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journey of meaning at work, The

Group Facilitation, Spring 2003 by Epps, John

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III. Implications

Given the three approaches to meaning and their three levels or phases, how can we as facilitators assist an organization to use its past, future, and present to disclose the dimension of meaning to its members"?

a. The Past

Regarding significance and the past, facilitators can help organizations develop their history. It is important to capture the legends of the founders and the stories of both great and notso-great moments. Facilitators can conduct a participative workshop in which people remember their experiences and develop a "Wall of Wonder" that graphically portrays them. Story-telling sessions can be facilitated to add spice and liveliness to the memories.

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When the data is compiled, it needs to be made accessible throughout the organization. Perhaps a brief handbook can be printed for newcomers, and perhaps some time for reminiscing can be part of corporate meetings. Photos of the founders can be prominently displayed, and perhaps a museum case of old technologies can be set up. One particularly interesting display is in a state-of-the-art computer-training institute?o. They have established a showcase of ancient computers and IT technologies. One views the display with a combination of appreciation, humor, and significance at just how far the industry has come in a relatively few years. You sense that you are part of a very lively history that is moving ahead at a breakneck pace.

But because people's experience of meaning expands with the size of the context, that history needs to go back before the founding of the particular organization to its roots in primordial human experience. When you can link the latest hotshot hi-tech Initial Public Offering with the proto-humans whose innovations included the use of fire for cooking, then you are not only part of this organization, you are also part of the human process of innovation. Facilitators can push groups to discern their links to the primordial past.

The Present

Regarding professionalism in the present, facilitators can help clients be active in their professions. Professional associations exist to enhance the meaning of their profession. They do not make you into a professional, but they assist people who have achieved that state to discern and reaffirm its meaning. When people who are artistic in a particular craft get together, lively discussion is inevitable. In fact, the level of discourse is likely to assume a language of its own, one that leaves "outsiders" far outside. Each profession adopts its unique technical language. Clergy discuss eschatology and soteriology; health professionals talk about hematology and oncology, policemen discuss perpetrators, geeks talk about gigabytes, (and of course, government officials talk about retirement). Both facilitators and physicists talk about force field analysis, but you suspect that they are not talking to each other! The language not only provides useful technical terms for detailed descriptions, it also makes one part of the in-group of the profession and so bestows a sense of meaning.

journey of meaning at work, The

Group Facilitation, Spring 2003 by Epps, John

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