Human to Human • Tenneson Woolf

August 9, 2017

Leadership

I am learning a lot through a team that I’m working with that is planning a series of leadership retreats.

Together, as a core team, we have been challenged to reach below the surface, and below what is below that, to clarify what we even mean by leadership. My goto is a definition from my Berkana Institute days, “a leader is anyone who wants to help.” It’s really important work to do this reaching. And it’s got some tricky edges to it.

Together, as so often is the case with teams, we have been challenged to lean in to our differences and open to a coherence and value in them. That work requires exquisite attention to our relationships, which I’m glad that we have.

Some of what I am learning through this group is about leadership as “refreshing vision, supporting alignment, and championing execution.” That is good stuff. And it’s a package. It sparks a lot in me about what that has to do with a participative approach. Execution has often been the privileged aspect of this trio.

Hmm….

I would suggest that within such leadership practice, this enticing trio, there are masculine expressions and feminine expressions. The masculine has typically meant “being in front of” and has shadow of “going without people, come hell or high water.” The feminine has typically meant “going together in collaboration and listening” and has shadow of “lost in perpetual gooeyness.”

I’m drawn to “leadership as practice” though sometimes it shows up as “position.” And am extremely glad to be around smart people who are able and willing to explore the edges together.

August 8, 2017

Days of The Circle Way

I have many gatherings in the next six weeks that are deliberately focused on The Circle Way. That makes me quite happy — The Circle Way is such a grounding and core methodology that underlays a way of being. There is The Circle Way Practicum August 23-28 on Whidbey Island, teaching with Amanda Fenton — Amanda and I have picked up a twenty year tradition of teaching in Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea’s home teaching space. There is a workshop and a practicum in September in Australia, again with Amanda. This is new territory for both of us, and delightfully partnered with Penny Hamilton from Brisbane. There is a new weekend leadership retreat in mid September in Minnesota with Quanita Roberson and Barbara McAfee, who are both people that I love to laugh with.

I’ve been reviewing this morning some of my notes from the practicum workbook. It gets me quite excited. I love the feeling of added nuance that arrives when it feels like I’m on the on ramp to those events. I get excited to teach. I get excited to play off of what these really skilled teaching companions bring to the table themselves.

One of my favorite learnings about The Circle Way came earlier this year in conversation with Christina. She was framing intent that she and Ann felt very deeply in offering The Circle Way. “We wanted a culturally neutral, light structure to correct what goes awry in so many contemporary forms of meeting.” I’ve always loved the way that Christina can take a deeply spiritual practice and bring it down to the everyday. I’m a pretty natural question catcher. From this statement it makes we want to engage a group around questions of what goes awry in so many meetings, and, what is possible in these meetings?

Circle creates a container for so many of the important conversations needed in the ongoing weave that is humanity. It’s a container for the challenging conversations, the ones that we are often afraid to take on. It’s a container for some of the exciting conversations also, to give them more depth and reach. Wisdom-based change arises from people together. That’s pretty cool. It just needs some support and structure.

I’m grateful for wise people that have guided me. I’m grateful for imaginative and kind teaching companions. I’m grateful to further immerse myself in teachings and practices from The Circle Way over these coming weeks. Because, well, they feel like home in how they animate realness together.

August 7, 2017

Perspective

Thanks Robin Athey, who is on the team for The Art of Hosting: Rising to Our Potential this November 5-8, 2017 in Loveland, Colorado.

Amazing what you can see from from just the right view, isn’t it.

August 3, 2017

Two Kinds of Intelligence

Further to my post yesterday about kinds of expertise, I love this from the great Persian Poet, Rumi.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbok. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from the outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

The second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.