ToP Network Virtual Facilitation Methods

By Jane Schadle

Establishing the Vision
ToP Network is a fledgling organization compared to its collaborative partner ICA, now celebrating it's 50-year birthday, but it is no less engaged. Several years ago, a small committed ToP group—the “Sisterhood”— began a virtual journey. Their quest was driven by a vision of virtual facilitation that transcended boundaries and borders and even oceans. They recognized that today’s groups are less about organizations and infrastructure and are more about collaboratives. Today’s groups form and interact using new technology and without physical geographical barriers. The Sisters recognized that these groups need facilitation as much or more than face-to-face groups. To stay relevant in this new climate, ToP methods would have to adapt to new virtual formats and platforms that the technology was offering. The Sisters created a learning group to build virtual ToP adaptations that work.

ICA-I General Assembly, India
By the time of the ICA-I invitation for the International Conference in India, the group had become pretty proficient and, not-knowing-what-they-don’t-know, they agreed to virtually facilitate for the conference by engaging those unable to go to India. Each afternoon after the day’s sessions were drawing to a close, a virtual meeting would begin to share the dialogs and decisions with countries across the globe. ToP Network’s Sisterhood used their software to open computer-based meetings, scheduled time ahead of meetings to train country participants and organizational leadership and spent hundreds of hours as a team planning how to pull this off. Many of their meetings were in the middle of the night to accommodate the daytime schedules half a world away. The day by day virtual conference sessions required night by night facilitator meetings and technician planning conferences. They served in a communication/deliberation role. Sleep deprivation was a common health risk for the group by the end of the conference.

The sisters have helped ICA-I/ICAs create a global dialogue over the past two plus years. The General Assembly of 2011 successfully engaged over eighty percent of its member countries virtually to empower all kinds of transformation. Larry Philbrook, ICA International President, said, “We are now a kaleidoscope of diverse personal and cultural identities of people around the world.” The task of the Sisterhood was to connect those diverse persons and cultures through technology and adapted-for-virtual facilitation methods.

The work of the Sisters explored options and taught ICAs to talk to each other regularly. They developed, adapted, modified and created virtual facilitation methods that worked for this unique population. The Sisters experimented and shared their knowledge and new skills as technicians, trainers, coaches and mentors to ICA-I leadership and to the country leaders. The actions of the Sisters did set up the adventure of the virtual conference and gave ICA-I courage to leap. This virtual Conference was a different reality for which a larger “we” of ICA-I created a distinct, but related framework. The Sisters were vital to the formation of this core effort. These social pioneers facilitated conversations that were engaging all ICA-I members, allowing for inclusive decisions. What President Philbrook described as messy in the beginning became poetry as the facilitators orchestrated a symphony of virtual layouts to achieve a meeting objective and conducted the meeting movements effortlessly through screens and dialogs and group processes to achieve their goal.

“Just as ICA is re-assessing its role as servant to the world through its country organizations, the Sisters are servant to the ICA in support of its role of engagement and communication,” says President Philbrook. Jim Autry, in his book Servant Leadership, talks about the humbling role of leadership to function in building and supporting an environment for the work to be done. In that spirit and with immense talent and a keen understanding of the participatory methods, the Sisters built not just a mechanism for country to country connection around the world but they also built a plan for training the country leaders and others to use the world-wide web for their facilitated meetings.

In their own way these women were servant leaders in its truest form; taking on the tasks, learning what was needed to know, teaching so others could engage and establishing the helping virtual environment that allowed anyone who was interested to participate.

This work created energy and drew others to it, motivating them to expand their own horizons through better connections to others half a world away. People were meeting regularly, at odd and middle of the night hours in order to hold conversations with others across the globe. These new teams worked through electricity “brown outs”, low telephone band widths, slow signal transfers and old computer equipment. They learned what they needed to know to be the virtual consultant, the technical assistant, the meeting producer and technician and the counselor and encouraging mentor. Through this work the virtual Sisterhood embodied the very spirit of ICA and as a group demonstrated the tenacity and inventiveness that defined the ICA pioneers of 5 decades ago.

For an organization to survive, it needs to remain relevant – to its members and in its environment. The Sisters have helped ICA take one relevant step forward to work and grow in a new electronic world of tomorrow.

“Our work is to foster these critical connections,” says Kathy McGrane, one of the original Sisters. “To do that we had to learn new skills, develop new knowledge and commit to helping create broad-based change in how ICA-I communicates. I don’t think we thought of it as lofty in the beginning, but as we look back, our work clearly has created a sea change for how we will work from now on.”

So as we evaluate the outcome of this work, we recognize the incredible commitment and engagement of this band of Sisters who changed the world. Margaret Meade said, “Never doubt that a small committed group can change the world, in fact it is the only thing that ever has.”


Left Picture
Front left: Cheryl Kartes, Catherine Tornbom, Sunny Walker
Back left: Kathy McGrane, Nadine Bell, Tamyra Freeman
Right Picture
From Left: Sunny Walker, Tamyra Freeman, Jo Nelson, Kathy McGrane, Cheryl Kartes, and Ester Mae Cox

Author Bio:
Jane Schadle is a ToP Network member from Des Moines, Iowa, and works in public health using ToP methods for health improvements.

For those of us who were engaged in the 'ICA life-changing journey' of the past 6 years, culminating and opening up new directions at our India meeting, your contribution has been very timely. We well remember sitting in a circle around the screen and passing the microphone around in India - and the frustration and elation as we dropped in and out! What a long way we have come since India to Nepal in 2 years!

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