Field notes from my Liberating Structures practice

Post workshop mood.

Post workshop mood.

Liberating Structures are a set of scalable facilitation patterns that orchestrate inclusive, real-time group interactions. The LS community of practice is one of the most vibrant and generous that I have encountered. These notes are intended to be a small contribution to its ever-growing body of knowledge, with a shout out of appreciation to my super-duper hosts and peers at Liberating Structures Studio and LS Playground, our alumni practice group.

This is what I’m learning from using Liberating Structure as a

  • Design consultant facilitating multi-stakeholder workshops for complex enterprise challenges

  • Workshop facilitator for design and research communities of practice

  • Convener of internal gatherings at my design consultancy

  • Teacher and participant in workshop-style training on various topics

 

Drawing some boundaries…

  • Much of the commercial application of my facilitation practice dwells in the subtle nuances of orchestrating momentum among all kinds of power dynamics in the client organization. A lot of these notes will be about how to navigate unknowable environments as a hired gun, and increasing alignment and confidence towards a broader project goal.

  • I am not of the school that believes facilitation to be a neutral act. As a designer, whatever intent I hold for the challenge at stake will be tightly woven in how I host and facilitate conversations. 

  • It’s rare that I host workshops that are a pure string of LS. I draw on other schools of facilitation to design for activities like synthesis, modeling, decision making, assessing risks, mapping scenarios, project planning, etc.

This is not:

  • An introduction to Liberating Structures

  • Comprehensive instructions on how to run them

  • Particularly actionable for non-facilitation practitioners?

  • Finished :D

If you’re aren’t familiar with Liberating Structures yet, you’re in for a treat. Visit the official website and join the Slack group. The Liberators publication is also an amazing place to learn the nitty gritty. To jump in with facilitation, start accumulating lived experiences as a participant. The community maintains an events listings and many meet-ups have moved online in 2020. If you're new to running workshops itself, I recommend "A Pocket Guide To Effective Workshops" and "The Workshop Survival Guide: How to design and teach educational workshops that work every time."

 

To get in touch, please use the contact form or shoot over a DM on the LS Slack to @tomomi. I’d love to say hi and hear your story.