We often assume that once we get the session scheduled, the hard part is over. Just get everyone in the room with some sticky notes, and the collaboration will flow. But what happens when the most senior person in the organization treats your workshop like performance art – and not in a good way?
That's the challenge Evelyn van Kelle shared with us in this installment of Stories on Facilitating Software Architecture and Design. It's a story about trying to facilitate collaborative modeling when hierarchy doesn't just influence the conversation – it actively suffocates it.
Already Fighting Uphill
Evelyn was a few weeks into working with a company going through major changes. Uncertainty was everywhere. Decisions weren't being made or repeatedly postponed. Fingers were being pointed. The hierarchy was so present in daily operations that in most meetings, only the people high up in rank were speaking while everyone else watched and waited to be told what to do.
She and a colleague proposed an EventStorming session. Leadership's response? They called it "a wasted day." Real work could be done instead. The participants picked up on this resistance immediately, showing up hesitant and uncertain about whether they should even be there.
The session reflected that anxiety. Conversations stayed high-level. There were no disagreements, which is a red flag for any facilitator worth their salt. No hotspots appeared on the board. Everyone agreed on everything, which might be an indication that nobody was saying what they actually thought.
Most tellingly, people kept asking for approval to even move a sticky note. They'd look to specific people in the room before taking any action, people who happened to be high up in the organizational hierarchy.
Working Too Hard
Evelyn and her co-facilitator found themselves working harder than usual to get anything moving. Another heuristic: when you're working this hard as a facilitator, something's going on that needs attention.
She got frustrated. She felt like she couldn't make an impact, like she was just proving the resistant leadership right. That feeling hit hard.
They tried intervening with sense-making exercises, attempting to make some of the implicit stuff explicit. They could feel there was a lot happening beneath the surface – plenty of shadows, as Evelyn calls it – but it felt like her flashlight wasn't working. She couldn't shine a light on what was really going on.
That's when she applied one of her own heuristics: when you don't feel in control, stand back literally. Just observe. Watch the behavioral patterns.
The CTO's Rounds
There was one more ingredient in this situation: the CTO. Part of the leadership group that wasn't sold on this "wasted day." He had more important work to do, so he wouldn't be participating.
What he did instead was walk in every now and then. Just to check how things were going, he said. He'd walk in, look at the brown paper on the wall, stand there with his arms crossed, maybe make a sarcastic comment, rarely ask a question. Then he'd walk out.
Evelyn noticed her own physical reaction every time: shoulders tensing, breath catching in her throat, starting to sweat. But it wasn't just her. The whole group would stop. People stopped writing on stickies, stopped sharing opinions, stopped doing anything. The entire session would freeze until he left.
The Slow Clap
Then came what Evelyn calls the grand finale.
They were in the middle of a sense-making exercise, one aimed at making feelings and interpretations explicit. For the first time all day, someone was actually sharing something vulnerable. It felt like a breakthrough.
The CTO walked in that exact moment. The energy changed immediately. But this person was brave enough to continue, sharing their concerns, thoughts, and insecurities.
The CTO listened. After a few seconds of silence, he started to slow clap.
That's when Evelyn's physical reaction peaked. Not just in her; she could see it rippling through the group. The CTO walked out, and everyone stood there in silence, looking at the facilitators.
Evelyn and her co-facilitator were overwhelmed. She figured the best thing to do was make it explicit. She shared what that moment did to her: the physical reaction, the feeling of being unsafe and defensive, admitting she didn't have an answer for how to continue.
Her co-facilitator did the same, sharing their vulnerability and that unsafe feeling. They took a break. When they came back, they asked the group: do you want to continue or stop here?
The group chose to continue. They did a sense-making exercise for anyone who wanted to share something about what had just happened. Some people did. In hindsight, Evelyn thinks it was the right move, but the impact of that behavior on the group was intense.
Unpacking the Dynamics
- Physical reactions are data: Evelyn learned that when she gets an intense physical reaction, it's a signal that something important is happening; a moment where she can and should act. This became a heuristic for her.
- Working too hard means something's up: When facilitators find themselves working unusually hard to get basic participation, it's not just a difficult group. Something structural is blocking the conversation.
- Hierarchy doesn't just influence, it overshadows: The dominant behavior of high-ranking people doesn't just shape the conversation. It actively prevents other perspectives from emerging. As Kenny noted during the conversation, people in higher rank can literally overshadow the other shadows in the room.
- Safety collapses before you see it: The conditions for safety were already fragile: leadership's resistance, participants' hesitancy, the transactional culture. The CTO's behavior didn't create the problem; it revealed how little safety there was to begin with.
- Neutrality is about creating space, not hiding feelings: Evelyn distinguishes between being neutral and acting neutral. She can't be fully neutral – she has reactions and judgments. But acting neutral means not letting her emotions dictate the tone for everyone else, which would shut down other perspectives before they emerge.
- Understanding behavior doesn't mean excusing it: After the session, Evelyn had a one-on-one conversation with the CTO. Her goal wasn't to tell him he was wrong, but to understand where the behavior came from. She learned that his behavior earned him compliments from others in his peer group. For him, at that moment, maintaining that identity was more important than the group's progress.
The Session That Shouldn't Have Happened
Looking back, Evelyn says she wouldn't run that session the same way. Making it a big official event for leadership turned it into something that had to be justified and defended. A better approach might have been to weave collaborative modeling into regular work, experimenting with it in smaller doses without the spotlight.
But she doesn't regret the experience. It cost her a few sleepless nights, but she learned something that's stuck with her: every facilitator will face behavior that triggers them, that they don't like, that hinders the group. The question isn't whether it will happen. The question is what you do when it does.
Further Reading
Facilitating Software Design and Architectur: Evelyn van Kelle, Gien Verschatse, Kenny Baas-Schwegler – Collaborative Software Design: Facilitating Domain modeling decision – Practical guidance directly from the facilitators behind this series on handling behavioral challenges in architectural workshops.
EventStorming: Alberto Brandolini, EventStorming – The foundational resource for running collaborative modeling sessions and understanding when they work, including the importance of psychological conditions.
Behavioral Science in Professional Settings: Kim Scott, Radical Candor – Addresses how to understand others' behavior and intentions while maintaining clarity and accountability, paralleling Evelyn's approach to the CTO conversation.
