STARS Knowledge Café

STARS and the Café for knowledge sharing and enhancement

The events use the STARS knowledge café approach. The café approach and the event topic are introduced by the event moderator Han van Loon. Participants are seated in a café style arrangement of 5 to 8 people per table. The moderator provides several discussion start points (aspects of the Topic), which are allocated to tables with selection by the participants. Each participant discusses aspects of the topic that are important to him/her. Participants are able to write, draw or sketch pictures and other information on paper sheets covering each table. There are several rounds of conversation, each takes 10 to 15 minutes. A table host notes the most important aspects discovered and discussed at each table. Participants can choose to be "travellers" and change tables each round. At the end of all the rounds, the people at each table provide a summary to all participants of the most interesting and relevant points covered. The event results in not just one viewpoint (that of the moderator) but a range of viewpoints based on the input of all participants.

Participant comments

"Thanks again for this great Stars evening last week in Zürich. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot while being there. I admired the way you have been there, so calm, so open, ready to talk to everybody, supporting everybody. I believe that people really enjoyed being with you because of the way you treated them."
Heidi Röthlisberger
“Thank you again for the facilitation of the Leadership Cafe. I would be very interested in future café topics."
Thomas Menthe, Management Centre Europe.
“Dear Han, the event yesterday was very inspiring and I even had a personal revelation about leadership."
Udo Sollberger, Young Enterprise, Switzerland
"The moderator has a natural born leader's style"
Massimo Chiaia, Credit Suisse.
"Ich habe mich sehr gefreut, Dich während des XING Knowledge Cafés "Leadership" kennenlernen zu dürfen. Bis bald mal wieder in Zürich!"

Agnieszka Rachwal Müller
"I participated in last week's "Leadership" knowledge café. I liked the idea and the form of the event, and I went back home with some food for thought."

Rainer Fischer
"The Cafe approach is really effective: 2 hours and the changing tables is perfect to get as many new ideas about the 7 or 8 aspects of Leadership. I was most interested in the EQ, Values and modeling of excellence of Leadership."
Tomas