(It’s been now over eight years that I’ve been actively and centrally using Liberating Structures (LS). Now that LS is firmly in my practice, I’m finding ways to share it with everyone else. This blog series (Structuring our liberation – LS under the lens), looks at some of the not-so-common structures from the LS repertoire).
It’s incredible that I haven’t yet blogged about ‘Spiral journal‘ as it’s one of my all-time favourite Liberating Structures, along with Ecocycle Planning and Heard Seen Respected.
It’s also quite incredible that there’s not so much guidance available about it online…
Perhaps it’s because it’s not part of the well-documented, original repertoire of the 33 Liberating Structures – it’s one of the ‘Liberating Structures in development‘ (more about this here too).
So here’s my introduction to it for you, through my subjective lens, and with my personal ideas for how to get it going fruitfully at your end:
What is the purpose of Spiral Journal?
Because it’s a structure in development, its purpose is less well documented than for established LS. The one-line describing it according to the gospel is to “Calmly prepare for the work ahead while sharpening observational precision“. And indeed it does that beautifully!
Personally, I find that Spiral journal is generally perfectly tuned to:
- Collect your own thoughts, insights, learnings, inclinations e.g. about what happened, about what is happening right here and right now, about indeed about what might be happening next
- Free your mind by releasing all the chatter that is in your head
- ‘Brainstorming with yourself’ to allow you to separate the wheat from the chaff later
- Ground yourself in the moment and attune to the conditions to be the most perfect version of yourself
- Prepare what you will be saying to people next
- Prepare what you will be doing next…
And probably there’s myriad other ways to use it that I haven’t explored yet.
What would be your purposes for it?
How does it work?
It works for yourself, alone, and for groups too [with extra guidelines mentioned in square brackets here]
Here are the steps:
- (anytime) Grab a blank sheet of paper – and a pen
- (15 sec) Fold the sheet in 4 quadrants [fold it in half on the length, then again on the width] and lay it open in front of you
- (1-2 mins) Start drawing a spiral at the center of the sheet, where the folds are coming together. Draw the spiral as it unfolds out, as slowly and meticulously as you can. The sheer purpose of this is to free your mind and mindfully put all your focus on this drawing. Keep the spiral as tiny and contained as possible because you’ll need the space on the sheet; keep drawing the spiral until the time has elapsed [show what it looks like when it’s finished]
- (8-10 mins) Now in the first quadrant [e.g. top left hand corner], write down the first question [e.g. ‘how are you doing today?’] and write down all your answers for it, including the obvious, the quirky, the difficult ones, the creative ones etc. 2 mins per quadrant
- Once the time has elapsed, move on to the second quadrant [e.g. top right hand corner], write down the second question [e.g. ‘what are all the things on your mind right now that prevent us from being fully present?’] – spend 2 mins again giving all your answers
- Do that again with the next question and next quadrant e.g. ‘what do you need today to give the best version of yourself?’ – 2 mins again
- Do that one last time with the final question and final quadrant e.g. ‘what will you do today to help others be the best version of themselves’? – 2 mins again
- Review your answers and circle which answers have particular meaning and vibrancy for you [and what you may want to share with someone else]
- [(3-10 mins) Optionally you can then invite people to follow up with e.g. an impromptu networking where they will be sharing some of their answers with each other]
- [(5-10 mins) Again optionally you may decide to invite people to debrief, in plenary, what they wrote and what they heard from other journals… ]
So if you keep Spiral Journal to the individual part, the whole activity takes no more than 10 minutes.
See this video also by Equity Unbound, or the video below by my buddy Jeremy Akers (with whom, along with Nadia von Holzen, I’m organising the upcoming ‘Liberating Journey‘).
Who could really benefit from this LS?
I find ‘Spiral Journal’ a wonderful and incredibly helpful little exercise. For that reason I think it’s a universal structure that can be used by any individual and any group.
I do, however, see some potential ‘extra benefits’ for certain groups of people:
- People that are hyper-sensitive, or introverted, and may need some time to gather their thoughts
- Groups experiencing major tensions or conflicts, which therefore need time to make sense of what to say or do next
- Any group that has been going through very intense or interactive, high tempo activities and need a change in the energy and pacing
- Groups that deal with such complex topics that they require a pause in their thinking to process and summarise all that is happening
- Any group that comes together for the first time and may need to prepare for their socialisation with each other
- Any group that is preparing to split up and wants to be mindful about what their being together has meant..
- Any person that is facing a difficult or important conversation and may want to get ready for well-weighted thoughts or actions…
What is liberating about it?
A Spiral Journal is almost always a clear break from whatever activity preceded it. As such it’s really liberating -as in a meditation- to be immersed with yourself and reflecting on whatever in what feels like a luxurious way.
The simple act of drawing the spiral, when you really try to do it as slowly and to keep it as contained as you can, is also freeing your mind, another meditative aspect of it, like gardening, dancing, painting etc.
The prompts that you use as questions for each of the quadrants can bring a lot of what I mentioned in the title of this post: comfort, challenge, ideas, creativity, clarity etc. If you come up with strong questions -for whatever you need on the moment- you experience a lot of elation and inspiration from it too.
Over time, if you use Spiral Journal regularly (like my friend Nadia who uses it nearly everyday), you also draw the long term benefits from ongoing journaling, seeing patterns, and finding a daily dose of calm in your mind…
How can it be stretched even further?
There are many ways Spiral Journal can be tweaked, here are just a few I’m thinking about:
- (Brainstorming using spiral journal) Do a collaborative ‘brainstorming’ spiral journal where groups of 4 work on 4 simultaneous journals, each journal focusing on a different question and each member working on a different question, then passing it on to their neighbours, then review the answers from all journals and discuss what is coming up for the group reading the compound collective answers
- (Generating questions) Ask people in the room to suggest what next question will be used for a quadrant of your spiral journal
- (The spiral drawing itself) If you use pencils, you may draw also something else than a spiral e.g. an infinity symbol, a sun etc. and you just keep drawing above the previous features of the drawing
- (Pattern spotting and filtering) Use the same prompt for all quadrants but fill out each quadrant over time, after different activities, so you see your thinking evolve over time and perhaps significant patterns emerge
- (Stringing) Use Spiral Journal as a way to prepare for another conversation reflection e.g. Ecocycle planning, conversation café, TRIZ, 25/10 crowdsourcing etc.
Whatever you do with it, I hope you just give it a try and experience the meditative power of Spiral Journal…
What creative uses would you recommend yourself?
Related stories
See other post in this ‘LS under the lens‘ blog series. And also:
- Structuring our everyday liberation, because facilitation magic is not just for the workplace
- The enduring power of Liberating Structures, online, and outside of meetings
- Multiple facets of Liberating Structures: interview snippets with Anna Jackson
- Other Liberating Structures posts on this blog (including the under the lens series)
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