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Bringing purpose to life

The general principles we use in designing our workshops

Our key principles for workshops:

  • Create space for the participants to explore and debate – this helps people to internalise the provocation and develop the conviction and the capacity within themselves to change how they show up and in service of what.
  • Good facilitation – to enable people to speak their minds (see tips for facilitating good dialogue below for more).
  • Set the tone – you can’t tell someone to be purpose-led, as one CEO we work with said ‘it is an ask, not a tell’. Asking rather than telling helps to stimulate thinking and catalyse lasting change in others.
  • Build in a way for people to connect to what they care about – so that during the workshop they can engage not just their head (rational thinking) but also their heart (what they feel) and their hands (what they can do). 
  • Encourage good listening – one of Blueprint’s provocations is that business shifts from seeing itself as a series of transactions or nexus of contracts to a series of relationships. Seeing business through a relational lens puts emphasis on the importance of good quality dialogue, one element of which is listening and the quality of attention we give someone (or a group of people). We design our workshops with this in mind. One outcome of creating and cultivating environments of active listening and attention, is that you are giving people an opportunity to think uninterrupted. This improves the quality of thinking. Another outcome of deliberatively creating space for listening is that people may feel more empowered to share honest reflections.

    This approach draws on the work of Nancy Kline in her work ‘Time to Think’:

Real help, professionally or personally, consists of listening to people, of paying respectful attention to people so that they can access their own ideas first. Usually the brain that contains the problem also contains the solution – often the best one. When you keep that in mind, you become more effective with people. And people around you end up with better ideas. This is not to say that advice is never a good thing or that your ideas are never needed.  Sometimes your suggestions are exactly what the person wants or needs…But don’t rush into it. Give people a chance to find their own ideas first.

  • Silence – another element we have included in some of our workshops is time in silence, when participants are invited to reflect on a particular question for some minutes. This can seem a strange and uncomfortable experience. We have found, however, that a combination of silent reflection together with opportunities for everyone to speak uninterrupted (on an equal allocation of time) creates a deeper and more honest quality of exchange which can be both moving and inspiring in revealing hidden personal commitments and aspirations for what the business could become.

The ground-rules we try to design for:

  • All perspectives are valid, I invite you to participate with the intention to make differences and diversity fruitful
  • Bring your whole self to the meeting, not just the ‘work you’ i.e. as a parent, son/daughter, citizen, community member etc. 
  • Engage in the hard questions to the best of your ability and with curiosity pursue them wherever they may lead. Don’t feel like you must have the answer. The workshops are not about coming up with a list of actions or initiatives.
  • Give everyone time to share their views, listen and be open to allowing other people’s views to challenge and change yours. 

We also like the following clear principles developed by Mary Parker Follett:

  • Expect to need others – Enter with the intention to make differences and diversity fruitful in order to make something together
  • Expect to be needed – Bring your whole self to the meeting. Ask and answer hard questions to the best of your ability and pursue them wherever they may lead in an atmosphere of trust
  • Expect to be changed – Yes, you need to (as we say today) bring “your truth” to the encounter. But Follett insists you have a reciprocal obligation to allow that truth to be affected by others. You should expect to leave a meeting not quite the same person as when you entered.

Follett believed that meetings have four possible outcomes but only one is good:

  • Bad outcome #1: Acquiescence – Just give in and let the pushiest or highest-ranking person have their way. This means you have not done your duty to bring your whole self and your wishes, worries, and experiences to the group.
  • Bad outcome #2: VictoryYou “win.” But in the process, everyone else loses their ability to contribute and make a group investment.
  • Bad outcome #3: Compromise – Most of us think compromise is a good outcome, but Follett wrote that compromising is just the practice of hammering out partial acquiescence from all participants. No growth or group investment takes place because no one leaves satisfied.
  • Only good outcome: Co-creation – It happens when all members of a group make a new thing together. This new thing is truly yours as an individual and also truly the product of the group. You are in it. It is of you and in you. And your individuality is not diminished as a result. It is enhanced.

Reference: Time Magazine article exploring Mary Parker Follett’s work

You can download and use this template to help you to design a workshop: Workshop design tool and template

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