Booklet
Introduction
• Qualities that were used to arrive at cards - eg not about ...
GROUP WORKS:
A PATTERN LANGUAGE FOR FACILITATION AND WHOLE MEETING DESIGN
Group Pattern Language Project
October 2011
Recognizing that the work of our collective rests upon generations of understanding of group dynamics, we are gifting this particular emergence of that ongoing development into the commons.
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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Group Pattern Language Project (2011) www.grouppatternlanguage.org
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DRAFT 4 (by Tree, & tweaked by Sue), building on Daniel, Jim, etc.
Introduction
The Group Works card deck is designed to support your process as a group convenor, planner, facilitator, or participant. The people who developed this deck spent several years pooling our knowledge of the best group events we had ever witnessed. We looked at meetings, conferences, retreats, town halls, and other sessions that gave an organization life, solved a longstanding dilemma, got stuck relationships flowing, resulted in clear decisions with wide support, and made a lasting difference. We also looked at routine, well-run meetings that simply brought people together and got lots of stuff done. We aim here to name the core wisdom of what makes deliberative group work successful.
Why are we doing this? Our world is, to a very real extent, based on dialogue. Every action taken that involves more than one person arises from conversation that generates, coordinates, and reflects those actions. Those actions have impact. If our human world is based on conversations, then the work of creating and supporting those conversations is central to shaping a world that works. Designing and conducting meetings well is vital to determining our common future. This project grew around a shared understanding that in an urgent way, our survival depends on our ability to work and play well together, and on discovering and creating group processes which are at the same time effective and life-affirming. Because this is easier said than done, we wanted to deepen and spread the insights, skills, and capacity to make that promise real.
The following core beliefs guided our work: [note we probably won't use bullets in final pass]
- Seeing a world in flux and deep need, we believe the work of facilitators, both formal and informal, can make a significant difference to the quality and outcomes of essential conversations. Thus we accept a responsibility, as facilitators and participants in group process, to act in the common good.
- We expect convenors of group process to act with full transparency regarding the motives and expected results of the sessions we organize and run. With honesty and humility, we strive to continuously improve the calibre of our work.
- We choose to assume the best of people. We believe people flourish when entrusted with the opportunity to authentically self-manage, collaborate, and make decisions collectively, as true respected equals. Because the most critical issues facing us in the world and in our organizations are complex and interconnected, we need each other to do this—the challenges we face are beyond solving by leaders or experts in isolation. We believe in sharing power, that we are wiser when we work together.
- We believe that effective group processes are clearly driven by the purpose for which they are called. We respect participants' life energy by invoking processes that productively use their time, resulting in cooperative sessions that meet a high standard in engagement, achievement and connection. We draw on experience and knowledge to create elegant designs with great care, yet remain flexible and open to change as the circumstances, will of participants and flow of events may dictate.
- Good process builds strong communities. Our work is an act of love in service to the world.
We were inspired by Christopher Alexander and the other co-authors of A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, who in 1977 published a seminal work on how to create built spaces that nourished people’s souls. They were seekers after wholeness, grace, “the quality that has no name,” which they asserted was both deeply subjective and empirically verifiable. Their book was beautiful in form, accessible to the layperson, and aimed to democratize their field. It took the arcane knowledge of how to design the best possible human-scale architecture and crystallized it into 253 principles that have influenced a generation of builders. Their book was also deeply interconnected, listing which patterns connected to each other and how, long before the advent of the World Wide Web made such thinking commonplace. Our project aims to apply the same approach to deliberative group process, and takes advantage of tools (such as wikis) that weren't available in the 1970s.
There are already plenty of good books and tools out there to help people run good meetings, and we did not want to replicate them. The Group Works cards express shared wisdom underlying successful approaches that is more specific than general values and less specific than tools and techniques. In order to decide whether or not to include a particular idea in the pack, we asked ourselves questions like:
• Does this describe a feature that shows up over and over again in group processes that fulfill the purpose for which they were called?
• Does it happen across many different methods?
• Can it take a variety of forms?
• Does it show up at more than one scale (such as within one item of a meeting and again within the meeting as a whole)?
• Does it describe an action that can be consciously undertaken by convenors and/or participants?
• Does my gut respond to this with a sense of recognition?
Because of space limitations, each card aims only to name the essential What and Why of that particular element. In order to actually use them, you’ll need to come up with the How. A lot of Hows are supplied on our website, where you will find a growing pool of information about the patterns represented in this deck. Some cards have plenty of resources already on the website, while others remain to be filled out. Over fifty people were involved in the creation of this card deck, and we’d be delighted for you to join the circle by helping explain online how to apply the patterns—see more on that below.
The people who put this together engaged in a multi-year, collaborative process alternating between in-person meetings and work online, learning as we went. We are a cross-section of North Americans from a variety of organizational backgrounds including: higher education, software development, communal living, corporate finance, indigenous tribes, political activism, nonprofit management, government agencies, faith groups, and more.
Note on Spellings: As a mixed group of volunteers located north and south of the US/Canadian border, after some deliberation we decided to go with uniform Canadian spellings.
SUGGESTED USES FOR THESE CARDS
These cards are yours, of course, to use in whatever ways make sense and work for you: in the workplace, in design and preparation of facilitated events, as a learning tool, for reflecting on how an event went, or just for fun. Here are some of the ways they have been used by facilitators and students so far, to give you some ideas to get started with. If you develop ways of using the cards that prove particularly appealing to you and your colleagues, and you would be willing to share them with us and with others, please post them to: www.grouppatternlanguage.org/[name of page on our site].
1. For group learning or teaching of facilitation skills
Deal out the cards randomly, so that each person is holding a portion of the deck. Have someone read, tell, or invent a story about an event:
(a) that was well-facilitated,
(b) that was poorly facilitated, or
(c) that they will be facilitating in the near future.
Have participants call out when the cards in their hands correspond to patterns that:
(a) were used in the well-facilitated event,
(b) could have been used to improve the poorly-facilitated event, or
(c) might be used in the upcoming event.
2. For post-event reflection and debriefing
Lay out all the cards in a tableau.
Tell the story of the recent event. As you do, identify which patterns were invoked and which might have been more effectively invoked.
3. For a team preparing for a facilitated event
Place a large display board at the front of the room. In the rows, list the nine categories; in the columns, list time stages: “early pre-event,” “immediate prep,” “during the event,” and “follow-up.”
Sort the cards by category. Hand out the category stacks to individuals or groups on the team.
Have someone describe the upcoming event: the objective, background, possible obstacles to success, etc.
Invite team members to select patterns in their category that could be used at each stage, and post the corresponding card in the appropriate row or column of the board (using a non-permanent adhesive).
Once complete, review the full arrangement on the board and discuss as a group whether it presents an appropriate strategy for the upcoming event.
4. For intuitive guidance—using the cards as an oracle or fortune-teller
Can be done as part of preparing for an event or a during a short break.
Focus on the situation you are seeking guidance for, turning it over in your mind. Draw one card to give you inspiration for how to proceed. Or choose a tableau to apply. For example, five cards might represent, in sequence: (a) the context/past situation, (b) current influences, (c) the current challenge you face, (d) unexpected future influences, and (e) outcome/resolution.
Use the cards personally or as a group to divine your current situation, future fortune, or what to do next. Let your minds and imaginations and the group conversation guide you to what it all means, and have fun with it!
5. For creating a case study to present in a class or workshop
On a board or flipchart, create a blank Storyboard with dates and/or times shown across the top.
In time sequence, tell the story of what happened, writing key events and facts on the Storyboard. As you do, post the card for the pattern that was used at that key point onto the Storyboard (using a non-permanent adhesive).
6. Assignments during a meeting
As people walk in the door to attend a meeting or once everyone has assembled, give each person one random card and ask them to take responsibility for bringing that pattern into the meeting as needed.
7. For self-assessment and self-directed learning
Lay out all the cards. Identify which patterns you feel most competent using, and which you would like to become better at.
A. Personal Development Activity
Each week, select one pattern from the second list, and think about how you have used it in the past, could have used it, and might use it in future. Keep it in a place where it's visible and refer back to it at various points during the week. Research situations where it has been used in an exemplary way. Make a point of observing when it gets used in an event or activity you participate in, and how the facilitator effectively invoked it (or not). (NB: If you are a facilitation teacher, you might similarly assign certain patterns to your students to study and research.)
B. Group Development Activity
Sit in a circle around the cards laid out. Give each person one or two sets of tokens (coins, paperclips, etc.). Invite each person to lay tokens on: (a) the patterns they feel strong in already, and (b) the patterns they would like to get better at. Take turns sharing about why you chose the patterns you did. Teach each other by having the more competent group members tell stories and suggest approaches and exercises, and go to the website for further resources.
8. Methodology Mapping
If you are an experienced practitioner of a particular process method (e.g. Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, etc.), you can use the cards to map that method. Choose 5-12 cards that you think are most important or that tell the story of how that method works. Then from that set, choose 1-3 cards to put at the very center, the patterns that express the vital core of that method. Use this to explain the method to others, from among your colleagues or on our website at [www.grouppatternlanguage.org/methodmaps].
9. In the middle of an event when the group is stuck
The deck can be used for "getting unstuck" in a variety of ways—by just having the group "go meta" and talk about patterns that might be invoked (perhaps handing out the cards and/or displaying the full list of patterns), by guerrilla facilitation of someone in the group describing an "escape pattern" and then leading the group to invoke it, or by drawing an "oracle" card as in use (4) above.
THE PHONE APP
In addition to this printed deck and booklet, there is also a phone application available with the same 91 cards. Download available from [www.grouppatternlanguage.org/phoneapp]. At the time of this writing, the phone app is only usable by iPhones; we hope to create a version usable by all smart-phones in the future.
PATTERNS IN EACH CATEGORY
Because trying to learn the full set of patterns can feel overwhelming at first, we have divvied up the patterns into this set of nine categories. Each category represents a group need addressed by that set of patterns. One could make the case for including some patterns in two or even three categories; however, for the purpose of simplifying the overall deck, we have determined one primary category for each pattern here. The categories are listed in the order in which they might naturally be considered in event design; of course reality is a bit more complex.
Following is a list of the categories (each with the corresponding icon), with a brief description of each category and a list of its cards in alphabetical order. The “Keystone” Pattern—a summing up or header for that category—is in boldface. To keep things simple we chose not to mark the keystones on the actual cards, but you may choose to do that by hand on your own personal deck.
1. INTENTION [icon] (5 patterns)
Serving and attending to the larger purpose for the gathering and how it is manifested, including addressing its longer term meaning and consequence. Why are we here, what’s our shared passion, and what are we aiming to accomplish.
Commitment
Invitation
Priority Focus
Purpose
Setting Intention
2. CONTEXT [icon] (8 patterns)
Understanding and working with the broader context and circumstances both in place and in culture.
Aesthetics of Space
Circle
Gaia
Group Culture
History and Context
Nooks in Space and Time
Power of Place
Whole System in the Room
3. RELATIONSHIP [icon] (10 patterns)
Creating and maintaining quality connection with each other, honouring our full selves, and recognizing power relations. Includes being authentic and sometimes foregrounding emotional needs in the moment rather than task.
Appreciation
Breaking Bread Together
Celebrate
Good Faith Assumptions
Honour Each Person
Hosting
Power Shift
Shared Airtime
Tend Relationships
Transparency
4. FLOW [icon] (15 patterns)
Covers rhythm, energy, and pacing. When we do what and for how long. Things to pay attention to both in anticipating the event and in responding to circumstances in the moment, to support movement along the intended trajectory toward the desired outcome.
Balance Process and Content
Balance Structure and Flexibility
Closing
Divergence and Convergence Rhythm
Follow the Energy
Iteration
Opening and Welcome
Preparedness
Reflection/Action Cycle
Rest
Right size Bite
Ritual
Seasoned Timing
Subgroup and Whole Group
Trajectory
5. CREATIVITY [icon] (7 patterns)
Using multiple intelligences and a variety of modes to open up creative possibilities.
Challenge
Expressive Arts
Generate Possibilities
Improvise
Mode Choice
Playfulness
Power of Constraints
6. PERSPECTIVE [icon] (10 patterns)
Noticing and helping the group more openly and thoughtfully explore different ways of seeing an issue. Watching, understanding, and appreciating divergent viewpoints, ideas, values and opinions. The key is in how you look at something.
Common Ground
Embrace Dissonance and Difference
Fractal
Go Meta
Seeing the Forest, Seeing the Trees
Time Shift
Translation
Unity and Diversity
Value the Margins
Viewpoint shift
7. MODELLING [icon] (14 patterns)
The essential skills and responsibilities for both facilitator and participants, to demonstrate good group practice and ensure the process goes well. Includes monitoring, nurturing and mentoring the group, enabling their effective personal and collective self-management.
Appropriate Boundaries
Courageous Modelling
Discharging
Dwell with Emotions
Guerrilla Facilitation
Holding Space
Listening
Mirroring
Not about You
Self-Awareness
Shared Leadership and Roles
Simplify
Taking Responsibility
Witness with Compassion
8. INQUIRY & SYNTHESIS [icon] (13 patterns)
Discovering coherence and moving toward convergence. From gathering information to exploring knowledge to arriving at understanding, shared meaning, consensus, or clear outcomes.
Deliberate
Distilling
Experts on Tap
Feedback
Go Deeper
Harvesting
Inform the Group Mind
Inquiry
Mapping and Measurement
Moving toward Alignment
Naming
Story
Yes, and
9. FAITH [icon] (9 patterns)
Trusting and accepting what happens in a spirit of letting go and letting come. The mystery, synergy, and ineffable, complex magic of emergence. You can invite it, but you can’t control it. Felt as a deep sense of connection not only to those assembled and to the work’s purpose but to the larger universe as well.
All Grist for the Mill
Dive In
Emergence
Letting Go
Magic
Presence
Silence
Spirit
Trust the Wisdom of the Group
The Patterns in Alphabetical Order
1. Aesthetics of Space 2. All Grist for the Mill 3. Appreciation 4. Appropriate Boundaries 5. Balance Process and Content 6. Balance Structure and Flexibility 7. ...
YOUR PART OF THE PATTERN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
This deck is not a finished product, but a snapshot in time of an evolving language. The pattern language for group process comes to life through the people who have developed it together, and now through you as well. As you use these cards to deepen your understanding and practice of group life, you will undoubtedly discover new patterns. In service of this, we've included a few blank cards so that if you identify more patterns you can add them to your deck. Below are a few other specific ways we imagine you might contribute to the further growth of this language.
Add Your Knowledge and Wisdom to the Set
Each card in the deck has a lot more information potentially available on our website. In some cases there are already write-ups complete with instructions for how to apply that pattern, things to watch out for, resources (books, workshops, etc.), examples, and more. In other cases there are at most a few sketch notes. The more knowledge is contributed by you and others, the more useful the project is. You probably know of workshops, books, or other resources that have helped you to manifest these patterns, and which may be helpful to others. There's a page on the project website for each pattern where you can offer your resources. They are all listed at [www.grouppatternlanguage.org/patterns_by_name]. If you come up with new patterns or just generally want to participate in the further development of this language, please contribute!
Join a Learning Community
Our website serves as home base for a learning community that connects via email and occasionally face-to-face. Join our email listserv to share your discoveries and hear what others are up to. Get together with people in your area to share the cards, create new activities, and connect more deeply. The website has many more ways you can participate, and space for you to add more. See [www.grouppatternlanguage.org/(participation)].
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Any project of this nature rests on the generosity of a tremendous community of support. We are grateful to the many volunteers and facilitators who contributed to this collective work. Without listing everything everyone did, we wanted to take space here to tell a bit of that story. We're sure to have missed a few people so we apologize in advance to anyone we've left out.
This project has been stewarded to completion by a core team who held a vision and committed to seeing it through. These three people made substantial space in their lives to devote to this project for the better part of three years, meeting regularly in person and over the phone and exchanging countless emails. They held a steady center while others passed through offering their gifts in turn.
Tree Bressen provided the initial catalyst to make it happen—calling in a circle of everyone she knew (and some she didn't) to help. She welcomed each newcomer and held the project space with consumate skill, keeping task aligned with purpose. She edited every draft and document, and managed the work to keep the entire project moving forward.
Dave Pollard provided a voice from mainstream business to balance our idealism. He pioneered most parts of the work, from finding the majority of early images, to creating the category chart, to writing up our core beliefs, to drawing up the first budget. He took notes on core team calls, graciously hosted us at his beautiful home, and funded travel and accommodations for whoever needed it along with other project expenses.
Sue Woehrlin tenaciously held this project amid a tangle of other commitments, bringing her insight, passion and care to just about every meeting and phone call. She facilitated many group sessions, participated in polishing every heart text, considered every possible related pattern, and often displayed her love of doing dishes.
John Abbe was our lead programmer in Wagn (the software we used to develop this), tech expert on call, and cheerleader for open everything. Ethan McCutchen (with Lewis Hoffman) developed Wagn and offered us assistance above and beyond the call of duty in using it. Vine Acorn performed multiple programming tasks on tight deadlines and a bunch of grunt secretarial labour, all with exceeding good cheer. Jeremy Lightsmith showed up to one work session to get to know us, went home and wrote the phone app. Janet Hager did the graphic design.
The following people also had significant involvement to further this work both at face-to-face work sessions and online in between, often at different phases of the project over the course of the three years:
Tom Atlee supported our ambition with both vision and on-the-ground labour, including substantial work on related patterns and pattern writing, as well as network contacts and out-of-the-box ideas.
Ted Ernst vigorously supported our image search in content, form, and process, helping move the visuals from good idea to concrete reality, as well as hosting several meetings at his community.
Daniel Lindenberger brought a thoughtful sensibility to activity development, the phone app, the website, and more, both before and (amazingly) after the birth of his son Ellison; thanks to his partner Aimee Lindenberger too for coming along and supporting these efforts.
Jim Newcomer brought an editor's pen along with a willingness to jump in where needed, not to mention his ability to cook truly superlative omelettes.
Dan Doherty put us on track for doing cards instead of a book, doing much of the work of producing the first mock-up deck.
Kathy McGrenera shared her upbeat attitude at work sessions, and got us to stop working long enough to eat!
These people contributed early ideas, inspiration, encouragement, and other forms of support:
Kaliya Hamlin came to early sessions and spoke for trusting in strong leadership within the community.
Bill Aal came to the first 5-day meeting and got us set up with email lists.
Chris Corrigan told us people had been talking about doing this project for over a decade and that we were the ones to pull it off, and got us to form a core stewardship team.
Paxus Calta offered early funding and confidence even without being quite sure what the heck it was.
Fergus McLean and others offered friendship and support to Tree through trials small and large, in the belief that this project would make a difference.
Maggie Moore Alexander offered an early blessing from afar and encouraged us toward wholeness.
Ward Cunningham told us that the software we really wanted did not yet exist and not to wait for it, just start.
Amy Lenzo, Nancy White, and Ria Baeck, in addition to other assistance and reinforcement, provided access to their extensive photo archives. Our sincere thanks to Sara Dent and all the other photographers and illustrators for each of the images. The bulk of images were taken from Flickr by searching for pictures available for commercial use under Creative Commons license.
We also offer grateful appreciation to the following: Margo Adair, Theodor Arnason, Don Benson, Tim Bonneman, Juanita Brown, brush, Richard Burg, Rabea Chaudhary, Paul Cienfuegos, Raines Cohen, Jay Cross, Lareina DePompeo, Mark Dilley, LisaMarie DiVincent, Dorit Fromm, Ken Gillgren, Nancy Glock-Grueneich, Karen Hixson, Peggy Holman, Ken Homer, Rebecca Hyman, Nuriya Janss, Lindsey Kerr, Christy Lee-Engel, Jenny Leis, John Kelly, Carol MacKinnon, DeAnna Martin, Iris McGinnis, Betsy Morris, Pennie O'Grady, Paloma Pavel, Larry Pennings, Lise Rein & Dan Parker, Anita Rosasco, Nick Routledge, Doug Schuler, Dawn Smith, Helen Spector, Mark Stiffler, Lynne Swift, Marc Tobin, Brandon WilliamsCraig.
The 6 authors of A Pattern Language—Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel—created a masterwork of enduring inspiration; and midway through our development, the middle four of them spoke at an architecture conference about their relationship with that work in ways we found enormously helpful.
Finally, we thank the community of practitioners and enthusiasts who responded to our preliminary deck in workshops, conferences and meetings while the deck was being developed and tested, and not least, you, as you take this creation out into the world.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
Tree Bressen is a skilled group facilitator who has served a wide variety of organizations for more than a decade. She feels blessed to pursue group facilitation as her calling, using skills learned in the "graduate school of communal living." Her gifts include elegant process design, holding space for tough conversations, and using good process to achieve excellent product. She creates meetings and other events that are lively, productive, and connecting—putting dialogue at the centre and bringing group ideals to life—and is an inspiring workshop teacher. Tree’s practice has been conducted on a gift economy basis since 2004; her website www.treegroup.info offers free articles and resources.
Until he retired in 2010, Dave Pollard spent 40 years advising entrepreneurs about starting and running a business, innovation, research, sustainability, coping with complexity, and the effective use of knowledge and social media. He writes a blog about living and working more effectively called How to Save the World, and in 2007 authored a book about starting and running co-operative businesses called Finding the Sweet Spot: A Natural Entrepreneur’s Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work. During his career, and in his post-retirement project activities, Dave has facilitated hundreds of business meetings, and witnessed some of the worst, and best, group process work.
As core faculty at Antioch University Seattle, Sue Woehrlin has spent the past 29 years supporting adult learners as they pursue individualized degrees in leadership, organizational change and social activism that dynamically interrelate theory with practice. The heart of her work is teaching the design and facilitation of participatory group processes that involve voices at the margins, engage the whole system, welcome uncertainty and the messiness of emergence, and tap the power of stories to heal, inform, inspire and transform groups. Sue believes workplaces and communities need effective collaborative groups now more than ever, and enjoys offering pro bono community training and consultation with teams of colleagues and students.
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