• Easing the coordination between different working teams
• Overcoming barriers/obstacles/organizational tensions
• Finding solutions together to the organizational problems of all.

Duration : 60 minutes

> What is a Sorting meeting?

The “Sorting meeting” is a special meeting that aims to help small groups to overcome the organizational obstacles they can face when coordinating to take action together. It is a fast meeting whose main goal is to find solutions, not to debate. It requires from the participants to be assertive and go straight to the point.

> Requirements to use the tool

Before the meeting ask to the different groups that have to coordinate each other to list the “tensions” they encounter and to choose 2 representatives that will assist to the meeting.

By “tensions” we mean the “zones of uncertainty” related to the coordination, the needs they have in terms of material or information in order to achieve what they need to do.

> The meeting

• 1/ Setting the frame

Start the session by introducing some basic rules, reminding the objectives and the timing of the meeting (= 1 hour maximum) :

• The speech is given by the facilitator;
• Participants need to be assertive as the time is short;
• It is a coordination meeting, not a debate. The participants are here to find solutions together to achieve their common goal.
• The meeting is divided in 5 steps: each step has specific constrains.

• 2/ Opening round : get connected to yourself

This round is for the group to listen, to share and to take into consideration the emotional state of all the participants of the meeting. Everyone will have a chance to speak about its emotional feelings at this stage of the project.
The participants (only the 2 representatives of each group) are part of the circle. The rest of the group can look but cannot participate in it.
One by one the participants will take the speech to express freely how they feel, for 1 minute max each. If the speech comes to them and they are not ready to talk, they can pass and the speech will come back to them. No reactions are allowed, it is neither a discussion nor a debate.

• 3/ News from the groups: what has been done and what is left to be done

In few words, without any comments or reactions from the others, each group will explain to the others how is it going in the group they are representing: what has been done so far, what is in progress, and what is left to be done.

• 4/ Agenda : co-creating the agenda of the meeting

One by one each person will give one tension of its group by using keywords (ex: space, material…). The facilitator will take notes and write them one after the other.
The order is very important as in the next stage they will be treated one by one and in the specific order they were told. The participants are therefore asked to prioritize them so the more urgent ones will be discussed. The facilitator will give the speech to everyone in the circle in a specific order (clockwise or anti-clockwise) until all the tensions have been said.

• 5/ Sorting process

As said before, the tensions will be discussed one by one following the agenda created in the previous stage. The facilitator will give the speech to the person that gave the first tension so that he/she can explain what is the need behind the tension. (Ex: for “space”, it can be: “We, the X group, need the big room for one hour so that we can ….”).

This will be followed by an open discussion to find a solution to it. Either the participants to the meeting have enough information and they can solve it, either they will need to look for the solution outside of the meeting. In this case, they will choose one person to take the responsibility of finding what is needed and to get back to the group in a specific timing.

Once the tension has been sorted out, we go to the next, and so on and so forth until either all the tensions are sorted out or the time is over.
(Usually it happens that as they sort out the tensions on the top of the list, some others get sorted out also).

• 6/ Closing round

The final round is similar to the opening one, as the idea is to share how the participants feel (their emotional state) after being through the process.

• Flipchart to take notes
• Chairs for the participants to sit