Introduction

A deeper understanding of why we teach organizing the way we teach it enables you to facilitate the discussions and embody the theory. The guide then presents the general flow of the coming training days. It offers general advice and tips on coaching challenges and common questions.

Dear Facilitators:

Welcome! These pages offer you some tips for facilitating your teams at the upcoming workshop
in PLACE . We’ll work through this guide together on … DATE.

Please plan to use this guide in conjunction with the 2.5-day participant guide that includes the
agenda, curriculum and breakouts for the large workshop.

The facilitators guide starts by describing the pedagogy of learning and teaching organizing. A
deeper understanding of why we teach organizing the way we teach it enables you to facilitate the
discussions and embody the theory.

The guide then presents the general flow of the coming training days. It offers general advice and
tips on coaching challenges and common questions.

From the general it moves to the specifics, taking you through each session. Among session tips,
you will find learning objectives. These objectives should guide your thinking when you need to
make facilitation decisions. They also include common challenges and questions.

In the end, there is no script. Trust your judgment and remember one thing: leadership is taking
the responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. It starts with
you digging in, owning your role, and using that role to support others to do the same.

We look forward to developing our collective learning, organizing skills and leadership together as
the facilitation team. We realize that these will be long days—and hopefully energizing for you
too!

Thank you in advance for your commitment to the success of the training.

In Solidarity,
LEAD TRAINERS

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2
RESTRICTIONS OF USE 2
FACILITATION TRAINING AGENDA 6
LEARNING LEADERSHIP 12
THE ROLE OF A FACILITATOR 14
FACILITATION TEAMS 16
FACILITATION TIPS 17
COACHING AS A LEADERSHIP PRACTICE 19
FACILITATING NARRATIVE 23
Facilitating Story of Self 26
STORY COACHING TIP SHEET 28
COACHING STORY OF US, NOW, LINKING 29
COACHING STORY OF US 29
COACHING STORY OF NOW 32
HOW TO COACH LINKED STORIES OF SELF, US AND NOW 34
FACILITATING RELATIONSHIPS 36
FACILITATING TEAM STRUCTURE 38
FACILITATING STRATEGY 40
STRATEGY I 43
PART 1: GETTING FOCUSED 43
PART 2: THEORY OF CHANGE 44
PART 3: STRATEGIC GOAL 45
PART 4: VISUALIZATION 46
STRATEGY II 46
PART 1: TACTICS 46
PART 2: CAMPAIGN TIMELINE 47
PART 3: KICK-OFF VISUALIZATION 48
FACILITATION ACTION – MOBILIZING 49

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We welcome your suggestions for improving this guide further for future trainings. We also welcome you to use it and adapt it for your own trainings, subject to the restrictions below.

This trainers’ guide has been developed by Dan Grandone, Jake Waxman, Sarah Kopse-Scholberg, Chris Lawrence-Pietroni, and Kate Hilton, drawing on work from Nisreen Haj Ahmad, and New Organizing Institute staff (among others).

It is originally adapted from the works of Marshall Ganz of Harvard University.

RESTRICTIONS OF USE

The following work [this facilitator’s guide] is provided to you pursuant to the following terms and conditions. Your acceptance of the work constitutes your acceptance of these terms:

• You may reproduce and distribute the work to others for free, but you may not sell the work to others.
• You may not remove the legends from the work that provide attribution as to source
  (i.e. “originally adapted from the works of Marshall Ganz of Harvard University”).
• You may modify the work, provided that the attribution legends remain on the work, and provided further that you send any significant modifications or updates to: marshall_ganz@harvard.edu or Marshall Ganz, Hauser Center, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.
• You hereby grant an irrevocable, royalty-free license to Marshall Ganz, and their successors, heirs, licensees and assigns, to reproduce, distribute and modify the work as modified by you.
• You shall include a copy of these restrictions with all copies of the work that you distribute and you shall inform everyone to whom you distribute the work that they are subject to the restrictions and obligations set forth herein.

If you have any questions about these terms, please contact marshall_ganz@harvard.edu or Marshall Ganz, Hauser Center, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Download Full Resource

See full resource below or download as a .doc file – The Facilitator’s Resource Guide: Facilitating an Organizing Training (.doc)

FACILITATION TRAINING AGENDA

DAY< DATE< PLACE

Tuesday, November 27^th, 2018

LEARNING LEADERSHIP

This training offers you a motivational, conceptual, and practical introduction to the practice of leadership, organizing and action. It is not a training “about” leadership but a training “in” leadership.

Learning practice requires motivation, because doing new things is risky. Learning practice requires a grasp of core concepts if one is to be able to adapt to new conditions. And learning practice requires, simply, practice – doing it – again and again and again. It is challenging too, because many distinct elements of practice come into play at any one moment (e.g., strategy and motivation), but can only be learned in a sequential way. So we have tried to order the sequence in such a way that each builds on what preceded it.

Some points on how we learn and teach:

• Organizing is a practice – a way of doing things. It’s like learning to ride a bike. No matter how many books you read about bike riding, they are of little use when it comes to getting on the bike. And when you get on the first thing that will happen is that you will fall. And that’s where the “heart” comes in. Either you give up and go home or you find the courage to get back on, knowing you will fall, because that’s the only way to learn to keep your balance. Each of our sessions will follow the same pattern: explanation, modeling, practice, and debriefing.

• Organizing is a framework – a way of understanding things. In this training we treat everyday practices – forming a relationship, telling a story, making a plan as objects of mindful reflection. This allows us to understand them more deeply and to practice them with more intentionality. For example, we set norms in a mindful intentional way. We make assumptions influencing our planning explicit so that we can be clearer as to our “theory of change.”

• Each training sections is designed in such a way that the content of what we teach – organizing as a leadership practice – is modeled in the way we teach. We begin with explanation (conceptual, motivation), we observe models (practice), we practice, and then we debrief our practice (reflection). Our modeling of leadership in coaching small groups, for example, demonstrates the leadership practices we teach. Our modeling of ‘reflective practice’ enables participants to do so as well. That is why we end every day with an evaluation, reflecting on and acknowledging what had been done well and what needs to be improved.

• Our training is also organized as a campaign – a way of mobilizing time, resources, and energy to achieve a specific outcome – time as an “arrow” rather than a “cycle.” Thinking of time as a “cycle” helps to maintain routines, normal procedures, our annual budget, etc. Thinking of time as an “arrow” focuses on making change, on achieving specific outcomes, on focusing our efforts. A campaign is time as an “arrow”. It is an intense stream of activity that begins with a foundational period, builds to a kick-off, builds to periodic peaks, and culminates in a final peak, followed by a resolution. Our training will follow the same pattern, each practice, building on what went before, and creating a foundation for what comes next. It is structured in leadership teams of five just like the infrastructure driving a campaign. The intense two days in which this training is conducted offers the support and the challenge of a well-run campaign, presenting both scaffolding and testing, always with respect to specific outcomes.

• This training creates the opportunity for intense relationships with participants. We need to respect these “public relationships,” not “private relationships” – both close and professional. We need to support them in the way we can and acknowledge that we can’t support them in other ways beyond our capacity.
• This training brings to the forefront ‘hot topics’ such as political differences, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and religion on a fairly regular basis – keeping in mind that the role of the coach is not to problem solve those issues but to facilitate a learning discussion among participants regarding those topics in relation to organizing.
• The evaluation of an effective training – as in effective campaign – rests on three measures: did the individuals learn, did their teams grow stronger, were the outcomes achieved. The goal of organizing is not only to develop outstanding individuals, but, more importantly, to develop outstanding teams. The value added of organizing is the creation of “collective capacity,” what De Tocqueville called “knowledge of how to combine.” And that is where our focus must always remain.

THE ROLE OF A FACILITATOR

Vocabulary

Facilitator: Facilitating the discussion with/among the participants at each table

Coach: Supports facilitators during the training teamwork sessions as needed and debriefs facilitators after teamwork sessions

Trainer: Introduces the concepts or one of the practices to all participants in the plenary

Vocabulary

Facilitator: Facilitating the discussion with/among the participants at each table

Coach: Supports facilitators during the training teamwork sessions as needed and debriefs facilitators after teamwork sessions

Trainer: Introduces the concepts or one of the practices to all participants in the plenary

• FACILITATION TIPS

Flow of the Day:

• 8:00 am: Morning meeting (when training starts @ 9am)
• 8:30 am: Prep table, wear name tag, welcome participants, introduce them to one another and get to know them
• Teamwork sessions: Model and facilitate
• At end of narrative sessions: Report back to coaches (index cards rating top narrative at your table)
• Breaks: 2 min check-in with coach
• Lunch: Facilitation team meeting
• End of the day: Be responsible for table tidiness and flipcharts
• Facilitation team debrief – Immediately Following Last Session of the Day

Common Facilitator Belief Barriers:

• “I am younger than the participants”
• “Some members on my team are superior to me”
• “I have not done this before”
• “I have a history of relationship with some participants”
• “I am not sure I buy it myself”
• “Telling stories is against our culture” or “Chants are against our culture”
• “I know all this already”

Common Challenges:

Number One: Time

Number Two: Intensity

Number Three: Emotions

Number Four: One difficult participant

Number Five: No ally among the participants

Number Six: Balancing support & challenge

Sentences quoted when debriefing good facilitation:

• “My facilitator started with a clear articulation of the purpose of the exercise – I felt we were on track”
• “Our facilitator was gently but firmly pushing us forward – s/he even said: I am going to push you”
• “My facilitator was a partner with us – supporting us, creating with us and challenging us on occasion.”

COACHING AS A LEADERSHIP PRACTICE

Goals for this session:

• To learn a simple diagnostic framework and a 5-step process for coaching others in organizing efforts.
• To practice the coaching process through role-plays and reflective discussion.

Goals for this session:

• To learn a simple diagnostic framework and a 5-step process for coaching others in organizing efforts.
• To practice the coaching process through role-plays and reflective discussion.

Leadership in organizing is about enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. Coaching enables others.

Organizing campaigns are rich with challenges and learning opportunities, but sometimes we are fish in our own water and we cannot see the challenges we are swimming in. Coaching in organizing helps to alleviate this problem. Coaching helps individuals to overcome motivational, strategic, and informational challenges that might otherwise hinder the progress of the individual, and/or the team, and thus the campaign or training.

What is coaching in organizing?

Coaching is a direct intervention in an individual or team’s work process to help them improve their effectiveness.

Coaching is a leadership practice that is useful in a variety of contexts in organizing campaigns and trainings. Some examples of when coaching skills are necessary:

• Helping an organizer overcome motivational challenges with their volunteers.
• Assisting a leadership team in creating strategy for their organizing campaign.

Coaching is useful whenever we are working to enable others to build their own capacity to act, and though the contexts vary, the process is very similar throughout.

How do I practice coaching in organizing?

Good coaching requires learning how to identify a person’s or team’s strengths and weaknesses in order to find ways to help them mobilize their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. People often know what they “should” do, but a fresh set of eyes is helpful in diagnosing the specific challenges they’re facing and initiating a brainstorm of solutions to maneuver through them. There are three basic practices of coaching:

Basic Practices of Coaching

• Motivational (heart) coaching is aimed at enhancing effort.
• Strategic (head) coaching is aimed at helping the team or individual plan, evaluate, or think about its strategic or structural approach.
• Skills-based (hands) coaching is aimed at helping the team or individual execute with skill (and learn from execution).

The first part of effective coaching is diagnosing which coaching practice is most needed in any given moment. For example, if an organizer is struggling with strategy but you try using motivational coaching, it is likely to frustrate them further.

As is true for the other practices of leadership, coaching is a practice that only gets honed by DOING, and then reflecting on what works and what doesn’t. Following this simple, 5-step coaching process can help you dive in and begin your coaching practice:

5-Step Coaching Process

5-Step Coaching Process

• OBSERVE – WHAT DO I SEE AND HEAR?

• Motivational (heart): Is the individual struggling because s/he is not putting forth enough effort? Is she not trying hard enough because she’s embarrassed? Is he quitting too soon because of frustration or fear?
• Strategic (head): Is the individual struggling because the goals are not achievable? Or because they’re not thinking creatively enough about how to use the resources they have to meet goals? Or because the overall strategy doesn’t make sense and needs to be clarified or adated to their situation?
• Skills-based (hands): Is the individual struggling because of not being able to muster the behavioral skill to execute effectively? Does he not have the skill in his repertoire? Is he getting interference from other habits and behaviors (like someone well-versed in marketing speak may think that skill set is a substitute for authentic story-telling skills)? Is there something you could model, or that this person just needs more help practicing and debriefing?

• DIAGNOSE & INTERVENE: WHICH FORM OF COACHING DOES THIS REQUIRE? HOW WILL I INTERVENE?

• Motivational Intervention: If your diagnosis is that the individual needs to put in more intense effort, choose a motivational intervention. For instance, you might encourage them with a “you can do it!”
• Strategic Intervention: If your diagnosis is that the individual is not understanding the focal practice adequately, or thinking about it appropriately, choose a strategic intervention. For example, you might ask questions to help your coachee to find the answer on his/her own. Or you might offer assertions about what you are observing and how you think the individual might fruitfully think about the practice differently.
• Educational Intervention: If your diagnosis is that the individual lacks execution skill, choose an educational intervention. For example, you might model the behavior and invite the coachee to imitate you or work side by side with you to get the “feel” of the activity.

• STEP BACK & OBSERVE: HOW CAN I ALLOW THE COACHEE TO DEVELOP THEIR LEADERSHIP SKILLS?

• Avoid the urge to do it for them.
• Allow the coachee to try the intervention.
• Observe them in action and note observations for your debrief.

• DEBRIEF: WHAT DO I ASK THE COACHEE TO HELP THEM REFLECT ON THEIR EXPERIENCE?

• What went well?
• What are you challenged by?
• What are some possible solutions?
• What are your goals/next steps?

• MONITOR: HOW CAN I CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE COACHEE?

• Schedule periodic check-ins to support your coachee in integrating this new or revised solution into their regular practice.
• Find out from the coachee how the situation has changed.
• Assess whether the diagnosis and intervention was successful. Celebrate success!

• FACILITATING NARRATIVE

What makes an effective public narrative facilitator?

Facilitator’s Purpose:

• Coaching individual stories
• Facilitating group interaction
• Establishing trust and “holding the anxiety”
• Developing the coaching skills of the group members
• Re-teaching public narrative concepts briefly as needed

Activities:

• Modelling
• Listening
• Asking questions of the storyteller
• Asking questions of the group
• Synthesizing in service of teaching objectives
• Selecting best storiesfrom the break-out to teach from during the debrief
• Teaching from what works as well as what is missing

Outcomes:

• People telling detailed stories with a clear challenge, choice & outcome
• People articulating what makes a good story through coaching
• People giving and receiving helpful feedback
• People “diving deep” or “falling off the bike and choosing to get back on”

What makes an ineffective public narrative facilitator?

Facilitators Purposes:

• Being the boss
• Being participants’ friends
• Being a “resource if you need it”
• Only being the time keeper

Activities:

• Telling people what to do
• Being general in comments
• Judging content
• Chit-chatting
• Allowing people to ignore the time keeper or beeper
• Sugary feedback: “That was great”

Outcomes:

• People who don’t know how to revise their stories
• Groups that don’t give feedback
• People who don’t feel “safe”

General tips on narrative:

• When you hear the story, ask yourself: “Am I coaching the storyteller or facilitating the group?”

• • If you decide to coach, start by saying “I am going to model coaching-and I am going to especially focus on x”

• This is not a public relations skills exercise: it is not about polished public speaking skills

• • It’s about “the glow from within, not the gloss from without”

• This is not a trauma/therapy session

• • The point is not to direct stories to private intimate details but to support public narrative for organizing

• This is not about polishing a script but rather about developing a leadership skill: help the storyteller with her thinking about how she tells stories and which stories she tells, rather than polishing a finished script
• Look for what works. It is easier to teach from what is there than what isn’t

Facilitating Story of Self

The purpose of sharing our story of self is for us to connect on values, or to understand why people are called to leadership and to organizing. By focusing on the challenge, the choice and the outcome, we are communicating that we exercise choice. The story is not supposed to reflect our heroism or show that we are unique human beings but rather the opposite – that we are human like everyone else, vulnerable and despite the challenge we exercise choice. We have hope, and we share our source of hope to inspire action. Finally, the story of self is the story of a choice – everyone (when they think about it) has 1,000s of choices they could tell a story about, so the key is selecting one that (succinctly) reveals why they are called to leadership for this particular issue. It doesn’t have to be dramatic but it does have to reveal the values they hold and want to put into action.

Purpose or learning objective:

• To coach a story of self that answers why am I called to leadership and organizing? Why am I at this training – what calls me here? Story telling improves over course of session
• To facilitate a team of coaches – to establish that we (team members) coach and support each other because we believe we are responsible for helping others become leaders.
• To create a respectful environment that supports sharing key moments in our lives in a way that is meaningful.

When you start:

• Go over the agenda and select a timekeeper.
• Give a 2-minute story of self – stick to this time limit to model for participants.
• Remind your team to record feedback they get in the worksheet for coaching purposes.
• When you move into work as a group, choose the first person carefully. Look for someone who is not overly talkative but is articulate. Try to choose someone who “gets” it. The first person you select can drastically change how the rest of the participants practice telling their story.
• You may want to coach the first person alone without opening it to the whole group. (This gives the group a strong, current model of good coaching.)
• Seek feedback from the whole group with the second or third teller.
• Make sure everyone tells a story and that everyone gives (brief, specific) coaching.
• Choose your best story for the large group debriefing and privately give it a rating out of ten (1 being a not effective story, 10 being an excellent story). This helps the large group facilitator make good choices (and a good sequence) for sharing and debriefing good examples.

Common Challenges:

• No challenge, choice, outcome
• “I don’t have a story” (usually means ‘a story I think is good enough’)
• Gives resume (telling instead of showing)
• Not Personal – either issue focused – like a speech on a topic – or about other people
• Story teller is ONLY character in story (too much self)
• Good story, but not public narrative about their call to leadership
• Someone becomes caught up by emotions
• Vague feedback
• One member dominates
• Chit-chat among team
• Non-responsive participants
• Story skeptic (this does not fit this culture)
• Bored and disinterested
• Distracted and distracting

STORY COACHING TIP SHEET

THE BASICS: Key Elements of Story

CHALLENGE

OUTCOME

CHOICE

CHALLENGE

OUTCOME

CHOICE

COACHING STORY OF US, NOW, LINKING

COACHING STORY OF US

The purpose of sharing our Story of Us is to create a community from the group in the room and from your small group. By focusing on the values that are in common among them and by focusing on the challenge and the choice and the outcome that joins them together, this community starts taking shape. This story draws on shared experiences (very often quoting stories of self shared earlier) to reveal shared values. As such, it is told in the past tense, like the story of Self. Importantly, it communicates also why we are hopeful and powerful together. It sets the ground for calling people to action in the story of now. Because it focuses on the common values it transcends issue silos. So instead of saying we connect on ending pressure sores vs. we connect on finding ways to cut costs – we facilitate a story of us that says we come together around the values of human dignity and stewardship of resources. The particulars of how we work on that and achieve it is for the story of now and the strategy.

Your purpose as a facilitator is to:

• Coach a story of us that answers why are we here together? Why together are we moved to leadership and organizing?
• Facilitate a team of coaches- to establish that we (team members) coach each other and support each other because we believe we are responsible for helping others become leaders.
• Create a respectful environment that supports sharing key moments of our lives in a way that is deep and trusting.

Common Questions:

• Who is the “us” you want us to develop a story about?

It is a challenge for the participants- they ask things like: do you mean us in this small group, us in the big group, us in at work, or should I imagine I am using narrative to recruit and the us is the targeted recruits?

• Is this story about the past or the present?

It is challenging for the participants to know whether it is a value based us (especially when the group just came together in this workshop) or if it is an experiential based us where they can go to the history of their relationships and draw on it. In the second case the challenge, choice and outcome of the story is often in the past. Of course, they can say and now our challenge is…and our choice is….and this way they are preparing the ground for the story of now. If it is a value us then it can go either way. The story could be 1. Clear from our stories we faced the same challenge which is X in A’s story and Y in B’s story and we had similar choices which are this or that and we chose and the outcome was X and why.

Common Challenges:

• Restates story of self
• Not “us” in the room
• Can’t find any specific shared experiences of us or shared values those experiences reveal
• Bad dynamics: no us, but everyone says there is. “I relate to that because I also grew up in a city.”
• No challenge, choice, or outcome

Challenging Participants:

• Get caught up the spirit of togetherness and think specifics aren’t needed because “Everyone will just FEEL powerful together”, missing the opportunity to illustrate with undeniable detail that this is a powerful, hopeful, courageous group
• Ridicules the power of us as insignificant given the scale of the challenges

COACHING STORY OF NOW

Now that we have a leadership team, we can begin to tell our story of us. Learning to articulate our values in relationship with others can help us tap sources of hope, confidence, anger, urgency and solidarity that enable us to act. Having developed a story of us, or the story of the project or organization, we move to the story of now. The story of now is the point to which a public narrative is leading – a call to commit to hopeful action.

Purpose of story of now:

• To create urgency and to articulate the specific action called.
• To contrast what would happen if I act AND if I don’t act
• To instill hope that the action I am being asked to take will make a meaningful
• To ask for a specific commitment

We are using the linked story of self, us and now to lead people to a point where they use their public narrative to make a specific “ask”. Therefore, you should encourage participants to be as specific as possible in their action they are calling on others to take.

Common Challenges:

• The ask is vague or abstract: “let’s all do what we can to improve the quality of care in our country”
• The ask is not a collective action: “let’s commit as individuals to doing what we can to improve quality for each patient”
• The ask is a laundry list of possible actions: “here are 53 things you could do to improve services”
• The ask is not achievable by group: “we need more Government funding for the QIO”
• There is no hope in the story of now: “things are really bad so we need to act”
• There is no vision of what the world would be like if we chose to act
• The story of now is not connected to the story of self and us

HOW TO COACH LINKED STORIES OF SELF,US AND NOW

Narratives, relationships, teams and strategies only become a source of power if they are turned into action. In organizing, action grows out of people’s commitment of their resources (time, money, energy, etc.) to achieving organizational goals and outcomes. An effective action program is one in which many people can contribute their resources to achieving a common objective through motivational task design.

In this part of the workshop, we are also coaching participants to pull their stories of self, us and now together and to motivate action to an urgent matter. The purpose of the complete public narrative is to call for action that is linked to the purpose, strategy and campaign chart.

When you move to the part of the teamwork on linking remind the participants that they can:

• Reconstruct their stories of self, us and now.
• Given the ‘now’ that they have identified what are the RELEVANT stories of self and us that they want to tell? Are there other parts of their stories that could be drawn on more effectively?
• Maybe now that they have been together for one intense day, they have more shared experiences for the story of us.
• Also remind them that they do not need to have their stories flow in order of self us and now. They can move from self to us to self to now and experiment with order.

FACILITATING RELATIONSHIPS

People are the essential resource in organizing – we organize people, not issues. Through relationships, we make the whole greater than the sums of its parts. Relationships sustain volunteer commitment, inspire creativity and allow us to engage diverse social networks and the broader community. The goal of this session is for participants to understand and practice building relationships in organizing, and to consider how to build relationships strategically in order to increase their social capital. In this training, we focus of 1:1 meetings, but organizers also use tactics such as information sessions, house meetings, team and community meetings, and emergency meetings.

• Your purpose as a facilitator is to help your team:
• Practice one on one meetings going through the five steps
• End the one on one with a commitment
• Explore shared values and interests building on the story of self
• Discover that they are resourceful
• Reflect on this way of “doing business” and how it is different from typical interactions in traditional settings

When you start:

• Pair your team differently from how they were paired for story of self
• Change pairs after first ten minutes and make sure that the participants take on a different role (i.e. if participant A was a “questioner” with participant B in the first round, s/he should become a “questionee” with person C in the second round)
• Warn participants that you will be “listening in” on their one on ones, and possibly intervening to coach them

Common Challenges:

• • • • Chit-chat during 1:1 (lack of focus)
      • Questioning “why we are doing this” – instead of doing it
      • Failure to follow the intentional steps of a 1:1
      • Participants identify a commitment to each other but not to the team
      • They want you to be note taker or report to large group

Common Questions:

• Do we build on story of self?
  • • Ideally yes, in the exploration step
• Is this pretence or are we really committing?
  • • It’s for real! Even if it’s a very limited commitment, the exchange of resources and interests should lead to a real shared commitment and participants should hold each other accountable to it.
• I know this person already- should I do the one on one with someone else?
  • • One-on-ones are not only held at the foundational stage of your campaign, but should be held throughout. This is the opportunity to renew, redefine or deepen your relationships and shared commitment to the campaign.

BEST PRACTICES:

• Be mindful of how you pair participants to maximize ‘weak ties’
• Remind participants before they begin to follow the 5 steps, providing the page number in their manual where these steps are outlined
• Inform participants before you begin that you’ll be listening in on their conversations and potentially intervening to coach them
• Intervene when participants are wandering, chit-chatting, or discussing their resumes instead of exploring stories. Effective coaching questions/interventions can include:
  • • What are you learning about so-and-so’s values/interests/resources?
    • Where are you going with this line of questioning?
    • This sounds like chit-chatting. How can you get to so-and-so’s story?
• As time for each 1:1 approaches an end, remind participants to get a commitment before they close.

FACILITATING TEAM STRUCTURE

Interdependent leadership teams create the structure within which energized volunteers can work together towards a challenging goal. Structured leadership teams encourage stability, motivation, creativity, accountability, and the effective use volunteer time, skills, and effort. They are at the heart of differentiating organizing from mobilizing. Teams strive to achieve three criteria of effectiveness – meeting campaign outcomes, deepening organizational capacity, and enhancing the learning and growth of individuals. Team members work to put in place three conditions that will lead to effectiveness:

Your purpose:

• Help your team identify its common purpose
• Help your team agree on norms by suggesting areas they should be considering
• Make sure they identify a self-correcting norm (i.e. what happens when a norm is violated)
• Help your team think of roles for the team in relationship to the purpose they have identified and be intentional about their interdependence

Common challenges:

• Anxiety about not “completing” team purpose, roles and norms
• Wordsmiths hold up team purpose
• Disagreement about a self-correcting norm (whether to have one, what is should be)
• Participants think that the chant is silly or can’t make up a good one
• Lack of clarity about the purpose of the team – is it just for the purpose of practicing the skills during the training or is it our “real” campaign team?
• Participants prefer to brainstorm purpose as opposed to sharing their individual lines.

Tips:

• Remind your team at the start that it is okay if they don’t finish the teamwork – we expect them not to and anticipate that they will finish it at their first team meeting
• Take control of scribing for the shared purpose activity in order to better steer the team’s direction
• Consider delegating the exact formulation of the shared purpose to someone in case participants get stuck
• Clarify the purpose of the team before beginning the work
• Be ready to explain the purpose of self-correcting norms (and to provide examples)
• Encourage participants to think of another type of community-building ritual if they are blocked with the chant; encourage creativity and remember to build on suggestions
• Be sure that the team knows when its next team meeting is and where it is being held
• This is a challenging session to coach. Don’t be discouraged!
• Take control of scribing for the shared purpose activity in order to better steer the team’s direction
• Be ready to explain the purpose of self-correcting norms (and to provide examples)
• Be prepared to delegate the exact formulation of your team’s shared purpose to a participant, if necessary under time constraints
• Encourage people to embrace norms and norm corrections by emphasizing that norms are about honoring the group and by using humor! Be prepared to respond to those who have the impression they are punitive.
• Don’t undermine the importance of a team name and chant. The better, more fun, and more meaningful these are, the more pride and togetherness your team will experience on the whole!

• TEACHING AND FACILITATING STRATEGY

Strategy is taking the resources that we have and turning them into the power that we need to get the outcomes that we want. It is motivational, intentional, creative, collaborative and a verb. We consider a map of actors, our motivating vision, our goals, theory of change, targeting, tactics, and timing as the means by which we mobilize and deploy our resources. Although we strive to make choices in as full awareness of their consequences as we can, we recognize that the future is uncertain, so the development of the “strategic capacity” to deal mindfully with unexpected obstacles and opportunities is critical. Good strategy can be explicit and can be practiced most creatively in collaboration with diverse others.

Organizing strategy assumes that we begin with far fewer resources than we will need – and to which the status quo has access in the end. We will be making the road as we walk it. The milestones along this road are when we have created enough new capacity, developed enough power that we can now undertake activities that we couldn’t before. For example, before we have a core organizing leadership team recruited, it is hard to put them to work recruiting volunteers; before we have enough volunteers recruited; it is hard to put them to work identifying other leaders in the community. Reaching a threshold that gives us new capacity is a campaign “peak.” It’s a peak because it is a threshold that we are able to cross as a result of mobilizing the most resources we can to achieve it. Once we across that peak, we can relax our effort briefly, assess, and then deploy our new resources to reach our next peak. So an organizing strategy is necessarily built around a series of peaks, culminating in a final campaign peak when we have won or lost.

TEACHING STRATEGY

Teaching strategy is based on what’s been called the “martini glass principle”. We begin a narrowing the focus of our work in the module on “structuring leadership teams”. In this exercise we build on what we have learned about our shared values and interests during “story of self” and “relationship building” to begin defining a “shared purpose”.

A shared purpose consists of a broad goal (gender equity, economic justice, etc.) a constituency (the voters in district 5, employee’s of company z, residents of neighborhood x) and the kinds of activities we anticipate doing (education, organizing, etc.) The result should be something like “The shared purpose of our leadership team is to fight for gender equity on the job by educating, organizing, and mobilizing female employees of the city of Buffalo.” As you can see this “goal” is more of an expression of values, often anchored in a story of us, than a strategic objective. This is the widest part of a martini glass.

The next day in “strategy one” we build on this shared purpose to identify the “change” our constituency wants and needs. We ask how “our people” experience the problem, how the world would look different if it were solved, why it hasn’t been solved, what it might it take to solve it, concluding with the “change” we need. In the above example the “change” might a commitment from the city to equity in hiring, promotions, and wages. That’s a narrowing of the martini glass.

Then we have to figure out how to turn this change into the strategic objective (strategic goal) of our organizing campaign. To get there we need to do power map of all the actors involved, their interests, their resources, and whether they are like to support our constituency, oppose it, ally with it, etc. Having figured out who has the power to achieve the change we need: can we build enough “power with” each other through collaboration or will we need to challenge “power over” us through contention or both. We can spell this out as our theory of change. If our constituency can collaborate enough to use its political, economic, and cultural resources to persuade the city council to commit to our program we can expect wage rates, promotion practice, and hiring policy to bring about greater gender equity.

So, what is our strategic objective? Our strategic objective to get commitments in writing from a majority of candidates for city council to commit to our program at least one week before the November 2019 Municipal election. We can then go on and figure out what tactics we will use, how we will sequence our campaign, when we will have our kick-off.

This approach differs from the way we used to do this by deciding on a strategic objective, our goal, before we did a power analysis or developed a theory of change, when the kind of strategic objective we could hope to achieve will depend on our power analysis and theory of change.

Embedded in “shared purpose” is usually a broad, values oriented goal, like educational equity. This is a place to start when working on the “change” which requires getting very clear about constituency and the logic of a focus on this kind of change, like ending segregation, as opposed to ending racism, in this context. Now that we know the kind fo change we want we need to do a power analysis to figure out where to start, on what to focus for our first campaign, which then becomes our strategic objective or strategic goal. Its like a Martini glass that doesn’t go from abstract to concrete but from that which is valued, to that which is relevant to this particular setting, and that which is relevant to this particular campaign.

Your purpose as a facilitator is to:

• Facilitate visualization of motivating vision (how the world should be) and visualization of mountain peak vision (how does success look from the mountain top)
• Help to articulate why we are using organizing as our approach to change
• Guide the participants in mapping their actors (constituency, supporters, competition and opposition)
• Guide the participants in drawing a campaign chart with different peaks and mountain peak
• Encourage the participants to analyze the power dynamics and the needed power shift to develop tactics

Why visualize?

The reason for the focus on a motivating “vision” is that strategy must be very specific to be real. You can’t develop a strategy to win a battle “in general,” but have to appreciate the unique terrain, resources, likely responses that pertain to that particular setting. And you also can’t develop a strategy unless you are able to go up to the mountain top and see who all these “trees” actually form a forest. Visualization is one way to challenge people to get specific, and, in a group, so we can all be sure we’re seeing the same picture. This enables us to focus our individual contributions much more successfully.

Your challenge as a facilitator:

One of the most challenging aspects of developing strategy is that it is based on a set of assumptions about how the world works that we call a “theory of change.” Bringing out these assumptions, making them explicit, and facilitating agreement as to what theory of change your team is operating with is a critical piece of facilitation work. Organizing is most appropriate where the challenge is such that it requires developing new collective capacity (power) to deal with it. And because organizing is about change, it often encounters much resistance especially from those content with the status quo. People think there is nothing wrong with change, except when it affects them. And to the extent the challenge has to do with problems of inequality, the resistance is even greater.

So your team must be clear what kind of challenge they are dealing with, whether it requires power to deal with it, and whether it requires power with or power over. If it is a power problem then taking the time for people to be clear about relational power and how it works lays a foundation for devising effective tactics.

General Common challenges:

• Too many things to achieve in one session: try to be systematic: mapping actors, problem, goal, tactics list, campaign chart
• One person shoots down other people’s ideas: “yes and” instead of “no but”
• The group has problems making decisions to move forward: revert to group norms on decision making
• There is a creativity block in generating ideas: make a few suggestions yourself? Ask questions to solicit ideas?
• Stuck over the fact that they can’t draw: suggest it as schematic drawing
• Wanting to make drawing perfect: stop drawing processes!

General Tips:

• Tell your group this is a challenging session, and take permission to direct the process to create boundaries without limiting creativity. Time is tight and there is a lot to do.
• Explaining the whole exercise to them before you start may take 7-10 minutes if you open it for questions. Instead, start with the first step right away and explain the steps as they come.
• Let’s not get stuck on semantics or perfect drawings. This is only a beginning of the strategizing process.
• You MUST have a timekeeper in the group – keep it going!!
• Don’t hesitate to ask the lead trainer or your coach for help if you get stuck or need support.
• Remind people this is an exercise in what “could” be, not what ‘’will” be. In other words, we need to use our imaginations to consider possibilities, without getting shut down by what seems most probable.

STRATEGY I

• PART 1: GETTING FOCUSED

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Identify their ‘people’ – a real group of people in a specific locale that can be realistically organized
• Identify and critically analyze the problem facing their constituency (this analysis will provide initial ideas about a specific problem to tackle through their strategic goal).
• Identify a long-term goal analogous to ‘ending segregation’ – not as big or lofty as ‘ending institutionalized racism’ (your shared purpose) but not as specific as ‘desegregating buses in Montgomery, Alabama’ (your strategic goal)
• Vividly describe a hopeful vision of the future for their constituency if these problems are addressed

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• The group struggles to reach sufficient specificity for their constituency, or are connected to different constituencies and struggle to negotiate ‘their people’
• The group throws out categorical problems, instead of experiential ones
• The group gets hung up on their ‘big picture goal’ – either suggesting goals that are too specific or too broad.
• The group’s analysis of the problem is not sufficiently critical or deep

BEST PRACTICES:

• Get the team to a specific, local constituency either by being frank about the demands of organizing or asking good coaching questions:
  • Where do they live? How old are they? How will you access them?
  • About how many Muslim youth in MA do you think there are? Can we get more specific?
• Push the group to describe experiential problems versus categorical ones. For example, if someone suggests that the problem is ‘poverty,’ get the group to describe what that looks like in people’s daily lives (i.e. many people are evicted from their homes, the quality of their schools is poor, etc.).
• Encourage a “yes and” approach to brainstorming instead of “no but”
• Refer back to ‘desegregation’ in the Montgomery story to help people understand the scale of a ‘big picture goal’
• Assign a good timekeeper. You will need to stick to time limits to get through everything in Strategy I effectively

• PART 2: THEORY OF CHANGE

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Identify your people’s specific, unique resources
• Identify whether they are running a ‘power with’ or ‘power over’ campaign
• For ‘power with’:
  • Identify how your people can use their resources differently to achieve their goal
• For ‘power over’:
  • Identify who holds the decision making power and resources our people need
  • Identify the ways our people can use their resources to leverage the interests of key decision makers and stakeholders
• Articulate a compelling ‘theory of change’ that is convincing to you and to the group

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members list resources that are too general and not concrete
• Teams don’t immediately understand from the prompt that they are being asked to identify who decision makers are
• Team members have faulty assumptions about how power works (i.e. we should ‘raise awareness’ and ‘dialogue’ with those in power to solve the problem). They push back against the idea of tension with decision makers or stakeholders.
• Team members default to habitual or familiar strategies instead of thinking critically about interests and resources.

BEST PRACTICES:

• This session sometimes requires facilitators to directly address/challenge the fearful or knee jerk reactions of team members when it comes to challenging power strategically. Often naming such reactions (i.e. the desire to dialogue with power players instead of critically analyzing interests) and questioning underlying assumptions and drawing on past experience helps teams get clarity. For example: “How many of you have ever been invited by the dean of the college to ‘dialogue’ about issues facing X group of students. Who’s agenda was it? Did you get what you wanted/needed?”
• In a ‘power over’ campaign – feel free to ask directly – “who holds the decision-making power?” though it is not listed directly as a prompt
• If you’re not convinced of a ‘theory of change,’ say so or help the group acknowledge that they are not all convinced.

• PART 3: STRATEGIC GOAL

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Understand the criteria for a good strategic goal, and add their own criteria if they have suggestions
• Choose a strategic goal that:
  • Is both focused and important/motivating
  • Would make good use of your people’s unique resources
  • Would build capacity (i.e. leadership, the ability to organize future campaigns)
  • Can be emulated by other groups as you work towards the ‘big picture goal’ (i.e. desegregation in America took many smaller fights to desegregate buses, schools, restaurants, etc.)

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• The criteria go over people’s heads before they start brainstorming because they’re too abstract.
• Team members suggest strategic goals that do not build capacity and therefore don’t lend themselves to an organizing model.
• Team members become territorial about their ideas as the campaign becomes more ‘real.’

BEST PRACTICES:

• Start by identifying one of the challenges in the preceding ‘People/Problem’ exercise that generates enthusiasm from the team. Or invite the team to work backwards from the ‘big picture goal’ to identify a smaller win that would contribute to accomplishing the ‘big picture.’
• As people suggest potential goals, compare them against the criteria and do some teaching to better clarify what the criteria actually mean.
• As the campaign becomes more ‘real’ your role as a facilitator will be to negotiate between the push and pull of different interests in the room. You must remind your team to adopt a ‘rough draft’ mindset, synthesize suggestions where possible, and steer towards the more viable and ‘teachable’ options (esp in workshops that are centered on training participants).

• PART 4: VISUALIZATION

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Visualize what victory will look, sounds, feel, and smell like upon reaching your strategic goal, enabling participants to emotionally access a hopeful vision of the future and help others outside your group access this vision

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Often, teams run out of time for this piece.
• Team members may have initial trouble moving from abstract and conceptual thinking about their victory to the concrete effects their campaign will have on the world
• Team members feel that the exercise is too sentimental or childish for them.

BEST PRACTICES:

• If you are running out of time, it may be helpful to delegate this piece to a couple participants to do quickly.
• Help participants access their creative and imaginative faculties by asking questions about the sensory details of their victory

STRATEGY II

• PART 1: TACTICS

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Brainstorm and identify 3-4 tactics that will:
  • Make good use of your people’s resources
  • Build capacity
  • Help achieve the goal
  • Relate to the culture, values, and/or experiences of your people
  • Get people excited

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• The criteria for good tactics goes over people’s heads because it’s too abstract.
• Team members default to habitual or familiar tactics (i.e. let’s sign a petition)
• Teams forget to engage with the social and cultural ‘context’ of their people, producing boring, generic tactics
• Team members suggest tactics that may seem interesting, but do not work towards the campaign goal

BEST PRACTICES:

• As people suggest potential tactics, compare them against the criteria and do some teaching to better clarify what the criteria actually mean.
• Encourage creativity and thinking outside the box. Remind group members that good tactics are those that their people will find exciting.
• Try to generate as many ideas as possible before narrowing down to 3-4 viable tactics, remembering to refer back to the criteria.

• PART 2: CAMPAIGN TIMELINE

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Work backwards from the strategic goal and sequence tactics into peaks that build capacity over the course of the campaign
• Assign turnout goals for each peak
• Assign dates for each peak in a realistic timeline for your campaign

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members propose a sequence of tactics haphazardly, often not understanding what is meant by ‘building capacity’
• Team members use a range of subtle tactics to avoid accountability on turnout goals: they are under ambitious, throw out fantastical numbers, want to ‘skip the numbers’, or give a range instead of committing to a real goal

BEST PRACTICES:

• Remind participants of the ‘snowflake’ or use concrete examples to help team members better understand how participation will grow over the course of the campaign.
• Hold team members accountable to committing to specific turnout goals that are a little bit of a reach, but still realistic.

• PART 3: KICK-OFF VISUALIZATION

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Visualize what the kick-occ of their campaign will look, sound, feel, and smell like, enabling them to emotionally access an energizing beginning to the work of this campaign
• To think through tactical design such that the event will build capacity, accomplish the goal, and motivate constituents by showing them their own strength and resources.

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Often, teams run out of time for this piece.
• Team members feel that the exercise is too sentimental or childish for them.

BEST PRACTICES:

• If you are running out of time, it may be helpful to delegate this piece to a couple participants to do quickly.
• Help participants access their creative and imaginative faculties by asking questions about the sensory details
• While designing a fun kick-off, remind team members of the criteria for effective tactics to strengthen prior learning.

FACILITATION ACTION – MOBILIZING

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Practice mobilizing others, using the 4 Cs: Connection, Context, Commitment, Catapult
• Practice setting mobilizing goals
• Appreciate a culture of ‘learning through action’ by debriefing people’s experience of mobilizing, what was effective, and what was not
• Appreciate the ‘numbers’ involved in organizing and its emphasis on concrete, measurable goals/outcomes and accountability to the collective

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members either over- or under commit on their mobilizing goals
• Team members are initially hesitant to put themselves out there and talk to strangers about their campaign
• Team members avoid making a clear ask, instead using “ask avoidance” statements like, “If you can come that’d be great” or “I really hope you can make it” or “Do you think you might maybe consider wanting to come?”

BEST PRACTICES:

• Orient your team members to take on realistic goals that are a bit of a reach
• Model the high energy and enthusiasm required to engage in this module fully with a healthy competitive spirit
• Name the challenges your seeing and coach participants to try on more direct questions like: “can we count on you to join us?”