The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.
This is a round-table conversation with Adam Kahane, author of Facilitating Breakthrough, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven’t listened to the interview I did with Adam last season OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation.
Adam does show some slides during the conversation, so head over to YouTube if you want to follow along.
A note on process: In this session, you’ll hear the panel share what parts of the book were most impactful to them, and then Adam responds to their comments with some deeper thoughts. The wisdom Adam drops here is absolutely worth the price of admission!
Check out the show notes on theconversationfactory.com for links to Adam’s book, our podcast conversation last year, and his work as a Director at Reos Partners.
If you’re unfamiliar with Adam and Reos, Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country’s transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid.
He’s gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between.
Adam is amazingly honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy, Transformative Scenario Planning, and Solving Tough Problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt...or just get Facilitating Breakthrough!
It’s all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it’s an eye-opener. As you’ll hear, many of the panel members had an eye-opening moment, as I did, around the idea of Vertical and Horizontal facilitation.
Vertical and Horizontal Facilitation
In the opening quote, Adam points out that Vertical and Horizontal facilitation are two poles of a polarity. And like all good polarities, the key is to hold them lightly and dance between them mindfully.
Vertical Facilitation is focused on singularity: We have the right answer, and a right answer can be found and advocated for.
Horizontal Facilitation is focused on multiplicity: We each have our own answer, our own view, and there is no right path.
A sketch I made to help me think though the key ideas of Vertical and Horizontal Facilitation and the moves that shift the conversation from one pole to the other.
As Adam says...the “bad guy” isn’t one or the other pole of the polarity...it’s choosing one over the other.
I also deeply loved that Adam makes clear that the work of the Facilitator mirrors the work of the group.
Adam points out (on p.70 of his book) that:
A facilitator can only help participants if they, like participants, move back and forth between bringing their experience and also listening and adjusting to the needs of the situation
Again: it’s not about choosing verticality (finding a single answer) or horizontality (exploring multiplicity)...it’s about the opening and emergence created when we shift from one side of the polarity to the other. Can we move between Inquiring (the move to the horizontal) and Advocating (which shifts to the vertical)?
Complex situations rarely have solutions that can readily and easily be identified and advocated for. So, finding a path through truly complex challenges requires careful and artful shifting between these two modes of Vertical and Horizontal.
I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and that you check out Adam’s recent book, Facilitating Breakthrough.
If you want to take a deep dive into mastering facilitation and leading conversations through complexity, check out my Facilitation Masterclass. The next 12-week cohort starts in February. Learn more here.
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
Facilitating Breakthrough, by Adam Kahane
Adam Kahane on The Conversation Factory
Minute 21
So the one phrase that I've come up with that's not in the book, about which I think explains the book, is that I think the world needs more and better collaboration. And if you define a facilitator simply as somebody who helps people to collaborate to effect change then the world needs more and better facilitation. So that is a summary of what the book is about that isn't in the book.
Minute 25
But early on a very generous person, who I actually don't know, who was one of the readers, one of the 207 readers of the manuscript, a guy named Marco Vallenti, said to me no, he thinks I'm wrong. This is a polarity, the bad guy is choosing one or the other, which I think most facilitators do, or at least they tend to one or the other. And the recommended approach is to use them both. Which you'll recognize is the central organizing idea in the book. And so a very important piece of feedback.
Now this thing about similarity and difference is interesting to me and I, years ago somebody said to me it's both. It's like Paris fashion week. Every year it's the same, every year it's different. So to me they are equally important. It's an ordinary polarity, it's related to power and love. But that they are both true. And that you need to focus both on what's common and what's different, and to focus only on what's common is the vertical and to focus only on what's different is the horizontal.
Minute 27
you don't need to decide if transformative facilitation is the right approach. I'm asserting that it is, that this is a general theory and practice of facilitation and that transformative facilitation equals good facilitation. So I know that is an audacious statement. So there is a discernment about fit for purpose, but its not about transformative facilitation, yes or no. It's about which move to make. That's where the discernment comes in.
Minute 32
The last thing, one of you mentioned this being a part of and apart from. I think it was Maggie. This is really interested me a lot. That is why I, even though logically the last story doesn't really, it doesn't have to be the last chapter, but I really wanted that to be the last chapter, because I think it's a very fundamental thing about whether you consider outside or inside a situation. And somebody said to me today it's the difference between controlling a situation and entering a situation. And when you think about it that way, of course we can't control and of course we are entering, but to recognize that, and again to recognize it's not that inside good, outside bad, but choosing one or the other rigidly is bad, and so like the other four polarities, its a matter of doing them both.
Minute 40
So Daniel is referring to an idea that I think I allude to in this book, but which is this central point in my previous book Collaborating with the Enemy. And it makes the point that there are, there is more than one way to deal with a situation. There are these four ways. And collaborating for some people is their favorite thing, for some people it is their least favorite thing. But anyhow you can't collaborate with everybody on everything, so collaboration is a choice. And not only is it a choice, but it is an unstable choice. So people can say we want to collaborate and then after five minute or five months say this isn't working I'm going to exit, or adapt, or force. But the subject of this book is if and only if the actors want to collaborate, then you need, then some person or people have to facilitate and this is how to do it. But this book says nothing about what to do if people or if key people don't want to collaborate.
More About Adam
Adam organizes, designs, and facilitates processes that help move people forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
Adam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners, an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
Adam is a leading organizer, designer, and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries and in every part of the world, with executives, politicians, generals, guerrillas, civil servants, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations officials, clergy and artists.
Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, about which Nelson Mandela said, “This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.” He is also the author of Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future, and Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust.
During the early 1990s, Adam was the head of Social, Political, Economic, and Technological Scenarios for Royal Dutch Shell in London. He has held strategy and research positions with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (San Francisco), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna), the Institute for Energy Economics (Tokyo), and the Universities of Oxford, Toronto, British Columbia, California, and the Western Cape.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
So, we are going to do a round robin, and just take a couple of minutes each. I'll let you know if you've gone past like three or four minutes, because that would add up to a lot of time. Just to share one, one thing from the book that you feel was impactful. And one thing, one question that might still be standing out for you that the group and Adam could help clarify.
Daniel Stillman:
Hey welcome aboard Maggie. We're just getting started with the round robin.
Daniel Stillman:
I will, I'll lead the way. I feel like the quote that I really loved was the idea that a facilitator, and this is from page 70, a facilitator can only help participants if they like participants move back and forth between bringing their experience and also listening and adjusting to the needs of the situation. The idea that we have to do exactly what we ask our participants to do, that there's this connection between what we do as a self and what we do as a group, I think is really profound. And to that point I think there isn't enough conversation around the inner moves of facilitation. That facilitation is an inner game as much as a set of outer moves. And that's the thing I am most grateful to have spoken about in the book.
Daniel Stillman:
And I think you mention I'm becoming more masterful as a facilitator, or in my facilitation, in as much as you can recenter yourself more quickly than you used to. And I think it's worth having the conversation at some point about how we, how you develop that skill. Because I know that is something that is not clear to everyone, how you develop that skill of the inner capacity for presence and stillness with yourself. I am going to pass the mike over to Osama. Osama.
Osama:
Hi Daniel. Hi Adam. Daniel, you look slimmer from last time I saw you. I just want to say that.
Daniel Stillman:
Just to be clear we are here to compliment Adam, not me, but thank you.
Osama:
Yes. Okay, okay. And Adam you have more hair than last time I saw you.
Osama:
So for me the thing that stuck with me the most, almost the physicist rigor. Studying these concepts. So, I know you, Daniel, your background is in physics and Adam your background is in physics. And my background is in computer science in a technical field, but when I was reading about vertical and horizontal facilitation, for me I didn't recognize them as separate things. Because I don't see them existing by them, like I haven't seen vertical facilitator or a horizontal facilitator. So for me they were kind of messy, and so I was irritated to see them split. But as I read more I valued what I learned by splitting them and studying them and then reintegrating them in transformative facilitation.
Osama:
I hope I made sense. And I pass it to, do I pass it to the next person?
Daniel Stillman:
Yes please.
Osama:
I pass it to Mark Melbourne.
Mark:
Thanks Osama. So great to meet you all. And Adam I guess what struck me, there was a lot of resonances for me I guess. I'm part of, I'm kind of a fan of the art of hosting community that does talk about many of the concepts that you've alluded to there in your book. I guess the thing that was impactful for me was just to, kind of in a way bearing witness to it being applied in such significant, kind of high gravity, kind of circumstances. Which I can't even conceive of being, kind of involved, being a witness physically to that.
Mark:
I think the curiosity for me is trying to understand how the experience of being in that holy environment of where the magic happens, how does that continue on past, once the event is finished? How does that sort of transformation continue to bleed out into what happens next and next and next? And if that is sort of an intentional part of the process?
Mark:
Hand balling to Kara.
Kara:
Okay. Hi. Thank you Adam for writing this wonderful book. It was a real joy to read. Your stories are amazing and similar I think to Mark is, oh my gosh, I can't imagine actually having been in these incredibly complex situations, like very high stakes and it sounds intimidating. But you are clearly an expert in navigating these complicated relationships.
Kara:
I had a lot of similar thoughts to what Osama and Mark had said. But something I'll add on top of that is I love the bookend, no pun intended, the concepts that sort of framed the very beginning and the very end of the book. Which is removing obstacles to contribution connection and equity as the goal of the facilitation. I love just how simple, but how impactful that way of thinking about it is. And then by closing the book where you talk about employing love, power and justice, and that that is kind of similarly things you want to remove obstacles to but also empower to kind of bring clarity to the situation. Those were two things that I really loved.
Kara:
The thing that I am left with is, it seems as though transformative facilitation is applicable to very specific scenarios and you have the very last page, which I didn't see for a little while, well maybe not the very last page. But is the guide for facilitating breakthrough and how to recognize when it's an appropriate tool. I guess I am still wrestling with that. How do I know that this is the right tool for the scenario that I am faced with and how do I recognize that in the situation? So, yeah, that is what I am left with. Thank you very much.
Kara:
And I will pass it to, I am going to pick my neighbor down the road in Tampa, Wayne. Two Floridians on this call. That's kind of fun.
Wayne:
Awesome. Thank you. All right, again thanks Mark. I don't know if anybody else listened to the book, but I did listen to it. And it was a very good listen. I definitely appreciate it. I know it wasn't you right, right? No.
Adam Kahane:
No.
Wayne:
Had somebody else. Okay. Definitely appreciated the way the book came in very into story telling. Again those high stakes situations were quite riveting. I liked overall how the book, there was not a lot of dips in it really. I definitely liked how the conclusion was almost like a fireworks show, where the end had a lot of stuff going on as well. That really tied things in, like Kara was saying, the power, love and justice. It was just like wow. You just sprinkled a lot of chocolate syrup on top of the sundae that we were already enjoying. So I loved that.
Wayne:
I loved how you put the power and love, I can almost picture it as a matrix, where without power or without love you really don't have anything, or just having one, just having another, but you need both of them which was great. Then you put the justice part on there, and it had me thinking and more curious about how different systemic inequities that exist look through that lens.
Wayne:
It almost makes me crave for a book focused on those things. Maybe someone else in the Reos group, who focus on that. What has been their experiences dealing with some of those rather sticky situations. And then lastly, this is something I've been going through personally, in terms of being a continuous improvement professional, very process methodology focused, and your book pretty much says, okay don't rely on that. You have to be able to, again maneuver and shift your balance and it's not just step one, step two, step three. It could be one, two, back to one, one, five, back to four. Just all of that. And the fit for purpose aspect is what I got from it and was really a mind set shift for me. Thank you.
Wayne:
And I will pass it to my neighbor up top, right next to me is Lynne Carruthers.
Lynne:
Thank you Wayne. On the opposite side of the country.
Lynne:
I loved this one line Adam. "It is a way to remove the obstacles to advancing on their own." A really nice [inaudible 00:10:32]. I also love the definition of the role of a facilitator. I often find that where I work, I struggle with what does a facilitator actually do. No you don't have all the answers and tell them what to do. So that lovely definition is very helpful.
Lynne:
Daniel will Adam see the things that we wrote up?
Daniel Stillman:
Oh I'm happy to share that slide stack with him. We've been capturing our nuggets in a place.
Lynne:
Excellent. Thank you.
Lynne:
I have all kinds of things, but I am a long time aware of your amazing skills and talents and I just want to say that Napier would be very proud of you.
Adam Kahane:
Thank you.
Lynne:
You're welcome.
Lynne:
That's it for me Daniel. Oh, excuse me. Mark where are you?
Mark N:
Hey. Thanks. I am actually in San Jose, California. So quite close to, regionally in a similar location. Yeah, thank you. Nice to meet everyone. People that I don't know and do know, but also very much nice to meet you Adam.
Mark N:
I can only kind of piggy back on what other people have said because they have said it so much better than I. I think really what struck me was the really simple part of the things that make us different. There's things that make us different, but focusing on the things that bring us together is kind of really the basis of facilitation. And the way that you work with the group dynamic to really focus on, I never really thought of being to bring it back to the human elements, you know the power, love and justice. But really having those goals and the reasons why, they have a reason to come to the table, even at these high stakes is just kind of how magical, how you were able to condense into something so simple. Because I think condensing it down is one of the most difficult things to do. So I very much appreciate you having gone through those experiences and being able to share it in that manner.
Mark N:
I think what, kind of the question that I have, that was kind of off book, was similar to Daniel's. When facilitating in tense situations with such high stakes, how do you as a facilitator recenter yourself, kind of avoid burn out and recoup from it so that you can continue to provide this type of facilitation again and again over time? I think that is kind of like the question that is probably going to be going for a long period of time beyond this conversations. But would very much appreciate to learn more about that as well. Thank you so much.
Mark N:
And to that I will popcorn to Maggie.
Maggie:
Thanks Mark. Adam it's a privilege to meet you and spend this time with you. I'm a fan of Solving Tough Problems, which I bought many years ago because I do a lot of scenario work.
Maggie:
The part that really resonated with me was that notion that a part of the group and apart from the group. That is always one of my mantras as I go in, especially when it's what you call the high wire situations, is this not about me, but I'm there too. So that notion of toggling back and forth between being apart and also a part of the group. It was enjoyable to see the foreword by Ed Schein. He was one of my professors at the Pepperdine MSOD Program many years ago. And I also really appreciate just the book, all the citations and notes, because I followed up on a lot of those as well. So it is a wonderful resource. So, thank you.
Maggie:
I'll pass it to Carrie.
Carrie:
Thanks Maggie. And thank you Adam for being here and for this book. I'm a fellow Berrett-Koehler author, so hello.
Carrie:
This was, I learned so much. And really over the last year and a half I never considered myself to be a facilitator, and over working with Daniel and his masterclass I have realized that everything I do is actually facilitation. This was deeply clarifying for me. Especially the ideas of vertical and horizontal facilitation. I didn't, like Osama, I didn't realize that those were two separate things. And that I often am working in environments where vertical facilitation is the only acceptable kind of facilitation, in these corporate environments. But, where from the top, but then horizontally there are just so many voices that are not being heard and are frustrated, and that are, things are falling apart. So that really clarified that for me.
Carrie:
The concept that I am taking away from it more than anything else is this concept of unconditional positive regard for the people that you are facilitating. And perhaps for yourself as well as you are facilitating. That will stick with me for a long time. Especially when facilitating difficult groups.
Carrie:
The question that I am still wondering about is, I think Carrie you mentioned this, how to know if this facilitation is right, and then how to get consent to facilitate this or if that is even a concept that makes sense in your framework? And then also what to do when working in this context and then groups have a sort of false consensus and are being too nice to each other? So that you are not really able to make any progress. So that is my big question after reading this. Thank you.
Carrie:
And I will pass it to Kelly.
Kelly:
Hi everyone. Thank you Carrie. I'm Kelly Evans from San Francisco. I apologize my late, and this is also my first one, so what an impression. Hopefully none of you will forget me this time. Because I'll be that one. Nice to see you Daniel again.
Daniel Stillman:
Likewise.
Kelly:
Wow Carrie. So many things that you said were exactly, I'm only on Chapter Two. I consider myself an accidental and a somewhat reluctant facilitator. I am an introvert and yet I have stuck myself in a position where I felt facilitation was important. It was needed at the moment. And lo and behold I was going to step in to try to be that person.
Kelly:
I was struck immediately from the book, just joyfully surprised about sort of elevating the role of the facilitator to sort of this, it was sort of a spiritual celebration of the role of facilitator for me. Because the facilitator is often, especially in my work environment, reduced to its minimal parts. You are going to keep us on time. You are going to create an agenda. It's really pretty stale. And I was really struck by the vertical and horizontal as well. Coming at it from the side. And I think one is sometimes more formal and the other one is sort of how it really happens, right?
Kelly:
And to Carrie's point I would love to learn how to influence the organization to buy in to a different way of doing and being. And also Carrie, echoed your developing empathy with myself as a facilitator. Lynne and I are colleagues and we've done a ton of co-facilitation, and just the exhaustion I personally feel sometimes with something, I just need to give myself permission because I felt I was giving so much to the group and felt so much accountability and responsibility for the success of whatever it was I was trying to get the group from point A to point B. Just being okay with sometimes it being messy or just missing the mark. So I also learned, or look forward to learning how to tap into the flow of this transformative facilitation to A to help bolster myself through and gain some buoyancy through some of the ups and downs of how these things really unfold in real life.
Kelly:
That's all. I'm just in chapter two. So tremendously impactful right at the get go Adam, thank you.
Daniel Stillman:
All right. Thank you everyone for doing that. And Adam I hope that wasn't too much of a shower, slash fire hose of insights. What from that is sticking for you as worth stretching out and expanding? I know that was a lot, but I'm curious where you think it would be interesting to start unpacking.
Adam Kahane:
Well, first of all thank you very much. Thanks for reading the book and finding something useful in it.
Adam Kahane:
Let me say a few things. And also perhaps its counter norm but also show you a few slides. And the reason is that I finished the book early in the year. It's a very long process from the time you finish the manuscript to the time the book comes out. I love Berret-Koehler by the way. I really enjoy working with them. But, any how, the point is I finish writing the book, I don't know six months ago, but I wasn't really presenting it yet. So I was sort of mulling it over in my mind and also rereading it many times, because you have to keep proof reading it and things like that, so as a result there are a few things that are clearer to me now that aren't in the book.
Daniel Stillman:
So you've learned things since writing the book? That's not allowed. It stays in time and that's it.
Adam Kahane:
Including some images, because it's more trouble than it's worth to try to get images into a printed book usually. But I'm giving a lot of presentations and I like to use images in my slides. So the one phrase that I've come up with that's not in the book, about which I think explains the book, is that I think the world needs more and better collaboration. And if you define a facilitator simply as somebody who helps people to collaborate to effect change then the world needs more and better facilitation. So that is a summary of what the book is about that isn't in the book.
Adam Kahane:
And I'm just going to show you a few images that relate to some of the things, well images that I, I like making these slides and they relate to things you said. So I'm just going to quickly share my screen here. I'm sorry this is in the wrong place.
Adam Kahane:
So you mentioned being a physicist. This is a bar in Montreal. I don't think it exists, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist anymore. But when I was a physics student, I was dating a theater student and she worked at the Kon-Tiki. She was a bartender at the Kon-Tiki. And I would go, I can't remember how often a week, but I don't know maybe three or four times a week, and sit at the bar waiting for her shift to finish and work on my physics problem. So I like that a lot. It actually really, I think this is a photo from before my time, but it really did look like this when I used to go there.
Adam Kahane:
But anyhow, I do like this activity of trying to figure out very precisely how to say things. I haven't taken anything else from my studies in physics, but I did take this love of finding a clear and simple way to say things. And the table at the back of the book, which I suppose doesn't show up very well in the audio version, or even in the digital version, but you can read in the paper version is pretty complete. And this vertical and horizontal is a new idea. I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it before. It's not that, the book is describing something that lots of good facilitators do, but it's describing it in a new way. And the big turning point in the book is when I realize the book was not about vertical bad, horizontal good, but choosing vertical or horizontal as bad and working with them both as good.
Osama:
Can you say it one more time?
Adam Kahane:
Yeah, so my editor, I don't know if it's the same as Carrie's editor, is the former president of Berrett-Koehler. His name is Steve Piersanti. He's a really, he's probably the best business book editor in the United States. He's quite a modest man, but he will admit to that. And one of the things he's told me recently, because I worked on five books with him, is that a book has to have a bad guy. You know, you have to say what this is not. And so I thought that when I first started writing and I thought that the bad guy was vertical facilitation and that the point of the book was that you needed not to be vertical and horizontal.
Adam Kahane:
But early on a very generous person, who I actually don't know, who was one of the readers, one of the 207 readers of the manuscript, a guy named Marco Vallenti, said to me no, he thinks I'm wrong. This is a polarity, the bad guy is choosing one or the other, which I think most facilitators do, or at least they tend to one or the other. And the recommended approach is to use them both. Which you'll recognize is the central organizing idea in the book. And so a very important piece of feedback.
Adam Kahane:
Now this thing about similarity and difference is interesting to me and I, years ago somebody said to me it's both. It's like Paris fashion week. Every year it's the same, every year it's different. So to me they are equally important. It's an ordinary polarity, it's related to power and love. But that they are both true. And that you need to focus both on what's common and what's different, and to focus only on what's common is the vertical and to focus only on what's different is the horizontal.
Adam Kahane:
Now the last image I want to show you is something I described in the book, but I have photographs about it. And it relates to the point that Kara made. That I'm going to say that you don't need to decide if transformative facilitation is the right approach. I'm asserting that it is, that this is a general theory and practice of facilitation and that transformative facilitation equals good facilitation. So I know that is an audacious statement. So there is a discernment about fit for purpose, but its not about transformative facilitation, yes or no. It's about which move to make. That's where the discernment comes in.
Adam Kahane:
And here is a, when Covid started my wife and I moved from the city to the country, and I wrote about this in the book. But the images I think will say it more clearly. So I live in Montreal, I'm back now and this is where I go jogging every morning. It's pretty straight forward, because the streets are marked. But when I go out to the country I jogged here where there are, yeah there are no marked paths. And it was really interesting because there's lots of paths in this forest and I kept getting lost, for days and days. In parentheses, I got lost while I was thinking about my book. So I was paying attention to something else and I would get lost. And the first time I got lost for hours, and it was getting dark, and I really thought I wouldn't make it back. I was pretty scary. And even when I did get back to a part of the trail I recognized I again started thinking about what I was writing and I got lost again, right at the end.
Adam Kahane:
But the interesting thing is its not true, I realized after three or four days, its not true that the path is unmarked. Actually its marked very clearly. There are red ribbons around the trees. But because I didn't know there were red ribbons I didn't notice them. Actually its more dramatic now that there are parts of the trail where somebody has spray painted big red dots. They are pretty high up. But the point is, if you know what to look for you can find your way, but if you don't know it just looks like this, like what's the direction. And I did this for a full year, and more or less tried to go on the same trail. But its pretty different from month to month, at least in Canada. And you have to be paying attention to different things. On the top right where the leaves are very thick its real easy to trip. When its snowy its not hard to find the trail, but its dangerous in other ways, etc.
Adam Kahane:
So anyhow, I'll stop there. So this idea that the discernment is about which move to make, there's only 10 moves. In a way its pretty simple right. Its just 10 things, it's not a million. 10 is not a very big number. But they're not in any particular order. I was thinking its like a recipe where they tell you there is 10 ingredients, but they don't tell you how much of each, in what order, or how to combine them. Just pay attention to what is needed next. I guess there are people who cook like that. I wouldn't know how. So that's the discernment. It's about what to use when.
Adam Kahane:
And I don't have to say a lot to say about this question about being present. I mean people are always interested in that. I don't know any way to do it except pay attention and when you screw up figure out what did I do there. And how do I do it better next time. There may be better ways.
Adam Kahane:
The last thing I will say in relation to your comments is, it is an interesting question is how do you get consent to facilitate in this way. I think one of the reasons for writing this book, well for all of my books, but including this one is, I'm trying to make it easy for people, I'm trying to give the user some authority. To say well, you might not believe me, but here is a book. It's got Nelson Mandela on the back. Because my experience is actually almost nobody cares about the process, if you try to explain it to them. Very few people are interested. All they want to know is do I trust you it will work. And that's about credibility and privilege and received, whatever is it called, referred credibility and things like that. So any way, I'll stop there.
Adam Kahane:
Oh sorry. The last thing, one of you mentioned this being a part of and apart from. I think it was Maggie. This is really interested me a lot. That is why I, even though logically the last story doesn't really, it doesn't have to be the last chapter, but I really wanted that to be the last chapter, because I think it's a very fundamental thing about whether you consider outside or inside a situation. And somebody said to me today it's the difference between controlling a situation and entering a situation. And when you think about it that way, of course we can't control and of course we are entering, but to recognize that, and again to recognize it's not that inside good, outside bad, but choosing one or the other rigidly is bad, and so like the other four polarities, its a matter of doing them both.
Daniel Stillman:
I'm going to invite Kara and Maggie, since I think your points were the ones covered by a fair bit of that, if there is a follow up or a deeper question you have from what was just shared by Adam.
Daniel Stillman:
Not to put you both on the spot.
Daniel Stillman:
[crosstalk 00:34:20]
Daniel Stillman:
Am I inquiring or advocating Adam? I actually don't know.
Maggie:
Well I like the idea that those, there are five polarities. And its that discernment at any moment, are you getting too involved and trying to shift the group to where you think they should be? Then you need to back off. If you are not paying attention and you are just outside and checking your phone, then you need to get re-engaged. And I think that for each of those polarities, I mean I love facilitating because when you are enroll its so easy to hold unconditional positive regard. And to just accept that whatever is happening is part of the process and we trust the process, and itself as instrument. And I think I acknowledge as well that the longer you do this work, the less vulnerable you are to making it about oh I hope I don't make a mistake, or I don't want to look stupid. You can just be there and stand in grace, not always. And what I appreciated too your admitting when you really messed up and when you were awkward or scared. And I think that that, I just loved your stories. But that to me, just that notion of these as polarities and having the versatility to be able to toggle back and forth pretty immediately.
Maggie:
Kara, say a lot.
Kara:
I don't think it was my comment though. I think it was somebody else who made, about the apart, a part or not apart of it.
Adam Kahane:
No that was Maggie.
Kara:
I'm not sure if that is what you were referring to Daniel.
Daniel Stillman:
No, I think it was the.
Adam Kahane:
I think it was you about is transformative facilitation the right tool.
Kara:
Right, okay. Then yeah, I want to ask about that. But I was like I don't want to take it off topic.
Kara:
I'm trying to deepen my understanding and your points that you just made I think were really clarifying that this isn't a tool or a method or a technique that you use in a specific scenario. Its the way you work with people in this scenario that you are helping them move forward together, in any time that that's what's being asked of you to help people with. So I guess what I've been trying to grasp for a process. You know, like what does an agenda look like in a transformative facilitation situation. But I think what I'm hopefully understanding, and correct me Adam if I'm not quite there yet, but, this is more a set of inner moves that you are using and cycling through in whatever the agenda is. [crosstalk 00:37:34]
Adam Kahane:
You are correct and I'm seeing more clearly now. It's a set of outer move and inner shifts. Well, let me say what the book says. Someday we can decide whether this is a true or false statement. What the book says is that this is a set of outer moves and inner shifts required for any and all good facilitation. And that this is a general and complete theory in practice. So I say it with trepidation, because that's a big claim. And there may be more than five or fewer than five. But yes this is, I don't know what you would call it, but its the basics for all kinds of what I call real facilitation. That's to say, not including where you are trying to manipulate or control people.
Daniel Stillman:
So Adam, there's two things I want to follow up on. One is I think, sometimes I think about it as there's the center and the edges of a conversation. And there's definitely a heart beat in a powerful group conversation where the edges are everyone having their own opinion, but also small conversations, self conversations and the center where we are all having the conversation together. And whether or not we can align or agree or find a path forward that's the other questions. But I think when you flashed your slides I saw number 51 is I think from collaborating with the enemy, which when we talk about physics brain and thinking really schematically and clearly about these things, when we had our first conversation I loved seeing this flow chart of is a real change here possible. Can I live with it, if not then, can I walk away from it, if not then? I don't know if you can share that for a moment because I think that, yeah there it is. I feel like in a way that answers a little bit of Kara's question. Like is a real change here possible. Is everyone co-located in the same, are they all reading this diagram in the same way.
Daniel Stillman:
Because if somebody says okay I think I can force this and other people are like I'm going to exit this, and somebody is saying I think we should collaborate, then we are not. Maybe we are not ready for, I feel like I'm getting and Amen from Carrie, so but I would love to get a conformation from you Adam.
Kara:
I think that's also where part of my question came from, is like how do I know we are ready to move forward I think with the collaborating like you said. So I love that slide. That is really helpful. Thanks.
Adam Kahane:
So Daniel is referring to an idea that I think I allude to in this book, but which is this central point in my previous book Collaborating with the Enemy. And it makes the point that there are, there is more than one way to deal with a situation. There are these four ways. And collaborating for some people is their favorite thing, for some people it is their least favorite thing. But anyhow you can't collaborate with everybody on everything, so collaboration is a choice. And not only is it a choice, but it is an unstable choice. So people can say we want to collaborate and then after five minute or five months say this isn't working I'm going to exit, or adapt, or force. But the subject of this book is if and only if the actors want to collaborate, then you need, then some person or people have to facilitate and this is how to do it. But this book says nothing about what to do if people or if key people don't want to collaborate. The book is silent on that question. Except to say that's non-facilitation and that's something else.
Wayne:
Excuse me Adam, can you? Oh I think Osama had his hand.
Osama:
Are we open to make general comments, or there's a flow?
Daniel Stillman:
Absolutely yeah, totally. I'm not in charge here strangely enough.
Osama:
So for me the story about the mystery Adam comes back. The story that you started the book with. I'm both delighted and sad to see the mystery decomposed, and to gain a deeper understanding of the mystery. And when I hear you saying a general theory for participation I cringe a little bit and I think, I would like to think that there is more to that. But I think this is a very useful theory. It's like the Newtonian view of physics. Very useful. And then maybe later we'll have the theory of facilitation that adds a few things that we missed and things like that. It's like this alternation between the magical, the mythical and the kind of rational, kind of carefully strategized approaches that I get when I read the book.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah, thanks for saying that. Of course you will recognize that early in the book I abandon any attempt to define the mystery or even explain it. I don't even understand it at all. And I didn't elaborate on it, but my conversation with Pacha DeRue was super confusing because he was trying to, he basically said, anyway, he basically by the end of the dinner said don't worry, you don't need to understand that. And I moved on.
Adam Kahane:
And as I point out, which you recognize, this isn't like a mystery, like an Agatha Christie mystery that you solve. And so what I became more interested in was not what's the mystery, but what can you do to remove the obstacles. So that is where I turned my attention. As for what it is, and it's a bit of a leap to say the expression of the mystery is power, love and justice. I don't have much confidence in that statement, it just was a way of tying the whole thing together. So don't worry, there's lots more to be said about the mystery and the expression of the mystery. I haven't even begun that.
Osama:
Thank you for that.
Daniel Stillman:
Wayne what's still on your brain?
Wayne:
Yes. Thank you. Adam I had a question about the last thing you said before [inaudible 00:45:18] book being about facilitation and so when the chief, or something or another, the Manitoban Elder said I don't trust you, was he still collaborating with you or was he not? Were you not at one of those forks in the road? Or was he still participatory?
Adam Kahane:
Well it's a good question. I shortened the story a little bit because it was hard to get the tone right. So let me just add a few more things. So George Moosewagon, who was the man who made that statement, is a tall guy and he has a ponytail. So he looks like I imagine, he's a big guy, tall and he has a ponytail, so he looked like what I would've imagined a first nations, he was an elder, but what a first nation chief would look like. So when he said, I hadn't met him before, this was the first day of the meeting and I didn't know him from beforehand, so when he said that I, as I said in the book, I was pretty scared. But he said it in a very kindly way. And I got to know him later, and he is an exceptionally kind and generous person. So he was, in referring to that framework, he was saying I might exit here. Or you might have to exit here, which is how I took it. Because I have two or three times been asked to leave in the middle of a meeting, and it's not a fun experience. I was not anxious for it to be, I mean I have literally been asked to leave meetings and it's not the sort of thing you want to have happen again. [crosstalk 00:47:26] What's that.
Wayne:
We really appreciate you putting that in there. That it wasn't all happy roses. That you did put in that. It was appreciated. Being asked to leave, a little vulnerability there, loved it.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah, and being asked to leave in the middle of winter in Manitoba is like an extra kind of hardship. But anyhow, so yes he was saying I think, I'm not sure this is going to work. I'm not sure this is working for me. I might have to exit or I might have to ask you to leave. But he said it in a way that implied that he was open to staying, and that's why, when I said to him later I don't want you to trust the process, so that's the opposite of what facilitators usually say, or often say. I think he took that as a, that he liked that, that I wasn't demanding that he trust me or the process, but could we just keep going for another little while and see. And anyhow after a while things with that particular crisis passed and we became pretty good buddies and the process as a whole was quite successful.
Daniel Stillman:
I think this question of unconditional positive regard, which another way of putting it is assuming positive intent, I think someone else might have heard that comment and heard it as a threat or as a declaration of intent, not we are at a fork in the road and what would you like to do. In a way I would propose it, you took it in the best possible way in that moment, through your inner shift of oh what are my choices here.
Adam Kahane:
Well, I was, I think I at least kept the door open and then we had a facilitator meeting, and it was other people, not just me, who together we decided very quickly what to do differently, and it was on a better path. And he, his tone of voice was not threatening, it was just honest. And I've often found as a facilitator that most people in a group don't speak honestly. And the people who do you can hear them so well. It's a thrill when somebody will speak honestly, because it just cuts through the normal, you know the crap that fills up most rooms most of the time.
Daniel Stillman:
Well Adam, speaking of not filling up a room with crap, this has been a really, for me this is my favorite thing to talk about, so I'm glad to spend this time with you. I want to respect your time. We only have a couple more minutes with you. I will stick around if anybody else has some final check out or processing or additional conversation that they want to have, but I just would like to thank you Adam for making this time to have this conversation. As you say the world needs more of this, of people who feel empowered to do the thing that can help better things get done together. So thank you for doing that and thanks for everyone for being here.
Lynne:
Thank you Adam.
Adam Kahane:
Thanks to all of you. And Daniel I really enjoyed our conversation, whenever it was a year ago. And so I think you are a very gifted podcaster. So I was happy to have at least a consolation prize of a book club conversation. And it's really fun for me to talk about this with people who are interested in it. So thank you all.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you all Adam. Happy Tuesday everyone.
Adam Kahane:
Okay I'm going to leave.
Maggie:
Thank you so much.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you [crosstalk 00:51:40]
Lynne:
Daniel it was great.
Daniel Stillman:
Lynne it was a pleasure.
Mark N:
Thank you Adam. And Adam if you ever need any Korean translation of those comments that never quite arrived, I'd be happy to do so.
Daniel Stillman:
That's amazing. Thank you Mark. Oh it's the Marks. Thanks Marks.
Mark:
Hey one thing I was thinking about. The art of hosting community has a lot of great frameworks that resonate really strongly with a lot of those things.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. Yes.
Mark:
Chaordic path is kind of the same thing to me. And four fold practice is another thing. I just sometimes, for me they are so kind of powerful, sometimes it feels so hard to get the world hearing some of these. Even collaboration is kind of
Daniel Stillman:
Du jour
Mark:
Yeah and what we need to get to.
Daniel Stillman:
I think that is an interesting question, and I must confess that I don't know about the four fold practice, which I want to look in to. I know with the chaordic path, I think it is interesting because of Adam's diagrams and I tried to make my own visual, like yeah it's about the shift. It's about the moving back and forth. And non-polarity thinking, right or polarity thinking depending on how you like to look at things. And boy oh boy I don't know. I think it is a hard thing for the world to lean into non-polarity thinking. To sit with polarity, because just like it is hard to sit with the polarity.
Daniel Stillman:
One of the polarities that I have been talking to people about is, there's nothing wrong with a sprint. Right? Jake's book is awesome. Let's spend a week just chugging through it. And then people are like well actually can we do it in a half day, can we do it in a day. Totally fine right. Let's just full speed ahead. But we don't know how to slow down and have more languishing conversations. And in the kind of conversations that Adam hosts they do both. I guarantee you that you have some rapid fire cadences and some slowed down conversations, but I think just generally speaking the western disease is speed and efficiency. That's my hot take.
Mark:
Yeah. And I wonder if, I guess a product of being in a state of anxiety or trauma or stress or whatever, you do gravitate to black and white thinking. And being able to navigate the wavy part of vertical horizontal chaordic path, actually requires that gray and negative capability stuff. Which is probably, works against the young conscience tendency we have in that sort of trauma, kind of anxiety state maybe. Anyway, keep trying.
Mark:
I can recommend outofhosting.org has a whole lot of videos, vignettes, and templates and things. Some really, people who have been working at it for a long time. Take through the stepping stones of the chaordic path. Anyway. Just thought I would say that.
Daniel Stillman:
No I appreciate that.
Mark:
Great work. Thanks Daniel.
Daniel Stillman:
Good to see you Mark. I'm glad you could make it out. I'm going to include this in the episode. I hope that is okay. This is great stuff.
Mark:
Oh of course. No worries. All right. We'll catch you around.
Daniel Stillman:
All right good to see you brother. Take care.
Mark:
You too. Bye.
Daniel Stillman:
Bye bye.