ECCAY RESOURCES

The ECCAY resources can help professionals to use in practice the solution focused knowledge they have just acquired.

Exercise nr. 6

SYSTEMIC MAPS

Mimimum number of patrticipants	Average time length	Individual Setting	Group Setting	Special Equipment	Unit	Online	Challenge /competition
3 to 5	1 h	no	yes	yes	1, 6	yes	no

The exercise aims to explore the systemic and complex nature of relationships.
It can be used to facilitate participants develop a systemic approach while reflecting on their professional and personal network of relationships.
The exercise provides a way to consider social reality as a complex system where all the events or phenomena are deeply interconnected.

The exercise can also be useful in working with young people at risk of social exclusion, as it helps them consider the interconnections between them, their communities and environments, and reflect on how they can be useful assets for them. Furthermore, this can encourage youth to think on how to act in order to improve and enhance their social assets.

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Aim / Benefits

Developing systemic thinking
Becoming aware of the narrative nature of the thought processes
Developing a sense of Agency and Active citizenship, by reflecting upon your role in your system of relations and how you can act in order to improve it.

UNIT(s) related

Unit 1, 3, 6

Why?
This exercise can be related to Unit 1 as it is a way to explain the Systemic approach and the General Complexity theory.
This exercise can be related to Unit 3, as it is a way to analyse the group focusing on what works (and what could work) in terms of relationship among members.
It can be related to Unit 6, as it helps participants considering how to approach to their ecosystem and how to mobilize them in a useful way.

How to do the exercise

Step 1 / Preparation:
Divide the group in subgroups of 3 to 5 people.
Explain the aim of the exercise.
Explain that the benefit of doing this exercise will be, for each participant, to consider his/her relational network from a different point of view.
This will help participants to see useful resources in their network for their aims and activities, that they might have never noticed

Step 2
Each participant individuates at least three important persons in his/her life (on personal and/or professional level) and writes them down on post-it notes (one relationship per post-it).
The persons to be identified can also be other members of the group.
Each participant is asked to choose an area of an erase board or a flipchart/big paper, where he/she will write his/her name and put the post-it notes all around it.
All the post-it notes indicating the relationships are placed on the erase board.

Step 3:
Then, they are asked to think about how the persons he/she identified are connected with each other.
Operationally, this can be done by drawing lines on the erase board with markers.
Participants should indicate the different levels of strength in the connections.
Decide with all the participants the criteria for indicating the level of strength in the connections, so that it will be applied by the sub-groups.
For instance, if they use an erasable board, a red marker might indicate a strong connection, a blue marker might indicate a weak connection.
If they use a flipchart, they can draw the connections with a pencil and in this case a single line might indicate a weak connection, a double line might indicate a strong connection.
In any case, we suggest using markers or pencils that can be erased, because at the end of the exercise participants might want to modify the quality of the connections they identified.

Step 4:
Once each member has identified the level of strength in the connections among the persons they indicated, ask him/her to think about possible connections between his/her network and the networks of the other members of the sub-group.
Explain that, by doing so, there could be two outcomes:
1. They discover their network are already interconnected. If so, ask them to evaluate the level of strength in these newfound interconnections, following the same criteria applied in Step 3.
2. They do not see any connections. If so, ask them to think about possible connections and/or how they could facilitate them.

Final Step:
Ask each sub-group to briefly discuss the personal actions that each person can take to empower the system or notice actions that are not very useful in the system of relationships that has emerged (for instance, a possible action to empower the system could be making more phone calls with the person the participant thinks he/she has the weaker connection with. On the opposite side, a not so useful action could be keeping that rude attitude that in the past affected the quality of the relationship).
In case you decide to apply the SF paradigm, encourage participants to focus on the resources they see in their network.
Also, encourage them to focus on the competences they have and the actions they can do to strengthen their networks and the interconnections among their personal networks.
This is the step where the erasable markers/pencils are helpful. In fact, after these discussions, if participants feel the need to change the quality of the connections they previously indicated in terms of strength, they are allowed to do that.

Debrief

Ask the group as a whole to discuss the exercise. It may be useful to have the group reflect on what worked and what are the benefits each member got by doing the exercise.
Have the group think on how the reflections that have emerged affect the way they see their connections with the others and the role they have in these relationships. In other words, have them reflect upon their sense of personal agency and how they can use it in order to improve the quality of their social connections.

●       What are the thoughts/ideas/feelings you have about your network after this exercise?
●       How did the idea you have of your network change?
●       What connections did you find and/or created between your and your colleagues’ network?
●       What could you do to strengthen the interconnections between your and your colleagues’ network?
●       How could these interconnections help you reach your professional and/or personal goals?
●       Are there other persons/groups/communities you think you could create positive connections with? If you consider the conclusions you reached after this activity, how could you do that? What are the values you could add in these new connections?

Specific materials

Erase board(s)
Erasable coloured markers
Post-its

Tips and Tricks

If you decide to use the paper sheets instead of whiteboards, you could also use a big sheet or flipchart where all the post-its for each sub-groups and the relative connections are indicated. Then, you can display the posters in the group room for a longer time.

A possible variation of the exercise could be asking each participant to indicate just three important persons within the group.
- You can propose this activity with a well-established group. In this case, it would be more focused on strengthening the quality of relationships in the group and help it develop a more solution oriented mindset.
- However, you can propose this activity to a newly formed group. In this case, the instructions could be, for each participant, to identify three persons he/she feels he/she could create good connections with. We invite you to pay attention to the dynamics happening: if for some reason resentment emerges (for instance, a member gets upset because he/she would have been pleased to be chosen by another participant and that has not happened), you can approach to this issue with a solution focused attitude, asking questions that help the members reflect upon their reactions and the role they want to have within the group.

On-line version

Platforms such as MIRO (www.miro.com) or MURAL (www.mural.com) allow you to create virtual whiteboards where participants can move items and connect them together.

Bibliography - Sitography

None.

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