A close-up look at Communities of Practice with Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner

[MUSIC] Hello dear listeners, we are back at the microphone after a short break. Iga to bring you more stories of togetherness at work. I am Anna Maria and I am delighted to welcome you to a special episode. Today I am talking to Etienne and Beverly Venger trainer to internationally renowned social learning theorists and consultants. Their pioneering writing and consulting around community of practice and social learning spaces is influential in diverse fields, including learning theory, business, governments, healthcare and education. They also found that the social learning lab to host events on theory, practice and leadership, which is where I met both of them this year, as I attended a three day learning immersion into communities and social learning. In this conversation, we explored the differences between communities of practice and social learning spaces. We go over their step-by-step approach to lounging new communities within organizations and close with their value creation model for communities and how to measure the impact through story collection. Grab your hot tea or coffee and a notebook. This episode is full of note worthy quotes. [Music] Ben Etienne. Hello. How are you? Thank you for joining me today. I have to say that I'm going back to my notes from our training on a weekly basis. So you're very often on my mind. Believe me or not, I'm thinking about you every week. You're probably not thinking about me every week. That would be very weird. But thank you very much for accepting my invitation to join me today. I'm looking forward to learning from the OG, the source of communities of practice. And I don't think there's anyone besides you to on earth that has thought about this topic and worked around this topic more. So I'm very happy to bring your perspectives to the audience. And I want to start with a bit of a let's say framing. Some of our listeners might know who you are, they might have read some of your books. But if there's anyone listening that, there's no what communities of practice are. How should they imagine that space? What are communities of practice? I mean, if you walk into a place, a room, around a table, and everybody's talking shop. And if you're on the outside, you might not understand or care or think it's rather boring. And these people meet regularly to talk shop and talk about what they're doing and the kind of problems they're having in practice and the kind of successes they've had. Then you've probably walked in on a community of practice. Whether or not it's called a community of practice. So it's really people who come together and talk about what they do. And through talking about what they do learn to do it better. And they share stories of what works, what doesn't work, what innovations they've had, how they're dealing with the current culture, their organisational constraints, all those kind of conversations. And really in a community of practice, it's the issues of practice that at the uncertainties that inevitably come up when you are engaged in practice, that drive the learning as opposed to a training or a course where it is a certainty of a professor that drives the learning. These students need to know that. I'm sure about that and I'm going to write a test to make sure that my certainty has made it into their head. So the community of practice is different because it's a mutual learning partnership where everybody brings in their experience of practice, both to provide challenges to the learning of the group and to provide possible solutions or possible approaches to address those challenges. So the experience of practice is very central and that's why we call this community of practice because they use practice as a container for learning. I still have vividly the example that you gave during the course with the lecture and how you can even use or infuse this learning from practice into what seemingly is a very formal sage on the stage context. And you give the experience of the, I think it was a neurosurgeon, the surgeon that was giving a lecture. And that's stuck with me. Would you mind maybe sharing a bit that story for us? You mean a therapist? The therapist there we go. There we go. Yes, yes, yes, psychotherapist at a conference who was talking about her work, right? But she did so in a very interesting particular way. So I would love to surface that story for a listener because I have it in my mind and I remember for me it was like an arm moment. Because I tend to put lectures like somewhere on the like lectures. Yeah, now really, you know, there's somewhere there. We need them. They're fine. But when you brought that example, I thought, oh, wait a minute, you can actually turn it into a very rich, very personal and very context specific learning experience. Even if it's just a lecture, someone that you know, share something with you. Yes, well, it was the psychotherapist and your conference in the US. And there are some psychotherapists become almost guru like in their status because people really look up to them and listen to what they say and so what they do. And read their books. Read their books. And she, so she was stood up on this big stage, big audience and everyone's there ready, maybe ready to take notes or whatever. And she showed us a short clip of her with a client with his permission, a difficult client. And you watched her navigate and talk to this client in a way that was so impressive and you thought, wow, I want to be like her. She so knows what she's doing, you know, one day that could be me. Well, except I don't want to be a psychotherapist, but I'm sure many in the audience were thinking one day that could be me. And then she played it again in slow emotion and she talked us through every single moment about what was going on in her head. And she was there thinking, oh, I just did this. Oh, was that the right thing to do? Oh, no, now look, he's doing it. She's doing it. And she said, well, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. very real and very human. It really pushes you to the core of who you are, as a professional, but also as a human, then with all your questions. - And it's interesting, 'cause it's got so separated from learning, you know, traditionally, or now people think of learning as certainty, as knowing what to do. If you know what to do, then you've learned. All right? If you're interested in learning, you're interested always in not knowing what to do, and how you recover from it, how you act productively in it, how you, what you do with what you know, and what you don't know. - And actually, it's almost a definition of, of expertise that we have developed, by working with practitioners who are very good at what they do, is that what makes them really, a master practitioner, it's a ability to remain productive on the conditions of uncertainty. You know, not so much, I mean, they have a lot of certainty, because they have read all the books, and they have had so many experiences, they can expect things. But the difference between somebody who is good, and somebody who is really a master, it is a ability to remain fully productive on the conditions of uncertainty. - Yes, I love that. And I mean, with the world we're living in, I guess that's not even an option anymore. You can't even just look away. I think there's a beautiful bright future for communities to come in as this playgrounds, to play and sit with uncertainty and try to unravel and make sense of things together, and take the space. And I've been in those, I love communities, I lead communities, I've been part of communities, and I've also been in groups where it's very uncomfortable to sit with that unknowing. Like I think also our brains from years and years of, there's an answer somewhere in this room to the question that you have, all you have to do is find the expert, whether it's a person, whether it's an article or a YouTube fooshoom, there's an answer to your question. So we grew up like that. The teacher had the answer, the professor had the answer, everyone had the answer, and we just had to learn the answer, and then emulated, like, share it back, remember it. And so I think our brains are very like hard-wired to, it's like solution, solution, solution, solution, and very often in these spaces is sit with that, not knowing, and it's so hard, 'cause our brain was, no, no, no, let's pin this down. So that's fascinating. - It might be useful to say that in the theory, we distinguish between a community of practice where this phenomenon happens between people who share a commitment to developing a shared practice over time, okay, that's what we would call a community of practice, and a social learning space, where this happens without necessarily sharing a practice, it can happen between people who are from completely different practices, but find value in learning from each other in that kind of mutual engagement of uncertainty, mode, and so our work, a lot of our work is associated with the notion of community of practice, but we have found that sometimes it's too much, it's too much to form a community of practice, it's more productive to have a social learning space, which is a little bit like a community of practice, but without the demand of a shared practice. Can I pick on something there? 'Cause I'm very happy you brought this up, because when we talk about, and also in the support of or peers conversation, hey, I wanna start a community of practice, it's very common that our peers that work in L&D, they wanna start a community of practice for first-time leaders around the leadership program, maybe they wanna start a community of practice around a certain specific department, like we have all of our engineers from around the world to come in this community of practice, so they can share and kind of make sure that they don't repeat work, et cetera. And so there's always this red thread, like you know that you're bringing the people around a practice, a shared practice, and communities for me, when I think about communities, there has to be a red thread, something has to bring these people together, now in a social learning space, there is still a red thread there, like people do feel a gravitas towards something. What is that? Is it, what is that gravitas? Is it curiosity? Is it? - So, when we give a formal definition to a social learning space, we talk about three dimensions, three vectors of participation, that when they are there, three of them present, and working together, we have what people are social learning spaces, so not every conversation is a social learning space, we wanna help those three things to be there. And the first is that people are there because they care to make a difference. So they're not there, kind of like, because they're both so long to be there, or they wanna pass an example, they wanna make a difference. Now, in a community of practice, it tends to be a very similar difference because they have a shared practice. In a social learning space, it would be completely different differences, they'll cater me, but it's still the driver that brings them together. So that's, that would be the first dimension, maybe the red thread, but it's more a connection than a thread in this case. - Yes. - Oh, wow, this is what you do, this is what you get, whoa, I wanna know more, you know? - Yes, so. - So. - And also, I mean, 'cause we would actually say that you could, you can try to transform any gathering and make it more of a social learning space. So it's not a social learning space or not, it's like, you might say to yourself, okay, how can I, you know, I've got all my family around the table, we always have the same conversations, we always have the same arguments. Is there a way I could turn this into more of a social learning space? Whereby, you know, we're there because we care to make a difference. And so I might simply say to people around the table, well, I'm interested to know, what is the difference you care to make? And we might go around the table and say that, which changes shifts the nature of the conversation. And then a second vector of participation is engaging uncertainty. So it's like really making sure that, yeah, you're not jumping in with the answers because if you really care to make a difference, you don't have the answers, otherwise you'd have done it. So you're operating from that space of not knowing whether you don't know anything, but this, you're just in that space where you don't know. And you don't have the four puzzle. You don't have that. And I think it's important to say, we don't say engaging in uncertainty. We say engaging your uncertainty is an offering to the space to drive the learning. Okay. So it's not like glorifying uncertainty. It's saying, when you want to make a difference, let uncertainty about how to get there. Is a driver for learning. - Beautiful. I absolutely love that, Beth. You want to say something? - Well, it's going to say the third vector is paying attention. So, yeah. And with the, yeah, if you just think of like any conversation, whether it's the family around the table, you can try to make it. You know, use what you know about social learning to create more of a social learning space than your ordinary, unproductive family dinner where people dig their heels in and argue the same, if you argue at your dinner tables about political perspectives, you know. - We'll tell you that. - Instead of people digging their heels in and giving the same old argument, yeah. - Or thinking, while other people are talking, they're thinking about the next argument they're going to make instead of paying attention to what is being said. So, this notion of paying attention is really central to create this kind of magic of trying to figure out something together. - Here are a lot of parallels with facilitation. We talk a lot about in teams as leaders, Pudio Facilitator had, Engager Facilitator leadership to open up the conversation and then hold the space and ask questions and make sure everyone's voices heard and they know that their contribution matters and so on. So, there are like fine parallels with this, guess you could call it the space holder of a learning space, the holder of a learning space. Now, I know that you are working with a lot of your clients to bring the social learning spaces, creating them nurturing them within organization, as well as communities of practice. And I wonder if there is any sort of, let's say preconditions that you're looking at in a new organization to make sure that they're, I don't know if it's the right word, if the soil that they have is rich enough or is ready for these types of spaces to emerge. And the reason I asked that is, I always see like when we build a community within an organization, we build it in an existing container. So the culture of the organization, the way the decision are being taken, the way people communicate, how they feel they are, they can behave or not, what is rewarded, what is punished, etc. How much space can they take or they allow to make this, all of those little things. That's the container that we step into. And so I sometimes feel, I look back at my experience and I'm like, oh, if I would have tried to build a community in this company, I'm not sure how successful I would have been. Whereas in this other company, all it needs is a spark and people would be like immediately like, yes, we know what this is, we want it. So my question is, is there anything that we have to look at in the culture? Is there anything like a readiness that an organization needs to have in order for them to engage in such conversations about communities or practice and social learning spaces? I mean, there are so many dimensions of readiness that if you have one or two and not the other, it might work because in the end, a community of practice will create its own culture. And members are in control of that space for that moment. Not to deny that the external container is extremely important. Now remember working in a government organization in Australia. And somebody said, well, but you know, in our organization, people just do nine to five, they put their time and they go home and they don't care. I thought, hmm, then maybe, and I don't know what it was just a workshop. So I don't know what they did with it, but for me, I felt like if people don't care, they're just putting in that time, what they're just doing. Make a nickel things where what they think what they care is not relevant. Then maybe maybe we should think of something else than a community of practice. And I think, I mean, we've seen such a range of community practice work from being under the radar. So that's that's one way to go to being sort of fully functional and bottom up to being top down because a, you know, in organized as we need to develop our strategic learning capability and this. The community of practice on this is super important and, you know, that's going to be a priority. You know, there's such a range there, but I think a sort of cautionary tale is more like if the organization is seen community practice as a channel for making change happen. So they're thinking this is the change we want to see. Let's therefore start a community of practice who will then implement this change. Then, then that organization is not ready for communities of practice. I know we're working with a university where they wanted to start a community of practice on faculty about what was called diversity in inclusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, equilating and education. And the purpose was more to make recommendations to the administration about what policies to establish. And it was like, the stands more like a task force than a community of practice. It's not so much that people learn how to practice equality with each other. They just is more like almost like a focus group or a task force to make some recommendations. And this is fine. So we're not saying that a community of practices solution for everything. It's a solution for a very specific moment of learning. And I think, organizationally, what's really important related to that is, does the voice of practice in the matter? Because in order to engage in a community of practice, people have to feel that their voice matters. If they don't, then there is not much of a motivation to participate in themselves in that community because it's like, okay, it's like, it's like this little playground that management has created for kids to play. But they're not going to take seriously the things that we come up with. So I think that's, that's really important. And another one actually that we look at is management ready for the long term. Because one of the problems we have seen in some communities is that the support for communities of practice goes up and down in a management level. And it's like, you know, if people invest their heart in the community of practice, then you have to enable that to be sustained. And so we have seen some organization where every time there is a change in management, you know, the investment community, they ignore them or some in another organization that is the way even against them. And so to have a certain commitment to take that path, you know, like in social technical design, if you're going to dance with a bear, you don't decide when to stop. And so in some sense, practice a bit like a bear because they'll be dangerous, they'll be wild, you know, you don't know. And if you try to predict what they're going to do, that's right. Because they're not there to comply with your demands. I think that's actually such an important part for that readiness. I sometimes ask like, how do you encourage, like, do you feel that you can challenge not necessarily authority? Do you feel like you can challenge decisions? Do you feel like you can, you know, disagree with something that is being said in meetings in general or is feedback invited and truly listen to because if, if again, higher up leadership, if they're not ready to unleash people and then, you know, we're like, this is, you know, you're not, you're not going to know where this is going. Like it's not like any other project that you're like, go from A to B to C to D and behave just like I said, to, if you wanted to work, you really need to unleash it like really let it let it go. And so some people sometimes it's like, I, yeah, I actually, especially in diversity, equity, inclusion, right, when you bring people together around the topic that is so personal, so personal. And then they come together and then they start to be like, okay, I want to go beyond us connecting. I want to actually look at policies. I want to make our lives better. I want to impact something. And they come up with these ideas, where is top management is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we are actually not expecting you to come up and bring any change here. And we thought that you're just going to do some events, right, like you're just going to do. And I'm like, okay, that, I think that's something important to, to discuss at the beginning in that when, when we assess that readiness, hey, this might happen. Are you, are you ready for this? I guess this is this welcome here, because if it isn't. And you're missing twice. Actually, I remember a while back in a big, big organization, they had a fantastic committee of practice, you know, process design and the manufacturing and really it was very active, very successful committee of practice. But they were angry because management had made an acquisition of a small startup in that domain without consulting them. And it had not worked well. And these people were saying, wait a minute, you have a committee of practice of, we know these people, we see them at, we meet them at conferences. We can, why don't you ask us, so it was interesting because the committee of practice was not asking, why don't you let us make the decision. They recognize, no, you are management, you made the decision, but you have this amazing resource of people who know this domain, you know, why don't you just ask us what we think and we would be happy to spend two hours discussing that, you know. But, but no, they have involved us, involved us, listen to us. Listen, listen, listen to our voice, the voice of practice, the voice of, in a committee of practice gives legitimacy to the voice of practice. And in an organization from a strategic perspective, that's a very important resource, because if you are a manager, you live at 30,000 feet, you have to, you cannot be involved in all the practices. There's no, there's no way, but then if you can have that connection with communities that can connect the voice of practice to your strategic decisions, that's a real, that's a real asset, that's a real precious thing. Yes, I'm happy that more and more organ, at least that's from where I'm standing and you're much more closest to this field than to different big and small organizations and NGOs, government, etc. Probably you're also seeing almost like a revival, like certainly it's like people are aware about communities, sometimes they imagine different things when they hear the world community. So I'm like, ah, that's not really a community, it's a task force. It's a project team, et cetera. But there's a general, I feel, a much more awareness on the market, if we call it, that communities is like a cool kid on the blog. There's something interesting happening there. We won't won. And so what Beth was saying about this mandate, it happens a lot. We see this a lot. Peers of mine, people working in LND, learning in HR, who leadership wants to do a community of practice. And I have no idea where to start. What is this? How do I do it, et cetera? And we treated very often like a regular project where we go on our desk with a little sheet of paper. And it's like, okay, I read all the books, I listen to some podcasts, and then I make a plan. And then I say, this is the purpose, this is what this community is here for. And then I lounge it, I announce it, and then I'm like, I created something pretty for you, dear colleagues. This is your community. This is the Slack channel or the Teams channel or whatever the community lives in the forum. Two weeks in, three weeks in crickets. And then they come, oh, I lounge the community. We have a problem with engagement. So does that sound like a typical flow? I see that a lot in practice. Do you see that too? - Yes. - Yeah, I mean, it is, well, the idea that you build it and they'll come, but of course, it means you're just the very word says people. So it can't be empty and then you invite the people in. It is the people. - So here's where I was going, because I know that you two have a very collective, particular community-driven way to lounge a community. So I know that you follow a process, you're inviting people in, there's conversations, you're building it together at a foundational aspect from the beginning, from the start. So maybe for a listener, could you take us to, what would this usually look like? There's an organization they bring you in, we want a lounge community, this is the domain. What does those initial faces, what options do we have there? How can we start to invite people to build it with us? - The thing is, you always remember that you're inviting people into a conversation, not into a space, into a conversation. So first of all, the first thing to do is to find out who cares about this. So you need to find who are the people, who care about it, and who could do with a conversation to talk about it. And so you're inviting people into a conversation with you, with others. I mean, and this is before you start your community, right? Starting with you. - I think it's important to say, if the conversation that happens mostly one on one, or one in a small group, it doesn't look like a community yet. And yet these conversations are already commutating as they are in a back channel. - So if you want to start a community, presumably, well, first of all, you've got to think why, is it because I am passionate about this domain or this practice, it is my domain and practice, or is it because I'm sitting outside it, maybe in a HR department or LND department, and I'm thinking, wow, I can really imagine that if these people come together, woohoo, it's going to be great. And this is the second part usually. - And then I see you, oh. - I bet they would love a community of practice, but I'm like, how do we know? - That's right. So then, well, that's why you have to speak to all the people first that you think, or a sample of the people, if there's many, to find out, where do you already go to talk about things that help you in your practice? Because maybe they've got perfectly good conversations happening somewhere else. And to try out the idea with them, and to find out what kind of issues would you like to, what keeps you up at night? And where could you go for help? Most people like help from their peers, about their problems of practice. They don't need, sometimes they think they need an expert, and that's great you could bring them in. But for the most part, people just say, "Oh, I just, I want to speak to somebody else who's done it like this before." That's what they want. And so you think, oh, so you say, oh, well, who would that be? Oh, John Smith, right? Okay, well, then he talks to John Smith, would you care about this? So you're having these conversations, one-on-one with people, finding out who's interested, who to talk about what, you know, and how much time, you know, how they got to do that, how much, how important it is for them, 'cause it needs to be important for them. So yeah, so the first steps we always say is, pick up the phone and talk to people. - And if you are in HR or in learning and development, and it's not your domain, the first thing to do is to find someone from the domain who's gonna work with you, who wants a community of practice for themselves, and it's gonna work with you. That would be the first thing. And after that, do what Beth says. But what Beth says is best done in collaboration with someone who has legitimacy in the domain, you know? Because otherwise, oh yeah, all those people from HR, you know. But somebody who is a practitioner, that when the invitation comes from somebody who is a practitioner, don't you think it would be better if we talked more often, you know, that's a different kind of, and it's already building the community because it's building relationship and it's building common hopes, common dreams, oh wow, yeah, now if we-- - And it's-- - Yeah, a very important thing is not a needs analysis. It's not calling people to say, "Oh, what would you like to talk about?" We thought of this topic, this topic, and this topic, which one's interest you the most? Or, you know, what do you need? Okay, well, we can find an expert on that. So the conversation, especially from HR or LND, it can often be in the conversation, often sounds more like a needs analysis. So it really is-- - Of course offering, of course offering. - Of course offering. - And why is that, why should we steer away from that? Why don't we want that? That, we usually do that because that's how LND and HR works. Needs, solution, what do you need, we deliver it to you? - Yeah. - And that can be good, that can be good. - Well, not against it, we're not against that, you know, but that's works for things where there's already certainty. Okay, so I want a course on this. Oh yeah, okay, we can organize it for you. Fine. - We arrange an expert, they'll come in, they'll give a webinar. And we'll have it, so that's great. But if you want-- - We're excited to this university to take the course, so whatever. But it's more like for the transmission of certainty. I want to, I want to a discussion of that topic. Okay. Coming to your practice. - And if you go to, if you-- - Not a series of topics. Yeah. Like the topics is a dangerous thing for a committee of practice. Just to say, oh yeah, now I'd like to learn about this topic and that topic and that topic. A committee of practice is anchored in the struggle that people have. - Yeah, because if you think back to, you know, what I said, like if you're going to a room where people are talking shop about their problems and things like that. So that's what you're trying to get from people. What's going to, you know, make you say, "Wow, oh, you did it like that." Oh, I'd never thought about that. Or, hmm, I don't think that was working. You know, that level of conversation, which is often relegated in face-to-face conferences or trainings, is often relegated to the tea rates. That's where people get to talk about that level of practice. But we're saying, the learning is in that level of practice. That, and so if you're trying to get to that, that's why it's important to talk to people and find out what is it that's going to excite them and make them want to join because it's going to help them improve their practice on Monday next week, maybe in the long run, but it's not a topic in general. I also find that whenever we ask, "What would you need?" We position ourselves immediately in almost this service provider, maybe see if you're maybe like, "I'm going to deliver something for you." Where is, and then we're surprised they're not engaging. It's because that's the culture you create in that space that you're asking. They tell you and then you do the thing and they participate. That's a big mistake. The big mistake we have seen some community leaders do is to create this relationship of service provider to the members. And then they reinforce it. But I send a lot of passion around this. I love it. Then they reinforce it by sending out a feedback form at the end of the event to say, "So how was it? How was the facilitation? How was this? How was the service that we provided?" And then they say, "Oh, we do." Right. I want to talk about that. I'm going to take a note. We do. Yes. You can't do that. And hope that people are going to be a community practice. Because a community practice is, people lead it themselves. They lead it with what they're doing. It's more like, "So what did you contribute to this meeting?" That's what your feedback form should say. Where we're going to do that. How could you and where could you in the future? Yeah, I absolutely love it because yes, I completely agree. Etienne, well, it's your community. If there is something you don't like about it, do something. Because it's as much your community as a person with a community leader. So actually, we do have techniques. We call them leadership groups, where we form groups of members who take dimension of the leadership of the community. Explicitly. So that's a little technique we have developed to accelerate the process of ownership of the community by members. Because often, in the start, it is started by one or two people. But over time, as a committee materials, you'd like to see more people feeling a commitment to the community that leads them to take some leadership and some initiatives to make the community move forward. Actually, along these lines, just also to mention that if we're talking about LED people or HR people, very often the language they use around the community practice is to talk about people as attendees. Or so there's a lot of language, which is about, you don't have attendees at a community practice. You have participants, we have members. Minimum, you have our participants, but there are people who are taking leadership role. And so you also have to be very careful about the language that often L&D and HR use. Does maybe think, and I've fished quickly, one of your slides from the course, which also left that impression on me. Because I do believe, and I see how it's simply changing from, from I and you to we. Even that in all of the comments, how can we do that? What do we think about that? Even that makes such an important change. But what you just said, bev, reminded me, and I fished a slide as this invitation. And I remember this, you put this invitation is part of community building. Exactly. We are, it is not a secretarial exercise, you're already building community through the invitation. And you also have a bunch of matters. Through the conversation, correct. And then it's a matter of matters, you don't invite. You don't invite people to attend a meeting. You invite them to participate in the start of a learning journey with peers. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Beautiful. So now we kind of had this conversations with people here and there. And we noticed, okay, there's a group, there's interest, I feel excitement, there's some energy building, etc. What are next step? How do we capitalize on that? How do we keep the energy ball growing? What would you recommend next? Well, that really depends on the conversation that you have with people. If it is, if there is a lot of enthusiasm and people already recognize the need for the convenience, you could do a very big launch. Tada, we're going to start a community of practice. But depending on what comes out of your conversation, you may think, oh, I don't really work on this problem together. Everybody seems to be struggling with this. I don't really work on it together. And you know, you give to the next experience. And they say, okay, like Bob Dylan says, if this is love, give me more. And so you start a community of practice without saying, oh, we're going to start a community of practice and it's going to go on for 200 centuries. You give them an experience of learning together. And they say, one of that was interesting. Maybe we should continue. So there are different approaches. You arrange another one and then you say, well, and then people say, well, it would be useful if so, and so could be here because they know about this. You say, well, invite them and you grow it that way. But sometimes you do a more formal launch. And so there, the danger of a more formal launch is the topic, the topic list. So when we do a formal launch, we usually start with a cafe. I don't know if you've done a, if you've done a cafe conversation where people move from table to table. Yeah. Well, cafe, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the question that we ask them is, what are you struggling with? What keeps you up at night? And that's the question they discuss. And it creates kind of like a sense of learning potential that's very different than the list of topics. Because they start discussing, yeah, you know, for me, I always have trouble with the, with that kind of customer, with that unbearable, and, you know, I don't know what to do. You know, and they start thinking, oh, yeah, no, I do need to, you know, this part, these people are always a problem. We need to figure out how to deal with that. Is that right? And so, so we start with a question that immediately anchors people, not in topic to learn about, but in practice, to focus on that practice and share stories of practice and share stories of what is struggling. We encourage them to share stories when they talk about, what are you struggling with at night? Tell stories of how that manifested for you. Yeah. We're going to bring the stories back in a second, but it just, I just want to make an observation because even when you talk about, we're doing a big launch of a community, it's still workshop. It's still a workshop. People are still around the table. They are still invited to share and discuss. It's not a big auditorium where you invite that probably three experts to talk about some topics and that's kind of how you are. Absolutely. I think there's, it's good to, because we sometimes we treat them like, like two marketing. Like it has to be big and then so invite someone important and so maybe invite one of the leaders and maybe invite someone to tell us how important this is. And that's kind of how we launch it and people are seated in seats looking into the right direction. I think it's an important caveat to serve as that even if at this big launch, it's still groups of people gather around the table talking about their challenges and their daily work. And even if you do it online, even if you do it online, you put people in breakout rooms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whether online or face to face, it's really people discovering that they are learning partners in their practice, not learning partners in their topics, but learning partners in their practice. And sort of along a similar track is you don't start the meeting by teaching people about community to practice so that they can go off and apply it. What you do is you give them the experience of being a community of practice. Then you may introduce it maybe helpful at some point to introduce the language of community to practice, but for the most part, you're setting up a date between people. Do we like each other? Do we want to go out with each other again after this? Or do we think we've got not enough in common? So you're really, that's the aim of it. Yes. And the good ending for a first date is maybe a case, but it's also a good ending is let's do it again. That's the ending, not a live plan. You may have discussed how many kids you want, but that's not the point. The point is that was great. We had a great time together. Let's do it again next week. The point is the second date. Yes, the point is the second date. The second date's goal is the third date and so on. And at some point you discuss, are you interested in marriage? At some point you will be disappointed. So we live together first. How many kids you want? Is there a problem with the religion of your parents and religion of my parents? You can do this. But don't start that. You don't come to your first date with a live plan. Because the person will go. Yes. You're ready for that. I don't even know you. Also, if we would start from that, we wouldn't see relationship against the odds. Do you know sometimes there's this couple against all odds? Right. We're together. If we would have shared, because you're scaffolding, you're building the trust, the love, etc. And so even if later you're like, oh, you don't want kids. I want kids. Because we build certain things, you're ready to make a compromise. That's right. And so you buy these by the odds. Well, where is if you have shared that probably from the beginning, it was like, okay, that's a, that's a deal. Right. So there's this scaffolding of love. If we trust love, connection, togetherness, that we're building through that. So I have to love this. That's why the method for works because coming to practice are not romantic relationships. Sometimes they're advised to them. But basically they are not. But there are very profanity human relationships. You have to find somebody else in this human life who is a partner for you, to struggle with you with the things that you, the distance you care to make and will help you approach the difference. That's very profound and beautiful and very deep meaningful. Very human, very meaningful. I just want to plug in a little tool that I think you might notice and call this something else. But for me, I discovered it years back in the Liberating Structure Toolkit. And I found that it's a beautiful tool to give people this taste of what it might feel like to to bump heads with peers and kind of get ideas, suggestions, etc. It's called Troika Consulting with little groups of three, where they take turns to be a consultant and a challenge owner. So they kind of, they all bring the question or a challenge or a particular thing that, you know, they're exploring and then the other two. So I think this exists under different names, but for the listeners there, if you're like, "Okay, I want to host such a workshop. How do I create that experience?" And you know, I don't want to talk about it. I want people to do it, to feel it. I think that's a very easy format to start to play around with. There's a lot of great activities in the Liberating Structure. We do, with commuter practice, we do an extended, sort of broader and deeper version of the case clinic. Because it is about learning partnership, but it's the same idea, like peer consulting, it's like somebody brings a challenge to the table. And you have a process by which you try and, you as the group who's trying to help, who's the rest of the members, will try and, you'll ask questions to surface understanding, you'll share stories about where, where you've seen it happen before and where it worked, or it didn't work, and you finally give advice. So, I remember quite vividly when you introduced this format in the training this year. And I remember thinking, "Oh, it has similarity to other peer coaching and peer learning formats." But in now other format, I've seen this story sharing before solution sharing. And I think there's a very particular specific reason why you ask participants to first share stories where they might have probably seen being felt something similar and then go to solutions. Can you tell us why, why is that step crucial there, that story? In fact, you know, when you listen to people talking shop, they may jump in and give solutions, and actually very often they'll tell stories about when it happened to them and what they did as a result or not. Because also people know when you work, when you're actually operating on the practice level, people A, know it's hard, and B, they know that advice can be, advice is often unwelcome, because in my context, in your context that might have worked, in mine it didn't. No, context matters. So when you tell me your story, I can take from that the advice that I want. I think the ownership of learning in a story is in the listener. The ownership of learning in advice is in the advice giver. And the advice stories that are so important. It doesn't tell you what to do, a story tells you what's possible, and it's up to you to decide how much of it you take and how much of it you let go. And then another part for a committee of practice that we have to say, when a committee of artists does that, very important for the community is to follow up two months, three months, six months later, what have you done with the discussion? We want to know, did it work? Did it not work? So if it gets sometimes people want a committee of practice as a series of topics, yeah, in February we'll do that. We'll put an advice, this topic, in March, this topic, in March. So you have to have continuity, you have to have a loop, a constant loop, learning, how did it work in practice? How did you adapt it for your context? And what was the result? So you always as a facilitator have to be room for creating that continuity of learning over time to improve the practice. And then I realized, it was the biggest takeaway and aha moment from me for the course. And I realized, whoa, we almost never closed a loop. And the committee that I'm an active member of and part of, it's considered successful community of practice. And we're like, we almost never closed a loop, almost no one ever comes back to the community to be like, we've heard what she said, Beth, and this piece worked really well. Or for me it landed very strangely. So then I pivoted, I did something on the spot and maybe it's useful to you or to someone else. We almost never closed that loop. And that was for me mind blowing. And it made so much sense. And this, I'm happy you bring this up at the end because we're approaching the end. But I can't let you go before we talk about this. This is your value creation model and it centered around stories. And that is fascinated because for me is like, how do I get feedback surveys? You put a survey, you ask things and then you have grades and stars and from a scale from zero to five. How happy are you with whatever, with the events, et cetera. I had so many questions. I remember in the training, I was like, oh, wow. Hey, how would I close this look like? Actually, what do I do to close the loop? Like what does that look like in practice? Do we have to tell people? Do we have to model it? Do we have to create the space? Like how do we do that? How do we change that behavior? Because it doesn't come natural to us. And second of all is, why stories? And how do we capture them? They're so fragile. So that was also a question. Well, how do I find the stories? By the way, by the way, we have just finished a three day workshop on the framework. So quickly telling you in one minute, that's probably my next, that's probably my next visit to telling you in one minute. Yes, it is a challenge. Yes, I know, I know, I know. Basically, give us something. Give us a little nugget that we can log in to. And then we can research. I framework our framework. Identify eight types of value that social learning can create. And each of these types of value, you can associate prompts or question to trigger the beginning of a story. So as a facilitator, it's going to be good to have a few questions. But it doesn't have to be complicated. It can just be, we had this great discussion two months ago. Anybody did something with it? You know, it's a simple invitation to the feedback. Not some communities have gone further than that. Some communities, because the framework to just a kind of a genre for the story of the kind of value that you want to indicate that you received. Like a great idea. So the story is a very basic. What did you get? Something specific, not just, oh, I got a great idea. It's like what idea in what circumstance? And what did you do with it? No, not just enough to say, oh, no, I used it in my team. But really, what exactly did you do with it? How did you adapt it? What did you do with it? And what resources did you need? And how did your management react? And all these suggestions for making a story complete so that other people can learn from it? Some communities have learned that strong. And so they have a check-in. Every time they meet, they have a check-in. Anybody has a value creation story from what we did before? And at the end of the meeting, they have a check-out. Anybody can see a value creation story with what we just did. And they can say, yeah, no, I can see what I could do there. And so you can see how the check-in check-out creates continuity of learning loops across the life of the community. I love it. It sparks ideas. Our community is globally distributed. So we're all over the place. We're over 6000 people now, different time zones. I'm almost thinking like, what about a weekly check-in? So checking in on a Monday and a check-in out on a Friday, right? So what did you do this week from, you know, you probably had one-on-one coffee chats. You probably worked with the coach or with the mentor within the community. You probably attended an event, a session, etc. You asked the question. Someone, you answered the question. Whatever you did in that, in that, in this week, what is it that you're taking away? What could you see yourself, kind of? And also, you see, it's actually in terms of learning. It's fascinating because one person says, "Oh, what I took away was that if I do this, then this is a problem." you know, then this could happen and somebody else thinks, oh yes, I hadn't thought of it like that. So one person's takeaway becomes lots of other people's takeaway, so they become little quick loops. And that's learning as well. Yes, evaluation and learning are very, very closely related. Because the same stories that practitioners exchange in these contexts and also be used to create a more formal evaluation is a collection of stories that complement each other and that's showing you indicators that are important to follow. So if you want to move towards a more formal evaluation, then the framework also suggests ways of doing that by combining indicators and then represent those interesting, innovative stories. But the stories are very important, you know, because in a community of practice, the value of the community often does not happen in the community. Some values happen in the community. I love being with you. It's so great. So sometimes it's easy in the community, but often it happens when you go back and you do your work. And so the story that gives you a link between the value in the community and the value when you're at home. And if you don't have the story, that link is mysterious. So if somebody tells you, "Oh, I belong to my community of, you know, math teachers and I'm a much better math teacher now." Fine, it's a nice testimony, but tell me a story of what happened in the community. What did you do in your classroom? And why did your kids' lunch math better because of that? You need the detail to know the cause of the link. Otherwise, it's just like, okay, well, it's interesting, but it's kind of true general, to be a true evaluation. It brings it to life, right? Like you can actually see the value. There's no more doubts there, because if you say, "I take a lot of things from the community," or the events are always very valuable, or whatever, that then stakeholders or people you might talk to say, "Yeah, what does that even mean?" But once you tell them, "I took this, I played with it. Customer was happy." I finally learned how to manage those tricky clients, those tricky customers that you were mentioning at the beginning, because someone told me a story and I played with that, and it worked. That's an example. That's immediate value. That's like, okay, yeah, you wouldn't have been able to do that, at least not as fast, as efficient, without the community. And you know, just to finish that, people think that managers and executives are only interested in numbers, but our experience is a good story, really, really helps them understand very concretely why a community exists. So even to talk to executives, a few good stories are as powerful as numbers. As I graph on the slide, maybe more, definitely more. As a closing words, what do you think are some of the skills that community leads, people that are striving to start communities, should build in order to be successful, or the other way around? What are some skills that you've seen, some traits in really successful communities? What do they do? How are they? Is there any red thread there? It's like, "Oh, all of them are." I would say one thing is that there is somebody, the community leader, the person starting it, or somebody else who is absolutely passionate about the domain. And without that, you'll never have a humming community. So at least one person, because they tend to attract others, but perhaps more than that, but you've got to have that before you even think of starting. And this passion creates a greed for learning. And what we've seen, these beautiful community leaders, they don't do it as a job, they do it because they need it themselves. They want the community because they need that community and they are ready to turn heaven and earth upside down to have that community. Now, there are certain skills, facilitation skills, to learn how to distribute leadership, to invite people to take small initiatives, to tell a good story, to management. They are often an important role to create a narrative that management can understand. So those are skills that in some communities are really critical, because some communities need resources. And so the person, the funder or the manager who has access to resources need to understand what the community is doing, so that they are willing to provide the resources that are needed. So it's often a community leader, a group of community leaders who learn how to tell the story of the community to access for external stakeholders. Yeah, we'll make sure to link in the show notes as well, your website with all your courses, your workshops and all of the things, because if there's one place on earth to go and learn about this topic and build those skills, it's with you too. And I'll link myself that I was able to spend a couple of days with you and our beautiful group. Thank you very much. We are very impressed by the work you're doing. The complement is returned. Thank you. I want to give a public shout out to the whole core team of Alanishikas community, because they're almost 60 now and everyone's pooling their ways with equal passion and love and energy and overtime and working on weekends and working my lunch break and doing all the things alongside kids and life and so on. So it's, yeah, that's what it is. It's the passion you were mentioning right, but like, there has to be someone that really burns for the domain, because it isn't easy. It's work. You need to show up. You need to show up consistently. Thank you too for showing up today and accepting my invitation and being so generous with your insights. And I hope to see you very soon, hopefully in Sassimbra sometime next year for another burning session.