Beyond the Tabletop: Solving Solutions, Not Problems
A small group of participants are gathered around a table. The conversation is curious, urgent, and probing. A large piece of paper covers the surface of the table - heavily drawn upon. There as Post-its and marker pens everywhere. The participants consult their reams of notes, plans they’ve been making, and various documents and handouts. They suggest strategies, and possibilities, and brainstorm ideas. There are flashes of inspiration, realisations, and questions. They’re chewing on a significant challenge that will take all their skill, experience, and resources to resolve. Finally, they come together, having settled on a way forward.
“What if we try and put the dragon to sleep and then sneak in and steal its gold?” They ask.
This isn’t a workshop. It’s a game of Dungeons and Dragons, but it has all the hallmarks of a successful workshop and the Game Master, or Dungeon Master, is facilitating the whole thing.
A lot of the workshops I run have participants engaging with significant problems or challenges. Sometimes these are issues that they have brought to the workshop or that the workshop is specifically focused on, sometimes they are problems they have generated through the workshop process, and just occasionally they are challenges I have offered them to help them learn the Design Thinking process. Whatever the source of the challenges they are engaging with, the same holds true for my workshop participants as for the Dungeons and Dragons players sat at my table - I’m there to solve their solutions, not their problems.
In almost every workshop I’ve ever run there has been a desire or expectation, sometimes strong and made explicit, sometimes gentler and kept implicit, that some participants think they might be able to show up, unburden themselves, talk through their problems and challenges and then receive, from me, some neatly packaged, expertly refined, and tailor-made solutions. Every single time I have to disappoint them and I take the time to clarify that I will be disappointing them in that way and I explain exactly why that is.
As facilitators, we know that the solutions our participants generate as responses to their challenges will always be better than anything we could offer them. They know the challenges far better than us - they’re the ones living them after all. The solutions they come up with will also mean so much more to them and to their peers and colleagues precisely because they were the ones to generate them. That kind of ownership is incredibly powerful. The solutions they develop will also be far more sustainable than anything I could give them. They know who and what they’re working with in ways I never could. So what do I give them if I’m not solving their problems? I help them solve their solutions.
“Can you put the dragon to sleep? Well, you know that you have that spell available to you, and you know it worked once before when you put that troll to sleep. Have you checked how the spell works?”
I’m not solving their problems. I’m not telling them how to beat the dragon, but I’ll help solve their solution. Have they thought everything through? Is there something they’ve overlooked? Can I reframe the problem for them? Can I get them to clarify their solution? The approach is exactly the same whether it’s my Dungeons and Dragons players questing through a dark and dismal cave in search of treasure, or my workshop participants looking to develop sustainable solutions to their own particular challenges.
In both cases this approach often involves asking questions; specific kinds of questions. I’m not asking for more information and I’m not asking them to tell me anything. I’m asking questions to challenge their thinking, push them deeper, and have them reflect on the process that has led them here. With my workshop participants I’m asking them;
“How would you get those key people onboard with your idea?”
“Have you got access to the resources you would need? If not, how might you get them?”
“Do you know anyone else who has done something like this? What advice might they be able to give?”
“Have you considered…?”
“Why do you think that…?”
“What do you think would happen if…?”
I’m not solving their problems, I’m solving their solutions. If I try and do anything else then I am robbing my participants of their agency, reducing the chances of success of their solutions, and taking the opportunity for deep, experiential learning away from them. This principle relates to another that is always at the heart of my facilitation; the person doing the work is the person doing the learning. If I solve problems for them, I’m the one doing the work and so I’m the one doing the learning.
Our role is to guide the process. To give techniques, tools, or methods, to ask challenging, enriching questions, to offer up ways to solve solutions, and to move their thinking forward. It’s important to remind participants that you’re the midwife - you don’t make the baby, but you’ll help them to give birth to it! This can take a lot of restraint as a facilitator as we often want to get stuck in and help people solve their challenges, we love the process of ideation, refinement, discussion and collaboration - after all, that’s probably why we’re even in this business at all. But we have to hold off. Let them explore. Let them figure out how to slay the dragon themselves otherwise what will they do when the next dragon comes along?
This approach can produce resistance in some participants. There’s often someone in the room who is there with the expectation that they will be handed the answers and can simply make a few notes in their (free, branded) notebook, return to their company, school, or institution, and parrot the answers they’ve been given. They won’t like being put in this position, and they’ll resist the process. We can head off a lot of that by how we bring people together in the workshop, how we clarify the process, and how we set the focus for the work we do together. This is all work we can do when setting expectations early on and even before we come together and I’ll be talking about this more in a future post exploring the relationships between the life of the Dungeon Master and the world of workshop facilitation.