I’m working this week in Texas. With my colleagues and friends, Caitlin Frost and Chris Corrigan. Our client system is University of North Texas. It’s deans, department chairs, university leadership. Good people. I’m really enjoying the learning together and the play together among all of us. Today is Day 2 of 3. This is the third time we’ve been able to offer this Art of Participatory Leadership 3-Day training and retreat with UNT’s leadership (a different group of 40 each time).
The photo above is taken from my window this morning. It’s great to see a sunrise again coming over flat lands and prairies. Where I live, sunrise happens over the Wasatch Mountains. That means that first light is light bent over the peaks. And early morning orange ball of sun doesn’t happen. Yes, I do feel that we are supporting a kind of illumination together in this offering at UNT.
I think of today’s agenda, Day 2, as about deepening in. We’ve said hello together on Day 1. We’ve created added connection together. We’ve invited another kind of learning as community. We’ve started to explore theory and frameworks. Today moves us into a couple of broad chunks that deepen all of that. 1) Working with Limiting Beliefs. It’s amazing how these broad and extensive patterns of thought from our inner worlds have impact on our outer worlds. 2) Open Space Technology. I love the liberation that comes from a process designed to welcome people to self-organize to working and exploration groups.
Today, we continue the narrative. Evolving what we do and how we do it. I’m glad for that. A version of that evolving is in the poem I wrote below.
dd
This Much I Know
Follow the spark of yes,
to be in learning.
to be in community.
Trust that there is guidance,
even providence,
to take me and us,
swinging beyond the edge of the known.
I am mostly convinced
that there is
self
organizing
naturally.
We all have inner longing;
and we all need community to grow courage,
This much I know.