How to Run an AQAL (Integral) Workshop

Amiel Handelsman, 'Counsel to the Curious' (www.curiousleader.com), suggested this highly interactive workshop – that can really get your group involved in thinking about a real-world issue, through the integral lens of the Quadrants (and, if you like, Levels also).

The London Integral Circle has used it very successfully on a number of occasions – looking at topics in areas such as education, health and Islamic terrorism. (We also adapted it, by adding a new phase to the workshop where the group moves from looking at causes (problems) to mapping out the elements of a solution – through an integral lens. We even attempted to use post-it notes coloured to correspond with the Spiral Dynamics values colour scheme.

Here's what Amiel wrote:
This tends to work well with groups that know one another, that are less than 20 people, with a skilled facilitator, and in a room with enough wallspace. Here goes:

1. Pick a question you want people to consider. e.g. "What are the causes of 9/11 from an integral perspective?" Tell people what they're going to do next. Make sure everyone understands.

2. Hand out post-it notes and pens. Ask people to quietly and individually write their answers to this question on post-its, one thought per post-it. Say: come up with as many answers as you can. For people who need conversation partners to generate ideas, invite them to break off into a small group in the corner of the room. Give people 10 minutes.

3. Ask everyone to place their post-it notes on a flipchart labeled with 4 quadrants. (Advanced version: also have value meme levels in lower left quadrant and/or other levels in other quadrants).

4. Have 1-2 people volunteer to quickly sort all of the post-its by theme - any two or more ideas that are obviously related.

5. Invite everyone to take 5-10 minutes to look at what is up on the flipchart.

6. Go around the room and ask each person to describe what they wrote and why. One post-it per person. So you'll go around the circle (or square or tetrahedron...) several times. Invite people listening to say, "Could you clarify that?" if they don't understand what someone is saying.

7. Then open the conversation. Invite people to write down more ideas as they are sparked by others' ideas.

I find this process to provide a nice mix of 'Orange' value meme [see Spiral Dynamics] possibility creation (fast, high volume idea generation) and Green inclusion (everyone gets to share ideas and no one talks for too long).

The downside is that initially, some folks in the room think "What a frivolous activity." This calls upon the facilitator to apply a Yellow sword...in Bill Torbert's words, to order people to be free. By the end, most people see the value of the activity.

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Please send other examples of integral – and related workshops and discussion formates etc – Matthew Kalman.

Copyright © 2007 Matthew Kalman