Hosting a hub meeting
How you host your event is entirely up to you. In this section, we present some ideas, methods and tips, for inspiration.
Setting Up the Room
Depending on the number of participants and the available space, there are two set-ups that help to invite a deep quality of conversation and listening into the group:
Designing the Process
Principles
Start with describing the intention(s) of the gathering, and use that as a guide for designing the process.
Be prepared to be surprised:
Don't plan too tightly. Leave some space for conversation and emergence.
Prepare & plan well and then be prepared to let go of your plan.
Think about the flow of the gathering: if you use different steps/methods, potentially even facilitated by different people: How do they connect? How does one piece lead into the next? Explain how every step fits into the process (what is the intention, what is the outcome...)
Patterns
Like every story, a gathering has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Here is one pattern you might want to integrate. We know from experience that this enhances the quality of the process.
Beginning
Welcome
Framing:
Who are your hosts?
Where are we in our journey? What led up to this moment?
What is the intention of today? What is the agenda?
Check-in: The intention of a check-in is to bring everyone's attention and intention into the room and to the purpose of the meeting. It allows people to arrive and leave behind what happened before (traffic, stress, and so on).
It helps to use a 'guiding question' for the check-in to deepen the place where people speak from. "How do you arrive today?", "What has changed for you since we last met?", "What is your intention for today?"
In a small group, you can sit in circle and invite every participant to speak. In large group, you can invite them to check-in in groups of 3 or 5 and then speak one sentence in the whole group.
Middle
You may want to loosely structure your time based on these three elements
Observe, observe, observe: What are we learning/noticing/seeing? For example, with a world café.
Retreat and reflect: Perhaps with some reflective journaling or mindfulness practice.
Act in an instance or prototype: What do you want to do next? Open space can be a useful method here.
End
Whatever the process of the meeting is, make sure that there is a moment to close together. Ingredients:
Check-out: A practice that aims at sharing individual and collective learning. Create a moment where every or some of the participants can speak their insights/impression of the meeting, or their next steps.
News and updates
Next steps
(see Tools and Methods for more info)
Creating a Safe Space
Cultivate an atmosphere of non-judgment and curiosity: Each person's experience & exploration is valid.
Build trust and confidence: Make an agreement in the first session to respect confidentiality, so that people can safely engage with the learning environment.
Encourage co-ownership: The purpose is for people to feel responsible for the space and for their own learning experience. This might include sharing practical tasks, such as setting up the room or providing refreshments, as well as ensuring that you don't find yourself unwittingly responsible for fulfilling every unmet need or being seen as the hub's 'teacher'.
Practical Tips
A bell: It can be helpful to bring a 'sound maker', like a bell or chimes. It helps to bring the attention back to the larger group following small group dialogue.
Timekeeping: Assign one member of the team to do timekeeping.
Informal conversation: Some hubs open their doors before the meetings and invite people to bring snacks and drinks. It allows for some informal social time to connect and to get to know each other better/in a different way. You can also create that opportunity after the meeting.
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