Author: Tenneson Woolf

In this case, inspire me and others to be in a new story. New story of change. Of who we are as humans. Of our ability to see the new and welcome it.

I read both in Meg Wheatley’s book, Perseverance.

“When his ship first came to Australia, Cook wrote, the natives continued fishing, without looking up. Unable, it seems, to fear what was too large to be comprehended.”

Jane Hirschfield, Poet

“We’re never ever gonna survive unless we get a little bit crazy.”

Seal, Singer / songwriter

Has me thinking of dialogues that feel important. What might we not see in a new story because it is so big? How might we welcome added capacity to be crazy?

Many people that I know through Art of Hosting trainings (participants) are very hungry to be in regular contact with each other. Five – six years ago, that hunger was fulfilled through periodic phone calls, or list-serves, or other form of electronic connection. People lived in different geographic regions of the country, continent, and world. More currently, the pattern has been groups of people able to meet face-to-face locally. Eighty-five per cent of participants tend to be local. Local learning communities are forming to support each other in their projects. Many are carrying forward their learnings from the Art of Hosting, growing the more loose association of a network into a deliberate community of applied practice.

This is all good news. Yet, I’ve noticed that many people are wondering what form to meet in. What design. Sometimes it seems that the broad experience of three days together blurs the clarity of what to do with each other when there is two hours to meet. How can we do all of that in two hours!

Here is a format I’ve been recommending that has been helpful. With a couple of gratitudes. One to friend and colleague, Kelly McGowan in New York. She and a few other local colleagues offered a starting format for community of practice circles, every month, that were project focussed (their prototype is here). A second gratitude is to Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea of PeerSpirit. They were my first teachers in the process of Circle, with is the best format I know for people to retouch a deep center of purpose together and then ground conversation in practical work and essential learning.

In this case, assuming a group of up to about 12 people meeting for two hours.

Intentions
-a group of colleagues supporting each other in applied practice of hosting methods (and frameworks, and world view) to grounded work
-co-learning (even though each meeting is focussed on one project, the learning often applies to everyone’s current work)
-meet in inquiry, the magic of what is available in the group that isn’t available as an individual

Prework
-a simple and clear invitation so that people can know, and deliberately choose to come, and that offers a synopsis of the project focus for that time

Design
-10 minutes Welcome & Context (sit in circle; rename the project; the project host names the inquiry that is important to them, tells some of the story of why this matters to them)
-20 minutes Checkin (welcome each person to speak a bit personally of how they are, or to share anything that helps them be present; also have each person speak a bit on how they connect to the project focus of the evening)
-45 minutes Deepening (offerings of questions to the project host, open conversation about the issues, responses to the particular help that the project host has requested, relating stories, etc.)
-10 minutes Break
-20 minutes Harvest & Reflective Learnings (pass a talking piece on what each has learned and how it connects to the specifics of the project, as well as the general principles in conversational leadership; reflections from the project host on specific learnings; helps to have someone offer to harvest as they participate to give to the project host; notice together what had particular energy as the group interacted and learned; capture this and make it visible on flipchart that can be photographed and shared with all; this is also a time for offerings — some will offer specific bits of support or collaboration with the project host)
-10 minutes Checkout (have each speak to what they leave with; appreciations, gratitudes)

Of course there are many variations of this that will work. Great. These are a few essentials that just work. And our grounded in the deeper theory and patterns of conversational leadership and hosting conversations. And keep people in their learning and application of what they learn.

This is all something to practice. Have some fun with. To be light with. To be serious with. And, I would say, a way of tending to the work that we know we must do, with boldness, with deliberateness, and with simplicity and clarity.

I’m enjoying a bit of reading this morning. From my balcony on a sunny and warm summer day. Before I dive into a bunch of email and project tasks. In many ways it feels like I don’t have time, or shouldn’t make time for this reading. Yet, I can’t help but be drawn to the wellness of exploring some ideas. These always tend to ground my project work. And help me to feel a wellness that I know many of us seek in these busy and changing times.

I’m enjoying two books. One is “Perseverance,” by Meg Wheatley. It is a short book. One to carry with you. Read a page or two here and there. Open it randomly to a page and welcome a thought for the day. Meg is a master conversation starter in person and in her writings. This book is a great resource for those purposes, and the outcomes of wellness that show us when a community practices inquiry and listening together.

Today’s pages were on Choice, Being Stuck, and Control. I love the way Meg has woven her thinking into quotes and poems. This one today by the Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi, “Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk. And this is the edge of the roof.” Meg offered it with her short piece on Stuck. It is an invitation to notice our patterns when we are stuck, when we feel stuck.

The second book is one I’ve been reading for a while. Each time I pick it up I feel a particular energy with it. Clay Shirky’s, “Here Comes Everybody.” I reference this book a lot. Shirky helps me to feel the energy of working with self-organization and emergence through the stories he tells and the principles he shares.

Today, some inspirations from a chapter, “everyone is a media outlet.” Shirky describes the “mass amateurization” of media. Many avenues to name news and amplify it through connected networks and “radical spread of expressive capabilities.”

Both these books help me to feel more of the pulse of work that I am in. Clarity. Insight. And a lot of joy on a summer morning on a balcony.

Two weeks ago I worked with a community in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Thirty-four people with focus on improving health and access to health services in Klamath County. We spent a day together. One of the questions I wanted to explore during our afternoon open space was about the most simple ways to mobilize a community in support of health. How to unleash a community movement?

Six of us gathered and came up with something playful and and I believe, helpful. We were thinking together about how we could get many people — everyone — talking about heath in a way that would have the community talking not only about health, but about the way that everybody is talking about it. Like the way a people might in casual conversation talk about current events. At that time the Football World Cup was on. We wanted to learn from the way that people were talking about that. We wanted to find a simple question and activate the energy of that question.

For me this applies not only to the people of Klamath in this county health initiative, but to many others that I am working with. Sometimes it is a question about leadership. Sometimes a question about strengthening families. Sometimes a question about health.

The gems from Klamath Open Space included:

-start by just asking the question, “what have you done today that you feel was healthy?” To anyone. Anywhere. In casual settings. In serious settings. The question itself matters and could be altered. However, the idea of people everywhere asking a simple question like this has appeal.
-“deputizing” those we ask to ask others. It might start as a “Volunteer County Health Research Initiative.” That’s the more formal part. The informal part is just inviting others to ask the question of one person during the day, and of themselves.

I don’t mean to over-simplify. Over over-dramatize. I do, however, feel there is something really important to pay attention to in how we can mobilize a culture with the most simple question. Unleash it on itself. Much energy for this as a way to work with networks to create change. The inquiry itself inspires the change in those asking.

Thanks to Bob, Steve, Joel, Jim, and Catherine in particular for their creative thinking and support.