Hand-drawn flip chart showing four different fish in a goldfish bowl. Captioned 'What difference do our differences make, as facilitators?'.
What would you say if you knew the usual suspects wouldn't interrupt you? What would you hear, if you could be a fly-on-the-wall during an open, honest conversation about something difficult? This is the premise of the 'fishbowl' technique, and I ran one at the IAF England & Wales Conference earlier this year. What happened?
Fishbowl 101
At the core of a fishbowl session is the division of the space into a small inner circle (I went with five chairs) and an outer ring for however many people are in the group. The rule is that you only speak if you are occupying one of the inner chairs. In our fishbowl, up to four people could be in the fishbowl at a time. The fifth chair was there to show that others could join the bowl, but only if someone already there gave up their place.
Sometimes a fishbowl process will include a step where the outer circle can pass questions to the people in the bowl, but I chose not to include this so as to maximise the sense of safety for people 'in the bowl'. Knowing that you won't be asked a potentially painful question increases the confidence to get into the bowl in the first place.
We all knew what time the session needed to end, and there was a big clock in the room. Because we were all facilitators or similar, I didn't do anything more than that the manage the time.
Fishbowl is included in the Liberating Structures menu of facilitation techniques, although I find this description a bit controlling. There is a Wikipedia page on fishbowl, which takes a slightly different approach. Like all facilitation techniques, there are variations!
Our focus question - what difference do our differences make, as facilitators?
We had a clear focus question, which was explored a little as a whole group before we began the fishbowl. We created a starter list of 'dimensions of difference' which might be talked about during the conversation. The list included things like gender, age, race/ethnicity, religious belief, sexuality, disability, neurodiversity and hierarchy.
Why was this the focus? The IAF, like so many organisations, is - in England and Wales at least - a fairly undiverse collection of people and in its short history mostly made up of white, able-bodied, middle-class or professionally-educated people. This needs to change, so we can serve groups better and so that people working as facilitators (including those who may not call themselves this) can benefit from what the IAF provides and be part of leading and acting in the organisation. The groups who need facilitators are much more diverse, and if part of the facilitator's role is to balance power, we need to understand how that power may be showing up in our own practice and being. As a peer-led group, IAF members and friends have been exploring and addressing this in multiple ways. I wanted to create space for a conversation where we could really hear each other's perspectives and experiences, and fishbowl seemed like a good technique to enable this to happen.
Why choose fishbowl?
There were two reasons, the first related to the topic and the second was more personal. I wanted a technique which would allow those who wanted to speak to do so, and where it was equally acceptable to remain silent. I also wanted a technique where most people would be obliged to be silent and to listen without responding. Secondly, although it is a classic technique, I had never facilitated fishbowl before and I had been a participant in fishbowls only a handful of times. I wanted to have a go, in this safe experimental setting.
What helped it work?
There were a few things which provided a helpful context for this session. It was on the second day of the two-day event, and although not everyone had been there for the first day, there was a level of comfort with the space and each other which enabled people to make confident choices about how much to share. Additionally, being a group of facilitators, people were interested in the process and I was confident people would 'stick to the rules' in a spirit of experimentation and mutual learning.
There had also been some sessions earlier in the conference which addressed power, privilege, diversity and equity, notably one on facilitation and protected characteristics (referencing the UK Equality Act 2010). Some of the people in the fishbowl session had been at that session, so there was some recent shared learning and experience.
We also agreed some groundrules as a group before we began. I offered some to begin with, under the headings of 'care' and 'mechanics':
Care - people who are in the fish bowl are sharing something they may find hard, so:
Be aware of your own power, look out for each other's safety. This included not sharing what people said outside the session.
If you are in the mainstream, make space for those in the margins.
It is fine for there to be empty chairs - don't feel obliged to join the bowl.
Don't argue with or counter someone else's experience, although of course offer your own which may be different.
If you don't understand or feel defensive, listen louder.
Speak for yourself, not what you imagine things are like for anyone else.
Mechanics - you may have experience of fishbowls which have been run differently. In this one:
Five chairs
Up to four fish
No questions from outside the fishbowl
The group added some:
Join in with a spirit of acceptance and respect.
Use clear language.
Suspend judgement.
Sit with your emotions and the emotions which are being shared, don't try to fix things.
We could have added 'don't assume things about the person speaking which they haven't shared' and I would do this in future conversations about this topic.
What happened in the conversation?
I won't go into details, because of the sensitivity of what was shared. What I will say is that about 1/3 of the people in the room joined the fishbowl and spoke over the course of the session. Experiences shared by people in the bowl included marginalisation by clients and group members and other team members due to gender, age, ethnicity and other characteristics. A strong theme was power and privilege, including charging rates and (not) feeling able to facilitate different kinds of groups.
What has stayed with me most, however, was the atmosphere which was alert, delicate and honest. People shared things with enough time to follow the thread of their thoughts aloud to its end. People built on each other's contributions. People really listened. What we shared and heard informed later sessions and conversations.
I found it a wonderful experience, and came away full of gratitude to everyone who spoke in the bowl.