Imaginative Facilitation

The revenge of the right brain

Daniel Pink has a new book out that might be of interest: A Whole New Mind: Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

His recent article in Wired magazine was interesting. Here's an excerpt:

The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Implications for meaningful facilitation?

Facilitating the discovery and recovery of the creative impulse

David Robinson is a strong artistic leader with extensive experience in theatre, visual art, creativity, and education innovation. He'll be a guest speaker at our weeklong session to help bring into the dialogue the experience of improv, storytelling, and perhaps masks. David's 20 years of professional directing experience helps him design educational programs for academic and corporate environments - utlizing theatre techniques and related creative processes to facilitate the discovery and recovery of the creative impulse, personal and cultural mythologies, and transformational experiences. He'll bring all that to bear on our work in 'imaginative facilitation' when he joins us for a half-day workshop.

Using fiction as a catalyst for conversation

Wouldn't it be interesting to start each day with a discussion of a piece of fiction, perhaps a short story, or a poem that could spark the theme for that day? Looking at our subject matter in a slightly different way, approaching it from a fictional place rather than always from a straight, linear business focus. Fiction from other countries, use of language, the ways in which the words affect people in the room. There is a lot that might emerge...

A search for beneficial surprise

I believe we will engage in a weeklong search for beneficial surprise, as Max De Pree has called it.  Real surprise - the totally unexpected. In a world so awash with images and insights, and in groups of people who as adults are taught to hide surprise because to show it would be a sign of weakness, that's hard to accomplish.

Creativity arises from discovering and connecting. Are our meetings and settings set up to support or hinder those two things?  What will aid our search for beneficial surprise? What does surprise look like? How does it make us feel - engaged or scared? powerful or stupid? Is our tendency toward intellectual disinterestedness or disdain the Baal of our organizations?

My vision for the class

 

As I start to think about what I want this experience to be, I’m reminded of a quote by a participant on a biking tour: “I wanted to throw myself into an experience that was too big for me and that would cost me something.” (Jamie Zeppa, The Otesha Project)

 My aspirational statement for the class:

 My week teaching “Imaginative Facilitation” with Kichom was a true peak experience for me, from planning to implementation. It woke me up from my slumber to really engage and learn.

 During the planning process, we worked electronically to develop an engaging and innovative (and slightly scary) seminar, stretching us both and helping us understand what we could each bring to the table. Our work was collaborative and energetic, bouncing ideas off of one another and each taking and meeting responsibility for moving the process forward within the timeframe of the SIIC deadlines.

 The materials we developed were the very best we could create, using many parts of our brains, not just the intellectual parts; our session was highly sought by SIIC attendees because it sounded so fascinating and rich. We met all of SIIC’s deadlines for materials and each contributed fully to the process, with clear roles and responsibilities.

 Most of all, we had enormous amounts of fun, challenging each other and laughing, and asking provocative questions that made our class think differently about what it means to be a facilitator. Everything clicked: we created a relaxed and powerful learning environment for ourselves and our students, invited them to play with us for a week, and enjoyed the dance immensely. We supported each other in whatever way was necessary during the week and just had a hell of a good time while adding real value. We were happy and exhausted at the end of it.

 Perhaps we even decided to write a book after it was all over.  (Smile) 

Another more recent take on it:

I've been thinking about what I'd like this class to be for everyone in the group. I want people to be constantly surprised, to be exposed to linkages outside the usual, to build a real learning community, to take risks and be exhausted at the end of the week, in a good way. I'd like for us all to really actively learn from one another, each seeking ways to make every moment an excursion. I'd like us to include the arts, music, science, literature, storytelling, improv - linear and nonlinear experiences alike, tapping into the cultural knowledge in the room and making use of the setting of the class within the context of the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication.

What is this all about?

Kichom Hayashi and I will teach a weeklong class on "Imaginative Facilitation East and West: accessing group wisdom for inspired results" at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication this summer.

Here's the class description:

IMAGINATIVE FACILITATION EAST AND WEST: accessing group wisdom for inspired results

To facilitate means to “make progress easier.” But facilitation is more than keeping discussion flowing and managing group dynamics. We’ll examine with an intercultural lens how to access personal and group wisdom, spark and support idea generation, help people speak from their intuitive and true voice, explore imaginativeness as a way of living, and build community for inspired results.

Designed for

People who want to create the conditions for purposeful group experiences, breakthrough performance, deep learning and personal development, creative business processes, and high-performing teams. This workshop is highly experiential; participants will need to bring both hemispheres of their brain with them.

Objectives

Participants will have the opportunity to:

§ Explore the challenges (and richness) of facilitating multicultural and online groups

§ Experience both digital and analog approaches to facilitation

§ Learn from breakthrough processes of thinkers like Kandinsky, Rimbaud, Ibsen, Stravinsky, W.C. Handy, Roentgen, Leeuwenhoek, and others

§ Explore differing cultural concepts of human potential, creativity, group, collective intelligence, process, harmony, and dissonance

§ Play with holistic exercises and intuitive inquiry to create group “flow”

§ Explore the “psychology of limits” to see how mental models become mental blocks

§ Use art, music, language, and metaphor to stimulate interaction and group consciousness

§ Learn concepts of somatic-emotional intelligence

§ Expose the underlying architectures of group sessions

§ Tune into the creative power of participants’ unvoiced/internal monologue

§ Use the Six Lenses model to artificially create contradictions that lead to higher creativity

§ Assess their own unique facilitative strengths and style

Learning Activities

Participants will create their own “Community of Practice” with activities such as:

§ Using a variety of imaginative facilitation processes, activities, and tools

§ Testing Appreciative Inquiry, storytelling, dramatic models, and improv as facilitation tools

§ Presentation of paradigms, conceptual frameworks, and models

§ Small group tasks allowing for risk-taking and playfulness

§ Critical reflection and journaling

§ Meta-learning from the Community of Practice created by session attendees

In preparing for the class, Kichom in Tokyo and me in Asheville, North Carolina, this blog will capture thoughts and ideas... Come along for the trip.