‘Establishing Trust in a Distributed Team to Cultivate Systemic Change’ session at the SciTeamSci 2018 meeting, Galveston TX

Three of us traveled to Galveston Texas from May 21-24th 2018 for the Science of Team Science annual conference. While there we presented a panel on Establishing Trust in a Distributed Team to Cultivate Systemic Change.

In 2017 we presented a poster at the previous year’s gathering to share the potential of Theory U as a change process, and to explore using it in a scientific milieu.  From that seed we created a science hub for MIT’s edX u.lab course, which saw 10 members of a multi-national cohort take the u.lab course together, remotely, over a three month period in the Fall of 2017.

Our panel included five who were there in person and two members who joined remotely (from Germany and Africa, respectively).  We shared the four levels of listening, some of the experiences we had during our three month journey, and ended with allowing participants to experience one of the more powerful tools we use for generating novel solutions to challenging issues – the ‘case clinic.’

It amazed me to learn that our two remote participants that they experienced the energy in the room and they felt very connected to the process.  This in spite of a persistent microphone feedback that was a bit irritating (until we figured out how to use one sound system to feed in and another to feed out), and in spite of the room being engaged in group work at the end of the session, with the two remote participants watching from afar.

Mery Miguez is the facilitator on our team who brings deep expertise in social presencing theater and other theory U tools.  The process co-developed by the group, under the expert lead of  Mery, was a success.  We realized after we were done that the flow of events we created can be replicated by others.   We now have a process that will allow groups or teams to experience the insights and discovery afforded by these four exercises we developed from u.lab processes.  We look forward to further prototyping of this approach, and to finding others ready for the exploration.