Author: Tenneson Woolf

Tomorrow I’m hosting a half day workshop, The Practice of Circle, with one of my local colleagues, Kathy Lung. We are anticipating 15-20 participants. Our workshop includes three main parts: 1) the experience of being in circle, 2) teaching and sharing stories about the core aspects of circle, and 3) inviting participants to practice / host a circle while we are together. There will be space for good reflection, questions, and coming to know each other more as a group of local practitioners. Our overall intention is to help participants get enough of the bones to start using circle, practicing it as a leadership methodology, and / or growing what they already know in a way that serves self, each other, and our communities / projects.

For workshops like this, really for all of the gatherings I convene, the beginnings matter a lot to me. That point at which we set context for what we will do during the time together. This a time rich with opportunity. A time to create a container for learning and for letting go. A time to signal and invite a deeper level of participation and intention. A time to show up real and welcome the real that can show up in others. A time to invite a particular energy or frequency of energy if you will.

In thinking about tomorrow, as one point of context I’ll offer, I’m remembering this: “You can learn circle in a day. But it takes a lifetime to master.” This was spoken to me by a participant and lovely man, Victor Branagan, at an Art of Hosting event earlier this year in Sweden. He came up to me, and in a mix of playfulness and awareness, shared that observation with me. He actually spoke it more broadly about overall hosting and harvesting conversations. I believe that Victor was seeing some of the many subtleties that go into things like: showing up present, inviting others to be present, naming purpose and focus by being in our questions together, listening well together, and harvesting.

I am one who believes in deep practice, the kind of mastery that Victor was pointing too. I am one who believes it is important to keep learning into the deeper levels of awareness and practice. It is important to see the depth of practice in the very simple principles. And yes, this is over a lifetime. Yet I am also one who believes we must start now. We must practice now. The level of projects that any of us are called into, the projects that we care about, the ones we can’t not do — these require are skill, our leadership, and our attention now. Whether convening neighbors into a conversation about safety or convening teams working on statewide use of energy. They require from us the kind of things we learn in a day, sometimes even as complete beginners, and our courage to offer that out now.

Learned in a day, yet mastered over a lifetime.

Thanks Victor. From Sweden to Salt Lake City.

Last week I met with friends in Seattle who are beginning to imagine a learning event in their area. It was a meeting at the home of Sheri Herndon, round a living room table, sharing tea, four of us (Sheri, Christy Lee-Engle, Teresa Posakony, myself). Friends feeling a desire to bring together other friends and colleagues who care about similar work and that want to make a difference in our communities. In health and wellness. In sustainability. In education. In building a connectedness and capacity that can be unleashed in an instant for whatever the needs are.

Our focus was on social innovation, a topic around which there is now a lot of interest and excitement. This builds for me on a few things: 1) a model I’ve used for the last several years with Berkana, 2) an event I’m co-hosting later this month in Nova Scotia, and 3) another event I might support and co-host with Bob Stilger in mid May in Japan. Social innovation. The way that people are coming together in networks and communities of practice to create influence and change. No longer are we as people waiting for organizations to lead the way. There are now simple tools and social technologies that are repatterning how people come together to work at large scales, formerly a possibility solely restricted to large corporations, governments, or religious organizations. Clay Shirky says much of this well in his book, Here Comes Everybody, including descriptions of what conditions have changed.

Social innovation. Four friends. Imagining. What could we learn further about this art of hosting social innovation? What could we create and commit to as practices together — not master plans, but instead master practices — that support the needs of this community?What could we further learn about accelerating the plethora of “what” needs in our communities with the “how” of community in social tools and methodologies? What are the deeper levels of consciousness that we could reach together that hold the energy of transformation to match the transformation of this human era?

It was Teresa who spoke the crystal clarity, intentions that were among us, intentions that I’m now carrying with me into many places.

Work in harmony at the scale of our dreams.

Meet in friendship and vision to be in leaderful community at its highest learning.

Work from longing in the spirit of transformation, yet grounded in real needs of our world.

It is a time for communities to come into next levels of leaderfulness. I see this everywhere I go. Social innovation. Many of us creating the next level of story that can hold the bigness of work and the abundance of people who want to help.

Fascinating to be with friends. Have tea. Notice together what we wouldn’t have if alone. Thanks Sheri, Teresa, Christy-Lee.

Earlier this month Chris Corrigan, Teresa Posakony, Steven Wright and I teamed up to work with Janie Leask, Liz Medicine Crow, and a bunch of other great people at First Alaskans. Our focus over four days was creating healthy and thriving community. I really appreciate the role First Alaskans plays to convene and catalyze, and in particular to promote and practice together First Alaskans’ values. Richly blessed to be there. I feel a great bunch of new friends and colleagues. I feel a confidence, a wow, in these new friends when I think of the work that they are engaged in. And I am particularly impacted in this journey by the work of practical decolonization as Chris references it. This focus has taken deep root in me and carried with me in a stronger way since being there. I’m paying attention very differently.

Gratitude again for this journey.

Below are a few harvest offerings:

Reshaping Our Community: Flow Game — Dialogue Poem

Anchorage Practitioners: Why Conversation Matters — Dialogue Poem

Photos — Event

Photos — Iditarod, Beluga Point

Have had such a full month working with great people and teams. Less time for blogging. Perhaps even more accurately, additional time needed to sit quietly to integrate a wealth of experiences, and be as present as I can in the work.

I’m looking through some of those notes along the way. Keeping some. Discarding others. Filing a few. Here’s one that reflects a conversation with Chris Corrigan. I asked him one day, “what are you learning about your blogging practice?” My desire was to pay attention to what I was noticing in my own practice and learn together. Below are a few gems. Thanks Chris.

-in this world of open source learning, when I write it, it becomes part of me
-to share, to offer as one form of learning into a bigger field of co-learners
-blogging is a modern form of scratch pad, a place to make notes and learn in public
-a place to record my curiosity — a kind of fieldnotes
-a place to harvest learning that influences design work
-an improvisational canvas
-a medium for contributing to and bringing social communities together
-a practice of generosity — to link learnings to those with whom we are learning
-a medium to remember the whole — these times includes such a wild ride and experiment in living in self-organized systems

Already these practices are common for younger generations. And social technologies abound. I marvel at what is common place for my teenaged children that was not part of my younger life. Such an opportunity to express. And to learn. To connect. And I believe, to reform our brains and minds. Ah yes, a bigger topic for another day — this evolution of humanity in simple tools and practices that are new for our time.