Design Your Liberating Structures Session With Purpose-To-Practice

Use the five elements of Purpose-to-Practice to design your meeting, workshop, or gathering with Liberating Structures.

(Re-)Designing meetings, workshops, or other gatherings with Liberating Structures is what I love ❤️ doing the most.

When I was first introduced to Liberating Structures, this was quite challenging. Learning 30+ official structures AND dozens of unofficial ones is like learning a new language 🤷. You need to learn many new words and how to turn them into meaningful sentences.

Something that helped me a lot, and still does, is to use “Purpose-to-Practice” to design sessions with Liberating Structures. I simply draw a P2P worksheet on paper or copy it into an online whiteboard and complete the various elements with the session in mind. ✍️

You can download the free P2P worksheet and poster with the principles here.

Here are some questions I often ask myself. These are just examples, and I continuously tweak and change them.

1. Purpose

🤔 What is the purpose of the session?
🤔 What would be the ideal outcome?
🤔 What do I want to make possible?

#2. Principles

🤔 What principles (of Liberating Structures) need attention?
🤔 Which three principles should this session embody, at least?
🤔 What principles do I expect to be challenging?

3. Participants

🤔 Who should contribute to this session?
🤔 Who must be included to achieve the purpose?
🤔 Who could support me in co-facilitating the session?

4. Structure

🤔 What Liberating Structures will we use to achieve the purpose of the session? What invitations will I use?
🤔 How will I distribute participation and configure the groups?
🤔 How will I arrange space and seating? How will I allocate time & steps?

#5. Practices

🤔 What should the Liberating Structures result in?
🤔 What is the tangible output of the session?
🤔 What does the desired outcome of the session look like?

After 30–60 minutes, I often finished the first draft of the P2P worksheet with a Liberating Structures design. Next, I share it with someone else to get feedback and improve the session.

I know this approach doesn’t fully match the original intention of Purpose-to-Practice. It does support me in designing sessions with Liberating Structures; I guess that’s what matters most! 🤷

Why don’t you give it a try as well? Let’s learn and grow together!