Facebook’s okay. Don’t mention google+ (makes me feel guilty), I’ve tried amplify, and instgram, I’ve lost count of my email addresses (they all go via gmail anyway), I quite like rapportive, I’ve just joined pin-somethingorother, I have a neglected flickr account, I think I have a YouTube channel, I subscribe to my favourite bloggers and thinkers, I just LOVE Skype – I could go on, obviously. What’s that? What about LinkedIn? Well, of course I’m on LinkedIn – I just don’t know how to use it that well. Then, in a little burst of activity towards the end of last year I created a LinkedIn Group. Wow! Just wow! I had no idea. It’s not a big group, less than 200 people – but what a generous and creative bunch.

And what I’ve learned from having a LinkedIn group is that it’s not about leading with answers – it’s about leading with questions. Real questions. Making big, bold offers by asking for help. Who knew?

Influencing and being influenced

Here’s another gym-inspired post. This time I was noticing how I run faster on the treadmill and generally try harder when there’s someone else on the next treadmill. If they’re faster than me (and most of them are) I’ll try and go faster too. If they’re slower than me, I notice a slight sense of superiority. Oh, I know all that stuff about doing your own thing and what’s right for you etc etc. I think we are always being influenced by those around us, and probably forget that we are influencing other people too.

At it’s best this is a good thing. I work occasionally at The Hub in Melbourne, a co-working space. It’s a long time since I’ve worked in this sort of environment, with people coming and going, hearing snippets of sometimes interesting conversations, sitting in on discussions, throwing ideas about, sharing a story or a glass of wine with people doing completely different work to me. I am happy to be influenced by this environment and the people in it.

Anyone competing in any physical endeavour will be able to tell anecdotes of how they were able to find something extra during competition. Performers experience it too – that feeling of ramping up for the actual performance. Improvisers (who are, after all, performers too) call it ‘being affected’, being open to the influence of people and the environment we’re in.

It seems to be a small step from being influenced though to being competitive. I have mixed feelings about competitiveness. Sure, I love the feeling of winning, of getting ‘there’ first, whatever ‘there’ might mean, of being recognised (which I think is what winning is all about, after all, no-one remembers who came second). And I’m also aware that a focus on winning denies all sorts of other possibilities,not the least of which is success. I learnt from some improv buddies the difference between winning and success, and how winning can be celebrated mostly by the winners and success can be celebrated by everyone.

This whole influencing, competitiveness, success dynamic is writ large on the internet. There’s the shallow, yet hard to ignore, numbers – of followers, of retweets, of likes, of friends. And there’s connecting with people in the same or different industries who are doing incredible work. There’s great writers, and great thinkers, incredible ideas, amazing analysis, brilliant artists, and people willing to share their successes and their failures.

It’s easy, for me, to feel intimidated. To feel inadequate, to feel that I have nothing new, or original, or interesting to say. Everyone else seems to be saying it – and much better than I could.

Woah! I’ve fallen into the Tyranny of Excellence – a feeling where nothing is ever good enough. We are doing amazing things, yet see ourselves as inadequate. This tyranny  is the dark side of ‘being affected’ – of influence, of collaboration, of easy access to what’s happening across the globe and of living in amazing times where being amongst creative entrepreneurs and thinkers is the norm. But it’s not the norm for everyone. It’s also easy to fall into a space of scarcity, where it feels as if there’s only so much to go round and not enough for everyone. Much better to remember a sense of abundance where the world needs ALL of our ideas and approaches and there really is no ‘right’ way.

The Be Affected art is by the amazing Mary Campbell (in the US) and the Tyranny of Excellence art is by the incredible Milan Colovic (in Serbia) and I’m writing this from Australia. See what I mean – we live in amazing times.

Exploring the Edges of Work II

Anyone visiting recently will probably know that I’m exploring the edges of work – offering a series of short workshops to explore how we might move beyond the rigidity of existing systems and processes to open up workplace creativity, innovation and agility – especially when the currency of much of today’s work is ideas.

So I’m delighted to announce a full-day workshop with Johnnie Moore as part of this year’s Story Conference; Widening the World of Work in Melbourne. Here’s a little about what to expect:

If you’d like to register go here (and if you register before 31 August, you’ll get that cool early-bird rate)

Join me at these events?

There’s lots of up-sides to travelling and working in different countries. Not the least,  I love it! The major down-side seems to be losing touch with locals. So I’m looking forward to these local events and would love to say hello to you at any of them.

Gathering ’11 - To build better futures: Melbourne 11 – 13 June

This sounds like fun and I can’t wait. Our intention is to provide a space and experience that supports the emergence of socially innovative and transformative ideas, and is a platform for their development in to implementable projects and enterprises.

I’m looking forward to lots of conversations and connecting.

Victorian Facilitators’ Network Meeting: Melbourne 20 June, 5.30 – 8.00 pm Kent Hotel, 370 Rathdowne Street, North Carlton.

We all know that ‘trust’ is an essential element of any good relationship. So how do we build trust and rapport as facilitators? What supports a good working relationship with a group? Come and hear some wisdom from our very special guests including Viv McWaters (Beyond the Edge: “I’m interested in improvisation, disruption and not playing by the rules.”), Rhonda Tranks (Illumina Consulting: “My approach is to shed light on new possibilities and pathways, drawing people towards their own realizations.”) and Ed McKinley (Groupwork Institute: “I’m a great believer in creating safe environments in which people can express diverse points of view on their way to identifying a unified sense of purpose.”) We are in for a wild and exciting ride! Trust us – it will be fun!” Facilitated by Michelle Howard.

Ah, Michelle, so brave agreeing to facilitate facilitators! I’ll try and not be too disruptive (with fingers crossed behind my back!)

Story Conference – Creative Methods: Widening the World of Work, Melbourne October 5 – 7

My friend Andrew Rixon is organising his third Story Conference. I missed the last two so I am really excited to be going this year and to be offering a pre-con workshop with my other good mate, Johnnie Moore. I’d go to this conference just to hang out with these two. You could come and hang out with a whole lot of other cool people as well, and share and learn stuff about stories. Awesome.

Johnnie and I are offering a pre-conference workshop Friction and Fiction: Creating space for deeper conversations

Co-facilitating: how hard can it be?

Can you pick the co-facilitators in this pic? A few recent incidents have thrown co-facilitating into sharp relief and helped clarify some of my own experiences and expectations of working closely with others. Co-facilitating can be a joy with the right person and a nightmare with someone else, simply creating even more work and stress in an already potentially stressful situation.

Recently a client refused my choice of co-facilitator for budget reasons and offered one of his own staff (whom I had never met) to help out. I declined. And at another workshop, two of the participants who had done facilitation training with me in the past wanted an opportunity to co-facilitate. I agreed, with conditions.

Here’s what works for me when co-facilitating (and most importantly, if it works for me it’s also better for the client):

Full-time facilitation

Part-time co-facilitation just doesn’t work. Just when you need your partner to discuss something, they are off with their mates (read work colleagues) doing something else. So I have a rule for co-facilitators, especially if they are from within the client’s organisation: either full-time facilitator or full-time participant.

Someone to hang out with, brainstorm ideas, rant occasionally

This is really important to me (it may not be so important to facilitators who are extroverts) – even when we’re not facilitating we’re talking about stuff (a technical term that covers everything from ‘what time is lunch?’ to ‘what can we do to really break down some of the inherent behaviours we’re noticing that could be preventing the group from moving forward?’ to ‘who’s going to lead the next bit?’). This is the role of friend, ally, confidante, someone with whom I can share my fears and insecurities (therefore, not a good idea to be the client!) and someone to be with without having to make an effort. And someone with whom I can winge and get things off my chest, knowing it’s not going to go any further.

A mentor and co-learner

We need to be partners, we need to learn from each other, we need to mentor each other, we need complementary and different skills, we need to push each other, we need to restrain each other. We need to enjoy working together, have fun even.

Similar world view

We don’t need to be clones but we need to share some values about facilitating groups and have some common understandings of our approaches. And we need to be comfortable with each other’s idiosyncrasies, be able to let go and trust each other.

—

Co-facilitating is more than just sharing the responsibility for facilitating a workshop. It’s a partnership. With the best co-facilitators, we seemlessly tag off each other, anticipate what the other needs before they have asked for it, hand over with complete trust to the other that they will do whatever is needed (even if we haven’t discussed what that might be) and can step in when the other needs us without being seen as taking over. In short, we make each other look good – and ultimately everyone benefits, most especially the client and the workshop participants.

In the midst of facilitation training

Tomorrow we start week two of three weeks of facilitation training. It’s a long time since I’ve done so much training in such a short time. Three diverse groups. I’ve been thinking about how this training is quite different from the sort of training I did when I first started facilitating way back in the dark ages (before the internet). Bringing people together for five days from across the planet is a huge investment. And so it’s important, I think,  to do more than simply share information – to do more than what can be gleaned from web sites, blogs, books and YouTube.

That *something* that we did last week – and will do again this week, and next – is to try and provide a series of experiences that mimic the real world of facilitating. Not a theoretical exploration, but a real, visceral experience of what it feels like to facilitate. And not just practice. Experiencing the effects of this approach or that. Knowing what it feels like to be faced with anger or cynicism or confusion or impatience or gazumping. And to actually live the principles of facilitation, experience them first hand so as we know, really know, not just theorise, that the group can generate knowledge, that being in the midst of confusion is a normal state, that paying attention to the human needs of the group and enabling connection can move a group into surprising territory. Experiencing the effects of laughter and of playfully exploring even the most serious of issues, and the impact of avoiding one-to-many processes or of simply removing the tables.

This work is exciting and invigorating, at the same time as being draining and stressful. Going beyond the expected norms, challenging the way things are done, encouraging people to their edges – it’s a responsibility and a privilege. Not to be done alone, so I’m glad to be working with Johnnie Moore who brings complementary skills to my own and pushes me to my edge – often. Together we have created something far more exciting than I think either of us could have done alone. It’s the value of true collaboration and models to the participants the power of co-facilitating, where the improv principle of ‘making your partner look good’ is embodied.

It’s a radical shift from a traditional training model – one that we hope has reverberations well beyond the people in the room.

The basis of successful collaborations

“They hit it off, and decided to collaborate, eventually producing PayPal.”

This was a comment on a program called The Virtual Revolution about the beginnings of PayPal. While the story of PayPal as a new global monetary system is interesting, it’s the first four words of the quote that really interests me.

That’s because I believe the best collaborations (successful and satisfying) are based on a foundation of friendship.

What’s possible?

At a workshop recently, Andrew Campbell said that ‘the only barriers are in your mind’.

Yesterday I watched Chris Anderson of TED fame talking about the future of TED talks – of taking the one to many format, which has provided so many of us with access to amazing people and great talks, into a more interactive model. The future, apparently, is in video. I’m guessing for some, the future is already here.

Here’s an example of what’s possible (hat tip to Nancy White). I found this video moving on many levels – great music and great skill in putting it together. But more than that was the idea, the capacity to take individual voices from around the world and put them together into something like this. This is creativity, innovation, collaboration and inspiration all rolled into one.

Yes indeed. The only barriers are in our minds.

Adventures in facilitation (in London!)

I like this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod (you can subscribe to his daily cartoon here) because it captures how I’m feeling about a visit to London and surrounds in September and October. It will be an adventure in many ways.

You might have heard me bang on about facilitation from time-to-time. Okay, a lot then. I find facilitating endlessly fascinating. There’s a different group, a different dynamic every time. Hence my own response is different. Changing. Evolving.

So I’m excited to be able to share some of what I’ve learnt about facilitating at a Facilitating With Confidence course in London. Let me say that again, just in case you missed it: Facilitating With Confidence in London! Woot! And best of all, for me, and anyone who comes along, is that I’ll have two brilliant co-facilitators at my side: Johnnie Moore and Trish Stevenson.

And what if nobody comes says that little voice in my head? No problem, I still get to spend time with Johnnie and Trish, and who knows what else we might cook up?

It will be an adventure no matter what. And it’d be really cool to share it with you or people you know. I can guarantee some fun, some laughter and you will even learn a few things about facilitating – just as I will continue to learn from you.

Everything else you want to know can be found here (including registration details). Or if you want to skip the blurb you can go straight to registration.

Part 1: 20 – 22 September 2010

Part 2: 4 – 6 October 2010

Wallacespace Covent Garden, 2 Dryden Street, London UK

Early-bird rates till 31 August, group rates available and special rates if you ask us nicely.

Sustainable is Attainable

In May, I was involved in a conference called Show Me The Change – all about sustainability, evaluation, behaviour change and complexity. There were lots of expectations regarding the conference and its outcomes. But here’s one that was probably unexpected.

It was a conference about sustainability, so we concluded that the conference itself should be as sustainable as possible. A no-brainer really. It was catered for by students from Swinburne University and it seems they were inspired. So inspired that they have since created this event called Sustainable is Attainable.

Here’s the details. If you’re in Melbourne this August try to get along.

Mecanix Restaurant and Swinburne Event Management class, Derby, are holding a sustainable dinner called ‘Sustainable is Attainable’.

Our dinner is to promote a healthy lifestyle that is ethical and environmentally friendly to the planet and our lives. The night will serve a three-course meal as well as tea and coffee and a presentation on how to live a sustainable life. Lucky door prizes will also be up for grabs. ‘Sustainable is Attainable’ is being held on both Tuesday 17th and Tuesday 24th of August at Mecanix training Restaurant (located on the Prahran campus of Swinburne) Building PE 144 High St Prahran.

Tickets are $27.50 and doors open at 6.30pm.

Booking are essential – please contact Mary Zougoulos on 92146589 or email Mary on mzougoulos@swin.edu.au.