Team Facilitation is easy with liberating structures
Leaders can develop their facilitation skills on-the-job
When working with these leaders, I often refer to the toolkit of Liberating Structures to prepare for their team meetings and development sessions. I highly recommend the book by Daniel Steinhöfer from Vahlen Verlag, the website www.liberatingstructures.de, and the Liberating Structures App LISA for both reading and practical application!
Liberating Structures – the background
Liberating Structures is a well-equiped toolkit that enables full participation and inclusion. This approach leads to improved outcomes. With it teams co-operate more, best ideas often emerge with it unexpectedly and a team’s potential is more fully realized than with traditional meeting and decision-making structures. It shifts focus from individual expertise to the collective expertise of the group.
The application of Liberating Structures is broad—ranging from „finding the right decision“ and „from decision to action“ to „reviewing and reflecting on decisions,“ including practical ideas for conflict resolution, start-ups, and strategy development. The individual methods are sophisticated yet intuitively easy to grasp. They use engaging metaphors, enlightening questions and skillful sequences (known as strings) that can be flexibly tailored to suit different occasions.
Find here an example for Liberating Structures with the issue of „Home Office“
The issue of home office work is currently a concern for many companies. The following string can be effectively used with teams to address the question of who works from home, when, and why, and when it might be better for the team to come into the office.
Preparation – Clarifying the Leader’s Expectations:
What are my „Go’s“ & „No Go’s“? It is worthwhile to communicate these in advance and clarify initial questions to establish a good basis for the string, which then includes the following three Liberating Structures:
1. User Experience Fish Bowl:
Two to three employees take a seat in the center of the fishbowl and share their experiences of two years of home office during the pandemic in an informal, unrestricted conversation. Everything can be expressed, whether positive or critical. The rest of the employees sit in an outer circle, listen, and at the end, ask questions or share their own observations.
2. 1-2-4-All:
Now, all employees have the opportunity to speak, using a sequence that considers both the „loud“ and the „quiet“ people:
- Individual Reflection: Each employee briefly reflects on their ideal office/home office situation.
- Pair Discussions: Followed by five-minute discussions in pairs.
- Group of Four Discussions: Then discussions in groups of four, again for five minutes.
- Plenary Exchange: Finally, the groups of four share their insights in the plenary session. This ensures everyone has shared their perspectives and ideas, leading to a common understanding.
3. What? So What? Now What?
This shared understanding serves as the basis for the final step. In the What? , facts from the previous discussions are collected. In the second round—So What?—everyone interprets these facts. This separation of fact and interpretation is crucial for Step 3, the Now What? Here, the team discusses how to proceed with the home office policy and what further development steps are possible or necessary in the medium term.
