Ladies of Code: November Meetup (In person)

Triz, w³izz & wicked questions: an exploration of liberating structures

We invite you to think about your favourite meeting ever, the one where you were excited to go, felt engaged, valued and equal to the others there. The one that explored important issues in depth and came up with real paths forward - and a plan to make things happen.

Are you struggling to remember this meeting? Or maybe this doesn’t sound like something that COULD happen - a pipe dream if you like. Join us to find practical ways to make every meeting your favourite meeting, using Liberating Structures.

Every day at work, we have interactions with other people. Sometimes in a scheduled meeting, if we are lucky we still get the opportunity for spontaneous interactions with others. Many of our calendars are full of meetings - but how many of those do you look forward to or take value from?

Thanks to The University of Glasgow for hosting us & our sponsors MAC recruitment group for the food & drink!

Traditional meeting structures include an agenda, a chairperson, a few key voices speaking, many others quiet, little opportunity - aside from the ‘Any Other Business’ at the end - to raise your points or questions (when everyone is itching to leave, or go to the next meeting). They stifle inclusion, engagement and open discussion - but are all too common in modern workplaces. Sometimes this is warranted - often it’s not.

But that can all change. We will introduce you to the world of Liberating Structures - a set of simple facilitation tools for meetings or gatherings of people which can revolutionise your interactions and time together. From a simple 15 minute energiser, finding alignment on key messages, to a mix of structures that can take participants through a journey together, there is something in the Liberating Structures toolbox for every type of meeting and every group context.

The structures have been created and curated to focus on interaction, giving everyone an invitation to participate in meetings and an equal opportunity to engage and have their voice heard.

In this workshop we will:

• Introduce the Library of Liberating Structures.
• Share our experiences of using these structures in person and online.
• Try out some of the structures to give attendees a flavour of their simplicity and effectiveness.
• Share some of our top tips for introducing these into all kinds of meetings and contexts.
• Help attendees understand their group’s context and needs, to design a session appropriately.

Valerie McLean

• Valerie is an agile and change coach and consultant, a self confessed agile geek, who loves finding new ways of bringing agile practices and learning into the workplace and bringing a new energy to staff. She brings strong facilitation skills, with a focus on equal voice and and a passion for diversity of thought. She strives for the best outcome and believes strongly in sustainable, incremental change. This creates consistency, reliability and dependability within organisations and, ultimately, for their customers and users. She has roots in scrum mastery and agile ways of working at a team level, but has grown to help wider organisations adopt more agile ways of thinking and working, encouraging and influencing more effective discovering, planning and delivery processes, involving increased communication between all levels and stakeholders and a focus on delivering value quickly.
  Sarah Liston
• With an HR background and a people focussed mindset, Sarah made the move into agile coaching with a plan to guide her organisation away from traditional structures, bringing openness and creativity into not just meetings, but the day-to-day of those around her. She doesn't stick to the rules, instead she creates a safe space that welcomes equal voices, experimentation and the chance to try something new.