Introduction to Employing Differences

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

[00:00:09] 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. This week's question is, what do I want to know?

The Facilitator's Perspective

[00:00:19] Karen: So this is one that Paul and I give a good bit of thought too as facilitators who come into groups that we're not part of and may be brand new to. We may not have any history with these groups at all, and we wanna talk about it from kind of both sides, both our perspective coming in, what we find useful, and also imagining that many of our listeners may be folks that are on the other side of that, where you are bringing in someone to the group.

[00:00:46] Karen: To help with facilitation, usually because you want an outsider sometimes because you want a skillset that you don't have. But as you bring this person in, what is it that's helpful to share with them? How much do we want them to know about the group, and are there things that it's actually not helpful, particularly because from Paul and I's perspective when we come in.

[00:01:07] Karen: We're getting all of our information from, you know, one or two or a handful of people, not from the whole group, which means that we're also collecting that information from the biases that are inevitably carried by those people and the agendas that are carried by those people and so on. So, this question of what do we wanna know?

[00:01:25] Karen: Because, you know, if you just dropped me in a room and I knew absolutely nothing, I would be less effective. And on the other hand, it can go too far. 

[00:01:33] Paul: It absolutely can. 

Gathering Useful Information

[00:01:35] Paul: There's an interesting thing I think that happens sometimes, and this is a thing that I have to sort of figure out when I'm coming in to work with a group, because oftentimes, you know, I do a lot of things where I'm coming in to do a talk or I'm gonna do a one workshop and I'm done, you know, kind of thing.

[00:01:49] Paul: I'm gonna be with these people for a few hours or a few days, and then I may never see them again, kind of thing. So I've gotta figure out like, what is the information that's actually useful for me? There's all kinds of stuff that I'm often curious about, like I'd love to grab some popcorn and listen to the drama kind of thing, but that isn't necessarily helpful to me or to the group for me to know.

[00:02:13] Paul: And yet sometimes I have people who, you know, have brought me in and we've gotten the agreement to do, and then it's like, okay, so I wanna make you aware of a few things. Right? And whenever I hear that my ears prick up. 'Cause I know that I'm about to hear something that's probably a little spicy, there's a little drama there.

[00:02:28] Paul: And I don't take it as a hundred percent true. Right? It's, as you say, through that person's experiences. Through that there were biases. There's a 2% truth in there. At least 2%. So I take it as information, but try not to take it at face value. For example, I had a group I worked with a few years ago where the person who was arranging for us to do this training and this training was gonna be all online, said, oh, this group never turns on their cameras.

[00:02:55] Paul: And I said, oh, interesting. Tell me a little more about that. And they just sort of explained like, this is what we're doing, this is how it's wor. And they just, you know, in meetings they never turn their cameras on. We said, oh, okay, cool. I sent that person a screenshot from the middle of the training and everybody had their cameras on, and so I took it as useful information that that was a thing for me to know and then kind of to work with, but not to say, well, I should just give up on trying to have people have their cameras on.

[00:03:21] Karen: Yeah. 

Understanding Group Dynamics

[00:03:22] Karen: I think there are a few frames that I typically start from. My number one biggest question that I ask if I'm coming into a group is, what is it that you would like to have different at the end of my job than at the beginning? So if it's a workshop, what do you want true at the end of the day, that wasn't true at the beginning of the day. Or at the end of the meeting that wasn't at the beginning of the meeting. 

[00:03:41] Karen: And I think we've talked about that on the show before in the realm of facilitation and meeting planning. But I do tend to start there and usually that gives groups a little pause, but they give me pretty good answers to that. And it's part of my job is to help them hone that.

[00:03:56] Karen: Like where, you know, I get three different answers from three different people and then we talk through, okay, how does that work together into one cohesive experience or event or whatever it is that we're doing. So that's one place that I start from. And I know, Paul, you have a couple of other sort of questions that you classically

[00:04:12] Karen: ask your groups. 

[00:04:13] Paul: Yeah, so I, one thing that I do like to ask about outcome, and I also often find that people sometimes really struggle to answer that, right? They're like, well, we just need a workshop. Right? But for what purpose? Right? To what end? And to that end, I will sometimes ask.

[00:04:29] Paul: How will you evaluate whether or not this has been a success? Like what are you going to be looking for? It's another way of answering your question of like, what do you wanna be different at the end? But it's like a week from now, three months from now, six months from now, how will you know that this got you what you wanted?

[00:04:47] Paul: And I find that often expands people's sense of, well, wait a minute. Why are we doing this? Right? They just think a workshop is the way to do it. I'm listening to a wonderful audiobook right now called How Big Things Get Done, which is about how construction projects and other sorts of large infrastructural things go horribly wrong.

[00:05:04] Paul: And it's because people latch onto the solution without actually being clear about what the outcome they want is. And that's what's in my head around this. So I'll often explore that outcome part a little bit more with them. And then another thing that I do like to ask about, like once we start to get clear on here's what you're trying to go, where are you trying to go?

[00:05:20] Paul: And then maybe kind of fuzzy. 

Handling Group Challenges

[00:05:22] Paul: I will often ask about dynamics in the group, right? I'll ask about like, how does this group tend to operate? And sometimes I'll ask for adjectives, you know, how would you describe this group? Like when they're together, you know, what are the sorts of things that I'm likely to notice?

[00:05:36] Paul: But I'm very deliberately asking that at the group level, because I'm gonna work with them as a group. I'm not asking, and this is the thing that sometimes people wanna volunteer and that I really don't want to hear is, here are the bad kids, right? And they go, these are the people you gotta watch out for.

[00:05:52] Paul: And I actually find that that's not useful for me to know. And in fact can be sometimes a problem because I will overfocus on those individuals. And honestly, like again, going back to the whole, well, people never turn on their cameras thing. I don't assume that people are going to act around me the same way that they act around others.

[00:06:12] Paul: And so that may or may not be an issue, but I do wanna know what do the dynamics tend to be? How does the group tend to act as a coherent whole? 

[00:06:19] Karen: Yeah, and I'm right there with you, and I'm thinking about things like it's useful for me to know. Yeah. We've got a couple of people that if you let them talk, they tend to talk on and on and on longer than anybody wants to listen to them, that kind of thing.

[00:06:31] Karen: Okay. Then I'm gonna facilitate more likely with time limits on speaking. I don't need to know who, because I'm not gonna put a time limit only on them. I'm gonna put a time limit on, you know, we're gonna do a round and everybody gets two minutes or whatever it is. Like I'll put structures in to disrupt that dynamic because I know it's there.

[00:06:49] Karen: Or we have people who tend to interrupt or the same people tend to answer all the questions. So I have structural mechanisms for addressing all of those things, and I don't use every one of them in every meeting. So it's super helpful to me to know. In the room, these sorts of things tend to happen.

[00:07:09] Karen: But like Paul said, I don't need help identifying. Who's doing it usually. For one thing, you pick that up pretty fast, but also there's a tendency to kind of bring in like old history and maybe that person's changed or maybe that person will be different on the day that I'm there because I'm there because there's company and we have company manners on.

[00:07:28] Karen: I don't know. There are lots of things and, but also I think that being thoughtful about the structure, likely solves a lot of those problems, which I think Paul is what happened with you and the cameras on thing was you were like, oh, I know how to get people to turn their cameras on because you build things into the structure that do that thing.

[00:07:46] Karen: And so that might be a way to think about from the perspective of, you know, a listener who's bringing in someone from the outside. A thing to think about is, so what do we think they're gonna do with that information? The answer is they're gonna be guarded against that one individual. You don't want that.

[00:08:04] Karen: You do not want a facilitator that is trying to shut down or silence a particular person, because if we do that, nobody in the room feels safe. Like that is exactly the opposite of what I wanna do as a facilitator. So if it's, Hey, this behavior might show up, sure, I think that's useful. But if it's the, here's the five things this person has done before.

[00:08:23] Karen: That doesn't help me. 

[00:08:25] Paul: Yeah. And what's interesting is that oftentimes people are telling me these things about how this group is, particularly if they're like, oh, this is a tough group. Right. That I get that, that energy a lot. Right. And it's just like, here's the thing. Pretty much anything that somebody says, like happens in a group is something that you and I have encountered before more than once.

[00:08:46] Paul: Right. And we know how to deal with it. It is useful to know. These are the things that you are likely to run into, right? And so I'm like, okay, let me be ready for that. Also, the thing that I sometimes ask, you know, I'll sometimes ask a version of this, which is like, if this goes wrong, how is it likely to go wrong?

[00:09:03] Paul: Right? Is the group gonna argue? Are they just gonna like sit on their hands? Like where's it gonna go? Part of that's useful for me as a facilitator, is to know if that's the group's natural tendency and they're doing that to me, it has nothing to do with me. It's not personal at that point to just kind of know, but it does mean that I can, I'm gonna make some slightly different choices, as you said, about how to structure things given their natural tendency and how that natural tendency may or may not be what really isn't useful for the work that we're wanting to do together.

[00:09:35] Paul: And so that's why I ask about that stuff because I wanna know like, what's the shift? Like you said, you know, you started with talking about like, what do you want to be different at the end? This is kind of asking about like what needs to be different in the room, you know, in the middle in order to help us to get that. What is their natural way of working?

[00:09:52] Paul: What are the patterns that exist that are getting them the result that they don't want, so that you and I know what patterns are useful to shift. It's never a like, oh boy, how am I gonna deal with that? It's inevitably a, oh, okay, good to know. I'll tweak this and adjust that that way, and I'll be ready for this.

[00:10:09] Paul: For me, it's always, I'm gonna meet them in the room however they are, and I wanna know, I wanna have a thing in my back pocket. If that thing that I've been told about asserts itself and shows up. It may not. You know, I've had the experience with, you know, been told, well, this group is just really quiet and like nobody talks.

[00:10:27] Paul: And if you have come to them to ask questions, like you're not gonna get answers. Like, cool. I build a little thing at the beginning that gets them talking and then that's, then you would never know, right? I've had that experience. So if like, then they're into it, right? Cause I'm doing the things, but I'm creating the dynamic.

[00:10:41] Paul: I'm shifting the pattern that they would normally have. And so I sometimes come back to the person who told me that saying, so, did you notice what I did to actually get them to engage and to interact? How do you normally interact with them and how is it different than that? Because now they have an idea of how they might wanna show up differently.

Preparing for Specific Topics

[00:10:59] Karen: Yeah, and I think the one other category that, and it depends on the type of meeting. I mean, if this is like a relationship workshop, this doesn't apply. But if I'm being asked to work with the group on a particular topic, like we just keep getting stuck on this topic, so come in and facilitate a meeting for us about this topic, then I would like some information about things like.

[00:11:18] Karen: So what is shared knowledge of the group? If I went and asked everybody this question about that topic, would I get the same answer? The sort of factual information that relates to the decision? Is that well known amongst the group, or is that something I might want to begin with a little education piece to get everybody to a shared knowledge piece.

[00:11:38] Karen: So just that sense of kind of if I'm being brought in to complete a discussion that has already begun. It's useful for me to know, yeah, we already did that. And also what activities have you done around it so that where I'm not, you know, I have this great idea and I come in and say, we'll do this thing.

[00:11:56] Karen: And they're like, yeah, we did that last week. Just so the history related to whatever the thing is that we're doing so that I'm not teaching something that's been taught before. Assuming shared knowledge about something that actually they don't have that shared knowledge about. So just that sort of information, where are we kind of thing.

[00:12:14] Paul: I agree. And the trick there is, you know, you really wanna know about the history with regards to the topic, with regards to like what they've done in this area. Sometimes what people wanna do is they wanna re-litigate an entire series of past grievances that actually have nothing to do with the topic.

[00:12:30] Paul: That is not helpful. Right. Particularly if you're not there to actually work with them on all of those things. I sometimes it is useful to know like, Hey, just so you know, when we get to the topic of budgeting, like this group has had some bad experiences with budgets in the past and it's likely to be a sensitive issue like that I'm good with, right?

[00:12:49] Paul: Because then it kind of lets me know where the danger is. One of the questions that I love to ask, I ask this whenever I'm coming in, doing consulting or facilitative work. I got from one of my teachers is what might I do that would cause you to fire me? Because what I'm really asking about is as I'm in there, I'm gonna be, try to be helpful and what's the thing I don't know about the landmine that I don't even know is there, that I might go and step on? And it's wonderful because when I asked that question, which I got from Faith Fuller. She introduced me to a while back and it's really great because it causes people to sort of step back and go, wait a minute. Like, what do we really not want you to do? We talked at the beginning about what we are, we're hoping will be different, but like what's the boundaries around this?

[00:13:34] Paul: What do we not bringing you in to do because we think it might actually make things worse or because we're doing something else. Or like, oh, there's something, you know, here. That for me is a really useful thing to know as a facilitator. So if you are in the process of bringing somebody in, like think about what you're not wanting them to do and specifically what you don't want them to dig into that they might out of a sense of really trying to be helpful.

[00:13:59] Paul: That would turn out to not at all be. 

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

[00:14:01] Karen: Yeah, and I think there's a lot more to be said about delving into history and conflicted history, and I think we're gonna do that in our next episode. So I'll just point toward that. If you're thinking, hey, we've been a little short, but for this one, I think where we've been is when a facilitator's coming in to a group, they don't know.

[00:14:18] Karen: So what Paul and I do all the time, what's useful in terms of preparing us as facilitators to serve a group? We wanna know what the purpose or outcome is that you're aiming for. We want to know what are the group dynamics? Do they tend to be quiet? Do they tend to be argumentative? Do they tend to interrupt each other?

[00:14:36] Karen: Do they tend to be lots and lots of talking and lots of sharing? And so taking up more time than we really have. All those kinds of things. What we don't want is this person is a problem because, and that person is a problem because those individual things are not useful. But just knowing these are the types of behaviors that tend to throw us off is super useful.

[00:14:56] Karen: We like to know how might this go wrong? What is the thing that could get us fired? What is the thing that we don't want us to touch? What is the landmine that we could land on without knowing it was there? Those are are good things, and we want a sense of all of that because very often as an outsider, because we're an outsider or because of structures we can bring in, we can actually avoid those challenges from ever showing up in the room.

[00:15:26] Karen: So the dynamics, one of the things that is our job as a facilitator is to shift the dynamics that you're used to having. And so as you're thinking about. What should I share with a facilitator coming in? You might ask yourself, well, what do I think they're gonna do with that information? And if it's structure, a meeting, shift the dynamics, help the group be more cohesive, all of that, that's great.

[00:15:49] Karen: If you're thinking, well, it's gonna shut down that person, whoever shares, or it's gonna have a very specific response on a particular person. Maybe, maybe not, but not the piece about, I wanna complain about this person. And gosh, you're gonna listening to that. Generally, we don't find that piece useful, but it's hugely helpful to have a sense of where the group's going, what information they all already have or don't, and what kind of dynamics we're gonna land in.

[00:16:13] Paul: That's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:16:17] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.