Tag: facilitation

sharing the love of meetings and meals

It does not work for me when two people, in a group of eight, are responsible for the brunt of an eight hour meeting. It results in poor design, poor execution. I find it frustrating, whether I am 1 of the 2 attempting to carry all, or 1 of the other 6 flabbergasted at the self-imposed exclusive, isolation.

In another light, it would be if I were to cook a meal at home, for 7 others, and only rely on one other person to assist with cooking, setting the table, and clean-up afterwards. Such, hoarding of activities results in people feeling less connected, having less of a stake in the taste, quality of the food and the caliber of the experience.

Having people choose silence because what they eat is so tasty is a far different choice and a different silence than when people are mum because of discomfort, awkwardness or not knowing how to connect with the others at the table. Similarly, people can shut down in a meeting when they feel uncomfortable what is not working for them. Or when people have been shunned from the design of a meeting, and therefore lob facilitator’s grenades nit-picking over what could have been different.
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i have identified 6 preferred go-to metaphors, which are body, sex, relationships, meals, ecosystems and ____ (I have forgotten the sixth, as I fly at 30,000 feet). in light of my recent activities, such out-of-whack behavior would look like the following:

  • in the body, it would be using one-quarter of my body while the other 3/4 sit idle.
  • in relationships, it is when one person talks 3/4s of the time.
  • in ecosystems, where an environment is so harsh because one of the four elements of fire, land, water and air dominates the three others. resulting in desert, tundra, flooding or windstorms.
  • in sex, it would be an encounter where one person is responsible for three quarters of the foreplay.

When these things happen, they are extreme occurrences of imbalanced arrangements. Interactions that are unnatural, awkward and coerced. It is necessary to be so unattuned to what is happening outside of ourselves in order to assert our own way.