Being Part of an Awesome Design Team

This week we organized the 2-day Liberating Structures immersion workshop in Amsterdam. Christiaan Verwijs already wrote an excellent article about the ‘making of’ and lessons learned. This post is focused on something that stood out for me in particular: the collaboration within the design team. I’m so grateful to have experienced this amazing type of teamwork and I’m still trying to figure out what really happened. My preliminary conclusion is that all the cliches about teamwork are probably true…

The Design Team

Let’s start by introducing the design team. We composed the team for this workshop in May of 2018. The people who joined the team were Ruben Klerkx — Createur, Max Brouwer, Rasheed Raya, Jordann Gross, Fisher Qua, Anna Jackson, Christiaan Verwijs, and myself. As the design team, we would be responsible for the design, execution, and aftercare of the Liberating Structures immersion workshop. With 121 participants from 10 different countries, we expected nothing less than a breathtaking rollercoaster!

So what really happened with this team? What have I seen, heard, or observed that stood out? What patterns or conclusions are emerging? Here’s my view of what happened…

We had a clear purpose and uniting goals

Yes, let’s start with the most cheesy one. Our purpose was to have the participants experience as many Liberating Structures as possible without compromising on quality. We wanted everyone to learn how Liberating Structures build and strengthen ‘neural networks’ in groups by enhancing the interaction between individuals, thereby improving the wisdom and creativity of the group as a whole. Our goal was to show the participants that you don’t have to be an expert to use these structures. Everyone can do it. An example is how we started the workshop. By inviting a ‘regular’ participant to facilitate “Impromptu Networking” we immediately set the tone for the workshop. This brave participant only had a few minutes to prepare and already successfully engaged everyone in meaningful conversations!

This focus on “immersion” and “expertless facilitation” helped us make some tough choices. For example, we sometimes did a short debrief to create space for more Liberating Structures. And although facilitating multiple sessions during the Open Space ourselves is tempting, let’s step back and encourage participants to run their own sessions (even though they ask you as the facilitator…)

We invested in a team kickoff

A couple of days before our own workshop in Amsterdam, the entire design team participated in the workshop in Hamburg. This trip served the dual purpose of team building for the design team and to learn from the design in Hamburg. So we booked seats on a train and traveled to Hamburg while sharing personal stories and anticipating the workshop together. Yes, the EUR 5.000,- was quite an investment, but definitely worth every penny (or euro)! The trip helped us learn our strengths, motivations, and how everyone wanted to contribute to the immersion workshop in Amsterdam. Drinking a couple of beers, wine, and water/orange juice didn’t harm our teambuilding process either :)

We made explicit team agreements

In the chaos of a workshop with 100+ participants you really want to have clear agreements for collaboration, coordination, and facilitation. Examples of things we agreed upon were:

• After explaining an exercise, the facilitator would always ask “anything to add?” to the design team. This ensured the facilitator remained in the lead and didn’t have to worry about being interrupted by an enthusiastic team member;
• When multiple participants have questions or comments, it’s up to the facilitator to select the person. Another team member gives the microphone to the participant. This gives the facilitator the opportunity to move on when time-boxes become a challenge;

We balanced skills, knowledge, and experience

As a design team, we had a wide variety of skills, knowledge, and experience. It was a mixture of facilitation & coaching, strategy & change management, and Scrum & gamification. The experiences with Liberating Structures varied from having some knowledge & experience to being pioneers. What wasn’t really balanced was the number of women in our team. With only Anna, we could have done better on this part.

We left our ego’s out

This is something we didn’t discuss upfront at all, but can really make or break your team. We gave each other space to ask questions, experiment, and also relax whenever necessary. By distributing the facilitation of the structures equally, we ensured everyone had a balanced agenda. Nobody had to ask for help, we already noticed it upfront and immediately offered it. We had each other’s back because it boiled down to a simple mission and intention: becoming a highly successful design team that offers the participant an amazing experience! This mission had no space for ego and selfishness.

We were not afraid to fail

When you have pioneers like Anna & Fisher in the design team it might be very tempting to have them facilitate the majority of the program. You don’t want to fail in front of them right? Wrong! This would have given the completely wrong signal to the participants. You don’t have to be an expert, remember? Therefore we decided to take the lead in the facilitation with Anna & Fisher adding depth wherever needed and requested. All with the purpose of minimizing the idea that this was an ‘expert-driven’ workshop. So did we facilitate every exercise in a perfect manner? Definitely not. We made quite a few ‘mistakes’ which proved to be excellent learning opportunities (yes, another cheesy moment).

We distinguished ourselves as a team

As you can see in the picture below we were wearing some very cool t-shirts. Although we were a bit worried to be distinguished as experts because of this, our intention was to be visible for the participants so they could easily approach us and ask for guidance. Another advantage is that it helped us grow as a team. Like any sports team, having the same shirts already creates a sort of bonding!

We invested in pair-facilitation

Upfront we decided that each structure would be run by two facilitators. This allowed us to jointly prepare the exercises, support each other with the facilitation and debriefing. It’s about having a shared responsibility of successfully facilitating an exercise. As with pair-programming, working in pairs might not seem effective. Sure, the necessary synchronization adds a bit of complexity, but it offered a tremendous advantage!

The main room proved to be too small to contain the vast energy of the group, therefore we decided to run the strings in parallel in two rooms (the main hall and a smaller room). So luckily, we had paired up facilitators for each structure. So each pair broke up to facilitate the same structure in each room. Though not prepared, the facilitators all stepped up to make this happen — even when it was quite nerve-wracking at times and took a lot of last-minute preparations. The investment in pair-facilitation definitely paid off!

We were comfortable with uncertainty

As the preparation for the previous immersion workshop, we attended the workshop in Berlin. The result was a completely re-designed program. Having remembered this experience, we decided to only create a rough draft of the program. This took us about 4 hours. It contained the structures we wanted to experiment with and the learning objectives. Although this minimal amount of preparation caused a feeling of uncertainty, it proved to be a good choice. The workshop in Hamburg was all about discovering, practicing, and learning a couple of new structures. Structures we could easily add to our program.

Another level of uncertainty was that even at the start of the workshop we only had some ideas for day 2. On the evening of day 1, we created the final program for the second day. This gave us the opportunity to add new insights that emerged during the first day. If you’re someone that demands upfront guarantees, this would have been a challenge for you…

We projected the same amount of energy

Although every team member has a unique style of facilitation, the vast amount of energy we continuously projected towards the participants is something we all had in common. As the facilitator, you determine the energy of the group. The group mirrors your behavior. If you act as a zombie-facilitator, don’t be surprised to have a room full of workshop-zombies! Being fully aware of this, we continuously encouraged each other to engage the participants. Having tons of energizers in our toolkit also helped :)

We continuously inspected & adapted

During the workshop, we continuously gathered, sought, and provided feedback. Not only amongst each other but also with the participants. An example if the UX fishbowl we facilitated as a closing exercise on day 1. The invitation “What’s been the good, bad, ugly, and lovely of today?” resulted in lots of valuable feedback that helped us improve the second day.

We gave each other nicknames :)

Yes, you can recognize a true team by its nicknames! I won’t explain them in detail, that’s our little secret!

• Ruben — Ron Brandsteder — Klerkx
• Rasheed — Mr. Feel Good — Raya
• Max — Candlelight Facilitation — Brouwer
• Jordann — Braveheart — Gross
• Christiaan — Sesamestreet — Verwijs
• Barry — Kindergarten Cop — Overeem

Closing

Being part of this design team was an amazing experience! It really felt like pieces of a puzzle fitting seamlessly together. Because Christiaan and I want to offer more people the experience of a design team, we decided to invite other people to join the team for the next workshop in May 2019. Given our lessons learned, I’m sure we can create an even more awesome team! How unlikely and impossible this might seem given the awesomeness of this team :)

Interested in joining an Immersion Workshop (again)? We’ve got another one coming up in May. If you’re aiming to join, book early. Our second workshop was fully booked months before the event. Or join the Dutch User Group to learn more about Liberating Structures