Hello Filiz
I am not sure what if anything could have been different at your OS
event but a number of things come to mind. One is that I hear you
wishing for the opportunity to bring closure to meetings before people
leave, both OS and other types that you facilitate. I live in the
northern USA and I find that people will all gather around food and
linger for a few extra minutes if there is coffee and roll or cookie.
Perhaps there is a way for you to ritualize the closing that you need
through some commonly shared and enjoyed experience like passing cookies
or a fortune from a cookie or just a wish around the circle to
commemorate the sweetness of working together. Questions that come up
for me are: Is the leaving awkward or difficult culturally in other
types of events and if it is how is it handled?
If it is you and your facilitating that concerns you I commonly use a
process for that. I call this process descriptive review and I use it
to tune my skills and my interpretations of the events I am witnessing.
A small number of people 1-3 act as your observer. They watch you and
take notes on what they see happening in the event. They do not
interpret or judge any actions or statements they simply are there to
report what they see. After the event they take several rounds
todescribe to you what they saw happening. What you said and did and
what they saw and heard other participants doing. After they describe
they can describe how it felt to be there or how it felt to be a learner
or participant in the experience. They can also take another round and
tell you what questions came up for them in the experience. Once they
have finished giving you this information in these different categories
then you can speak. You can respond in any way you want or not at all.
You can ask for a final tuning if you wish by asking them to describe
what they would have needed to see for their questions to be answered.
Good Luck
Pat Black
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