Fishbowl: A Powerful Tool For Facilitation
Creating the conditions for inclusive dynamic conversations
One of our favorite facilitation tools for fostering healthy dialogue in the workplace is called a Fishbowl…
Picture the scene
A group is sitting on chairs in a big circle. In the middle of the circle are 4 inward-facing chairs, a few feet from each other (an inner circle).
A facilitator summarizes the topic that the group has come together to discuss and then invites people who’d like to get the conversation rolling to come forward and take a seat in the middle until 3 chairs are filled (leaving 1 empty chair).
The group in the middle starts discussing the topic at hand. At some point, someone in the outer circle has a strong feeling they could add value to the conversation and they come forward and sit in the vacant chair.
The fact that all central chairs are filled is a signal to each of the 4 people speaking that they should reassess whether they’re coming to the end of the value they can add in that moment. Inevitably, 1 of the original 3 participants returns to the outer circle leaving an empty chair once more.
The conversation continues with people stepping in and out, until the allotted time elapses or no-one in the overall group has anything more to add.
What is the purpose?
The fishbowl process is a great answer to a common facilitation challenge. Namely…
How can 10-50 people have a complex, highly dynamic conversation where everyone gets to hear everything said and feel included?
If you don’t know about the fishbowl format, you are likely using one of the following more common formats for large group meetings…
Popcorn: This is a traditional meeting where people speak up if they have something to say (with no perceivable structure to the order in which people ‘pop up’ to speak). The larger the group, the more likely people are to be passive rather than run the gauntlet of stepping on each other's conversation. Additionally, the subset of people with greater confidence and less inhibition will tend to dominate the conversation.
Scatter-gather: This approach involves breaking the group out into smaller discussion groups and then, when everyone reconvenes, stitching the results of their conversations back together. This stitching step creates a lot of overhead for the facilitator and the group and, for complex topics, can often be a moment in which one group realizes that most of its conversation was moot, given the insights from another group. This format also runs the risk of having things be mis-remembered or mis-captured.
By contrast, fishbowls keep the entire group in sync. They encourage everyone to pay attention and invite people to be mindful of the value of brevity.
Why does it work?
There are a few key reasons fishbowls achieve their purpose…
They encourage participants to move deliberately between listening and speaking. This alleviates the ‘half-listening/half waiting to speak’ state that meeting participants often find themselves in.
People who tend to dominate conversations become viscerally aware that they have been holding onto an inner circle seat for a long time.
The mostly-vacant, inner-circle seat is a powerful signal to the entire group that there’s always room for another voice, even if that voice has something simple / quick to add.
Which topics benefit from this process?
A fishbowl is a good bet for subjects where the wisdom / buy-in of a group is important, the number of different opinions is high and the conversation needed to explore those opinions is likely to be complex and unpredictable.
For example, you might discuss topics like…
The future of an important product / service.
The organization’s recruiting / talent strategy.
The impact of AI on job roles / products / services.
The success / failure of the organization’s cultural values.
Process tips
There are a number of actions that we’ve learned to take when facilitating fishbowls in order to give them the right blend of energy and inclusion.
Before you begin…
Remind everyone that the process relies on the assumption that people will offer respectful disagreement without fear or hesitation.
Encourage people to offer ‘hot takes’ if they’re the first to speak. Hot takes are opinions that are simple to state and often un-nuanced / simplistic. These give the rest of the group early conversational inspiration for things that could be discussed.
Let the group know that, if you think it will be helpful, you may inject provocative / playful questions to help them go deeper / further.
During the fishbowl…
If you realize that a member of the inner circle has been there for 5+ minutes and hasn’t said anything, remind the group that they should feel free to return to the outer circle if they find themselves with nothing to add for multiple minutes.
If everyone leaves the inner circle but you have time left, say that you’re giving the group 5 minutes of quiet thinking time in case anyone would like to jump back in. If no-one does so after that period, the fishbowl can be ended.
If the inner circle has been chatting away energetically for 10+ minutes and no-one has come to join them. Remind the group that there’s a chair free if anyone wants to add to the discussion (this could also be a good moment for a provocative or challenging question from you).
Variations
Multi-stage: Create a discussion journey by running multiple fishbowls back-to-back, resetting the inner circle each time for each new focal area. For example, rather than having the topic be ‘customer satisfaction’, the group might discuss product design issues first, then sales issues, then support issues.
Multi-cohort: Organize the entire group into subgroups with different roles/experience and limit the inner-circle participants to each subgroup in turn. This approach helps to draw out diverse opinions. For example, maybe the group should hear from its leaders first followed by its individual contributors. Or perhaps its engineers followed by its marketing experts.
Tap-in: When someone would like to speak, instead of having them move to the empty seat, have them tap a current member of the inner circle on the shoulder. As soon as they do so, the person tapped should leave the inner circle promptly. This is a very high-energy variation and can be a lot of fun. It’s also less inherently safe and inviting so it's most effective if all of the people involved are inclined towards playfulness.
Virtual: It is possible to run an all-remote fishbowl. The key tool involved is the participants' control of their own video feed. They turn it on when they ‘sit in the inner circle’ and turn it off again when they leave that circle. This approach is obviously not as fluid as the in-person process as there are fewer cues to help people understand that (for example) multiple participants might be about to step forward. However, a little discipline and situational awareness from participants allows virtual fishbowls to work nearly as well as their physical counterparts.
Next Steps
If you think a fishbowl sounds fun or interesting (hopefully both! 😛), see if you can identify an upcoming opportunity to experiment with it. For your first time, you might consider a lower-stakes setting with some equally enthusiastic participants. Then, once you gain confidence with the format, you can look for broader opportunities to try it (perhaps with a large group) and start to build the facilitation muscle that will allow you to add this technique to your tool belt.
Oh and of course, please do post any questions or experiences in the comments here.
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