Collaborative Modeling and Liberating Structures share many similarities like fostering a shared understanding in groups and real collaboration by including and unleashing everyone. In this hands-on lab, I will show you how you can improve your next Collaborative Modeling workshop with the surprising power of Liberating Structures.

Liberating Structures are a set of easy-to-learn microstructures that offer real participation for all people involved. In contrast to conventional structures like presentations or open discussions they offer the right amount of structure to ensure target-oriented interactions while leaving enough space for innovative ideas to spark.



During this highly interactive workshop we will practice several Liberating Structures and reflect on how and why they work. We will compare them with the well-known conventional structures by examining the five design elements (structuring invitation, space and material, distribution of participation, group configuration, sequence of steps and timing) that define all microstructures.



We will take a deeper look at the similarities of Liberating Structures and Collaborative Modeling and see how Liberating Structures can support certain aspects of Collaborative Modeling.

Liberating Structures and Collaborative Modeling form a perfect match in a facilitator’s repertoire and in the end every participant will have at least one implementable idea that will help improve his/her future Collaborative Modeling workshops.

duration: scalable from 60 Minutes up to 8 hours
room configuration: movable chairs, no tables, ca. 4 meta plan walls/flip charts, post-its and pens, beamer
participants: scalable from 8 to something around 100 participants (theoretically even more)