Author: Tenneson Woolf

Some brilliant and thoughtful words here on the OST listserve from OST practitioner Lisa Heft. I love the emphasis she is offering on the OST format for holding the space for a group to do its work. I also love the distinction of what is the group’s work and what is the facilitator’s relationship to conflict and resolve. Great stuff here for any practitioner deepening his / her ability for the complex environments in which we use OST and other participative methodologies.

My observation is that many individuals – which therefore includes facilitators – are conflict-averse. We see something we name as conflict, and we either want to avoid it or solve it away. We are not very good at sitting with it; breathing through it. I am talking about those conflicts where your life is not immediately in danger but instead where voices are raised and people are angry and upset.

And for some of our cultures – what one culture sees as conflict (raising of voices, dramatic gestures, angry faces) – another culture sees as passion or simply as expression and communication. So all those cultural filters are at work (us, our groups, our personal / cultural style, our family-of-origin / relationship history – oh so many things).

So to me – as a facilitator – my job is to know:
– what is the group’s work (and what is my own internal work)
– to breathe (and to breathe as a way to hold space for others)
– to do thoughtful work (including the pre-work and analysis for / selection of best-fit dialogue process)
– and to care for self and others (in specific ways like making sure I am hydrated, rested and fed, and holding in my heart and mind that their work is their own and that I think they are amazing).

Conflict without violence is to me – passion. Someone struggling to name their own truth – which while not perhaps true for others, is true for them, at that moment.

Harrison I disagree with you – I don’t think conflict is something that can often be resolved in a single meeting. By a single intervention. Resolution is not what I seek by offering Open Space as one of the possible tools for a certain meeting. The ability to breathe through conflict – to witness rage without blows – to be able to walk away (and walk back in) – to hear another person’s story (without trying to solve or change it) – these are all the things that an Open Space (of two days, ideally) can offer. Resolution? Take any human behavior – there are so many things that inform and change and hold in place certain behaviors. The meeting is just one part of someone’s life, life history, life after the meeting, real life ‘on Monday’, social norms, support for change and so on. But what the meeting can do as the ‘massage’ so the human can witness their own inner dialogue, feel witnessed, notice and wonder, try to articulate, stumble through, step back and step back in? Amazing. 

I say two days ideally because in any process – including Open Space – on Day 1 people are often naming their grief and loss. Day 2 does not magically change that but with the overnight, with eating together, with feeling witnessed as they tell their story again and again on Day 1 – seems like enough people shift a bit on Day 2 to not lose their own story but walk forward into imagining a slightly different story, together. 

As you say, Harrison, ‘…given the time / space to do it.”

It is what happens before the meeting and afterward that also count. Which is why I think of Open Space or any other facilitated process as one in a chain of steps of change and shift as part of a greater whole.

This is a poem by the Irish poet, David Whyte. It is one that I have liked for a long time. And lately, it has been coming back to me often. There are a few key lines in it that have felt helpful as I’ve worked with colleagues, clients, and my inner stirrings. “…the world was made to be free in….” This is one of those lines that inspires such a beautiful and needed invitation — what if we were to follow our freedom (in the evolution of a project, team, plan)? What if we human beings were to welcome with more compassion for ourselves and others a full range of experience and freedom to be in our brilliance? Want brilliance; invite freedom. Want sustainable commitment; invite freedom. This goes against what many of us were taught in management schools. Yet, it is perhaps a significant part of the evolution of how we transform the way we do leadership.

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

 is too small for you.

Thank you David Whyte.

I work as a consultant. Often I reference myself as a facilitator. I’ve found this an easy way to start talking with people. I design and lead meetings. Why? To help people be smart together. All of my work is from a participative leadership perspective. Living systems, self-organization, and emergence inspire my work. This is one version of a simple starting description that is authentic for me.

I learned something important this week in working with a client. On the surface, it appeared to be personal. And perhaps silly. Yet it has extreme relevance to the professional. And feels quite seriously helpful. Interesting how this is often so. Like a professional coach or partner showing up right before us through the experience of the seemingly unrelated personal.

I was with a corporate client. We had finished our event, three days together in a leadership retreat. It was fairly involved, mixing together dynamics and needs of third and fourth generation family owners, senior management, and external directors on their board. It was time to say goodbye. Some shook hands. Some hugged.

As I approached one person, she somewhat jokingly said, “Do I have to hug you?” I’m a hugger. Very comfortable for me. I responded playfully, yet honestly. “You don’t HAVE to hug me, but you are welcome to.” She had already reached out to hug before I’d finished speaking. “Oh good,” is what I said. We both laughed.

Through reflecting on that personal experience some important principles crystalized in me that are good for the professional. I see them as important, reaching principles of invitation, welcome, and freedom for working in participative leadership formats. And as a practice of kindness.

1. Differentiation
I don’t really know what to call this, but this is the best I can find now. It is removing need. Perhaps decoupling. Removing requirement or obligation. It is a welcome of an individual or group to be where s/he or they feel they need to be. It is removing any of the imposition that I might subtly have of wanting them to want what I want. With my story, an energetically clear, “if you need to not hug, then don’t.” In organizations and with teams, a deep and significant invitation for them to reclaim their freedom and authenticity. For those of us who are consultants, this helps us pay attention to the distinction of what we want (or want them to want) and what they need. I often experience this through the process methodology of Open Space Technology. I often describe OST as a simple process for creating self-organized working groups. Yet, at deeper levels, it is an invitation to reclaim freedom of choice. And something in that, though different as operational practice, is kind.

2. Appreciating
Appreciating the person or the group being in their learning. Whatever that might be for them. This is of course related to the differentiation. It is honoring the individual place and timing of learning. Of observing. Of sense-making. In my story, it was honoring, the place of learning for that person, even if it might be different than mine. Celebrating it. High-fiving it. Way to go. Brought forward from the awareness of a smart and thoughtful person before me. A good, capable human being. Not needing that person or organization to be in my learning, but rather in hers / theirs. This is a kind of Bodhisattva positioning that seems grounded in appreciation of that persons journey. It is not just tolerating another persons learning, but trusting the right-timing of it for that person.

3. Offering
This is kindness and responsibility to me. A responsibility of kindness even. It is what ties together the differentiation and the appreciation. It offers the kindness of welcoming the person to their own timing of readiness. The offer is, “If you want to invite me in to exploring more of that with you, you are welcome to do so. As a listener. As a witness. As a friend. As a thinking partner.” It is important to note that this is not a requirement. And that it must be genuine. Perhaps it is more kind not to offer when the offer is not genuine. Hmmm…. Just an offer that encourages people to notice the resources and the kindness around them. It is interesting to me that there is some relationship to this principle and the intimacy of relationship. On the one hand, intimacy creates an already open channel for this to offering to be in place. And also, from another view, intimacy creates some blocks or old habits that are more hard to get past in these steps.

4. Empathy
Again, I’m not sure if this is the right word, but the best I can come up with for now. It is a kind of awareness that there are times when each of us are clear and, in this framing, could stand in clear differentiation, appreciation, and offering. However, as it seems so often, most human beings don’t stand there all of the time. There are times when I may need to ask for the first three things of you. To not need something from me. To simply appreciate and celebrate that I am learning or that I am being worked in ways that are helpful. And to welcome my ask for some help. It is a way of saying, “I’m good with where you are. And clear. And now I can offer something. At others times, it may not be so. I might ask the same of you.”

Yes, it’s all a personal story. Seemingly silly. But not, really. What if these were practices and understandings on teams, across teams. What if they were agreements of compassion and learning with each other. Agreements of honoring the natural timing and evolution of the things we need to work on together. Practices of kindness to bring out the best of us in the the best timing possible. That all feels… helpful to me. And inviting.

Appreciating this collection of resources and case studies that the hosting team for an event in California has compiled. Also loving the beauty of their invitation and the ease of accessibility and information shared.

CASE STUDIES

AOH SUCCESS WORKS EVALUATION REPORT 2011 (1.1M)

HERO TO HOST: A STORY OF CITIZENSHIP IN COLUMBUS, OHIO (3.5M)

LEARNING TO CO-CREATE THE SOLUTIONS WE SEEK: THE ART OF HOSTING A NONPROFIT (2.3M) Written by Jeannel King for The Master of Nonprofit Management Program at Regis University in 2007. Presented research explores the potential of Art of Hosting methodology and practices applied in a non-profit context.

PRACTITIONERS GATHERING, EUROPE 2012 (992K)

THE LOTUS: A PRACTICE GUIDE FOR AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY (15M) This practice guide is the result of thesis research by our very own Dana Pearlman, as well as Christopher Baan and Phil Long, for the Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, in 2011. Their research consists of literature review, and interviews and surveys with 33 facilitators, hosts and change agents working on trans- formational change and/or sustainability, from around Europe, North America and Africa.