Human to Human • Tenneson Woolf

March 12, 2018

Longing, Courage, Community

I love these words from the book above, that I began reading on the weekend. I sipped this book. Like a comforting cup of warm or hot tea.

“Throughout the years I have found that beneath whatever we might think our discontent is, we very much need three things: an awareness of our inner longing…the courage to act on behalf of that longing…and a sense of community to support and maintain our interior journey.”

Longing.

Courage.

Community.

I love it when I find references that feel so clear, practices that feel so grounding, and narratives that are so good for community.

March 8, 2018

On Circle — Not Mine, But Ours

Though The Circle Way Advanced Practicum that I’m cohosting with Amanda Fenton is nine months away, I find myself thinking about it much. It’s running in the background and foreground for me, like a song that I’m enjoying and is stuck in me. I find myself humming the tune of the practicum yet to be. Humming it into some choices of form.

That leads me to some reflections on circle this morning. It remains the tool beneath tools for me. It remains the way of being that has most altered my life and authenticity of interaction.

Living as circle is a way of being. It brings us into a requisite vibration such that we can now be in relationship to the heartbeat not mine, but ours. To the thinking and feeling not mine, but ours. To the grander scale not mine, but ours. To the inspired and tangible action not isolated, but integrated.

It’s as if we arrive to circle with our backyard simple stream, only to have it transformed, even for a moment, to the mighty Mississippi. We arrive with crevice created from an overnight storm, yet gain access to the wonder of the Grand Canyon. We come with dripping faucet, yet flow with others, for a moment, to the majesty and drenching quality of Victoria Falls.

Circle is the ultimate amplifier.

Humming, yes. Perhaps some of you will join us in December to evolve the practice, each other, and even the core of our personal being.

March 7, 2018

Famished for Awakeness

The last four weeks I’ve been co-teaching with Amanda Fenton an online class about The Circle Way. Twenty-eight people participated from nine countries. It’s been learning filled and delightful in relationship.

Yesterday’s class, the last in the four part series, was designed around people’s questions and interests — “what do you still want to give more attention to?”

Though it wasn’t a question asked directly, I found myself reflecting on why circle works (a question that is beneath many questions). “The circle working” is the desire that most people have, everything from crossed fingers to unwavering commitment. They want and need a more collaborative and thoughtful way of connecting and working together.

I came up with this clarity that I offered to the classes:

Circle works because people are hungry for it. They may not know it, but what they are famished for is hope, awareness, and awakeness. When they can experience that and apply it to their context of work or community, it is life-changing.

What feels important to me in this is recognizing that most people aren’t that interested in being sold on a process. They are not looking for another “thing” (even though mechanized society has so often taught looking for “things”). The grand aha of it, so often, is that through the structure, the invitation, and the most simple questions to engage, people taste an increased honesty and vitality, that is sadly rare in contemporary organizational structure.

That’s the moment. When famished transposes to fulfilled. Even just for a moment.

What a delight to offer this class, and to strengthen use and practice of circle with these good people.

March 6, 2018

Inner + Outer

My friend Quanita Roberson reminds me, “there has to be an ‘I’ in team.” She’s pointing to the importance of a healthy and whole self, differentiated and present.

Another friend has recently pointed me to www.innerengineering.com, which offers practices from the yogic sciences on inner well-being.

Another colleague reminds me in our group facilitation and strategy work that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Plans may be brilliant. And necessary. Without a culture of support, or imagination, or connection — even brilliant plans wilt like water and sun deprived plants.

Beneath each of these reminders is an important teaching. The inner world has massive impact on the outer world. It’s way to easy, and seductive, and common to given 99% of our attention to things “out there”. And 99% of the time, it feels that attention to the “in here” is deemed wasteful, soft, or indulging.

It is my learning that people everywhere are ultimately hungry for the healthy internal (whether as a person or as a team or as a community) to be at the foundation of what is applied out there in our varied contexts of work and community.

My friend Kinde Nebeker and I continue to explore these teachings. Our medium together is The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership. Our next gathering is May 11, 2018 in Snowbird, Utah. I love the language we’ve created to find others that want to be in both the inner and the outer.

Please, peek your head up with us.

It’s the Story Under the Story That Changes Everything

Many of us, as formal and informal leaders, are learning that many of our most needed solutions do not exist in current systems of thought and practice. We work tenaciously in isolation, yet it is connection that brings creativity. We obsessively attribute causality to external circumstance, when it is internal awareness that holds greater promise for evolutionary contribution. Many of us know that we live in a time when we need further metamorphosis of our story of mechanical fidgeting with things and parts. We need awareness and alchemy to replace anxiety and authority that is ungrounded.

IOEL IV is for a different kind of leader and a different kind of story.

• for those irrepressibly compelled to burst into new understandings of reality and to share with their respective teams and organizations

• for those wishing to partner with life’s inherent organizing capacity in more organic, simple and life- enhancing ways

• for those willing to embody matured courage and presence to support real change

• for those hungry to wade further upstream to release us from the torrent of habits, individual and collective, that offer at best convenience and illusion of accomplishment

• for those who realize that the primary practice is consciousness, in which is embedded leadership in organizational system, not the other way around.

IOEL is not a therapy group. It is not a fix. It is a gentle, yet fierce commitment to get real (serious and playful) about exploring paradigmatic edges together and to call bullshit on antiquated yet still rewarded general practice. It is for those of daring to peek our heads above the fray to see who peeks with us. We are not alone.