Seeking To Perceive More Than To Be Perceived
, Bernard Notarianni 
Summary for the printed Program Guide
This session explores an alternative to “information push:” to seek in others with a curious mind the stories and ideas they might have, and to combine them with what has already be shared. This benevolent, attentive listening, this non-judgmental investigation helps to embrace ideas that surround us, and to meet more efficiently the whole group’s expectations. We’ll experiment with several tools that help adopting an active listener posture — namely: Marvin Harris’s emic approach and Jim & Michele McCarthy’s Investigate protocol, taken from their Core Protocol.
End of summary for the printed Program Guide
A drama in a developers’ team. Two experienced programmers violently argue about which design choice will satisfy best the customers’ requirements they have to implement. Three others, slightly taken aback, wonder about whom they should side for. One of them thinks, maybe it’s the right time to suggest rewriting the whole thing, in a programming language she likes particularly. Intervenes the team’s manager. He brutally settles the case — because “we have to keep moving forward” — along an orientation that suits no one.
Group work is often the stage of negotiations of territory : a compromise with the others, a compromise with one self. “Am I cut out for it? Do I have my place here? How to contribute? Will I manage to impose my ideas?,” one may think. If several team members follow this mindset, there is soon a deluge of ideas and information, many mutually contradictory, unexploited due to lack of time, everyone waiting for the moment they’ll be able to offer “their” contribution, oblivious to others. Here lies a paradox: even when we (think we) know what the group needs, saying it may hinder the group in its finding answers.
As members of various groups — agile teams, family, business companies… — we can do better.
This session explores an alternative to “information push:” to seek in others with a curious mind the stories and ideas they might have, and to combine them with what has already be shared. This benevolent, attentive listening, this non-judgmental investigation helps to embrace ideas that surround us, and to meet more efficiently the whole group’s expectations.
We’ll experiment with several tools that help adopting an active listener posture — namely: Marvin Harris’s emic approach and Jim & Michele McCarthy’s Investigate protocol, taken from their Core Protocol. We’ll discuss together the discovers we’ll have made along the session.
During the session, participants will have the opportunity to
- learn techniques that allow to get a better grasp at a group’s potential, and to individually use it more efficiently
- practice with communication tools they’ll be able to reuse immediately in other contexts
- think about how to contribute to increase the value of a conference
- have fun and meet other people sharing analog interests
- Introduction (5 min) — Participants designate between 2 and 4 observers, depending on the size of the group. Exercise presentation: “as a group, propose an action you’ll implement together that will increase the value of this conference”
- Iteration 1 (5 min) — Participants attempt to do the exercise, with no additional help
- Debrief (10 min) — Feedback from observers and group discussion
- Presentation of emic approach (5 min) — that is, to ask someone to teach us to do something the way they do it, in order to understand how they think.
- Iteration 2 (15 min) — Participants break in triads (student, teacher, observer). They attempt to get new pieces of information that will help them answer the exercise through emic approach. Participants switch roles in the triad and start over again.
- Debrief (10 min) — Feedback from observers and discussion
- Presentation of Investigate protocol (5 min) — that is, to get investigated by others to give pieces of information important to them (rather than important to us)
- Iteration 3 (15 min) — Participants, as a group, decide whom to investigate. Depending on the size of the group and time remaining, the group designate another person to investigate and start over again
- Convergence and conclusion (10 min) — The group formulate its answer to the exercise
- Session debrief (10 min) — What we’ve learned together; pointers at further readings