Nancy Fry's Page

:-)

Hi Nancy -

Thanks for the clarification about the "shared assumption". That changes things. :-)

I love the clarity of your purpose for this first Cafe - which is "wanting to get a picture of what a bully-free environment would look like", and it could lead directly to a great starting question for that first Cafe. For example "What's your vision for a bully-free environment? What does it look like?"

:-) It could be that simple.

Best,

Amy

Hi Nancy,

You asked:

I am hosting my first Cafe soon called The Workplace Bullying Cafe. My intent is to host a series of these Cafes. Would really appreciate your feedback on my Question which is as follow:

"Agreeing that workplace bullying behaviors are wrong, what are right behaviors?"

First, let me say that your question/s (like everything else about your World Cafe design) should be driven by the specific context and intent, or purpose, of your Cafe. What is the goal of this series? What do you want to come out of them - as individual Cafes and as a series? Will there be some way of feeding the results of one into the next?

Once you know where you are headed, you'll know what the questions are that will help take you there.

Crafting a great question is something you'll want to spend some time with and get feedback/collaboration on from your client and the relevant community... you will know best from their responses what the question/s are that really light them up; the questions they can't wait to get in a group and talk about. On the other hand, if they shake their head and ask you for help understanding the question, you might be headed in the wrong direction...

Other support for you in finding some good questions to start with might be here in this community of WC hosts - others who may have hosted a World Cafe in a similar situation, or have other useful experience in your sector. Try posting the context of your Cafe and what you want to achieve (along with how you plan to "capture" that result in your harvesting process), along with any questions you're thinking about using in the World Cafe Needs and Exchange thread. See what kind of responses you get ...

In my experience, questions that come from an appreciative perspective are most useful, as are (especially for the first found) those that focus on people's actual lived experience rather than an abstraction or idea. Another thing to be careful of is hidden assumptions in your questions - in this case the assumption isn't hidden at all, but it's an assumption it might be better to let emerge on its own, with more specificity, rather than state up front in an unspecified way.

Taking those perspectives into account, I might phrase a question like yours another way, for example:

Can you share a story or experience of workplace (or other) bullying that was handled well? What happened?

That may not end up being your great question - it probably won't be - but you see what I mean?

Let the questions sit for you and others on your design team until you find the right ones... finding a question that is truly meaningful to your participants will make all the difference in the world to their level of engagement.

Hope that helps.

Hi Nancy, thanks for asking! please let me know how I can be of support!

Best

David

:-) great question, Nancy. I think it would be that it's not about me :-) and that I could trust that - given the space and conducive conditions (which are created by using the World Cafe design principles and basic cafe "set up") - people will naturally have generative conversations.

Let us know how your Cafe goes, please! And ... have fun. That's the most important part. :-) If you are having fun, they will be too.

Hi Nancy, and welcome to the World Cafe community of learning and practice!

25 other members from Kansas. see them under people, advanced search, KS for Kansas and search. also people interested in education, health, community ( also on advanced search ).. there are many resources available. books, articles, stories, blogs, groups. thank you being with us!

David Isaacs