Employing Differences, Episode 190: How do we share without talking?

"There's a lot of different channels for sharing information that we often overlook when we're working in a group. We sometimes think that talking about things is the only way we can get information out there. In our experiences, there are a lot of other, richer ways that we have access to. And then it's up to us as facilitators to notice when might it be useful to do some of those things." 

Paul  & Karen share some of their favorite techniques for helping information flow without needing to use words.

Transcript

 [00:00:00] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.  

[00:00:12] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.  

[00:00:14] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis.  

[00:00:15] Karen: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "How do we share without talking?"  

[00:00:25] Paul: So we've been on a little bit of an exploration these last now four episodes of some of our favorite facilitation techniques. Working with groups, helping information flow in ways that it might not otherwise. And we started off with actually about not sharing when we're in a group. We started out with doing solo work. Why aren't we talking? And we want to come back around to the other side of that here, and talk about how are there ways that we can actually make information flow through the group? 

[00:00:56] Paul: How can we share information in the group without needing to talk? So we're going to interact in the group, but we're not going to necessarily do it verbally.  

[00:01:06] Paul: And we've got this maybe turn into a little bit of a grab bag, but these are some of our favorite techniques for helping information flow without needing to use words. 

[00:01:16] Paul: Before we dig into that, I think it's important to talk about why is that important? Why is it useful to actually help a group communicate without talking?  

[00:01:25] Karen: Absolutely. And I think there are a lot of good reasons. One of them is as simple as every time you sort of change up the format of a meeting, you increase attention and focus, and stamina for a meeting. Like, it just helps with keeping people engaged throughout a meeting. So this is a version of that. So that's one.  

[00:01:44] Karen: I think a more important one is actually in the kind of equity space. There are people in this world who are really comfortable talking, very articulate, very good in that way, very fast thinkers, they come up with an answer right away, all that kind of stuff. 

[00:01:58] Karen: Those people tend to be disproportionately heard in meetings, and there are other people who tend to be disproportionately not heard.  

[00:02:07] Karen: And if you switch out of the talking space, you don't silence anyone, but you shift away from that advantage. And you may add advantage for people who are more comfortable sharing in other ways. So you get different kinds of information.  

[00:02:25] Karen: And I would say that the 3rd reason for me is that. With talking, unless you're speaking in American sign language, which is very different. But for most of us speaking, verbal languages, spoken languages. You can only do it if one person talks at a time. And so then everybody's speaking in order. And each person influences the ones that come after them. And nonverbal sharing can happen simultaneously. 

[00:02:51] Karen: So everybody can be thinking, everybody can be expressing at the same time. Which means both that we're not as influenced necessarily. We don't, aren't immediately influenced or pre influenced before we start sharing.  

[00:03:03] Karen: And it's really efficient because 30 people can put their ideas into a shared space in 30 seconds. 

[00:03:13] Paul: And that's one of the keys! That doing some sort of nonverbal sharing would be useful. Like, one of the things that tells us that we might want to do something like that is "Actually, we need to find out what everybody thinks about a particular thing very quickly. And we don't have time to go around and hear from everybody. We need to know this now."  

[00:03:31] Paul: So one of the ways that, for example, I like to do that, I know this is one of your favorites as well. When we are actually all meeting in the same physical location, you know, which used to be the default, but I feel like in the last couple of years, that hasn't become in some ways, like the outlier case. 

[00:03:47] Paul: But when we're doing that, one of the things that we can do is use the physical environment that we are in, the space that we are in, to communicate.  

[00:03:55] Paul: And so one of the things that we can do with that is by having people stand in different places, or sit in different places, move to different places in the room based on how they feel. Their opinions about something, what they think about a particular thing.  

[00:04:09] Paul: So, for example, one of the ones that I will often use is a tool called informal constellation, which is where you make a statement. You have an object that's sort of in the middle of the room and people move closer to that. The more they agree with that statement, the further away from it, the less they agree with that statement. 

[00:04:25] Paul: And it allows you to very quickly get a sense of where do people stand on this particular issue. Mm hmm.  

[00:04:32] Karen: There's a linear version of it that I call spectrums. And it's similar, except you might have like two competing values. For example, if you feel more strongly about this one, go stand on that side of the room. 

[00:04:45] Karen: If you feel more strongly about the other one, go to the other side. And you can move within that line, within that spectrum. So if you value them both equally, you'd stand in the middle, for example.  

[00:04:55] Karen: So that can be used either for an agree, disagree, or for " I'd rather have us paint it yellow" and, or "I'd rather have us paint it red", or I, I don't care. It could be either. Anything like that.  

[00:05:07] Karen: And I've even done a version where you've got one access. That's the question being asked. And the other access is the, 'How important is it to me?'  

[00:05:16] Paul: One of my favorite uses of one of these was actually, I was working with a kickoff for a company. 

[00:05:23] Paul: And the chief architect for this particular software group had just sort of laid out the technical vision of where they wanted to go for the next year. And we had 120 people in a hotel ballroom. And we actually had them simultaneously moving around, around closer to the middle. The more you felt like you understood what this vision was. 

[00:05:43] Paul: And in literally 30 seconds, we could see where the entire group stood on this. Unsurprisingly, the architect was standing in the middle. He just presented this whole thing. And meanwhile, everybody else has kind of spread out all over the place and it was news to him. That he was like, "Oh, okay. I realized I have a lot more gaps to cover." 

[00:06:00] Paul: That was information that came out so much quicker than again, having to have a whole series of one-on-one conversations or Q and A's or surveys. It was 30 seconds. We could see.  

[00:06:09] Paul: And then the next question was, you know, "How clear are you on what you need to do to contribute to this vision?" Same thing. And just made a whole bunch of information visible very quickly. 

[00:06:22] Karen: I want to make a note that. As Paul, you mentioned that this is how you do it if you're standing in a room physically. This can also be done using Miro boards or Google slides or something like that. Where everyone has some kind of avatar, a little box with your initials in it, a picture or whatever, that's you, and you can create the line on a screen and you can move your little box. 

[00:06:44] Karen: So it absolutely can be done on Zoom calls or other kinds of interfaces like that, if that's what you're doing.  

[00:06:51] Paul: Absolutely. So that's one thing that we like to do is we can get a lot of information quickly from a relatively large group by asking them to sort of take a stand, right. To arrange themselves physically, or virtually, on an issue. What are some other things that you like to use with this, Karen?  

[00:07:08] Karen: So a very similar one that I call temperature checks, and there are a thousand versions of a temperature check. So this can be a thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways. It can be the 'fists to five', 'hold up however many fingers based on how much you agree or disagree'. 

[00:07:21] Karen: Or are we ready to make a decision? Or would we pass this proposal if it was, you know, right now. Where we're not actually trying to pass a proposal, but we're just asking where are we on it? That kind of thing. So lots of ways to do temperature checks.  

[00:07:35] Karen: And including, if you want people out of their chairs, you know, stand up and be as tall as you can, if you love this idea and get as close to the floor as you can, if you hate this idea or something like that, like, so there are lots of ways to do that. But again, that using your body in some way to show where you are about a thing.  

[00:07:55] Karen: All of those that we've just said, have the advantage of you can get a sense of where people are very, very quickly. The disadvantage is that there's not very much nuance. It really is sort of hot or cold on a particular topic. 

[00:08:07] Karen: And inevitably, if there's any meat to the topic, somebody says, "But what I really think is this other thing that's not on there. And it doesn't take into account this other element." And you just sort of have to ask the group to tolerate that simplicity because there is a bit of a trade off. But it does give you way more information. And you may add some conversation about it to get more of that nuance represented. 

[00:08:30] Paul: Yeah, often with any of those activities, we'll do some level of debrief to it. Of a, like, what are some reasons before first choosing to stand where you did? What are the things that influenced that? Where are you? You know, when you're like, " I'm committed to this, I'm willing to move forward, but these are the reservations that need to get addressed as we're going" that kind of thing. 

[00:08:51] Paul: Again, we were talking about wanting to do these things before talking about it. So we can get a read on that. It actually cuts down on a lot of that debrief discussion because I can just say, "Yeah, what Karen said, right? We don't need to hear all of that again and again and again, once something gets out into the space." 

[00:09:09] Paul: And so even when we're getting more nuanced to it, we often get to that nuance faster than if we just did a round, for example, and asked everybody to speak.  

[00:09:20] Karen: Yeah. So if you're looking for a more open ended kind of information gathering. There are a number of ways to do that. I'll start with one that I use on Zoom. 

[00:09:30] Karen: You've probably run into the use of chat in various ways. "Everybody put your thought in the chat", a variation on that that can be useful so that people have a chance to think, and also to kind of commit to where they are, is to ask everybody to type in their thought into chat, but don't hit enter yet. 

[00:09:48] Karen: And then give it a moment or two for everybody to type. And then once everybody's had a chance to do their typing, then everybody hits enter at once. So again, you're not getting this sort of ordered sharing, but you're getting everybody had a chance to think and then everybody has a chance to speak through that hitting enter. 

[00:10:04] Karen: And then, of course, you need to give people time to read it.  

[00:10:06] Paul: Yes. I will, particularly if we've got a video on for that kind of call, I'll often tell people, just because it's fun and silly, you know, " When you are finished typing, put your hands on your forehead" or indicate visually so that the rest of the group can see, right. 

[00:10:22] Paul: It's so that when people are done, right, it's information that becomes available so that the group now knows, "Oh, okay. Everyone has had a chance to contribute. We're ready to hit enter now." And so that's another thing. Again, that's a way of communicating 'I'm ready' without actually needing to say anything and making that available. 

[00:10:41] Paul: Yeah, that chatter fall is actually one of my favorite things to sort of, then you see all of that scroll by and you go, 'Okay, now we're going to take a minute to sort of read that.' And again, we're talking about things that allow us to put information out there so we're not anchoring on what everybody else thinks, right? 

[00:10:59] Paul: Because if we're just speaking in a circle, you know, if I'm the seventh person to go, what I'm going to say is absolutely going to be influenced by what earlier people said. So it's useful to use these techniques as well. When that sort of group think, that conformity bias, is a thing that we want to avoid. 

[00:11:17] Paul: One of the things that I'll do, for example, a very common technique for narrowing down or figuring out interest between options is something like dot voting. Well, one of the techniques I learned from my business partner, Jake Calabrese, when we were doing a lot of stuff in person is, we'd give people the dots and we say, "Great, we've got you seven options here, you can vote for three of them", but we'd actually ask people to write the number of the option on the dot first.  

[00:11:42] Paul: So everyone would write on their dots and then they'd have to go and put them up onto the thing. So that way you didn't see people going, "Well, lots of people are putting their dot on that one. So I'm going to put one over there." 

[00:11:52] Paul: You don't anchor on sort of where the interest goes first. You're making your decision. "I'm voting for", "I'm going to choose two and six and seven", and then we'll see where it actually all lands.  

[00:12:04] Paul: It's a very small thing, but it's a thing that I like to do whenever I'm doing that kind of thing. 

[00:12:10] Karen: It's nice to have options too, that, because dot exercises can be done in lots of ways. So you're talking about, you know, everybody gets presumably all the same color dot and they get however many between however many options there are.  

[00:12:23] Karen: I've also done a thing where people can have as many dots as they want, but they put green if they love it, yellow, if they have concerns, red, if they're really opposed, kind of thing. 

[00:12:33] Karen: So, you know, put a dot on each of the things, but where are we on that? So that would be when it's less perhaps of a preference between, but more of a, 'for each thing', "Do we want to go in that direction or not?"  

[00:12:44] Karen: So lots of different ways to structure a dot exercise. And again, you can do this on a Miro board or even with Google slides or something like that, if you're trying to do it online. 

[00:12:53] Paul: Yeah. One last variation on that, that I've seen is, where we're going to choose a topic that we're going to do for this particular activity. This is the list of topics, put a dot on anyone that you are willing to use. And so you could vote for all of them if you wanted, because you're basically saying 'I'm willing to engage in any of them', but if there's any that you don't want to, you don't put a dot on that. 

[00:13:14] Paul: And so it's a nice way, again, of like, we're looking to see where there is the most willingness in the group. What's the richest thing for us to engage with?  

[00:13:26] Karen: So a step up from that is if again, we want more content, more sort of creativity or more open ended is like a sticky note exercise. 

[00:13:36] Karen: So now you can not only put that you like it, but also what it is that you like about it, or what you value. I've seen this in design exercises where an architect put up a variety of possible exterior types of exterior looks kind of thing. And the problem is, if she only did a dot exercise, she didn't know whether they liked the big windows, or they liked the overhang, or they liked, like, what part of it did they like? 

[00:14:00] Karen: So instead, she had them use post it notes or sticky notes to say, What I like about this one is. And so that ability to put a little more content around what you're liking or what you're concerned about or, you know, a place it could go, whatever.  
[00:14:16] Karen: But bigger dots that have potential to write more information on. Which again, everybody can kind of write. Sort of like, you know, pick your number and put it on. 

[00:14:27] Karen: You can sit back and kind of write what you're thinking. First, everybody has a chance to kind of process and engage. And then put their stickies up and then still be circulating and reading them. So, I mean, that can be a 30 minute or even an hour exercise, depending on how much content. But especially if you're spending a whole day together, trying to get something to happen, having that quieter, more dispersed kind of communication is super helpful  

[00:14:54] Paul: And going even further afield. I think a lot of people have encountered the kinds of things that we're talking about before. There are things like where you have to have activities where you end up drawing something, sometimes with a limited set of symbols as a vocabulary, I've done some of those. Where you are assembling something. You're actually tapping into the tactile or the physical. 

[00:15:18] Paul: I've done this, there's a whole set of techniques called Lego Serious Play, where people make do builds. Right. And so I've done a thing with a team, where they were first coming together for the first time. And I said, 'When you think about a team that works well together, what is that like?' And they've all got the same set of Lego pieces. 

[00:15:35] Paul: And so they spend seven minutes building their thing without talking. And then they do a debrief round of like 'Here's what this represents', 'Here's why this matters to me'. And it's fascinating to see that how people take that in!  

[00:15:48] Paul: The advantage of doing something like that, where you have a limited set of materials that people are sort of all working with, is that you get to see what people come up with out of the same stuff. 

[00:15:59] Paul: But also, oftentimes, if you ask people simply to draw, people like me get very self conscious about the fact that I'm not a very good artist. And so I'm not going to be able to do that.  

[00:16:08] Paul: But when you're actually asking people to assemble stuff, sometimes they'll get through that. And you tap into that's a very non verbal part of your brain. 

[00:16:17] Paul: The kinds of ideas that come out, these sometimes fall into what in my improv troupe, we would call "leap before you look" sorts of things. Where it's not the verbal section of your processing that's coming up with these ideas, or filtering those ideas. You're making a thing and then you're having to figure out 'Why did I make it?' 'Why did I do that?' 'What did I mean by that?'  

[00:16:36] Paul: And that often taps into a very different set of ideas. Going back to the idea that we very often privilege the spoken, and certainly the verbal, in a lot of our information sharing in a lot of our communications. If we can start to move away from that, we can often, and particularly when we need to do stuff that's really different, that's really innovative, that's not our business as usual. 

[00:16:57] Paul: Moving into that space can sometimes be really powerful.  

[00:17:01] Karen: Yeah. Another example of that is if you're willing to get into the emotional space. And I have had groups, particularly if there's a willingness for a bit of silly, or, you know, if there's enough readiness to do this.  

[00:17:14] Karen: But when people are coming into something where they may have a lot of emotion about it, some people may be really nervous and worried and other people may be really excited and ambitious and whatever. That I'll ask them to express how they're feeling with their whole body. 

[00:17:32] Karen: So put your whole body into a position that expresses what you're feeling and then look around. Or even move around the room in an emotion that expresses that. So again, a different, a playful kind of approach.  

[00:17:45] Paul: Yeah, and that, that is one of the things, that moving out of the verbal sometimes really gets us. Or it gets us often more playful, right? It gets us into a different emotional space rather than a purely cognitive one.  

[00:17:57] Paul: And that sometimes that's really the frame that we need. That's really where we need to go on some of these things, is into that different, more approachable space.  

[00:18:05] Paul: So we've covered a lot of ground here today, as we said, it's kind of a grab bag, but coming back around, right? 

[00:18:10] Paul: The idea is that there are times when we really do want to enable people to share information in a group without having to talk. For a couple of different reasons, right?  

[00:18:19] Paul: One of them is that we often privilege the verbal. And the people who are the most comfortable speaking in front of a large group, the people who can't help but talk in front of a group, are the people who are most likely to participate when we're only using talking as a way to engage. 

[00:18:34] Paul: And so oftentimes we want to hear different voices. We often want, need to, find out a lot of information quickly. And so for reasons of efficiency, we don't want everyone to have to talk.  

[00:18:44] Paul: So there's different ways of doing that. You can use the physical space, or you can use a virtual representation of a physical space, to do that. 

[00:18:52] Paul: You can do things like dot voting, or fist to five, or any of these temperature checks, sorts of exercises. You can do a variety of different things where you can have a debrief or not to add additional nuance where that might really be useful. You can really expand out into the visual, and into the tactile, into the kinesthetic. 

[00:19:13] Paul: There's a lot of different channels for sharing information that we often overlook when we're working in a group. We sometimes think that talking about things is the only way we can get information out there.  

[00:19:24] Paul: In our experiences, there are a lot of other richer ways that we have access to. And then it's up to us as facilitators to notice when might it be useful to do some of those things. 

[00:19:34] Karen: Usually in conjunction with some talking around them.  

[00:19:37] Paul: Usually.  

[00:19:39] Karen: And that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.  

[00:19:43] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.