Introduction to Employing Differences

[00:00:00] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:11] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. 

The Complexity of Arriving Late

[00:00:15] Paul: This week's question is, Can I come late?

[00:00:18] Paul: If only it were that simple. 

[00:00:20] Karen: In my heart of hearts, we get this question all the time. In my heart of hearts, the answer I would like to give is no. And the reason for that, it's not actually that I absolutely don't ever think anybody should come late and there are plenty of occasions in my life where it's totally fine for people to come and go and doesn't bother me, you know family Christmas. We're together.

[00:00:43] Karen: We're having dinner. We're doing puzzles. Come when you want, leave when you want. It's totally fine. It's not going to be a problem because of the nature of what we're trying to do. But in the space that we tend to talk about on the podcast, we're talking about spaces where there is organized activity.

[00:01:00] Karen: There is a plan and a direction and whether it's, you know, for Paul and I, it may be that we're doing a training and trying to teach some things. It may be that we're doing a workshop where we're trying to get some relationship stuff worked through with a group. It may be that we have an agenda of business stuff that needs to be accomplished in that time.

Impact of Late Arrivals on Group Dynamics

[00:01:16] Karen: And the thing that shows up for me around the question of can I come late is I think we misrepresent to ourselves what it means to be late. What the impact of that is. And so I think the math that we like to do, and frankly, I do this math too, is, Oh, they'll just sort of be gathering and I won't really miss anything.

[00:01:38] Karen: Or, you know, that first check in round is, you know, not that important. And I'll be there when we're doing anything that matters. Or like we tell ourselves all these stories, or maybe we just say, nobody will really miss me. I'll come in when I can. This other thing that I need to do is more important. And the part about the other thing I need to do is more important.

[00:01:55] Karen: That may be true. That may absolutely be true. When it's true, I really want to honor it. But the part about it doesn't make a difference to the meeting that I'm coming in late to, I don't think that's true ever. And so this is what I think we want to talk about today is. What is the actual impact of people coming and going other than at the time that everybody's coming and going 

[00:02:15] Paul: Right. And I think it's not just about the, you know, the being late part.

[00:02:19] Paul: It's that transition of it might be that I'm showing up after we've started or I'm going to be here at the very beginning, but then I'm going to need to step out and then I'm gonna need to come back. It's really that we're talking about where the group that is doing whatever group work it's doing is not intact and the same for the entire period of time they're doing that work together.

[00:02:42] Paul: That's really what we're talking about. We're talking about where the membership of the group in the room is changing. While the work is happening and I think that is the thing that we're pointing at is that there are times where the nature of that work is such that it doesn't matter if people come and go.

[00:02:59] Paul: And there are times when it does. And I think that you and I who do a lot of facilitative work, who do a lot of working with groups around these things are much more attuned to the impact of those comings and goings on the particular type of work that we're going to be doing than most people are.

[00:03:16] Paul: And that's not surprising. Alright, we do think about this, because you're right, there are times when it doesn't matter if this person comes and goes. It doesn't have an impact, but there are other things that we may be trying to do with the group, and they may not realize that it's different. And sometimes that's because they've never worked with us before, and they don't realize, I mean, I can't tell you how many times, one of my favorite compliments, and putting this in scare quotes, that I received once was, I did a training and a group thing, you know, for a team, this is a number of years ago in a software company around how they were going to operate as a team.

[00:03:52] Paul: And, you know, so some of it was training and it was really teaching them some skills and some of them was getting into the kinds of things that we talk about where we're digging into the relational space and we're starting to do this. And I had someone come up to me afterwards and said, that was the best training I'd ever been part of.

[00:04:10] Paul: My expectations were really low. And I accepted that for the compliment that it was because a lot of times people are used to these trainings where it doesn't matter if you come and go because we're not doing the type of work. That where the impact of the coming and going on the rest of the group is really there because I think that's the thing that you and I are really thinking about is if someone's coming and going, how does that affect the rest of the group?

[00:04:38] Paul: Not just their own experience. 

[00:04:39] Karen: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. 

Neuroscience Behind Group Disruptions

[00:04:43] Karen: And I think one of the reasons we underestimate the impact is that the impact is largely unconscious. I'm going to throw out a word here that comes from the polyvagal theory world of neuroception. And it's this idea that in any moment, the human brain, it is a thing that we do.

[00:04:59] Karen: We are scanning for danger, safety. What's dangerous, what's safe, what's dangerous, what's safe. And because we're humans, what's going on in our relational space, what's going on in our social space, what's going on amongst the people around us is a huge part of what makes us safe or not safe. 

[00:05:18] Karen: And so with neuroception in play, that is always happening and one of the things that neuroception does is it scans a room and says, who's here? Okay, I know that person and that person and that person and I kind of know how they're likely to behave and I feel safe with them or I'm not sure if I do, but we did this check in thing and now I feel better or whatever that piece is. Anytime someone leaves or someone joins, we reset that assessment.

[00:05:44] Karen: And the energy that it takes to reset that assessment and to rethink it distracts us from what's actually going on. And neuroception by definition is unconscious. It happens faster than conscious thought. And so it's always ahead of what we're aware of. And so the conscious thing that we're aware of is we want to be inclusive.

[00:06:04] Karen: We want to be welcoming. We don't want to like point our finger and shame and judge somebody because they got there late. And I agree, we don't want to shame and judge anybody because they got there late, but when that's the consciousness and we ignore the unconscious where the energy is going and what's happening in the relationship space, we really underestimate the impact.

[00:06:26] Karen: And I think that's problematic. 

[00:06:28] Paul: I'll layer on a little bit to the neuroscience there. Even if, and this is kind of an argument for like, cause anytime we talk to people about this, they go, I feel safe in this group. And your point is that your brain doesn't know that.

[00:06:40] Paul: Your brain is always doing this. Even if consciously you hold that thought, that's not how your brain is operating. But the other way to think about it is also just, our brains are predicting engines. Our brains are always working to reduce uncertainty. That's actually one of the ways we create safety for ourselves.

[00:06:55] Paul: To go, what's going to happen, okay, blah, blah, blah. And so we're creating predictions. This is also at that unconscious level. And so we're predicting what's going to happen. And as soon as someone new comes into the room, or someone leaves the room, all of our predictions are invalid because they're based on that person being there, not being there.

[00:07:13] Paul: And so our brain has to throw all that out and start predicting again. And that's expensive from a neurological resources standpoint. And so even if you take the notion of safety out of it, the fact that your brain, as an unconscious prediction engine, now has to do more work. And that's also where it feels threatened, where it suddenly goes, Oh no.

[00:07:32] Paul: And this things that I thought was going to happen, like, Oh, I thought this person was going to be here for this conversation. They're not going to be. That's also at that unconscious level. So I sometimes will talk with people about it at that level, because they sometimes don't buy this whole notion of feeling unsafe.

[00:07:48] Paul: But it's just like, look, your brain is working ahead of where you actually are. It's looking down these roads and when we change the population in the room, the brain has to reset and start over and that's very disruptive to your unconscious brain. 

[00:08:01] Karen: And also the part about the ability of the sort of cognitive brain and the emotional brain to talk to each other, which is a huge part of what we're teaching you to do, both on the episode and probably anytime we're working with you, is to get conscious of the unconscious.

[00:08:14] Karen: And that also gets interrupted and has to be restarted. And there's a whole sense of flow. Like when I'm planning, even if I'm planning several activities within a meeting, each one may be setting up the next one. Maybe they're not. I mean, it depends, but it's not at all unusual for me to have a sequence of three or four theoretically different activities or group experiences them as different activities.

[00:08:36] Karen: But I know that each one was the setup for the next. And like helping people think individually about what they think about things and then an activity that helps them share those thoughts. Well, if you missed the individual thinking part, the quality of your shared thought is going to be pretty different and probably less safe for others is frankly what happens when we're off the cuff instead of thoughtful.

[00:08:57] Karen: And that's just one example, but that sense that there is a flow to the meeting and frankly, even the time that it takes to stop and say, okay, so we were going around and there was whatever energy and topics were being followed, however they were. And we break that to say, oh, Paul, so glad you could make it.

[00:09:15] Karen: Let me update you on what we're doing. This is where we are. Maybe a useful summary for everybody else. And we wanted to reset at that moment, but probably not. Probably there was a flow that was disrupted so that we could take a minute or two to get the new person caught up enough that they can participate.

[00:09:33] Karen: And I think we just underestimate the cost of those disruptions. 

[00:09:38] Paul: Yeah, we absolutely do. 

Facilitator Strategies for Managing Late Arrivals

[00:09:39] Paul: And, as you said, sometimes the reality is, look, this person's not going to be here for this time because of this other thing that is actually legitimately more important. So we as facilitators have to be willing to roll with that and to work with the reality there.

[00:09:54] Paul: I will say that, you know, when somebody says, can I come late? My answer is always, I would prefer that people be in the room for the whole time when we're doing this work. And given that that reality is not going to happen, how will we handle the comings and goings? Because I think if you're trying to ad hoc it, and that's actually the worst, right, that where somebody says, where you're ready, you're doing the thing and then you find out, Oh, by the way, this person's going to be late, right?

[00:10:21] Paul: And you haven't decided how you want to handle the comings and goings. I think that's where we really get into trouble. So I think that as much as you and I might love to say, no, you can't come late. You can't be here on time. Don't be here at all. That's not realistic. And so we need to be ready.

[00:10:39] Paul: I have been in situations where groups have said, where they've been willing to do that, where they recognize the costs, where they recognize that, like, look, at the beginning, we're going to do 30 minutes of building our protocols to figure out how we're willing to be this vulnerable.

[00:10:53] Paul: And they go, yeah, actually, if somebody comes in after we've done all that. It's like, let's just start the meeting late. We're not going to start until they get here. But I think the more common thing we need to do is we just need to have an agreement about when there is a come and going, how are we going to handle it to reduce the cost?

[00:11:11] Karen: And I think there are a number of things, some of which are fairly comfortable and some of which really aren't, but on my list of top things, one is the more that I can know as a facilitator, this is what you were just saying, Paul, the more that I can know about when people will come and go. The more I can plan for that in a way that minimizes the cost.

[00:11:33] Karen: And some of that is about like, what are our objectives? Like what objective am I trying to accomplish in this hour? Well, maybe I don't try to do that objective in that hour when that person won't be there, or when there's going to be several people coming and going, like if I know that this is a group where people typically arrive late.

[00:11:49] Karen: I'm going to do something that's more sort of light and feel good and doesn't have a lot of continuity in it for the first half hour. And if I know that I can make that plan, it's not my favorite way to spend the first half hour. It's probably not the one I would think would be most effective. 

[00:12:04] Karen: But it's better than trying to do what I'd like to do in the first half hour and then have people coming and going and missing and all that. Letting me know in advance or whoever's running the meeting, letting them know in advance, not just, I'll probably be late, but you can expect to see me at this time is probably my number one.

[00:12:23] Karen: I have others, but I'll let you chime in, Paul, if you have one you want to go to. 

[00:12:26] Paul: As part of that, you know, I tell people, look, we can handle this, but we need to know. So, please let me know because I do that live too, where it's like, Hey, we're getting started today.

[00:12:37] Paul: If at any point something comes up and you need to step out, right. You get a call, you get a thing, like, let me know. And I think it's really important to do that in a way that isn't blaming or shamey. Right. Cause there's totally the version of that. That's the like. Well, if you are so incapable of managing your schedule that you couldn't make time to do this, you know, then let me know and I'll work around it.

[00:12:59] Paul: And that's not useful, right? I always tell people, look, I trust that you're adults, that you make good decisions about where your attention and your focus needs to go. And what I'm asking for is information so that I can make appropriate adjustments based on information that comes up. So it's really about trying to create that sense of partnership around it.

[00:13:18] Paul: It's like, look. We prefer that people be here the whole time and why or I'll do a little bit of that and just say, and we'll work with what we need to, but we can only do that if you let me know. I had a class, I was teaching a class back in December and one of the things that happened was the HVAC was malfunctioning and we had to have workers in the ceiling of the classroom we were supposed to be in for like 30 minutes and we're like, okay, what are we going to do?

[00:13:44] Paul: And we found a way to work with it. We actually ended up doing a bunch of activities in the hallway, and so it wasn't just going well, it's not going to be the way that I thought it was going to be. So therefore we're just going to wait it out. We can't do it. It's like we can work with what comes up, but we need to know what's coming and partner around it.

[00:14:00] Paul: And I think that sense of, as a facilitator, having a partnership with your participants about trying to make the best possible experience for them is important. 

[00:14:11] Karen: Yep. A couple of other things that I think are super useful if you can get group buy in about them. 

Best Practices for Minimizing Disruptions

[00:14:16] Karen: One is to say, if you have a choice about when you come, I mean, maybe you're going to miss part of a workshop because you have a thing that you need to do that day, but you have some flexibility about when it is, for example.

[00:14:27] Karen: See if you can arrive or depart at break times. Instead of missing half of the morning and half of the afternoon, miss all of the morning or all of the afternoon, but not half of each kind of thing. So anytime that you can time your comings and goings to breaks that are already happening, and especially longer breaks like lunch breaks.

[00:14:49] Karen: That's super helpful. And then the other thing that I recommend that I think it's not usually so difficult for the arriving person to do, but it's often very difficult for the group to do, which is if you arrive in the middle of things. My request as a facilitator is hang out and just observe, stay on the fringe a little bit.

[00:15:09] Karen: Don't expect to jump in and participate. Don't be surprised if everybody's in small groups and I'm not going to put you in one. You're going to have to just hang out and wait until those small group, that activity is done and we're at a transition point that we can pull you in. That kind of thing.

[00:15:24] Karen: What I find is that typically the person coming in is pretty okay with that. They know they're late, they understand. They're able to observe, we're not, again, no shaming, no jaming, no blaming, it's not, you're being left out, you know, you're not in the dunce chair because you were bad.

[00:15:38] Karen: Right? Like, we're not doing that. We're just saying, we're going to ask you to wait until there's a good time to engage that doesn't require us to stop and give directions that we've already given or rejigger groups that have already been said, or those kinds of things that just really eat up the time in the day.

[00:15:54] Karen: Usually the person coming in can see that. Very often the groups I work with tend to have a really high value on inclusion. They can't stand it. They have to find a way to include that person. Even though it's disrupting, I mean, frankly, the person coming in is often embarrassed because they don't want to be disrupting everybody else.

[00:16:13] Karen: The rest of the group is disrupted. The person who's causing now the disruption of saying, no, we have to include this person is, you know, they're not getting what we all hoped for out of the time either, but they just have this need to be inclusive. And so if it's possible for my groups, like if I'm facilitating, if I can get the group to just trust me, like I see that the new person came in or that the late person came in or whatever, and I will include them when I can, but I'm going to do it in the least disruptive way possible.

[00:16:44] Karen: If you can trust me with that and not try to do that job for me. There's going to be a lot less disruption than if the only option when somebody comes in and possibly when they leave is that we stop what we were doing, break the flow to catch them up or bring them up to speed or whatever it was. So there may be times that like bring them up to speed is important because they're so central to what's going on or something like that.

[00:17:08] Karen: That's a judgment call and it's way better for the group if one person's trying to make that judgment call. Because if anybody in the room insists on stopping everything, nobody, not even the facilitator can prevent that from happening. It will disrupt what's going on.

[00:17:23] Paul: I will also often try to get an agreement around that or it's like, great, if we've got people who are going to be coming and going, I want you to let me handle that. This is part of, we've talked before about, you know, a facilitator is someone trusted by the group to make decisions about structure and process to help them achieve their goals.

[00:17:40] Paul: Right? And my colleague Jake Galbraith will sometimes say, please respect my right to facilitate. But what it is, is, you know, I'll introduce it with like, so great. So given that we're going to have some people coming and going, here's how I'm going to handle this. I'm going to make the decision about how to bring them in because I don't want you to have to do that.

[00:17:57] Paul: And in fact, I want you to stay in whatever it is that you're doing. Because that's where I want them to keep their focus. I want them to keep the focus on the work that they're doing. You know, why they're there. That's the impact of that disruption. The disruption is now they have to come out of the content and live in the process world.

[00:18:14] Paul: And I'm there to live in the process world. So let me do it. And so it can be really useful just to establish that to go when somebody comes in, it may be that they can drop right into an activity that they're in and I will let them know, please join that group. Here's what's going on. It may be that when they come in, I know there's a good point coming three minutes from now.

[00:18:35] Paul: You don't know that, right? I do. I know it's coming. I do think that there is a piece around, you were talking about breaks, right? And can they come and go at the breaks? That's where it's useful for us as facilitators to actually be transparent about the timings of things like we're going to take a break at around 11:45. Sometimes, I know I've been hesitant to do that to then go I have to reveal my plan because I know that it might change but that's also like I need to be a partner to them and trust them and go here's what we're planning on doing and this may change but if you could, given that I know a bunch of people need to step out, we're going to try to conclude this part early so that you can be at your 10:30 meeting and we'll do this thing.

[00:19:18] Paul: And so there's a sense of working together. And by doing that, I can sometimes get the buy in from people, let me play traffic cop, right? Let me decide when I'm going to bring someone into an activity or when I'm just going to ask them to sit back. Because you're right, if someone else decides that they're going to take over that job, there's nothing you can do about it as a facilitator, as much as you might want to.

[00:19:42] Paul: And so trying to get that understanding and that agreement early. And sometimes it does require you to go, Hey, remember the thing that I asked for about letting me make the decision here? This is one of those moments. And sometimes that's enough. And the people go, Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. Like they really just wanted to bring people in and they forgot that.

[00:20:00] Paul: And they're not used to having someone who does that. 

[00:20:03] Karen: Yeah. And I think to your point about partnership and planning ahead, like you, I'm hesitant to give an absolute schedule because then people depend on it. It's not that I changed my mind. It's that I follow the group and, you know, I learned something, things evolve in a way that I couldn't have predicted.

[00:20:18] Karen: And so we ended up following a different schedule, but what I am very willing to do is if someone says, Hey, I need to get there, sometime between 11, 11:30 and I can say, okay, well, if you come in at 11, they're going to be in small groups, I will, at that moment, have a minute to sit with you and get you caught up on where we are.

[00:20:35] Karen: That'd be great. And then you won't have anything to do except talk to me for the first 15 minutes or half hour because they're going to be doing something. But what I expect you're going to come into is this, or it may even be the thing that I think is going to be going on then is this. Let me give you the instructions now, like in advance.

[00:20:52] Karen: And so you're ready to come in. All of those things can be done depending on what you've got, but they only work if people are communicating with the facilitator in advance. And sometimes that's not going to happen, right? Sometimes that can't happen, but it's hugely beneficial. And I will say that this applies like the more sort of structured, the more you have a facilitator who's holding space and has planned activities, the more important this is.

[00:21:19] Karen: I don't feel the same way about it. If there's like a lecture hall with 300 people and somebody wants to come in late and sit in the back row. No problem. As far as I'm concerned, like maybe they're going to miss information and you got to deal with that, but that's pretty manageable. It's not going to disrupt the experience of everybody else in the same way.

[00:21:36] Karen: But I think exactly what you're saying, that partnership with the individuals who are going to be late to say, give me as much information as you can, I'll adjust what I can and I will in turn give you the information that I can about what's going to be going on. And the partnership with the group that says, If I'm facilitating, I can do my job better if you let me do my job because I have a bunch of information you don't have and I do recognize and share and I'm happy to abide with the group's value for inclusion.

[00:22:07] Karen: I can make that happen and I might make it happen in a way that seems unfamiliar or uncomfortable to you, which by the way, is part of why you hired me is because I will do it differently than you would. But that dual partnership with the facilitator is what makes it work. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:22:23] Paul: Yeah, so to track sort of where we've been today, there's the question that we get all the time.

[00:22:26] Paul: Can I come late? And as much as we would like to say no, we often can't. Right? But the reason why we want to say no is recognizing that, in a group, when there's comings and goings, that does stuff to our brains. There is this neuroception that's always going on, that our brain's always scanning the environment.

[00:22:46] Paul: Part of what it's doing is it's looking for danger and safe or not. And changing who's in the room changes that calculus, but also our brain is just kind of predicting what's going to happen. And changing who's in the environment affects that in different ways. And so causes your brain to go, Oh, you've got to do the math again.

[00:23:02] Paul: All of that happens at an unconscious level. And so we often get people thinking that if they come and go, it's not going to have an impact on the group. They think it's only going to impact them. And they're willing to take on that. Oh, I'll miss the first half an hour, but I can get up to speed.

[00:23:16] Paul: And they don't think about how it impacts the group. Obviously, there's different impact to the group, depending on whether or not it's 300 people in a lecture hall listening to one person, or it's 15 people doing deep, vulnerable work around things that they're concerned about that are going on. 

[00:23:32] Paul: And part of what Karen and I tend to do as facilitators and trainers, right, is to think about, what is the impact of the coming and going going to be on the work that the group is trying to do? And when we find ourselves in a situation where there is, for whatever reason, a reality that someone's not going to be there the whole time, there's going to need to be some degree of coming and going, what are things that we can do to actually reduce the impact on the work of that transitory nature?

[00:24:00] Paul: And so part of what we want to think about is, can we partner with the people who are coming and going and also the group itself to minimize that impact, to do things like let people know when is a good time, you know, given that you need to do this, how do we work together on this so that it reduces that impact, and how are we going to do it, what's our protocol for when someone joins after the beginning of something.

[00:24:23] Paul: We really like it when the group not only gives us permission to, but actually supports us in letting us be the person who decides when they come in or when we bring them into an activity, because we have a little more knowledge about what's coming, right? That they let us, you know, sort of play our role as a facilitator.

[00:24:39] Paul: As someone who makes decisions about structure and process to help the group achieve its goals. And we recognize there's a reality that that doesn't always happen, and we just kind of have to work with it. So, really what we're trying to do when we're thinking about coming and going, is we're thinking about how can we give the group the best chance of achieving the outcomes that it wants to create, given the realities that not everybody is going to be there the whole time.

[00:25:05] Karen: That's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:25:09] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis, and this has been Employing Differences.