Sunday 28 July 2013

How to be Happy in Love, and in Life




“You don’t know what it’s like when someone you thought loved one, goes away and does the same things with somebody else”


Pieces from a jigsaw of relationships
Here’s a blog from a volcanic island for anyone who wants to be love again. I’ve just finished reading Sybille Bedford’s autobiographical novel ‘Jigsaw’, and I can’t stop thinking about love. Maybe it’s the Sicilian heat, or possibly my medication, that cost twice as much as last night’s dinner. Whatever. Bedford’s Proustian narrative about inconstant, and unforgiving lovers, has got me thinking about my past relationships: what happened, and what I contributed, often, to make a difficult situation worse.

Patterns of behaviour
I need to make sense of the pieces in Bedford’s ‘Jigsaw’. What messages does she have about love and life? Imagine a real jigsaw depicting a French mediterranean town, north London, and Finchingfield, Essex. If you look at the whole picture, you can see small groups of people, in twos and threes, involved in different types of relationships. Take a closer look, and you will see patterns of behaviour that, for me, are uncomfortable.

The Pursuit of Love
In ‘Jigsaw’, Bedford describes many different relationships. I’ll try to summarise five of the most prominent.

Relationship One
A young woman and a young man have a one night stand. Later, the young man becomes increasingly abusive towards the young woman, because she does not want to sleep with him again.

Relationship Two 
A young man marries a young woman because she is very keen to marry him, and, having been engaged for a year, he feels it is the right thing to do. Once they are married, the young woman makes a habit of sniping at her husband, while cultivating admirers in a very public way.

Relationship Three
An older man has a long term unacknowledged relationship with a young woman. They live separately, and go on holiday together, once. After a number of years, the older man commits suicide over gambling debts.

Relationship Four
A married woman divorces her husband after he tells her that he is having an affair with someone else. The married woman insists on a divorce, saying: “Jamie has done wrong…he must bear the consequences.”

Relationship Five
A young man marries a much older woman. After some years of living happily together, the young man has an affair with a younger woman. His wife starts to drink, and becomes addicted to morphine. The young man still loves his wife, and wants to stay married to her. Eventually, he leaves, because he finds it too difficult to watch her self-destruct.

What can we learn?
What is Bedford’s message? If she had written a book called ‘How to be Happy in Love, and in Life’, perhaps she might have said this:

Have purpose in your life. Discover what you want to do, and stick to it.
The young woman in Relationship Two wanted to be world class tennis player. She didn’t succeed, because she was not physically strong enough. The narrator of ‘Jigsaw’, on the other hand, becomes a writer. Despite her many ups and downs, she is one of the few characters in the book who achieves some kind of lasting personal fulfillment – Maslow’s ‘Self-Actualisation’.

Learn to forgive, avoid jealousy and blame
Taking positions, making demands, and blaming other people, is what leads to the failure of four of the five relationships. In Relationship One, the young man blames the young woman for not wanting to sleep with him again. In Relationship Two, the young woman blames the young man for many things, including not being good at business. In Relationship Four, the young woman blames her husband because according to her principles, he did wrong and must suffer. And in Relationship Five, the older woman blames the young man for having an affair. Only the young woman in Relationship Three does not blame her lover.

Be kind, be empathetic, try to see things from the other person’s perspective
The older woman in Relationship Five has moments of seeing things through her husband’s eyes. However, she needs increasing doses of morphine to manage her rage. What if the older man in Relationship Three had asked himself what it was like for the younger woman to be his lover? He did not even know how she traveled to his apartment every night.
 
In ‘Jigsaw’, Sybille Bedford pieces together what she has learned about love and life. It's good learning, if only I could put it into practice...

Stromboli and London, 25-28 July 2013

PS Listen to Sybille Bedford on Desert Island Discs broadcast on 5 July 1998




Monday 15 July 2013

Natural Facilitation: How to design better meetings



Who likes going to meetings? Honestly? Good facilitation can make the difference between having a productive and enjoyable meeting, and having to start all over again. As a facilitator, my aim is to create the best possible experience for my client, and for the meeting delegates. Here are some of the principles and approaches I keep in mind when designing meetings. 


How to design better meetings


1 Get to know your client and their needs

You can’t prepare for every eventuality, but building a good working relationship with your client will make it easier for you to work through any difficulties together.


Action
Clarify these questions


  • What is the purpose of the meeting?
  • What are the key topics and isssues?
  • Where do we need consensus and where do we need agreement?
2 Invite the right people
The quality of the meeting outcomes will depend on the depth and breadth of perspectives and expertise in the room.

Action
Strive for diversity and balance. Reach out to experts from different sectors and geographical regions.

3 Have confidence in your approach to facilitation.
Establish what feels comfortable to your client in terms of approach, tools and methods. Then make a case for what works for you.

4 Identify, and share in advance, the critical information that delegates will need to perform well at the meeting

Action

  • Don’t assume delegates will have read documentation before the meeting.
  • Distribute printed copies of critical information on the day.
  • Not printing documents to reduce the meeting footprint could be a false economy. You may save a tree, and lose your meeting.

5 Create a natural working environment
The way a room looks and feels will impact on the performance of the participants.

Action
There are laws against keeping animals in cramped spaces. We should treat people in the same way.

Aim for a room with a high ceiling, natural light, tables and chairs, and, very important, free wall space, where you can hang flip charts. 
You will also need an adjacent free space for different types of activity (either indoors or outdoors). Create evenly spaced table groups of 5-6 or 10-12 depending on the size of the event. Try to get round tables.

6 Be a good host
How you meet and greet participants can have a huge impact on how people behave for the rest of the meeting.

Action
Make delegates feel truly welcome, and special, by having a word with each individual when they arrive. Your subliminal message must be: “I am so pleased to meet you, at this best of all possible meetings. You have all the skills and experience to help make it a success”.

7 Encourage dialogue and networking
Design-in formal and informal opportunities for participants to get to know and learn from each other.

Action
Insist on time for participants to introduce themselves to the group, and to state their expectations. Build two minute time slots into the meeting schedule for participants to talk about their work. After refreshment breaks, twice a day, will help to keep delegates engaged and interested.

8 Take a lesson from Napoleon Bonaparte. Reportedly, one of Napoleon’s tactics was ‘Reculer pour mieux sauter’, which in English, roughly translated, means, ‘Take a step back in order to jump further forward’.

Action
Just when you think you are close to achieving the meeting objectives, things have a way of coming undone. This is actually a sign that the group is fully engaged with the topic, and wants to get things right. The facilitator’s job is to offer the group a process that will help them to clarify the outstanding issues and consolidate their work so far. Be prepared to throw away the schedule for an hour or two. 

9 Learning and having fun
In my experience groups that are learning and having fun, tend to be the most engaged and productive. Notice what energises the group, and work with it. Surprise the group, confound their expectations with questions and observations that nudge them to see and think differently.

How to tell if delegates are engaged and having fun?
If you have followed the principles above then, probably your delegates will be happy as Napoleon. How can you tell? Here some indicators:
  • When groups burst into life when given a task
  • When groups don’t want to finish working on a task
  • When delegates change places willingly
  • When there is spontaneous laughter in the room
  • When delegates stay in the room long after the meeting talking to each other.
10 Whose Agenda is it anyway?
When a group sticks with a challenging task and gets a good result, they experience a well-earned sense of pride in their achievements. Your job is done.

To paraphrase Lao Tse, when the meeting objectives have been fulfilled, and the delegates think they did this by themselves, the facilitator’s work is done…