Two Tactics to Create All Voices Heard Meetings and Events
Many businesses, organizations and various communities are struggling with setting the content of discussions in a contextual framework that resonates with differing opinions.
All Voices Heard forums, when designed and facilitated well, provide alignment amongst a diverse group of people and a clarion call for action to solve complex challenges. Meeting structures enable a diversity of ideas to emerge, deep conversations about what matters most, and alignment on a path forward.
There are three main goals of All Voices Heard forums:
Tapping into the wisdom of the group
Creating alignment on a common vision
Generating urgency for action
Designing an All Voices Heard forum requires selecting a set of processes that will engage, inform, and move people into action. Smart use of technology is paired with meeting design to capture as much data as possible that is generated throughout the event through both quantitative and qualitative methods. Using polling, brainstorming and decision-making tools captures all the ideas, data, and final agreements from the group.
Here are two tactics to create an All Voices Heard event:
1. Brainstorming Technology
Avoid letting great ideas get locked away by using efficient brainstorming technology. Presenting significant information and then posing key questions to small table groups of 5 to 8 participants for discussion generates more dialogue, more options, and more sense of a community coming together to create solutions.
The reports of the small group discussions can be captured on laptops or tablets and reviewed for both thematic ideas as well as unique ideas. There are many variations of how to design highly interactive sessions for any group size. A few options include:
World Café
Open Space Technology
Liberating Structures
Charrettes
Pre-work is necessary to develop the best meeting design to ensure outcomes are met and leaders and participants can fully engage and understand the collective thinking of the group.
2. Graphic Facilitation
Inspire creativity and support broad understanding amongst participants through graphic recording. It’s a way for complex ideas to be communicated in concise and simple ways using both imagery and text, and can be done in real time.
Graphic recording is both a process and product. People who witness graphic recording will often engage better with the topics and materials and will report feeling as though their voices are heard by witnessing their ideas come to life in the moment. It is also an effective way to engage groups that are often left out of planning processes, policy discourses, community gatherings, etc., especially with youth, elders or ESL speakers.
After the event, the graphic becomes a living document; evidence of the meeting's progress and direction. This resulting conceptual map is an engaging and meaningful tool because the participants watched its creation in relationship to their experience. Images being emotional and subjective, participants can interpret the image and recall their own "Aha!" moments.
An intentional, well-planned and executed All Voices Heard forum creates a culture of inclusivity, productivity and innovation. If your meetings or events have become one-sided and are void of results, REACH OUT TO US to discuss our facilitation offerings.