Why Does the Gurteen Knowledge Café Work? A Participant’s Perspective Marcus Conyers (2022)

Why Does the Gurteen Knowledge Café Work?
A Participant’s Perspective

Marcus Conyers, Ph.D.
BrainSMART® Founder and CEO

After a lively conversation at the conclusion of one of his Knowledge Cafés conducted via Zoom, David Gurteen asked me why I thought this process worked. This non-technical article is my response as the opinion of a participant who helps organizations to create engaging learning and development initiatives.

For decades, I have been fascinated by how human brains create meaning and actionable insights in social contexts. One question that I have consistently asked participants at my learning events around the world is, “What do you remember most from professional conferences you have attended?” The most common response is that it was the informal conversations during breaks or after the formal proceedings.

This and other insights led me to develop cognitive frameworks to help organizations create learning experiences in which participants are actively creating meaning and generating actionable insights by tapping into the brain’s natural learning systems. I often share my metaphor that the brain seems to act as if it has SAVE and DELETE keys. It tends to save what is most meaningful or novel and to delete much of the rest. In a sense, the brain, over time, seems to act as if it has auto-delete for much of the information passively received from long presentations unless it is converted to meaningful knowledge by active processes such as conversation.

One of the key reasons that the Gurteen Knowledge Café works so well, therefore, is that David shares a short presentation and orchestrates a series of conversations in a safe environment in which participants are actively engaged in exploring the topic at hand. Since each brain is as unique as a fingerprint, shaped by experience, each participant brings a different perspective. This leads to rich interactions. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that such conversations help participants convert information into meaningful knowledge and actionable insights. One way to help illustrate this is through my CPR formula.

CPR Formula Applied to the Gurteen Knowledge Cafe

A key to improving the probability that participants will benefit from learning events such as conferences or workshops is to minimize the quantity of content covered and to maximize processing time, with multiple processing experiences. I attempt to capture this concept with my CPR formula.

Content x Process = Results
(What) x (How) = (Learning/Insights)

The Gurteen Knowledge Café focuses for a few minutes on the presentation of Content as “grist for the mill.” The vast majority of the time is invested in Processing (small group conversations and large group finale), “milling the grist,” which in turn produces positive Results in terms of high levels of engagement, meaningful learning, and the generation of actionable insights.
Below I identify some other factors that support the effectiveness of the Gurteen Knowledge Café.

Psychological Safety and Active Engagement

We are inherently social beings. A warm welcome from David at the beginning of the session created a sense of psychological safety plus a way to learn a bit about our fellow participants as he greeted us one by one when we came online. The expectation that we were all to contribute to the conversation was established, and this created the need to be actively engaged in the process.

Making Meaning, Generating Actionable Insights

After David set the scene with a brief presentation, we broke into small groups. The prompt question led me to make connections to life experiences, create meaning, and then share insights. I was fascinated as each person shared a brief story. Each conversation led to another insight, and I sensed that we were co-creating deeper meaning. This process was greatly enhanced by having three rounds of small group conversations and a final large group session. Actionable insights include the importance of being curious and nonjudgmental while in conversation with others.

Sustaining Focused Attention

In a traditional presentation, levels of attention may drop over the course of the learning event. And attention is essential for learning and development. The Gurteen Knowledge Café embodies five key components that I have found to support focused attention. I summarize these with my CRAVE framework.

Curiosity. In each small group session, I was curious about what other people’s perspectives would be.
Relevance. The subject matter was relevant to my everyday life.
Asking questions. After a participant shared a story or insight, others would follow up with questions or supportive comments.
Variety. Variety is the spice of attention. Rather than having one speaker as in a traditional presentation, this process generated high levels of attention as we were experiencing a fascinating variety of perspectives from across the globe.
Emotion. The authentic sharing of real-world examples and the experiences of insights being generated supported positive affect and, in turn, high levels of focused attention.

Retaining and Recalling Key Concepts

The combination of the factors described above naturally supported strong retention of some of the core concepts at the center of our conversations. As I write this, I can easily recall stories from a participant from Singapore and someone else who grew up in Iceland. In a sense, these conversations have been added to my memory bank for future use. In essence, “I was hitting the SAVE key.”

Transfer and Application of Learning

Some keys to transfer are strong initial learning, multiple examples of a concept in practice, and metacognition (thinking about thinking). These criteria were met through the multiple stories shared and the metacognitive process of taking a step back to reflect on someone else’s story and connect it to our own. In an unofficial small group process at the end of the Gurteen Knowledge Café, David shared a story about how a friend of his is quite a contrarian. For a long time, he chose not to get into arguments with him until one day, he did and thoroughly enjoyed the process. This was an excellent “transfer tale.”

In conclusion, I think that the Gurteen Knowledge Café works because it taps into how human beings naturally learn, co-create meaning, and generate actionable insights through multiple respectful conversations in a safe and stimulating environment. I am looking forward to exploring ways to apply this process in a variety of organizational contexts.

Marcus Conyers, Ph.D.
BrainSMART Founder and CEO
marcus@brainsmart.org

May 2022

Dr. Marcus Conyers is a developer of the BrainSMART® program for helping organizations to create learning and development initiatives for any audience with any content. Over the last 30 years, he has refined this process by working with 100,000 leaders, educators, and facilitators from a broad range of organizations across the globe. He is an international keynote speaker, co-developer of doctoral courses and graduate degree programs, and author of several books, including Positively Smarter.

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