Stepping back, stepping in

Transcript of this video:

I think the most satisfying feedback I’ve ever had

as a facilitator was a few years ago at a three-

or four-day-long, quite intense conference

of about 80 political activists, which are a great group

to work with because they’re passionate and committed.

and

because they’re activists in politics,

they’re pretty sensitive

to the small p politics of the meeting.

So they’re in some ways a

tough crowd to work with.

But I kind of relish the challenge

and one of them came up to me at the end of the

three or four days and said, “I’ve been watching you

and what I like about you is that you seem to know when

to step to the front of the room

and when to almost vanish into the background.”

And I found that pleasing.

Well, obviously it was nice about me,

but I also love the recognition of

what I think is in some ways the absolute core of the art

of working with groups of people, knowing when

to get out of the way and knowing when to step in.

And I think most people in my line

of work feel under constant pressure to be seen

to be doing something useful.

And I think that often leads us to interfere too much

and actually end up getting in the way.

And I’m really fascinated by how I manage the choice

between staying out of it and getting involved.

And one of the most interesting things

that happened to me at a relatively recent gig was

during a section of the day where I had no role to play.

It had been pre-designed.

Various presenters were coming in

and they had a format to follow

and I was just there to watch basically.

But things had gone slightly awry.

One of the presenters had had to leave,

and they’d gone a lit off kilter and they’d gone off script

and had defaulted to doing Q and A with the audience.

Q and A is often one of those things

that puts me on amber alert.

It’s, on the face of it, it’s participatory,

but it’s often not very energetic.

And I was increasingly feeling

that was what’s happening in this session,

but I was thinking, oh, well I’m not meant

to be running this session

and I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable.

And what I found myself doing,

and I describe it that way deliberately,

was I just moved from my position at the back of the room

around the back of the room, down the side, about two-thirds

of the way towards the front, and sat there

and did nothing for maybe a minute or two.

But after a minute or two, the person

who was chairing the session caught my eye

and we exchanged glances

and they said, actually, I’m gonna ask Johnnie

to chair the rest of this because I think it’s

more his bag than mine.

And so we very graciously swapped places

and I found myself at the front of the room now

with a slightly more front-of-house role to play the Q

and A ran for another question and answer,

and then I chose to intervene.

I noticed that one person was engaged in a very friendly

but energetic kind of conversation with the

speaker, which was,

I sensed, was probably excluding

anybody else from taking part.

So I didn’t wanna say that, but I said something like,

“I’m just gonna pause here.

I know you’ve got some more things to say,

so we’re gonna have that in a moment,

but I just wanna check who else in the room is burning

to take, has a sort of burning urge

to take part in this discussion.”

And two or three hands went up.

And then I said, “and I’m conscious that we have 15 minutes

before we do to go for coffee,

and I’m guessing that some of you might be concerned

that we do get to that on time.”

Big nervous, guilty laugh from a large part of the room.

Ah, I said, “so I was right about that.

So here’s what we’ll do. Well, here’s some more from you.

And we’ll aim to get round to you

and you, as well as the speaker here to respond.

And we’ll try and do that in the next 15 minutes

so we get to coffee on time.”

You could pretty much feel the energy in the room

just drop, I don’t mean in a bad way, just relaxed.

People just relaxed a bit.

And I think all I did for that 15 minutes was

probably a tiny bit of sort of pointing, catching of eyes

just to show the room if you like, that there,

somebody was just conducting this a little bit,

injecting a little bit of structure into this process

to get us to the coffee on time.

And I think that got everybody pretty happy.

Now, there’s no way I can prove to you that that was

as a result, a better meeting thnt if I hadn’t done that,

I don’t think you can ever know that working with people.

What I do know is that it’s moments like that that feel

to me like where I’m really earning my money not

so much in the design

of structures and processes, more in that willingness

to take risks and feel my way into,

I guess the way I would put it, trying

to find the aliveness in the room.

And that’s the most exciting part of my work.

Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash