Author: Tenneson Woolf

Yesterday I spent the day with Steve Ryman and Steve Prather. Our focus in this first of two days together was innovation in health care.

Steve Ryman and I have been together in many settings now: Art of Hosting trainings, working system-wide change in his former public health organization, The Center for Human Development (CHD), and stewarding the beginnings of a Berkana Community of Practice on participative leadership in health care. He’s a easy guy to be with. Insightful. Humble. Very giving. He has a wealth of stories, many of which come from his 35 years with CHD working with a shared leadership model.

Steve Prather and I met a couple of years ago. Our work together is primarily local. Currently in support of Midvale City (Health People, Healthy Community). Steve describes himself as being in his third career. He is a former physician. He spent several years working quality improvement with medical systems. He is now a hungry learner around participative leadership. He too has a wealth of stories. A big heart. A deep longing to improve systems and open some magic with them.

Much of yesterday was about sharing stories in healthcare and our learnings from those stories. Doing so helped me to feel a sense of weaving ourselves together, clarifying a sense of need for innovation in health care, and imagining what we might offer as trainings to health care professionals.

Here’s one from Steve Ryman: “We had just married together two different areas — Public Health with Mental Health. We were beginning to notice the level of poverty and learned helplessness that was carrying from one generation into the next. We really wanted to see if there was something that we could do to stop or curb that. We wanted to dream together. We did, in the form of weekly brown-bag lunch and learn sessions that carried on for a year. We learned together of a few models of what other organizations were doing. We became clear in our belief that all parents begin with a desire to be good parents. As a way of reducing cross-generational patterns, we decided together we would create a Center for Parenting Excellence. We wanted to feed those desires to be good parents. We had a room in our building that wasn’t being used. We all volunteered ourselves (and as our ideas took shape, we gained more support from our respective teams to whom we were accountable). We painted the room. We readied it for engagement, learning, and training around parenting. Without our brown-bag sessions that center wouldn’t have been created. Me met. We dreamed. And then we created.”

On we go into a second day together. Today will be about converging our ideas into more specific format for a training that we can offer to health care professionals. And likely a few more stories too.

• Moshe Feldenkrais on mind / body work and somatic education: “What I am after is more flexible minds, not just more flexible bodies.”
• RT @TEDWomen: Naomi Klein: The most destructive idea of all?: We all believe that at the last minute, we’re all going to be saved. #TEDWomen
• Sister Barb at #HCC: we are prophets of a future not our own.
• Ann Kendrick at #HCC: I’d like to exterminate those squirrels in my head. But I only know how to cage them up sometimes.
• Teresa Posakony at #HCC: There is always a top in organizations. It is the energizing structures that make that healthy for all.
• Ann Kendrick at #HCC: When we’re connected, even the trouble doesn’t feel like trouble.
• What would make our community partnering in 2011 wildly successful? At Hope Community Center. #hcc
• Service Learning as container for community work. Not fixing. Not even helping. Rather, Sr. Kendrick: learning in mutual relationship. #hcc
• Taggin’ on our braggin’ at Hope Community Center. Chaordic path as framework for learning and improving. Working groups on challenges. #hcc
• Meeting new friends at Hope Community Center in Apopka, FL. Facilitating next two days on next levels of learning and agreements.

It is not knew for me to feel that I learn a lot with my kids. I’ve always loved being a Dad with them and learning about that. I’ve also always loved being a soul-traveller with them. The adventures we have together in regular day to day life often offer some of the most reaching and important teachings I experience and need in broader life. Here’s some picked up this weekend in our together time.

From Zoe, fifteen years old — offer something that feeds a relationship.

This comes from awareness of her full and engaged teenaged life. Friends to be with. She is alive and excited in her social life, being with a growing group of male and female friends. She has many commitments — church service, piano, homework. She can be busy each and every minute of the day. And often is. In my hunger to honor where she is, and support the depth of our relationship, I find myself inviting her to offer something that feeds the time that we have together. Some deliberateness of time. Some deliberateness of attention. Something amidst all of the busyness of a full and vibrant life. What a gift to feel my heart longing for our special connections and to find myself reawakened to the broader principle of offering something to feed the relationships I am in.

From Isaac, thirteen years old — be curious.

In the last month, I’ve had several different friends and colleagues stay at my home. Edgard Gouveia Jr. from Brazil and the Berkana Exchange network, Steve Ryman from the Art of Hosting Community of Practice, Thomas Arthur from Earthanima. With each I’ve noticed myself looking for a simple way that I could support Isaac in interacting with them. What is it that I could say to him that would help him to feel at ease with them so that he can enjoy so much of what I love in these friends, and, so that they can enjoy so much of what I love in Isaac. Isaac is naturally quite good at this — just be curious. Ask them about who they are, what it’s like to be them, what it’s like where they live, etc. He has such a kind heart. What a gift to see him in his simple curiosity, building friendships.

Elijah, five years old — it’s ok to pause.

Elijah is this fantastic five year old. So ready for engagement. So much wanting to play. So much appreciating friends. He has a kind of hunger that is beautiful to be in so much engagement. He wants to play a game. Great. It often seems before the game is complete, he’s asking about being able to play it again or about playing another game. The same with eating. Before completing a meal, he often asks about another meal. Or dessert. He’s like a lot of what I remember with Zoe and Isaac at this age of life. I find myself sharing with Elijah, in his excitement of life (and in my fatigue sometimes as Dad), that a pause is a good thing. It’s ok to pause. It’s good to honor the completion of one thing before needing to launch into another. Thank you Elijah for helping me to remember this in all of the projects that I’m a part of.

Offer something. Be curious. Pause. Good teachers, these beautiful kids that I get to journey with in this life.

Our local Practitioners Circle met for the last time in 2010. A lovely circle hosted and harvested by friend and colleague, Jane Holt of the Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community.

Jane invited us together to support a civility initiative:

The SLCEC is joining in a collaboration with Salt Lake City and the State of Utah in a state-wide project called Utah Civility and Community 2011 Initiative. SLCEC will be meeting with community groups in four regional meeting and in specific communities to invite citizens to be in conversation about civil discourse and the importance of engaging in citizen conversations that matter for their community. In our participative circle this month I am inviting input from our group to begin creating critical questions that we may use in the convenings planned throughout the state. I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts on what it means to be “civil”  and to be in a “civil dialogue”. You may have a story to share where you have experienced or observed a lack of civility. I am looking forward to what you can help me create on behalf of the Utah Civility and Community 2011 Initiative. I hope you can join me in this conversation.

Developing Critical Questions for a community conversation on Civility in Public Discourse.

If you were invited to a community discussion on Civility (in public discourse), what are the critical

questions you would like to talk about with your friends and neighbors?

The harvest of questions is here.

I particularly like the way the Jane helped us to meet in inquiry, to begin to explore questions that would support this initiative. I can imagine using these questions in an exercise to help participants begin with inquiry and deepen their own questions.

Nice work.