About Emergent Conversations Services
Our Emergent Conversations Services offering is designed to catalyze and transform traditional meetings and presentation programs into immersive and embodied experiences with significantly enhanced levels of engagement, and emotional satisfaction, and perceived value for all participants.
This is achieved through the creation of an event Container, an Event Invitation, and the actual Program itself, with a BIS-catalyzed, collaborative, co-creative process manifested by and between our Client’s people.
1. Creating a Container
From our first conversation with you, Being in Systems comes to learn, and fully understand your organization’s challenges, needs and aspirations in relation to your people, and their level of engagement.
Being in Systems then co-creates with those in your organization charged with providing offerings a custom made Program or series of Programs. These programs are tailored for your organization to be responsive to the challenges presented or agenda being pursued.
The people tasked with this collaborative container-building process are co-creators and co-authors of what is to be offered. As a result, they are both vested in, and supportive of its presentation to the rest of the organization. It is of and by them. It is their baby.
The human beings who comprise the organization create a Program container custom fitted to their and the organization’s needs. This container is designed in service to those who will attend, who in turn will have the opportunity to co-create their own experience and connections. It is this essential emergent cascading co-creative dynamic that BIS catalyzes throughout all phases of a client engagement.
On an ongoing basis and after the completion of a Program, BIS supports the Program’s refinement, improvement, or adaptation for further dissemination throughout the organization. When attendees self-organize post-Program ongoing gatherings or activities, BIS serves as an ongoing resource, as needed, to support attendee self-generated initiatives by providing Space Holders to assist with support and growth of employee awakening.
2. Creating the Invitation for Participants of the Program(s).
After the Program container has been contextualized and developed as outlined above, the next step is to co-create the invitation that is to be extended to those for whom it has been designed to serve.
In addition to the normal information related to time and location, the invitation introduces who has created the opportunity (including both internal sponsors and BIS), the value being offered to a prospective attendee, and a setting of the expectations regarding any participant commitments involved, if any. Lastly, the invitation contains an expression of excitement for and appreciation of those who decide to come.
Lastly, BIS and the Program creators collectively identify the most effective timing, channels of communication, and signal frequency of invitation transmission to the Program, in service to maximizing Program awareness for the intended beneficiaries, and maximizing potential attendance and engagement with the Program.
3. The Program - Awakening Through Emergent Conversation
Once the Program time has come, the attendees are welcomed into an interactive online video gathering supported by a team of BIS Space Holders. After an initial welcome, we provide a brief sharing of what is to happen over the duration of the gathering.
This is followed by a sharing of suggested guidelines covering how to participate, contribute, inquire and engage with each other during the session. We also address confidentiality, if the Program or session is to be recorded. Helpful suggestions regarding where participants speak from when sharing or responding to others are also provided.
It is at this point in the Program that the participants will be given their first opportunity to experience connecting with each other in small breakout groups; after which everyone is brought back to the main room, to share individual experiences, and to experience connection within the larger group context.
The next and longest element involves providing extended time, in small groups, to engage in emergent conversations. These are catalyzed by whatever questions or topics were developed in the Program design stage outlined above. After the extended breakout sessions, everyone is returned to the main room. All are invited to share and exchange with each other what was meaningful for them.
Depending upon the number of participants, and the length of the sharing, there may be an additional breakout room round introduced.
At the conclusion of sharing, the participants are invited to participate in a Gifts Conversation, which provides an opportunity for each participant to acknowledge and thank others in the session for anything particularly meaningful or valuable to them that was shared.
Upon completion, attendees are invited to participate in a brief questionnaire, if they so choose, and are given an opportunity to share their experience and opinion of the Program.
General Considerations
Program Offerings can consist of an individual or series of Programs.
It is not unusual, based on the quality of connection and conversational depth experienced by participants, for attendees to express the desire to organize regular and ongoing gatherings to maintain and grow the connections made with other Program attendees.
BIS recommends and can provide BIS Space Holders to support these emergent grass roots gatherings. This affords the sponsoring organization the opportunity to maximize the generative potential and creative capacities of the attendees awakened by BIS service offerings, and nurture this growth and generative potential, on a regenerative basis following formal Program completion.
We hope this gives you a starting place for understanding our process. We also know that words can tell you only so much. Actually experiencing the emergent process in a team situation brings forth a totally new dynamic that powerfully shifts teams to their highest.