The World Café Get's
Its Day In Court!
A Social Architect Takes The World Café
from IONS to Judicial Mediators
by Liz Lafferty
In July of 2001, sitting with 1200 other participants from around the globe at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) conference held in Palm Desert, California, I knew I was experiencing a simpler way. Although similar in style to my own preferred conversational methods, Palm Desert was my first experience with The World Café. I relished the ease with which Juanita Brown wrapped us in a cocoon of questions and then stepped back--trusting us to sprout our own wings and fly.
And fly we did! Riding high on a steady breeze of hope and catching every updraft of possibility, conversations winged their way round and round the room as people moved between their clusters, cross-pollinating their insights with those from other groups. The whole was hungry to know the parts and the parts were eager to shape and inform the whole. Sensing that I was witnessing a conversation without end, I, ever the engaged observer, watched as the conversation touched down in all four corners of the room before heading out door on the heart and breath of every participant. I knew, the first opportunity I could create such an experience, I would apply what I had learned.
Court Mediators Sit Down at The World Café
Five weeks later, I had my opportunity. By trade, I am a social architect specializing in institutional and non-profit organizations. Bureaucracies by nature are intended to be cornerstones, solid, immovable, stabilizers of the ideals they were created to uphold. As such, changing bureaucracy becomes an oxymoron--as it should be. Regardless of which party is in office or which individual is running the show, a fundamental role of our institutions is to provide constancy, i.e., to maintain the status quo. Holding that critical role in place while aiding an institution in becoming flexible, and responsive presents some very unique challenges. The World Café provided me with new way for addressing this old problem.
I was to be the closing presenter at a weeklong training for mediators recently hired to work within the judicial system. Seventy to eighty participants who had spent an intense week in a well crafted mental marathon of listening, questioning, testing ideas, taking notes, notes and more notes about the quagmire process of providing mediation within the courts were slated to be my conversation mates. I had been asked to blend inspiration, self-care and connection time into a four hour closing process. It seemed to me, that one of the biggest gifts of The World Café is that it provides a means for moving people into heartfelt conversations without engaging their defenses about becoming too, 'touchy feely.' I was delighted at the prospect.
Hoping the Café look could be nicely created without dressing every table, I packed the settings for ten tables snuggly into a small-wheeled suitcase. "Have Café will travel," I
thought to myself. The flight landed and I arrived just before the group was to break for lunch. The hotel had been alerted to break down the room and bring in small round coffee tables to which I added the red and white-checkered tablecloths, paper, 4X6 cards, and floral centerpieces with large blue mugs I'd fill with colored pens. Add a little jazz music and voila!--the effect was perfect.
I began the afternoon by telling them this was a time to slow it all down. To discover what they knew. Using Juanita's statement, I told them, "This is the time to just bask in one another's brilliance." I polished a glass, while quoting George Bernard Shaw, "Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world." We would close the training by making meaning of their week together. I explained to the group, that through conversations, we would collectively make some of the connections that had occurred during the week visible.
Thought connections
Idea connections
Relationship connections
Soul connections
Then I told them a story. A story I have long since lost the origins of, about an anthropologist who travels too far too fast and must wait for his soul to catch up. (for complete copy email LLChoices@aol.com)
From there we stepped into a series of four questions intended to fill the afternoon.
1. What did you discover this week about mediation, the court, or yourself, and how will that discovery affect your work as a mediator?
Seated four to a table, the participants launched into deeply engaging conversations. After about 30 minutes I had a 'host' remain at each table and everyone else moved to new tables and created new communities. The host's task was to welcome the others and share the essence of the first conversation then to invite each person to add their stories. After about 20 minutes I had them shift again and then again about 20 minutes later. From the very beginning, the room buzzed with conversation and laughter. Then we passed a microphone between the tables and allowed the whole community to hear itself. Which turned out to be a great set-up for the second question.
2. Thinking of yourself as an agent of change (a theme that had been woven throughout the week) remember a time when something you did, shifted the status quo. That was shared with one other person at your table. (approximately 10 minutes) Then we moved on to the second part of that question: What would you attempt if you knew you could NOT fail? They wrote that down on a card. Then, on a separate card they wrote down, What's missing that, if it were present, would empower you to act on that dream? They then exchanged that card with someone from another table. Many of the cards were read out-loud allowing the community to hear its hopes and dreams and what was needed to fulfill on those dreams.
It was powerful to witness. What especially caught my attention was the ease with which most everyone slipped into deep levels of engagement and enjoyment. At one point, while the participants were busy in conversation, I asked the coordinator of the event about the groups of people at each table. Did he know if they had known one another before? "No, I don't think so. They are from differing counties and I don't believe they had met before this event." For me this was the evidence of what I was beginning to understand about The World Cafés commitment to creating meaningful conversations about things that matter.
There were two other questions I had wanted to pose that afternoon:
3. What does it mean to you to be REALLY GOOD at mediation with the courts over the long haul?
4. What practices of self-care will best support your excellence?
My plan was to close with a wonderful quote by Helen Keller, I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
However, life in its entertaining way had something different in mind. The air-conditioning began dumping something nasty into the room so before we got to the last two questions, or the closing, the room was evacuated and the conference officially, or should I say, unofficially ended. I do not know for certain, but judging by the quality of engagement I can trust that everyone received something of value from the afternoon. I certainly know I did.
Liz Lafferty is the owner of LLChoices a consulting and training firm located in Southern California dedicated to enhancing interpersonal skills in order to improve organizational success. She is the creator of The Cultural Renewal Project a training program about the choices we make and the outcomes those choices produce.