Strategies To Navigate Resistance Against Liberating Structures

How To Navigate Resistance Against Liberating Structures?

10 Robust strategies, practices, and experiments to try when working with groups that resist Liberating Structures

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I’ve been a huge fan of Liberating Structures for years, and I’ve experienced its strength and potential in countless situations. Most often, participants share my enthusiasm and are eager to experience a string of Liberating Structures. But this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes people are a bit cautious to experience a ‘new’ phenomenon. Other times they just fully resist using Liberating Structures. This resistance can come in different shapes and forms. It might come from one person or the entire group. From people with little knowledge and experience to the complete opposite. From people that vocally express their resistance to more subtle ways of sharing worries, doubts, and concerns.

In this blog post, I share a bunch of practices, experiments, and strategies to navigate resistance against Liberating Structures. I’ll focus on strategies that are always a good idea to try, regardless of the precise situation you end up in. Give them a try, and also share the ideas that worked for you in navigating resistance against Liberating Structures. Let’s learn and grow, together!

Strategies, practices, and experiments to consider

1. Start with a clear purpose

Have a clear purpose in mind for why you want to use Liberating Structures with a group, during a specific session. What do you hope it makes possible? What’s the ideal result you’d like to achieve? What Liberating Structures will, most likely, help you achieve this purpose? How will Liberating Structures help the group make the most out of their gathering? You don’t necessarily have to share the answer to these questions with the participants. Only do so if you feel it’s relevant for them to know. I can also distract them and only strengthen their resistance. A clear purpose can boost your confidence, and this is something participants notice. The opposite is also true. If you don’t have a clear purpose for using specific Liberating Structures in a session, and you have a group that doesn’t like experiments, then you find yourself on thin ice. So, always start with a purpose. The Liberating Structure “Design Storyboards” can help you get started.

2. Build a solid foundation with the 10 principles

Liberating Structures have 10 principles that serve as a solid foundation. Once you truly understand the principles of Liberating Structures, you can also more easily decide what structures you need, to achieve the purpose you have in mind. Overall, the principles highlight what becomes possible when Liberating Structures are used to structure everyday interactions. Whenever you design a session with Liberating Structures, keep these principles in mind. A good understanding of the principles can also help you navigate resistance.

Take for example the principle “Include and Unleash Everyone”. Its intention is to include everyone in shaping the next steps, to make all voices heard, opinions respected, and contributions acknowledged. A consequence is that with Liberating Structures, the ‘loud voices’ or people with a strong opinion need to share ‘their stage’ with others. If someone is used to being the dominant figure in every session, they might show resistance. A solid understanding of this first principle can help you explain what it makes possible for the group.

Check this blog post to learn more about the principles of Liberating Structures.

3. Try to figure out where the resistance is coming from

As I already mentioned in the introduction, resistance can come in different shapes and forms. It might come from one person or the entire group. From people with little knowledge and experience to the complete opposite. From people that vocally express their resistance to more subtle ways of sharing worries, doubts, and concerns. Try to figure out where the resistance is coming from. And keep in mind that resistance often isn’t necessarily negative. Maybe someone just wants to understand why a specific structure is used, or they struggle with the short timeboxes and want a bit more guidance.

I’ve never faced an entire group resisting the use of Liberating Structures. If it happens, it’s often one or two people. Approach them before the session or during the coffee break, and ask them what their ideal session would look like. What do they want to achieve? If it matches your purpose with the session, ask if they’re willing to try a small experiment and give Liberating Structures a try. Chances are, they’re up for it, and “all” you have to do is show the potential of Liberating Structures :)

4. Share the design of the session upfront

Whenever I work with groups, I always share the design of the session upfront. It could be a simple explanation of my purpose with the session, the total timebox, and how everyone can prepare themselves. Often, I don’t mention Liberating Structures at all. I do share this whenever I expect to work with a group that’s eager to learn more about Liberating Structures OR when I expect resistance. By sharing it in advance, everyone has the opportunity to share their questions, thoughts, and maybe concerns upfront. This gives me an opportunity to explore this in more detail early on, instead of last minute during the session itself.

5. Don’t make Liberating Structures ‘a thing’

Rule number one of Liberating Structures should be “don’t talk about Liberating Structures”. Talking about Liberating Structures quickly becomes vague, abstract, and meaningless. The quickest way to lose a group is to talk about Liberating Structures. Don’t do it. Just have the group experience the potential, and if they like, use another Liberating structure for reflection. Also, don’t make Liberating Structures ‘a thing’. Don’t announce upfront that participants will experience something new. Everything that’s new is also scary. Some people love change, while others resist from the start. They won’t resist Liberating Structures, they simply resist ‘this new unknown thing’. So, as a famous brand says: “Just Do It!”

“Rule number one of Liberating Structures should be don’t talk about Liberating Structures.”

6. Focus on the foundational structures first

Personally, I consider 1–2–4-ALL, Impromptu Networking, 15% Solutions, and Conversation Cafe the foundational structures. I might expand it with Troika Consulting, Nine Whys, TRIZ, and Appreciative Interviews. This isn’t set in stone, but these are fairly straightforward structures that nevertheless give participants a great taste of what becomes possible with Liberating Structures. Once the group has experienced its potential, you can try other structures as well. It’s perfectly fine to stick with the foundational structures for a while. Give people time to build confidence in using these structures during regular meetings. Only move to the more advanced structures once you’ve set a solid foundation with the basic ones.

So, temper your enthusiasm about Liberating Structures and resist the urge to blow away a group with an awesome — yet advanced — string of structures. Although the outcome of the session itself can be great, the participants might also get a feeling that this is something they can never do themselves and that they really need an external facilitator to use Liberating Structures. This damages the self-spreading and expertless attributes of Liberating Structures, something you want to prevent. So, keep things simple and focus on the foundational structures first.

7. Run various experiments and build momentum

Check your calendar for the upcoming weeks, and see if you can identify 1 or 2 opportunities to use Liberating Structures. This shouldn’t be too difficult, because Liberating Structures already improve interactions between two people! If you use Scrum, each Scrum event is an opportunity. Why don’t you use Liberating Structures during the next Daily Scrum? It’s only a 15-minute event and a simple 1–2–4-ALL or Impromptu Networking could already be valuable.

Instead of these small experiments, you can also think big and redesign a large company event. For example, the yearly annual company-wide strategic session. I’ve experienced many boring presentations in which C-level management presents their strategic plans for the upcoming year. Be courageous, and suggest running this session with Liberating Structures.

Whenever you run experiments with Liberating Structures, make sure to share the outcome. Maybe this already happens automatically because participants enjoyed the session and they spread their enthusiasm. But you can also consider writing a short article on the company's intranet or creating a quick video in which you explain how Liberating Structures was used. Even better: organize a UX Fishbowl and let people share their experience with Liberating Structures! Just try to build momentum and movement by running company-wide experiments with Liberating Structures and continuously develop new 15% Solutions to eventually involve and unleash everyone!

8. Co-design a session with your biggest “resister”

A great strategy to deal with resistance from participants is to involve them in the design of a session. Maybe it’s a person that actually resisted the use of Liberating Structures during a session, it could also be someone that might do so. Make it an open invitation. As I’ve mentioned earlier, resistance is often rooted in the unknown, so invite them to learn more about Liberating Structures upfront. Ideally, it helps them understand that Liberating Structures are not merely some fun facilitation tools, but techniques to unleash the potential of a group. Over the years, I’ve discovered that the biggest skeptics can become the most enthusiastic users of Liberating Structures. It’s up to you, to support them in making this shift.

9. Make Liberating Structures about the users, not the facilitator

Liberating Structures are skills to be learned by users, not facilitators. This is truly essential to understand. It took some time before I ingrained this idea into my work. Mostly out of enthusiasm, I used to create the most advanced strings of Liberating Structures. For the participants, it was mindblowing. They had a great experience, enjoyed the session, and achieved valuable results. But I often received feedback that although it was a great experience, it wasn’t something they could do themselves. They really wanted to hire me as the “expert facilitator” to run the session.

Although they didn’t resist Liberating Structures as a concept, they did resist the idea of using it themselves. Whenever this happens, I consider it a personal failure. Because my goal is to give people the confidence that they can actually do this themselves. As Christiaan Verwijs explains in this article, “instead of falling into the trap of making it more about the facilitator, start simple, practice, and repeat. When people start building the skill to use each Liberating Structure on their own, you’ll start seeing their true power.”

10. Join the community

Liberating Structures has a lively community around the world. There are tons of local user groups that organize online and in-person meetups. Join a user group and learn how others navigate resistance. Even better, take the lead and organize your own meetup. There are so many practitioners of Liberating Structures out there from whom you can learn!

Another strategy is to invite people that show some form of resistance toward Liberating Structures in the community. What I love about the Liberating Structures community is that the majority doesn’t try to convince you about anything. In all honesty, this is a big difference compared to many Agile or Scrum-related communities. Let them experience the vibe of Liberating Structures, and how it’s experienced by practitioners around the world, and maybe you can plant a seed to have them try a Liberating Structure during the next meeting.

Closing

In this blog post, I shared a variety of practices, experiments, and strategies to navigate resistance against Liberating Structures. Although you can cherry-pick the ones you prefer to try, my recommendation is to eventually use all of them. They are all ‘robust’ strategies. Meaning, that regardless of the exact situation you end up with, they’re always a good idea to try. If you’ve got any other ideas, feel free to share them. Let’s learn and grow, together!