How might we...
- Base Building: How might we improve our engagement with our members/base to build power?
- HMW get clear on the recipe for emotional empowerment?
- HMW measure emotional empowerment?
- HMW measure our capacity to influence emotional empowerment cognitive empowerment and community empowerment at our local renewal team meeting?
Hypothesis
If we have the intention to build emotional/cognitive/community empowerment, then we can build an agenda that influences these things.
Design
Experiment Plan:
Goal: measure emotional empowerment at beginning and end of the Renewal Team statewide meeting.
Strategy: Invite participations to measure themselves at beginning and end of the meeting by asking “on a scale of 1-5 how much do you feel like you can make change”
(Slide was also presented in Spanish)
Participants indicated their data in the chat and we will download results and analyze later.
Roles:
-Lisa: Owner works with Ashlin to determine method of measurement. Analyze results.
-Ashlin: Helper supporting how we will measure and also coordinating with meeting agenda team and chair to present question
-Sloane: Creates slide deck
-Andrew: Runs slide deck on day of meeting, downloads chat and send to Lisa
Metrics
Success:
100% participation in the poll/tool. People know why they were polled/to what organizational or organizing end this served.
People understand why we’re asking these things (but not in a way that influences their responses)
Did we successfully gather data from participants at start and end
Technically it was simple, worked, and easy for participants
Data we can make reasonable assumptions from about people’s impact from baseline
The meeting increased people’s feeling of cog/emotional/community empowerment
Failure:
It was too confusing for people to complete
It felt random or didn’t flow with the meeting
Learnings
Top 3 learnings:
1 -highly motivational speaker + prayer can bring ppl to high emotional empowerment
2 – People need to be holding both the reality of current (bad) conditions and a powerful and optimistic vision for their own power. Need to hold both those things to be able to win.
3 – Our optimism might be the result of a culture of performing optimism for each other in ways that aren’t benefiting us
Other learnings:
- What we thought would be a good venue for measuring (using chat in public meetings) may not have actually been.
- Making sure person who delivers the question is clearer (if Ashlin had done it herself it wouldn’t’ have been in the same energetic light)
- The person who delivered it was very inspirational
- Is there an opportunity to follow up with everyone? Email everyone and ask the question again?
- Let’s get clear on what we learned? Gathering learnings also from Ashlin or other folks on the call. Maybe analysis from Calvin or Andrew just from hearing about it.
- It was an energizing moment – the question wasn’t so much of a data collection question as a rhetorical moment to get people excited.
- People aren’t reliable at reporting emotional empowerment if you just ask them “are you emotionally empowered?” – the key could be figuring out how to ask without asking
- What are ways that we can be paying attention to emotional empowerment in our trainings, in the way organizers interact with leaders, etc. Need to know our starting point.
- Emotional empower is really quickly influenced by tone/person delivering message
Decisions
Want to try again/measure emotional empowerment again at Jan 2 meeting
Questions
HMW learn about the impacts of our work on emotional empowerment over the long term?
What are the factors that influenced emotional empowerment?
- What are we asking?
- Who delivers it?
- What is their tone?