Tag Archive: desired outcomes

September 19, 2017

Facilitating (and Leading) “From the Chair”

Photo by Siew Yi Liang, shared under the provisions of Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0.

 

One of the questions that often comes up in our popular workshop, Facilitative Leadership for Social Change goes something like this,

“It’s great that I’m learning all of these practical leadership and facilitation skills, but what happens when I’m not the one leading or facilitating?” 

How can we keep things rolling when we aren’t formally in charge and when formal leadership is perhaps not so skillful? My answer: There’s usually some opportunity to lead, ask good questions, and to facilitate from the chair! Read More

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April 19, 2012

To What End?

outcomes

|Photo by Social Innovation Camp|http://www.flickr.com/photos/sicamp/4078247284|

Another offering here in the spirit of simplicity and how we can get a lot from doing little things differently.  Yesterday I blogged about “working agreements” to set groups and collaborative efforts up for success.  Today, I want to lift up the power of planning meetings, convenings, and longer term collaborative endeavors with the end in mind.  Often we find that people have the tendency to jump into doing and talking about doing without working backwards from the intended outcomes.  There is an art and science to crafting “desired outcomes statements,” which we teach in our workshops (see Facilitative Leadership and Essential Facilitation), and a starting point is to imagine your stakeholders leaving said meeting or collaborative process and asking yourself:

  • What shared understanding is it important/imperative for us to have achieved?
  • What agreements is it important/imperative for us to have built?
  • What commitments do we want people to have made?
  • What products do we want/need to have generated?
  • What feeling/spirit do we want to carried forward out of this experience?
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February 2, 2012

Funder as Convenor: Part 2

convening2

|Photo by cambodia4kids.org|http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/3987334968|

A year ago I blogged about the critical role of convening in collaborative multi-stakeholder change work, particularly as it plays out through a funder.  Having been in Michigan last week working with a group of diverse foundations in a customized Facilitative Leadership session, I have additional thoughts to offer stemming from a very productive and provocative conversation about how to address and manage power dynamics when one attempts to initiate a partnership or collaborative effort and one is holding the purse strings or a significant portion thereof.  Read More

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