We’re talking to a lot of people at the moment about how to have great conversations online. So I thought it would be useful to revisit The World Café Approach© 2008 The World Café http://www.theworldcafe.com.
This is a fantastic tool that works really well in an online environment, using tolls such as Miro, to capture the conversations.
The World Cafe is a powerful social tool for engaging people in conversations that matter and is a great way to engage employees. It’s based on the understanding that conversation is the core process that drives personal, business, and organizational life and is more than a method, a process, or technique – it’s a way of thinking and being together sourced in a philosophy of conversational leadership. Drawing on seven integrated design principles, the World Café is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue. Whilst the approach doesn’t specifically use AI, there are obvious similarities and I have often used AI and the 5-D design principles to design Cafes I have run with organisations.
World Cafes tend to be run with large groups of people, and take the form of a summit run over a single day or a couple of days. They make a great alternative to the usual employee conference by involving participants in the conversation, rather than talking at them for hours. The World Café can be modified to meet a wide variety of needs. Specifics of context, numbers, purpose, location, and other circumstances are factored into each event’s unique invitation, design, and question choice, but the following design principles comprise the basic model.
How To Run a World Café – Guidelines For Success
Conducting a Café Conversation is not hard—it’s limited only by your imagination! The Café format is flexible and adapts to many different circumstances, and it works particularly well online. When these guidelines are used in combination, they foster collaborative dialogue, active engagement and constructive possibilities for action.
1) Set the Context and clarify your purpose: Pay attention to the reason you are bringing people together, and what you want to achieve. Knowing the purpose and parameters of your meeting enables you to consider and choose the most important elements to realize your goals: e.g. who should be part of the conversation, what themes or questions will be most pertinent, what sorts of harvest will be more useful, etc..
2) Create Hospitable Space Café hosts around the world emphasize the power and importance of creating a hospitable space—one that feels safe and inviting. This is especially true if running the café online. When people feel comfortable to be themselves, they do their most creative thinking, speaking, and listening. In particular, consider how your invitation and the set-up can contribute to creating a welcoming atmosphere.
3) Welcome and Introduction: The host begins with a warm welcome and an introduction to the World Café process, setting the context, sharing the Cafe Etiquette, and putting participants at ease.
4) Small Group Rounds: The process begins with the first of three or more twenty-minute rounds of conversation for the small group – if you’re running an online café zoom or Teams breakouts work really well. At the end of the twenty minutes, each member of the group moves to a different new ‘table’ or breakout room. They may or may not choose to leave one person as the “table host” for the next round, who welcomes the next group and briefly fills them in on what happened in the previous round.
5) Explore Questions that Matter Knowledge emerges in response to compelling questions. Find questions that are relevant to the real-life concerns of the group. Powerful questions that “travel well” help attract collective energy, insight, and action as they move throughout a system. Depending on the timeframe available and your objectives, your Café may explore a single question or use a progressively deeper line of inquiry through several conversational rounds. Each round is prefaced with a question designed for the specific context and desired purpose of the session. The same questions can be used for more than one round, or they can be built upon each other to focus the conversation or guide its direction.
6) Encourage Everyone’s Contribution As leaders we are increasingly aware of the importance of participation, but most people don’t only want to participate, they want to actively contribute to making a difference. It is important to encourage everyone in your meeting to contribute their ideas and perspectives, while also allowing anyone who wants to participate by simply listening to do so. The opportunity to move between rooms, meet new people, actively contribute your thinking, and link the essence of your discoveries to ever-widening circles of thought is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Café. As participants carry key ideas or themes to new rooms, they exchange perspectives, greatly enriching the possibility for surprising new insights.
7) Connect Diverse Perspectives The opportunity to move between rooms, meet new people, actively contribute your thinking, and link the essence of your discoveries to ever-widening circles of thought is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Café. As participants carry key ideas or themes to new rooms, they exchange perspectives, greatly enriching the possibility for surprising new insights After the small groups (and/or in between rounds, as desired) individuals are invited to share insights or other results from their conversations with the rest of the large group. These results are reflected visually in a variety of ways, most often using graphic recorders. Through practicing shared listening and paying attention to themes, patterns and insights, we begin to sense a connection to the larger whole. After several rounds of conversation, it is helpful to engage in a whole group conversation. This offers the entire group an opportunity to connect the overall themes or questions that are now present.
8) Listen together for Patterns and Insights Listening is a gift we give to one another. The quality of our listening is perhaps the most important factor determining the success of a Café. Through practicing shared listening and paying attention to themes, patterns and insights, we begin to sense a connection to the larger whole. Encourage people to listen for what is not being spoken along with what is being shared.
9) Share Collective Discoveries Conversations held in one room reflect a pattern of wholeness that connects with the conversations in the other rooms. The last phase of the Café, often called the “harvest”, involves making this pattern of wholeness visible to everyone in a large group conversation. Invite a few minutes of silent reflection on the patterns, themes and deeper questions experienced in the small group conversations and call them out to share with the larger group. Make sure you have a way to capture the harvest – working with a graphic recorder is recommended.
If you’re interested in running a world-café I would highly recommend taking at look at their web-site: www.theworldcafe.com. On the site you’ll find a host of useful resources, a world café community you can join, videos, case studies: everything you’ll need to run your own café.
