Giving People an Out helps them be all in
Today, people have a lot on their plates. Their calendars are full. So, getting people to carve out time in their lives for your meeting is, let’s say, non-trivial. It’s even more challenging to get them to stay engaged during the time you have booked with them.
People are at liberty to leave your session at any time. Back when we met “in real life” it took guts to follow the “Elon Musk Rule” and leave a meeting you thought wasn’t leveraging your time well.
(This rule is sometimes better known at the Law of Two feet in the world of Open Space Technology...and has been renamed the Law of Mobility to be more inclusive.)
Now, people can leave in an instant, at the touch of a button.
In “Finite and Infinite Games” (one of my favorite books) author James Carse suggests that
“anyone who must play, cannot play.”
In other words, you can’t force people to show up at their best.
Creating a space where people feel safe to bring their best is one of the most important skills right now. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve been musing on past emails about how to create these kinds of spaces.
I’ve also been musing about this topic, because over the last weeks, I’ve been facilitating a session about creating safety for authenticity for the Google Relay Conference. Over the past 4 years it’s been one of the most powerful conversations I’ve been part of, bringing together top consultants in Design Sprints and Innovation with top experts from inside of Google to talk about the future of Design Sprints. Stay tuned for a set of materials and outcomes from the session.
Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation
You can try to leverage extrinsic motivations, like duty, money or habit to get people to show up...but they'll only show up in the most mechanical of ways.
If you want people’s creativity and engagement, you need to evoke their sense of play or their sense of purpose.
People are free. They don’t have to be in your meeting.
Respecting and acknowledging that essential freedom is the most powerful secret to engaging people.
If you think about earning people’s attention instead of “getting them to pay attention” you will find a subtle internal shift in how to attempt to lead and facilitate groups.
Giving people an out helps them to be all in: Four layers to shift
This is an internal, mental model shift. There are at least four layers in this shift towards acknowledging that we have to earn people’s attention.
1.Showing Up: One layer is getting people to show up for the session, the meeting, the workshop, the kickoff. For that, we must refine our skills in Invitation, one of the core elements of my Conversation OS Canvas. Why does it matter for them to be there?
2. Participation: Another layer is allowing people to participate at their own comfort level once they’ve arrived in the session. This is why I always let people “pass” on a check in, or hang back on an exercise. I make it clear that we need them fully here, but acknowledge that they might have other things going on, so they might need to step back. Or, they might want to just watch for a bit until they feel ready to jump in
3. Payoff: People need to believe that the outcome of their participation will be worth MORE than time they put in. In other words, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”.
4. Variety: People get bored. It’s life! Think about switching up your approach as often as relevant and possible: Chat. Video. Using physical activity and digital whiteboards.
eight types of variety to boost engagement
VARK refers to “Visual, Auditory, (W)ritten and Kinesthetic learning types. Although the theory is contested, it’s still a good shorthand for engagement. While you can’t really diagnose and customize for a specific learning style, adults usually claim to excel in one over the other. I like to make sure I move around the VARK circle early and often.
When I work with leaders on developing their facilitation approach I like to get them to think about what other types of variety they might use to engage people. Any one of these modes of engagement can get boring if overused! The code word is variety!
Spectrums to create variety across include:
Visual: I love to get people to sketch their ideas on paper…it’s a cheat, because it also uses written communications and is highly kinesthetic. It’s a 3-for-1
Auditory: Clear instructions, judicious use of music (one facilitator invited folks to play their own music during a silent, muted brainstorm.
Written communications: Anchoring the conversation in written text, either in slides, in chat or in a shared document can create engagement if not overused.
Kinesthetic modes: Like stretching, or using objects in their space.
Conversational Size, Interpersonal to Intrapersonal: ie, making time for small and large conversations, including time for individuals to think.
Tempo or Cadence: making time for short, focused bursts and more slowed down conversations.
Control or Power: Making space for structured work as well as creating space for unstructured, decontrolled or decentralized conversations.
Patterns: I am a huge fan of breakouts and “think-pair-share” but even that can get boring if over-used. Leveraging a greater variety of group conversational patterns, like round-robin, popcorn-style share outs or fishbowl conversations.
Whatever you do, the core mental model is that you are earning their attention, by inviting free folks to participate freely, to make the payoff clear and tangible, and to continuously engage them across any and all channels that work.
As with all human challenges, your mileage may vary. Experiment and try new things, and see what works for your team.