Case Studies
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Case Study Example
about the ClientOur task was to conduct a racial equity skills training and facilitate a staff discussion about its application in an organization’s everyday work. In the pre-session planning, our consultant team recognized racialized tensions and put together a plan to address it.
Meeting Facilitation:
When Discussions Get Heated
The Situation
Our task was to conduct a racial equity training for an education-based nonprofit and facilitate a staff discussion about its application. During pre-session planning, our consultant team recognized underlying tensions between leadership and staff. We also understood that some of those tensions were racial in nature. Our firm always practices productive pairing when facilitating meetings. In short, we build teams based on our client's needs, the context of the conversation, and the skills needed in the room. For this engagement, we put together a cross-racial team that could speak to the tensions we were seeing in the planning process.
The Adaptive Challenge
For the consultant team, the adaptive challenge was to create a learning space that felt safe for each participant, where people could be seen and heard, despite underlying issues with management. Years of experience have illustrated that when there are organizational issues, training spaces can become a platform for airing out grievances. We always warn clients that this dynamic could emerge. The adaptive challenge for our client was to take advantage of the learning space to expand their capacity. Additionally, it was challenging for the team’s leadership to hear hard feedback without taking it personally and becoming defensive.
The Solution
Our team approached the engagement using the following strategies:
Warned the leadership team about the climate of the racialized dynamics that were present within and across the staff
Expanded the typical planning time to gain a better understanding of existing tensions between the staff and leadership
Conducted a coaching call with executive leadership to prepare for the session with an emphasis on active listening without becoming defensive
Conducted a listening session with staff to learn more about tensions to look for leverage points we could resolve in advance of the session
Put together a plan for the learning session based on our agreed-upon scope of work
Responding in Real Time
The desired outcome required a shift in process and practice, but it was going to be challenging to get there without acknowledging past harm and current tensions. As we thought, people engaged in meaningful discussion about the learning content, but conversations heated up when we moved into the facilitated portion of the day. The consultant team rolled with it. In those situations, it is better to acknowledge what is happening in the room and navigate through it. Facilitation was tight, with an intentional focus on protecting people from harm.
The Results & Lessons Learned
Ultimately, as conversations become heated, the session left this team in a more honest space. The leadership team learned to give staff the space to share areas of challenge, disagreement, and problematic behavior before learning sessions. When conversations are heated, lean into curiosity to better understand where people are coming from. It’s hard to lean into curiosity and be defensive at the same time. It is hard for those two behaviors to coexist. Our team encourages leaders to be curious because it is likely to produce the best results. This situation is a good example of how training spaces can go awry. However, pre-session planning and experienced facilitation helped this team name and navigate some hard moments together.
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