Patterns & Metaphors
Conference leadership
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Leadership and/or various working groups within a conference do not control but simply influence the dynamics of the event. Each group, as well as the team of leaders, facilitators, etc. has influence over their given specific arena which might greatly influence the direction of the event. Usually this influence on the direction of the event is temporary and is somewhat arbitrary, depending on the composition, mood, topic, etc. of the conference.
The conference leadership is the team of people whose common discipline and internal organization are designed to allow the fullest possible responsibility for the achievement of the intent or intents of the conference. Their concern is both their arena of responsibility and the whole conference. The larger the event, the more minds it takes together to catch all of the details of the life of the conference.
The overall leadership team needs members with to have overlapping responsibilities. The tension among two or three individuals dealing together with an arena provides the necessary creativity to respond to unusual needs should they arise. One person in charge of one arena can lead to territoriality.
Conference leadership does more preparation than anything else. They prepare for the conference, and then during the conference prepare for every session, every workshop and every plenary. It is not altogether necessary that they all participate in any but the most highly symbolic sessions of the conference unless they have unique individual roles to fill. Rather, they are the ones who reflect on the results of each session, consider new alternative directions as they are needed, and watch the conference spirit. They are necessarily in evidence "around the edges" of the conference, and make themselves available to participants who have special concerns about the conference direction.
Leadership of a conference may consist of groups dealing with (a) the overall leadership of the event, (b) conference procedures, (c) spirit of the , meeting, (d) facilitation and (e) practic.
The overall leadership devises meetings with facilitators, and the coordinators of the programme, of the conference life and of the practics, to allow everyone to share their learnings and to hear arenas for new directions, ideas for how to implement them, and assignments to teams and individuals to carry them out. When a crisis occurs in the direction of the conference, the leadership team has the time to locate the contradiction underlying the issue, and to work out a number of approaches to dealing with it. For this sort of purpose, they may well ask the counsel of participants who are appropriately placed to be helpful.
The overall leadership is very much concerned with polity. They try to devise new strategies for reconciling opposing viewpoints. They look for ways to ensure that decisions made are as inclusive as possible. They function occasionally as a sounding board for issues and individuals who feel themselves left out of the process, and for tempering issues and individuals who may be dominating the process. They watch the intent of the conference above all, and seek to ensure that it is achieved both through the conference process and beyond the process, through individual conversations and negotiations as needed.
The overall leadership serves as the centre of ongoing conference coordination. They are the place to go for underlying issues and concerns. They delegate the ongoing work of the conference in order to be available for rethinking and recoordinating as it becomes necessary. In a way they are the eyes and ears of the conference. This team, whether a full time group in session or a daily check-signals meeting, symbolizes the legitimacy and the responsiveness of the conferencing process. They symbolically and quite substantially exist to make it clear to anyone that the conference is not a system set in motion which now runs on driverless according to programme, but is a living creation to be improved upon and adapted as the content and the group need arises. The very existence of such a group is often enough not only to ensure the sensitivity of conference activities to participant input, but also to convince dissidents that their outlook is being taken into consideration, in whatever form that is taking place.
One of the most effective ways of designing the organization of leadership for a conference is to create several autonomous groups with some overlapping responsibilities and with ample opportunity to dialogue. Several levels of leadership can be used. The overall leaders (possibly a team of four or five) are responsible for many of the master of ceremonies roles in the conference. They are "In Charge" of the event. This is the role of the first person who speaks in the meeting. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," is the first line of this role. It establishes that someone is in charge so the group can relax. Whereas a round table without a leader creates anxiety about what is required of whom, a more formal style paradoxically creates confidence that someone is in charge to whom a participant may go if displeased. At the same time this role has to appear to be quiet, nonchalant and natural and at the same time requires meticulous staging and orchestration. "The best leader is the one who, when the war is won, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'" (Sun Tsu) The mark of a successful conferencing event is one where the leadership is not intrusive.
The second level of leadership are the facilitators. They are the up front people during the workshops and the studies. They have the closest contact with the participants. They need to be capable of leading their sub-group to a product and yet enable all of the participants to actually contribute to the product. They, stylistically, need to be open and flexible and yet understand where they are going and how to get there.
The third level of leadership are the support forces. These include the practics people and the procedures group. Their role is that of seeing to it that the participants and facilitators are not distracted from the point of the conference, that they are not bothered by food or accommodations or foggy directions. They coordinate translation, production, food, lodgings, decor, procedures and any of the other practical aspect of making a conference successful. They translate the existential aim and rational objective of the event and of each session into practical steps and environments.
The leadership team is concerned with consensus, within whatever decision- making process is being applied. If the form of polity of the conference is dictate, they are after the acceptance and creative response of the body to the dictates of the authorities that be. If, for example, the method is majority rule, they seek a reconciliation among opposing forces by which they can move with whatever the majority opinion turns out to be, rather than withdrawing support into a camp of one of the opposing forces.
This is a concern not only for the process of the conference itself, but more importantly for the quality, the depth and the long-term effectiveness of the decisions arrived at. This role clearly is one which requires insiders to the organization, but also a strong sense of team collaboration and considerable trust by the conference delegates. In effect, the leadership team functions as a microcosm of the conference, in order to work through its living dynamics and to affirm its struggles.
The leadership team is basically a symbolic dynamic, which serves as a "dumping ground" or a "lightning rod" for feedback of all kinds. Its role is to suggest direction, tone and approaches to all of the other arenas of conference life.
It is certainly clear that non-political power roles play a very important part in the conferencing dynamic, but this arena is relatively unclear. A good source for this sort of research is the type of conference which exists purely for symbolic purposes, in which protocol is more important than decisions, products or the intellectual life. This is an arena in which much consideration and new models are badly needed.
