I’ve loved stumbling across ‘liberating structures’ – a fantastic menu of tools and practices for many-to-many communication.

“Liberating Structures are easy-to-learn microstructures that enhance relational coordination and trust. They quickly foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to truly include and unleash everyone.”

Beyond conventional structures of presentations, managed discussions, open discussions, status reports and brainstorm sessions, there is a menu of structures freely available to use (ordered simplest to learn first at the top left), and there is also a ‘matching matrix‘ to help match structures to goals.

One simple example I enjoyed recently was using a set of starter questions to build trust and engagement – so simple and so effective…

• What first inspired me in my work is…
• Something we must learn to live with is…
• A bold idea I recommend is…
• What I find challenging in our current situation is…
• Something we should stop doing is…
• A courageous conversation we are not having is…
• A question that is emerging for me is…

Another brilliant tool for exposing and strategising when there appears to be conflicting needs is to find the ‘Wicked Questions‘ using the starter “How is it that we are … and we are … simultaneously?” – moving the question to an ‘and’ that includes both. ‘Integrated Autonomy‘ is a more in depth way to help a group move from either-or conflicts to both-and strategies and solutions.

(NB: Convergent Facilitation is the most effective way i know currently to find a way forward when there are a lot of different perspectives and needs to take into consideration.)

I also love the ‘Conversation Cafe‘ (and similar formats) to build trust, reduce fear and make sense of complex, difficult or painful situations.

There is so much here to explore! If you are interested to try out using Liberating Structures with your group or community, browse liberatingstructures.com or get in touch if you would like support.