Purpose

Understand motivations, values and emotions underlying the collaboration

Description

Each collaboration comes with tensions, implicit or explicit. Differences between disciplinary perspectives, epistemological positions and objectives may seem insurmountable at times. However, similar values, concerns and emotions are underlying the collaboration – there are reasons that a team has come together in the first place. 

‘Five whys’ allows team members to unpack layer by layer what drives their team members to be part of the collaboration at the most foundational level. This is an unfamiliar level for many, also in terms of self-understanding. Reaching this stage together supports getting to know each other as human beings and understanding each other better, contributing to trust-building and finding common ground.

This activity will not come easy to everyone, as it requires a willingness to go deeper and deeper, perhaps to questions that participants have not asked themselves before. For the activity to be meaningful, an openness to questioning (oneself) is key, which requires a level of vulnerability that may be uncommon.

Instructions

1. Introduce the competence ‘finding common ground’ and ‘listening levels’. 
2. Show five whys on  the slide: explain that asking ‘why’ five times is known in journalism/communication as the key to reaching the level where the actual drivers for thoughts and behaviour are found. Explain that participants will ask ‘why is that important to you?’ five times, not one time less. Explain that it may feel frustrating, as the speaker may experience that the answer has already been given. Invite participants to pursue and continue finding the answer to the question.
3. Break up in trios, select person A., follow the sequence:
   • A shares their research topic (4’). Uninterrupted time to speak. Free flow of thoughts and ideas. Stay with silence if it emerges. Listen in service of the other.
   • B asks 5 times ‘and why is that important to you?’ (5 whys). C listens in the service of the other (6’)
   • Journaling (4’)
     1. What do I notice about what the other is (/I am) saying? What’s the key topic/concern and why is this important to them? What would I like to understand better?
     2. How would I bring my (scholarly) lens to this?
   •  Sharing from the journaling (5’)
   • Closing remarks by speaker (1’)
4. Swap roles twice
5. After three rounds invite trios to move to the Generative dialogue 10-15’. Prompts:
   • What did the others allow you to see that you didn’t see before?
   • What do you realise about the differences and commonalities between your disciplinary perspectives?
   • What potential conflicting concepts or assumptions do you see between your perspectives? What might be ways of bringing them together? Where do you see potential for common ground?

Phase

During the development of a research proposal

Competences

Finding common ground
Listening
Communication

Time

100 minutes

Group size

3 – 20 persons

Required materials

• Slides
• Start in plenary, move to break out in trios. Sufficient space needed for each trio to be at distance from others, so that acoustics are calm and groups do not disturb each other

Related tools

This exercise can be combined with Listening Levels

Relevant resources

Liberating Structures: Nine Whys

Tips & experience

This activity needs a basic level of trust and is best done when groups already know one another a little. See comments to the left about vulnerability.

Make sure that the ‘why’ questions are asked with openness and curiosity. The ‘why’ question is an invitation to dig deeper, to explore with curiosity what else comes up. The ‘why’ question should not contain any judgement and if it evokes a defensive response, invite participants to explore how to ask the question in such a way that the speaker feels invited to be curious about their own response to the question.