Building culture for co-production - Chapter 1. Holding meetings

For best results, make time to develop your compassion practices to support yourself between meetings. By looking after ourselves we can support others better.

Be creative and kind! This guide has been designed for use in virtual, hybrid or face-to-face meetings. For all meetings, seek out creative ways to value diversity, fulfil participants’ needs, minimise negative environmental impacts, and involve nature.

Everything starts with a pause. Research shows that even the briefest of pauses can help us make better decisions. It takes only about 120 milliseconds for the brain to shift focus and block out distractions to make a more accurate call. We can use pauses and short meditations (for example, a body scan) to help pace a meeting.

Sitting in a circle (of chairs and sofas) physically represents the equal importance of everyone in the room. It also allows us to ensure that everyone gets a turn to speak, be heard and to listen. In a virtual space you can recreate this effect by drawing the circle of participants during the first round. The circle is easily recreated in the virtual environment.

A round means everyone taking a turn to give a short response, either by taking turns round the circle or by allowing each person to offer their answer when they are ready. Getting everyone’s thoughts into the room can lead to more options, more creativity and better decision making.

Your meeting will have a specific purpose. The questions you use will need to relate to the purpose of the meeting and will be unique. Sometimes you may want to co-design your questions live in the meeting.

Familiarise yourself with the process as described above and below. Think about how this might work best for you and your participants - adapt, use, reflect, try again.

Find a friend (or 2) to support your chairing – do you need someone to take notes or move people into and out of virtual rooms? Or just to take a turn at hosting?

Consider the questions you will use. Maybe discuss these or ask others for their ideas? Decide when you will share the questions. Some people prefer to see them before they meet other groups, others may like to be surprised.

Immediately before the meeting, make time for yourself in whatever way helps you.

Welcome everyone to the meeting. Describe the etiquette and structure of the meeting. This might include confidentiality, the need to speak concisely to allow everyone to take their turn, the fact that no-one is required to contribute verbally and the importance of listening and attention, as much as speaking.

You may want to use an optional grounding exercise to bring everyone fully into the room. Many people use a tapping meditation, a body scan or a short silence. Try to choose something suitable for your participants. Shorter and gentler exercises are best for beginners. Pauses to collect your thoughts can be better than feelings-base pauses for those who are under pressure.

Research tells us that people think better when they are in a positive or appreciative frame of mind. So, use your first round to invite gratitude into the room.

You might invite people to share; one thing that is going well for them outside work, what motivates them to work on the topic we are about to discuss, or something they have learnt or appreciated about the Well-being of Future Generations Act.

Choose one question and explain how the round will work, for example:

“Start by saying your first name and then share one thing that is going well for you outside work. It doesn’t matter how small the positive is – even being here might be an achievement, or you might want to share something nice in your life that you take for granted; but you can always feel free to pass. If you pass, we’ll come back to you at the end of the round to give you another chance to participate, but it’s fine to pass a second time. Just being here and listening is really valuable in itself. When someone is ready to begin, please do. Please share your first name and one thing that you are grateful for outside work.”

If you are in a physical room, you might continue to take turns round the circle. If you are in a virtual room (or want to let people take their turn when they feel ready) you may want to keep a note of who has spoken. A good way to do this is drawing a circle and adding each name, as people speak. 

Depending on the number of people in the meeting, you could cover each of your agenda items by:

• completing a fresh round in the same way as above, using a suitable question and following up with a more open discussion
• moving people into pairs or 3s (using breakout rooms, if working virtually) to take part in listening without commentary, followed by an open discussion and an opportunity to feed in their main thoughts (via the chat bar or verbally in a virtual meeting) when the whole group comes back together.

Remember to be creative and use different approaches to suit different items. Remember to use rounds and pauses to help you hear everyone’s voice.

You can even hold a meeting entirely without any agenda by using the question; “is there anything that you want to bring into this meeting today?” either with another question as part of the first round or to start a second round. Once everyone has spoken, open the floor to discussion by asking; “are there any threads anyone would like to pick up, with a question, comment or thought?”

If you are not sure whether the meeting is ready to close yet, ask the classic question: “is there anything else that needs to be said, heard or asked before we check-out?”

Once complete, it is time for the final pause and round of the meeting.

If action is required, you might use gifting and requesting for this final stage or you could invite people to check-out with another question or prompt such as:

• “One word for how I feel just now is…”
• “Something that interested me during this meeting is...”
• “A learning point for me is…”

Thank everyone for being here – for listening and contributing.

When you reach the appointed time, the chair or facilitator draws the meeting to a close and begins the exercise of gifting and requesting.

Have someone ready to write down any actions that are shared and who offered them.

Stop the workshop or meeting to consider the actions you will take as a result of what you have heard.

Silence is held.

Anyone can speak but only to the whole room.

You can only say things which are:

• gifts: offers of help, actions that you are willing and ready to take

or

• requests: invitations to help, things that you feel others might be able to do to assist

Continue to hold the silence until all the offers (however sparse or meagre) have been made or you have run out of time.

Thank people for each offer as they make it.

It does not matter which people or how many people respond, only that their offers are genuine.

As you practice, people will start to link their offers together to create joint actions.

Introductions

Start the meeting with introductions by asking people an unusual question, such as: inviting them to describe something they feel grateful for, tell us what motivates them, describe something creative (they say or did) or tell you when they last interacted with nature.

Scene setting

One person briefly describes the topic or challenge on which you are going to work.

First round

Everyone takes a turn to provide one sentence or one question within the rules below. It is ok to pass or to have your go later in the round. A note taker makes a note of each of the sentences or questions using the exact words of the speaker.

The rules

You can only say one sentence or question, either a description, proposal, or suggestion:

• Descriptions should be about something you have noticed about the situation.
• Proposals should start with Could I..? Could we..? or Could they..?

Stop once everyone has had a go and decide whether a second round is needed (same rules). Once you have had enough rounds (often one for a large group but sometimes 2 or 3 for a small group), go to the next step.

Discussion and decision

Pause and breathe.

Reflecting on the round (or rounds) and attempting to retain any clarity that has emerged; discuss and decide on what you want to do and who will do it. As your discussion comes to an end your actions may become clear or you may find it useful to use gifting and requesting to clarify them.

Note takers and facilitators my also find this facilitation guidance useful.

What is three question chairing?

Three question chairing is a way of increasing focus, effectiveness and practical outcomes for any meeting. The chair (convener or facilitator) simply asks three, well prepared, genuine questions.

Remember to pause peacefully before each question for best results.

Question 1: (how is this meaningful for me?)

The aim of question one is to start the conversation, deep in the middle of the topic that you are planning to discuss and with good listening. Each person in the room is invited to introduce themselves by answering this question, starting with whoever is ready first.

For example, what inspires you to do the work that you do? If I could grant you one wish to change just one thing about this organisation; what would it be? What is, in your opinion, the biggest opportunity in the work [specific project] that we are doing together?

Question 2: (how is this meaningful for us?)

The aim of question 2 is to deepen our joint understanding of the topic on which we need to make decisions or take action. This is a specific, open question to everyone in the room.

For example, how could we maximise good health in old age? How could we replace fossil gas with other sources for those industrial operations that cannot be carried out using electricity? What do we know already about cost effective, efficient transport which does not increase the environmental footprint?

Other questions and answers will develop during this stage of the conversation. Make sure to invite quieter voices to join in, when necessary.

Question 3: (so what are we going to do about it?)

The aim of question 3 is to bring us back to action.

For example, what small step could we take in the right direction? How could we pull these (apparently diffuse) ideas together in a simple, experimental action? What do we want to do next?

Once everyone has decided what they will do together, you may want to ask one more question: how will we invite others to join in?

For larger meetings you might like to try Open Space, World Café or Sociocracy. See also the facilitation chapter.

The issue

A problem arises as we develop better, more human ways of meeting. Many people find it hard to justify going to ‘really nice’ meetings and yet these are increasingly the most important meetings that we need to attend.

Even the most dedicated reflective practitioner can find themselves feeling guilty about enjoying an action learning set, an appreciative enquiry, or a Welsh class.

Kindness and compassion are often described as 'acts'. However, we are increasingly finding it useful to think of them as attitudes or stances that we adopt. In an interconnected world, an act of kindness implies that it is optional and can be turned on or off. This allows us to justify ourselves colluding with abusive systems whilst apparently still remaining kind and compassionate to the individual.

The analysis

As human beings we often have a strong sense of fairness and determination to work hard (subconscious or conscious) for various reasons. Having attended a wonderful programme meeting in beautiful woodland we find ourselves naturally slipping the next of these meetings to the bottom of priorities. This appears to have more to do with our guilty feelings and reluctance to be kind to ourselves than with any rational assessment of strategic importance.

Holding meetings differently is one thing, but the work on the wards still needs to go on. How can we bring this agenda to task orientated roles so that we improve everyone's working lives rather than those who are fortunate enough to sit in meetings? Not including the staff on the wards or the teachers in the classrooms are divisive and disrespectful.

The invitation – time banking for your conscience

We propose the following simple solution for those interested in these problems.

Every time you have a meeting which feels good, log the time it took and pay it back.

You can ‘pay back’ by working or volunteering on the front line or by meeting with front line staff to facilitate or provide time for them to think together. Most managers start with 'no funds yet banked' while many front-line staff are already owed large amounts of good meeting time!

The objective

As long as we also actively convert the meetings we have control over good meetings, eventually, we might end up with a combination of beautiful meetings and compassionate action, as old fashioned unproductive meetings get squeezed out of the system.