Ch.10 Cooperative-collaborative learning goes mainstream
Serializing Experiential Insight Colleges, how Women In Congress redeemed colleges, preparing themselves to face bigger challenges
The proposal for Summer Conference 2028 was to address a big social problem, the “heads-down generation” phenomena. Women sensed accurately it was a big risk to proclaim, “This Conference offers practice in solutions to the lack of healthy face-to-face interaction everywhere in society now.” This was Women “girding up their loins” to “take a big swing at life,” to address the damage to interpersonal relations done by 200 years of failed male leadership in healthy interpersonal connecting based on competition and win~lose.
For Women In Congress, elected representative, their office staffs, and the thousands of Cultural Creative women who were their followers on social media, on TV and followers of Monday Lunch With Experts broadcasts and recordings, this all felt Promethean. They felt like they were being handed fire from on high, which could then be passed on to the common person. Many women caught the vision of how to understand Blueprint of WE, to learn about Best Practices in Interpersonal Competency, empowered people to exit:
- “problem consciousness” (the state of all news broadcasts including NPR); and enter into
- solution-focussed states; where, if you kept looking, workable solutions for many of the social-cultural ills of the day had been innovated — then discarded — by failed male leadership intent on preserving hierarchical group process structures Men acted if the only game they could play was King of the Hill; where, there can only ever be one winner; everyone else is by definition a loser.
As the buzz on Monday Lunch presentations rippled out from Washington, DC, two responses returned. One was people, mostly women, attracted to the positive, life-affirming, celebratory nature of heartfelt face-to-face live group processes.
Paradox of the Old Left
The other response heard was people, mostly older, who favored pyramidal hierarchy. They were NOT enthused; they were not amused. House and Senate offices of Women in Congress began to hear from Old Leftists about the need to return to:
- one-day mass rallies,
- one-day, one weekend, marches,
- mass sit-ins,
- mass grassroots organizing to get out votes for specific upcoming elections.
Women began to understand how older-generation-politicians, thru their early political successes at mass mobilizations, were committed to Old Politics group-process forms. Seeing more clearly now, Women understood, in the Internet age, the effects of Old School mass mobilizations disappeared one day later.
Why? How could huge multiple 100,000 person rallies, int eh US and Europe, be ignored by mass media reporters the day after they occurred?
The problem was pyramid-form media companies, driven 100% by ad revenue, only cared about eyeballs.
dg-jar of eyeballs
Especially since 2008, pyramid-form media companies felt threatened by bottom-up activity of all kinds. Why? Because it might lead to social-cultural change.
Why was “change” bad? If you are sitting on the top of your little pyramid — there is nowhere to go but down. Any change is bad for you.
You may be forced to talk about “power sharing.” Yet as long as it’s just talk, only talk, you can remain sitting on the tip of your little pyramid for years more, decades more.
In this way, Women began to learn the divide between Cultural Creatives, ready, willing, able and wanting positive social-cultural change; and, Conservative-Regressive approaches to life and politics.
Women step up to learn group facilitating
More and more Monday Lunch presentations featured experts facilitating sample exercises with the entire live audience. Thank God for non-fixed seating! Experienced facilitators demonstrated the classic group process formats available.
These hands-on, interactive partner exercises shifted Monday Lunch With Experts even further away from talking heads on a stick; and towards, a graduate level, hands-on seminar in thinking for yourself; and how to encourage this in others.
A large fraction of women attendees exclaimed, Aha! — we GET IT. Cultural Creative women in the audience understood the heads-down generation, gridlock in politics, declining rates of marriage, rising rate of suicides WERE NOT GIVENS. They were social-cultural distortions, “illness” if you like, for which solutions had been innovated decades ago — then neglected-forgotten by male leaders terrified of losing their perch atop their pointy little pyramids.
A large fraction of these “turned on” women said to themselves, “I could be an effective facilitator.” Since the 1980s, it was known the role of group process facilitator attracted Cultural Creatives who also had courage and charisma. The best of them also had honesty and humility according to the HEXACO model of healthy personality
Q
Unfortunately the MBTI, its major competitor, DISC, and the Big Five do not include psychopathy as one of the personality components. One profiling system that does is the HEXACO model with six components developed by Kibeom Lee and Michael C. Ashton: The HEXACO model is complementary to the Five Factor model.
“The Collapse of Arthur Andersen: A Failure of Emotional Intelligence?” (PDF online)” by Christopher Golis, MA Cambridge MBA London Business School FAIM
cgolis@emotionalintellgencecourse.com
To Learn More
Consequently, from time to time, women would come up to Monday Lunch speakers, asking, “Where can I get trained to practice group facilitating?” For many women in this training, this felt like their chance to DO SOMETHING to benefit the next seven generations coming up.
After a few months, this list of interested women exceeded 100. The organizers of Summer Conference #2, 2028 recognized, “Here are our facilitators for Conference 2028.”
A course for prospective facilitators was assembled. A tiny non-profit training org was set up. Several sponsors volunteered to support salaries. A committed group of 75 women activists attended the first training day at a cost of only $50 per day. Facilitated by very experienced facilitators, the trainers took attendees thru exercise sequences to explore their motivations, their biography and their intentions towards facilitating. Blueprint of WE was used.
Homework for facilitator-trainees
For homework, facilitator-trainees were given electronic copies of Games Trainers Play. They were told to pick a theme they were passionate about; then, match three or more exercises to it. In class, groups of seven, trainees would present to each other.
The template for a trainee script was as follows:
A short 2–4 minute lecturette defining the theme (for example: identifying Violent Communication). Alternatively, a few minutes of a rehearsed, comical skit, with or without props. Then set the stage for your audience to do a milling, dyad or triad exercise to consider the theme in their own life, to listen to, and learn, from their partner’s own personal experience with the theme.
Many Women bought copies of Games Trainers Play. Some began playing these games with their own children at home in family meetings. A lively international sub-culture of women collecting and sharing PDF books and other resources in digital form rose up. Books of exercises only read by dozen in the 1990s were now read by a thousand women (estimate). WHAT to facilitate; and, HOW to facilitate healthy group process was spreading.
In this way, enthusiasm and buzz built for Women’s Summer Conference #2 (2028).
Where are experienced facilitators?
Women then asked, “So if experienced facilitators of group process are not found in academia — where are they? The answer is they are few and far between. They can be found in various business consulting firms; and, in some personal growth training orgs like Insight Seminars. In 2028, almost nowhere else.
Older, retired facilitators who thru hands-on experience had become expert, were often obscure, humble individuals, “peaked-out” of academic environments and business contacts. They cared little about college degrees; nor, did they often publish any writings. Extensive networking and detective work was required to ferret them out, entice these facilitators to come speak to Women.
Necessity of a heartfelt look and feel
Monday Lunch hosted a series of expert facilitators to come, speak and facilitate interactive exercise sequences. Women participated as audiences. After six or seven such presentations, women began to notice a difference. There were facilitators who cared primarily for the form, process and logistics of exercises. Other facilitators cared more about creating a tangible “heartfelt look and feel.” Experiences facilitated by this second group of facilitators were more fun and more humorous.
Crucially, more spontaneous teachable moments and spontaneous learning in partner exercises occurred when heartfelt facilitators presented. In this way Women discerned how they themselves might style their own public presentations.
What excited many women was more heartfelt ways of facilitating and learning were more effective with more people generally. It was intuitively obvious to many women female facilitators were going to be more naturally talented at this kind of facilitating. Why? Because healthy motherhood was a training in how to facilitate.
This learning changed the kinds of speakers invited to present at Monday Lunches. The number of “talking heads” speakers declined. Many attendees had their first exposure to milling, dyad and triad exercises. Monday Lunch presentations became more interactive, fun and personally engaging.
To Learn More
Heartfelt Facilitators Notebook; Best Practices Facilitating Large/Small Group Events (2022).
The first book on facilitating with a heartfelt look and feel. If you know of other titles on this, please contact the authors.
Cooperative-collaborative learning
Monday Lunch experts explained how in the 1970s-1980s, a significant fraction of K-12 school teachers attended summer conferences; most impact-fully, personal growth and therapy immersion experiences. Teachers were exposed to methods-techniques of facilitating group process (milling, dyads, small groups). When they returned to school teaching in September, they tried these out in their K-12 classrooms. Over time this became an educational movement, cooperative-collaborative learning.
How effective was this? Not very. Why? Ultimately it had little to no impact on teaching or instruction. Why? Because male-led adult relations remained hierarchical and wedded to the pyramid, King of the Hill paradigm. Cooperative-collaborative formats brought into classrooms, never rose much above the level of a fad.
SIDEBAR ~ The most successful interactive group process seminars
All of these arose in the period 1965–1995:
- The successes and failures of Mind Dynamics (1968–1973) and its many offshoots,
- The successes and failures of Lifespring (1974-ongoing),
- The successes and failures of Hoffman Quadrinity Process (1967-ongoing),
- The successes and failures of Insight Seminars (1978-ongoing),
- Cooperative-collaborative teaching-learning methods, exercises, strategies for use in K-college teaching (1985–2005).
What did all these have in common? Partner exercises, dyads, milling, triads, small group, and other Games Trainers Play. Exercises are sequenced on a focussed theme, to draw out from participants, greater awareness of learning from their own life experiences.
This movement did develop a solid, sizable literature in the 1980s-1990s. Leave it to school teachers; who routinely devise manuals for new classroom methods before textbook publishers.
-=+ -=+ -=+
SHOW don’t TELL
The training for new facilitators emphasized showing — not telling. For example, it’s crucial facilitators demonstrate, thru their personal example, how deep attendees should go in the next partner exercise. Attendees will watch how deep the facilitator goes. This is the depth they will then shoot for in their partner sessions. Social permission is given thru demonstration without speaking directly of it; no need to.
In this way, Women learned good facilitating was SHOWING BY PERSONAL EXAMPLE and TELLING STORIES on a theme — not TALKING ABSTRACTLY ABOUT a theme. In this way women learned to stop teaching and start facilitating exercises for self-discovery.
Women learned, “I can show not tell; I can arrange safe, relaxed, face-to-face interpersonal exercises, where attendees learn and practice Best Practices in Interpersonal Competency.” Who’d have thought the solution to the problem of the “heads-down generation” was something fun and rewarding to do!
Group facilitators become new role models
North Americans like to brag about — and complain about — the “power of one,” their movie stars, their solo billionaires, their star politicians and so on.
In learning group facilitation, Women were introduced to the topic of role models. Role-models, modeling healthy behaviors, is a mythological dimension of group process. Humans gain social permission — what is and is not appropriate behavior — by what their role-models do and do not do. This activity is most intense among middle school children, when they are at the “flock” stage of individuation.
Adult women, now less blinded by male propaganda, were more able to perceive, the easy way to make the Game of Life two-sided again, Inner and Outer, was arranging for as many people as possible, to experience and practice healthy group process.
Does talking offer any benefits?
Yes. Talking (left brain only) has three primary, beneficial uses in group facilitation:
- Lecturettes of ten minutes or less to establish a theme and engage audience interest in the theme,
- To explain the logistics of an interactive experience-process,
- To debrief after an exercise, support attendees processing the unconscious content which emerged for them (crucial for extraverts).
Prep for Summer Conference #2
Preparation for Sum Conf #2 focussed on composing and live rehearsing of:
- fun, social, interactive partner-exercises,
- small group exercises,
- large group milling; and,
- debrief formats.
Scripted exercise sequences were written and test-driven with pilot groups of volunteers. Women learned how to combine cooperative-collaborative group process with Games Trainers Play. Attendees were astounded at the wealth of methods for avoiding and neutralizing interpersonal conflict. Increasing enjoyable face-to-face connection was nowhere as impossible as males had imagined it to be.
Opening day of Women’s Summer Conference #2
On opening day, standing around the entrance waiting to get in, many women felt excited, even personally anxious. about how the seminar might lead them to change in their own lives. Attendees responded to these with interest and “creative anxiety,” “How will this seminar change me?” A large fraction of women attending were Cultural Creatives. They were ready, willing, able, and wanting to take appropriate risks in their own lives. Historians later said, learners were empowered to drive their own personal growth; and, pay for the privilege and fun of doing so.
Historians later said, learners were empowered to drive their own personal growth; and, pay for the privilege and fun of doing so. Many considered the Conference an investment in their own better, future self” ~ Testimonial from attendee at Sumer Conference #2 (2028).
What exercises on the theme of making face-to-face interactions safe and healthy again were employed?
- Listening to each others’ life learnings, to listen to divergent and opposing views with an intention of learning something new, outside your own mental box,
- Chunking-down personal problems into bite-size pieces, and
- Practicing re-framing life’s conflicts and obstacles as “teachable moments” where something worthwhile could be learned.
Facilitators were alert for incidents of Violent Communication. Some of these were appropriate as teachable moments for the whole group.
Conference exercises were often organized around uncovering lingering questions, present in each attendee’s personal lives: How willing am I to live? How willing am I to learn something new? How willing am I to be of service to both myself and to others?
The Conference was a Friday night, Saturday and all day Sunday to 6pm. Not all, but many attendees, came out Sunday night feeling more alive than ever before. Sunday night found many attendees living much more from their center and from their feelings; rather than, only from the neck-up.
Dancing
Outside of partner exercises and large group debriefs, at natural breaks, dance music was played. Those who wished, danced alone or with partners. An entire evening of nothing but dance was petitioned for Summer Conference 2029.
After the Conference
Women more than men grasped how this surge of new life could be the beginning of a whole new approach to life and values. Could it be? Life itself as a laboratory for experiments in personal expansion? The Conference gave attendees permission to take exercises home, learn them; and, try them out:
- At family games and exercises,
- At neighborhood parties,
- As live events where Cultural Creatives could gather and find each other,
- In State Legislatures, especially when impasses arise,
- In the United Nations (this happened after 2050).
Women’s Summer Conference #2 was attended by 25 journalists from the US and abroad. The success of dyads, triads, milling and small group processes did not go un-noticed. The reporting and interviews which results made the methods and practice of Best Practices in Interpersonal Competency “a thing” in mainstream media. Over one hundred podcasts resulted on these topics, people sharing their experience.
Calls for facilitators to hire started coming in to Conference organizers. Many corporations, workers-owned-operated biz and institutions wanted live trainings. Organizers scrambled to connect as many capable facilitators with paying gigs as they could. For a change, the next New New Thing was not an app. It was trainings in which attendees practiced conversing with other people face-to-face in safe ways, learning to make requests and negotiate win-win resolutions with conversational partners. The lack of this is what had fueled the Heads-down Generation and interpersonal strife everywhere
The last TED Talk
Women’s Summer Conferences were not deliberately competing with live and recorded TED talks. Live TED talks had already been declining for years. After 2028, much of the remaining momentum went out of the TED Talk empire. TED events became smaller and smaller. TED Talks were unable to rise to the challenge of making their presentations more interactive. Nor did they offer more than talk therapy solutions to the problem of the Heads-down Generation.
It wasn’t just TED which was affected. Once introduced to the potential of interactive exercises, Cultural Creatives hungered for more. Attendees went home and demanded their churches, synagogues and mosques be more flexible. Attendees showed local church leaders how to adopt and adapt interactive exercises into religious services.
The last live TED talk was early 2029.
In short, interactive group processes were appropriate wherever whole-brain, two-sided, thinking and feeling processes were wanted. Additionally, interactive group processes are appropriate wherever facilitators wish to stimulate Imagination, Intuition and Inspiration.
Little did Women In Congress suspect, the very interactive processes brought in to make the work of proposing and passing bills and laws more female-friendly, 20–30 years later, would lead to a significant fraction of women “peaking out” of politics, leaving The Hill. To do what? Taking leadership roles in the Women’s Spiritual Liberation movement of the 2070s. But I digress. Back to the story of Experiential Insight Colleges.
