From Cycle 0 to Cycle 1
Symmathesy in Action
It’s messy, yet I enjoy it so much! I’m talking about the intertwining Zoom calls, Discord chats, Telegram exchanges, and subsequent versions of the drafts, outlines, and design documents, on Notion pages and Google Drives. All that, interspersed with the “Can you hear me” question that reflects something deeper than our wondering about the sound quality of the electronic machinery transmitting our voice across the continents…
“Can you hear me” is the unspoken, underlying concern of our complex multi-stakeholder negotiation. Can the others get the context I’m operating from, can they feel my passion for what I try to accomplish, and will they support it?
What I enjoy about our process is the insights it gives us access to. Insights about how the chances for its omni-win outcomes depend on our capacity for something called symmathesy (transcontextual mutual learning) that Nora Bateson is writing about.
We can still be goal-oriented, or at least, goal-inspired but the odds will be more in favor of us if we put on our learning glasses as we look at our process. That’s what I’ll do and couple it with learning-out-loud in the following musings.
From Cycle 0 to Cycle 1
The first thing I notice is how much my mental model of what needs to happen changed since I came up with the idea for this Generative Action Research (GAR) project. Together with the mental models of the other stakeholders (at variance with mine), they are like the constantly shifting colorful images in the kaleidoscope.
As I marvel at what unfolds from them, at times I’m also puzzled about how to adjust my perception of what can be my most useful contribution in the next turn.
It’s like practicing action research already, even before we designed its first Cycle.
We could say that we’ve been in a Cycle 0 since the felt sense of the need for this project turned into the originator idea, a very sketchy, rough version of Plan. Following that, we engaged in the Act of sharing it with each other. We moved to Observe each other’s initial reactions and Reflect on them.
Presently, we are doing “rinse and repeat,” trusting that if we hang in long enough with this process, as engaged explorers, the pattern of the Minimum Viable Design will emerge, as the outcome of our Cycle 0. That’s when we can contract with each other and let our co-creation shift into a new phase, Cycle 1.
What makes me feel optimistic
Observing our process, I notice something that makes me feel very optimistic about its outcome, whatever it will be. It’s how much and how instinctively we are using the principles of “good faith” communication. To illustrate them, I insert below a quote from “The Endgames of Bad Faith Communication” article from The Consilience Project.
Observing how well we are doing on each of those points could be a promising inquiry within our inquiry into the main focus of our project, which is discovering practices worth replicating in community management.
Archetypal roles in community facilitation
Community facilitation is one of the main territories of community management. Every well-designed Generative Action Research project includes the 1st-person inquiry of how the researchers themselves experience the focus of the research in their own life and practice. Given that, why not explore how well each of us is contributing to facilitating the messy processes of Cycle 0.
To inspire that exploration, let me borrow the 8-archetype model of the Arts of Facilitation by, my friends, Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz.
Vessel holder: holds image of whole, allowing people to find their way within it; contributes capacitance
Protector: maintains psychological safety, upholds guidelines and agreements
Navigator: guides group through chosen process towards goals
Questor: poses questions; asks for other ways to frame issues; models learning behaviors
Weaver: sees patterns, makes connections, creates knowledge
Evocateur: asks “what’s needed? what’s not been said?”
Fool: uses humor to create fluidity for learning
Guide/Shaman: experienced traveler takes the group through dangerous passages to deeper levels
In a mature core team of community facilitation, different members play those roles at different times. These are also qualities that a high-level facilitators training can strengthen. Their development would be also on the radar of transformative communities of practice.
Next, I will invite my partners, the other primary stakeholders of the process that I started commenting on in this blog, to share their own experiences and reflections about what we are doing and how.