General Materials
Agenda
A standard Culture in Action session follows a simple format. During a 90-minute meeting, you work through each of the seven practices. You can adjust the agenda to suit your needs – for example, to provide you with more time to focus on a specific skill or address multiple TENSIONS.
Leader Tips
We recommend you use an external facilitator or designate a team member to guide each session. You can rotate the role across the team to help build accountability for the process, deepen facility with the practices, and draw upon each person’s unique skills and approaches.
Session-by-Session Materials
During each session, you’ll use all seven practices, and will also dig in to one practice more deeply.
We’ve organized the sessions in a way we think will help get you going, reinforce what’s working, and build out the “softer” skills after you’re making tangible progress.
That said, you can adjust the order in whatever way works for your group.
Session 1: Intro to the Seven Practices
In Session 1, the goal is to become familiar enough with the seven skills to get started.
You’ll read about the seven practices and then go through one complete Culture in Action meeting, using each practice and diving into at least one real tension.
Session 2: Tensions
Session 2 focuses on TENSIONS — what they are, how to frame them in a way that creates the greatest opportunity for growth, and what traps and pitfalls to watch out for.
Session 3: Appreciation
Session 3 lets you start to create a positive feedback loop by working on APPRECIATION.
Session 4: Conversation
In Session 2, you started working on your TENSIONS – the gap between your current reality and your desired future state.
Session 4 takes you back into the meat of things, focusing on CONVERSATION: how to have meaningful, inclusive discussions so you understand the TENSIONS you face and can decide what you want to do in response.
Session 5: Stories
In the last session, you focused on CONVERSATION.
In any CONVERSATION, some of what we say is fact. But a lot of what we say – and think – is about STORIES.
That’s the focus for this session. What do we notice? How do we interpret it? What STORIES do we tell ourselves and others in light of those things? What do our STORIES say about us, and how do they shape our perceptions, beliefs, and choices?
Session 6: Action
Session 6 dives back to the center, working on how you agree on and hold yourselves accountable for ACTIONS.
By the end of session 6, the group should be developing a rhythm for raising TENSIONS, having high-quality CONVERSATIONS, agreeing on ACTIONS, and holding themselves accountable.
In addition, you should be seeing the impact that STORIES and APPRECIATION have on highlighting specific behaviors you value.
The final two sessions turn to the practices that help create a foundation that is conducive to high quality interactions: PRESENCE (Session 7) and FOCUS (Section 8).
Session 7: Presence
Most days, we run from meeting to meeting. Wherever we are — whatever we’re supposed to be doing — our minds are often elsewhere.
This session looks at the importance of breaking that pattern, letting go of the past and the future to become present.
Session 8: Focus
The last session focuses on the practice of FOCUS.
Focus is about paying attention to what’s going on inside you … and then intentionally shifting your attention to the group and the issues at hand.
It’s also about paying attention to what’s going on for others and for the group as a whole. During the “check in” process, each member of the group steps into the session and discloses to others things that may affect how they participate and how they are perceived.