Running a Social Learning Session
A short list of hints and tips to effectively running a community session based around social learning
To briefly revisit the stated aims of a community of practice, they are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (Lave & Wenger). They work best when they foster social learning, when the community comes together to find a solution to a problem/answer to a question/path to explore. We don’t disagree that learning from an expert is an effective and necessary process, but (in my opinion at least), social learning is just that little bit more………fun.
Let’s assume you agree and you want to promote social learning within your community – where to start? As a leader, you’d like to add a social learning event to your community’s session calendar, but how to do it? You can’t schedule a speaker, that isn’t how it works. How are you going to make sure that the louder voices in the community don’t stifle the smaller ones? How do you make sure that the session doesn’t peter out and leave you with good intentions and no outcomes? You’d think it would be easier to organise a session without having to coordinate with a speaker, but it turns out that’s comparatively easy – with a social learning experience, everyone is a speaker, and you need to work out how to run the session effectively so that everyone is free and comfortable to contribute to it.
Here's a few suggestions from experience that might help you on the path to success
Prepare – You can’t just drop a session on people and expect it to work. We need to be in the right mindset to learn, and we need to be in the right mindset to share. Make sure community members know the session is coming. Share what they can expect and what will be expected of them. Give members the opportunity to arrive ready to take part in the session, with an idea of what they will be doing.
Start as equals – Even amongst friends, its not straight forward to get yourself in the right mindset for an effective social learning session. What if you’re tired? Excited? Just got out of a really bad meeting with the CEO? Its important to start the session on a level playing field, and as the leader its your job to help get everyone together. I’m a fan of ice breakers that are just a little bit silly, and give the opportunity for everyone to feel a little bit uncomfortable – I like ice breakers that let me say “now we all feel a bit uncomfortable together, which is always exciting”. Why is this important? There will always be someone in the room who is feeling uncomfortable already, and it was going to hold them back - now they know they aren’t alone. There were those who were ready to rush in and start all guns blazing – now they’ve had an internal reset without losing any of their enthusiasm.
Start with a problem – Share the challenge. You might have all agreed on what the challenge is going to be ahead of time, but its important to reiterate and frame it at the start of the session. From the moment you first discussed what the session was going to be about, each member began forming their own ideas about it and everyone has begun to diverge. Some will have expectations on what the solution might look like, some will think its easy, some will think its insurmountable. Some will have imprinted their own problem on top of it and be about to go off in completely the wrong direction. This is the opportunity to recentre everyone, ensuring everyone hears the same message at the same time, and hears the same interpretation together. This is the single most important task for the leader – get everyone aligned and do your best to keep everyone aligned
Breakout and come together – We want the members of the group to feel comfortable to do their best work. If you’re in a group of thirty people, how do you get a word in edgeways without talking over someone or being talked over by someone else? Splitting up into smaller groups makes that easier, but of course it much harder to keep aligned if you’re not all talking to each other. And lets not forget that feeling when you’re in a Zoom meeting and the facilitator says ‘so we’re going to all go into breakout rooms’ and a little bit of your soul shrivels up and dies. One of the most effective middle ground solutions I’ve seen used is breaking up into groups for a third of the session, using the second third for each of the groups to share and demo their work so far with the others, and then for the final third all collaborating to bring your ideas forward and into alignment with each other.
Facilitate – I think I’ve written before about the best facilitated meeting I’ve ever been in….it was one where the facilitator stood at the front making notes and taking minutes on a whiteboard but didn’t say a single word at any point during the meeting. She used silence as a prompt when the conversation slowed down, and avoided getting in the way or trying to steer the discussion in any way from its natural trajectory. I always aspire to be a facilitator that effectively, and this should be the role that you as the session leader should take here. You should be enabling effective conversations within groups, removing barriers and blockers, and generally helping to keep people focussed and aligned around the problem they’re trying to work with.
Community sessions which are centred around social learning activities are not easy, either to run or to take part in. They require effort and investment, and they don’t come with the guarantee of what clear outcomes and conclusions are going to be. To me though, that’s what makes them so exciting. They are unconstrained and boundless in what can be achieved. They give the opportunity to collectively go further than anyone could have envisaged at the start of the session. They build relationships and they produce results I unexpected and exciting ways, and above all else…..they’re fun to be part of.
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)