Liberating Structures

Liberating Structures, that was our cross-company WOL workshop organized by WOL Rhein-Ruhr in August. Since a long time I wanted to learn more about it so I'm very thankful that Manuel Wyszynski and Sebastian Oremek organized this event for our community.

#LS is a set of inclusive methods for meetings & decision-making processes, open source with a strong global community behind that helps each other in learning, testing, developing the methods.

Kathrin Mussmann & Dr. Nicole Werner demonstrated an outstanding way of virtual facilitation, thanks a lot for this inspiration!

Both started the workshop by putting #LS in the context of two quotations:

"Learning is experience. Everything else is just information." (Albert Einstein)

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than to think yourself into a new way of acting.

Back to Back Listening

That was the first #LS we experienced:

• 2 min listening to a song, trying to experience it with all senses while making ourselves aware of what we experience
• 3 min in pairs in a breakout-room describing each other in detail our feelings, pictures, connections with the song
• 2 min listening again to the same song now trying to experience it with what our partner from the breakout room described us
• 3 min breakout room with former partner discussing what we've experienced while listening to the song for a 2nd time

My conclusion after this 10 min method: just fascinating how simple it is to put yourself in the other ones shoes and change perspective!

1-2-4-All

This is one of the most popular #LS I think and I got to know already at the beginning of this year at the 2nd virtual TEAMS BarCamp organized by Kathrin Bischoff, Magnus Rode et al. The idea is to give everyone the chance to share their ideas and collectively develop them further. It works pretty easy:

• 1 min everyone brainstorms on his own on a question that is presented by the facilitator
• 2 min ideas are shared in pairs in a breakout room and enhanced together
• 4 min the results of the 2 min breakout rooms are shared in another breakout room with four people, so two breakout rooms are put together to work together more in detail on their ideas
• 4-10 min all workshop participants come together to present their most important idea as a result of the second breakout room with four people

We've worked on the question, what does Liberating Structures mean for you. And one of the results was: Inclusion. And that's how the workshop really felt to me. Others highlighted a 360° view on one topic, that different perspectives come together and it's using the collective swarm intelligence.

User Experience Fishbowl

This method is based on individual experiences to a certain topic which is shared with a group. After sharing their knowledge the audience gets the chance to ask questions based on their case study.

In our workshop our facilitators Nicole and Kathrin were explaining why they are using Liberating Structures and what distinguishes them on their opinion. Workshop participants wanted to know from them i.a.:

• Experts in the English speaking community recommended for exchange and virtual workshops? Anna Jackson & Fisher Qua
• Book recommendation? The surprising power of Liberating Structures
• Further offers for in person and virtual workshops? There are User Groups worldwide, mostly organized on Meetup
• Where to use this method best for? Board chats, panel discussions, peer counseling

This exercise inspired me to apply it to webinar that Benjamin Meirza is planning out of our global Working Out Loud #WOL community at GE with David Ilécio to share his experiences in the context of Inclusion and Diversity, being black and gay in a leadership position in our company.

Appreciative Interviews

This method helps to reflect on individual experiences, focus on what led to success in these situations and transfer the learnings to new situations / challenges. What we've done:

• 8 min telling each other a personal story and identifying factors of success, pairs were grouped in breakout rooms (4 min each)
• 10 min two breakout room pairs were grouped together in a breakout room to tell the group of four people the story of their partner from the first breakout session (everyone 2 min) and altogether to identify patterns of success (2 min)
• 5 min sharing factors of success with all workshop participants and identifying further possibilities to do more of it

Mad Tea

That's the last method we were guided during this workshop. Task was to complete the following sentences in the chat and wait with sending them until our facilitators told us to do so. That way no one is influenced by responses of other people and one get a clear, honest and structured picture on different questions.

• What I realized today is...
• What I need to reflect again is...
• What I want to tell other people who couldn't join today is...
• Beyond what is said already I want to share that...

Five Liberating Structures tested in two hours

My conclusion: it's worth deep diving into these methods, experimenting with them by oneself, learn about further Liberating Structures and how to apply them for different use cases!