I’m hosting today. With my good friends, Chris and Caitlin. Our work and friendship together now goes back twenty years. It’s an online webinar for university leaders. It’s on participatory decision-making. It’s a wrap-up event for a cohort of 25, sponsored by the university Provost and President. The three-day in-person event took place earlier this year. Sweet to be in learning and practice in this way.
These two diagrams above anchor the learning that have been important to me. Both diagrams come from Chris and Caitlin. One, from nearly 20 years ago when we were teaching together in our early Art of Hosting days. The other on the right, is updated a bunch by Chris and Caitlin. It’s good material on the basics, and on the nuanced needs that go with each of these phases of participation and then decision making.
Still love and find helpful the basic map. Divergence. Groan Zoan. Emergence. In the spirit of “all life is meeting (Martin Buber)” and “all life is relationship”, this map and the exercises that go with it point to a relationship with many important practices and ways of being — with exploration. With aha. With perseverance. With emergence. With courage. With shared clarity.
Here we go.