Author: Tenneson Woolf

Last week I participated on a team call for those organizing, calling, and hosting and upcoming Art of Hosting in Kariskrona, Sweden. We were towards the end of our call. We asked each other about harvest. What harvest would be helpful? What could we plan on? What tools might we want available as resources? Not having enough time to respond, these questions stuck with me over the weekend. I could hear the voice of my friend Chris Corrigan reminding me to give this full attention. So here are a few resources and thoughts on harvesting that feel important with design teams.

1. What you intend to harvest influences tools you use. If the intention is a report, then that will influence how we gather information. If the intention is relationships, then that will influence the design choices we make.

2. Pay attention to portability and visibility. For those not at the event, what are the forms of harvest that can be shared as further invitation? Are there particular mediums that the system can hear and see better than others? And for those of us at the event, what forms activate the energy that was felt? What can help move an “event” to next levels of scale?

3. Pioneer new forms. I’ve written before about four forms of harvesting: content, process, relationships, and energy field. The most common tradition is content. Reports. The least is energy field, that rewiring that happens for us. Yet, it is the most lasting. See this blogpost from work with a community health organization (the last part) for more.

4. Harvest in partnership with sponsors. Sometimes we have sponsors and organizations that just go along with us. They offer support and partnership for new efforts. They accept our invitation to work with emergence, yet still operate within a planned outcomes political climate.

See also this blogpost inspired by one of my conversations with Chris, his framing of interior and exterior harvests.

This week I was able to connect with Diana Smith. She is among other things, a consultant in Victoria, British Columbia, through Ecosol and The Ginger Group Collaborative. She is also an educator. A great thinker. Soulful. Practical. Integrated. Diana and I have known of each other for about ten years, meeting through a Berkana Institute event that I co-created. We’ve touched in with each other a bit over the years. Yet, in a way that feels just ready, within the last year, have been participants together at a conference on Leadership in a Self-Organizing World, co-designers for a recent Art of Hosting on Vancouver Island, and now designing together again for an upcoming Art of Hosting in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s been a good year with Diana!

Our conversation this week was about what it means to steward the Art of Hosting. I appreciated Diana’s starting point. Stewarding is a strong word. She doesn’t take it lightly. She had several questions about what it means to do so. Together we also had many questions. What is different between hosting and other forms of leadership? In other words, what needs to be stewarded? What is the importance of brand and integrity of brand? What does brand mean when it is held by an amorphous network of people rather than trademarked or copyrighted by an organization? What is accountability in a network? Like it is with many great conversations, we found insights and many new questions.

One of the most helpful insights that I carried away from our call was the notion of “fluency.” We explored what it means to be “fluent” in a language. How fluency is a concept — is anybody really fluent in any language. How fluency comes from a presence and experience within a culture. Beyond words is meaning. Just as beyond methods for hosting is meaning. We explored “dialects” within a given language. I asked Diana to say more about what fluency with the Art of Hosting means to her. “Sensitivity to the field. Multiple sensitivities. Enough understanding to make design decisions.” Just as it is with enough fluency to recognize choices of expressions rather than one simple way. I further found myself aware of commitments to “crowd-sourcing” and “self-organization.” Of commitments I know with colleagues at Berkana: “emergence,” “healthy and resilient communities,” and “life-affirming leadership.”

We both became curious about this. What could become clear at the next level of helpfulness if we were to look at Art of Hosting as a dialect that requires fluency? How would this help all of us — from stewards and pattern-keepers to new people wanting to apply learnings? What if the broader language is something about participative leadership or engagement? And the dialect is Art of Hosting? This helps me to think more clearly about the many people I know who know a ton of stuff and have extensive experience in leadership and the like, yet don’t yet have the dialect of the Art of Hosting. As it was with Diana, we were talking about a lot more than the meaning of words or the translations. There is indeed a dialect to learn. A cultural experience, multiple times. Something to learn to develop proficiency in. As will a language, to practice, practice, practice so as to come to embody the dialect.

Thanks Diana. Lots of sparks as always.

Earlier this week I talked with a good friend in Utah. A colleague. A fellow traveller. A deep heart. One who can journey. We were reconnecting for the third or fourth time in the last couple of months after not seeing each other for years. It was a kind of connection that was so easy. So simple. As if the aging over the years has made it just right now.

She gifted me with a story that changed her life. Some of that story includes a meander in the forest near Haines, Alaska. At a time in her life when she had suffered the loss of some close to her. She was a person open to extraordinary experiences. Attracting them really. She walked further into the forest. Alone. Becoming aware that nobody really knew where she was. Yet, entranced by the beauty she was seeing and feeling. She was being changed by it. I sensed it was a kind of home for her.

She became aware of a danger. A bear. Didn’t see it. Just felt it. She stopped suddenly. She decided to return to where she began. Her rational mind told her to move toward safety. Yet as she began to return, a significant and life-changing impression came to her. “Don’t allow fear to stop your heart from seeing what it desires. Risk all. Go to beauty.” She continued into the forest.

My friend later learned how close she was to a mother bear and her cubs. The danger was real. Impactful. Yet, the impression to go to beauty was even stronger. It changed her life.

I appreciated this story and the related messages that I felt my friend sharing. Walk through fear. Walk to what we love. To play. To telling stories with each other. To laughter. To magic. To beauty. All beyond what can feel like an impenetrable barrier of fear.

All of these stand out to me because of the many messages of fear that are so easy to give ourselves to. In industries. In teams. In families. In society. And because of the much more compelling invitation to move to beauty. Something about beauty that is an invitation to create or potentialize. Whereas fear seems to shut down or lock into reductive vision.

A couple of instances that have my attention:

• This week working with a planning team for an upcoming art of hosting, we were sharing with each other the lack of registration. Some frustration. Some puzzlement. Some disappointment. We explored why. “People are afraid. They don’t have money. They treat the training as a luxury.” I felt our conversation and invitation process shift in tone as we invited ourselves to consider what is beyond fear.
• Last week meeting with a beginning community of practice on healthcare reform. It was a phone meeting to meet each other deeply. All good people. All inspiring leaders. All with awareness of how difficult it is for people who joined the healthcare profession because of their desire to help, yet are struggling and hurting through layoffs, mandates, cut budgets. We were all aware of the fear. One participant, Dan, said, “I want to know what is on the other side of fear. What is the story on the other side of fear?” Again, a shift and spark as we welcomed that question.
• Yesterday meeting with a group of local community leaders. Twenty people that welcomed the invitation to learn more together about participative leadership. Community organizers. Faith leaders. HR leaders. City planners. Activists. And from a great check-in circle, where people were invited to speak the 2nd answer, the one below the first, hearing this awareness of fear. Hearing our own struggles with fear. Yet also feeling a healing that comes from being able to even just say it out loud. And then turn our attention to what might be possible on the other side.

Walk through fear. Go to beauty. It is one of our choices. As individuals. As teams. As community. Gratitude to my friend for making it clear in another way through sharing her life. Gratitude to the many I work and journey with that can trust enough to just speak the truth and the tremble, to feel freed to move to the other side.

Yesterday, I co-hosted another half day appetizer on participative leadership. This was followup to our earlier gathering in December. With both, my colleague and I, Kathy Lung, held the intention of building community in the Salt Lake Valley, offering an experience of participative leadership, and learning together what next levels of practice we can offer to host for the betterment of our local community.

I loved the group that gathered. Twenty-one of us. People who really showed up. Who shared more of who they are. We began with context focused on this valley, this community of place. We offered the bones as I know them of any participative process: setting context, coming present, having a deliberate question, listening together, harvesting, acting, and sealing. And we invited people to be in three practices: sharing stories, welcoming the personal that is the professional and vice versa, and welcoming the second answers that runs a bit deeper.

The circle was really deep. Like all good circles I know, it had the feeling of an expanding spiral. We passed a piece on these questions: Who are you? What is it like to be you? What has your attention now? It created such a good foundation, a good presence, for then shifting into our task of exploring curriculum together. It is so different to proceed right to task. This checkin was rich.

One thing I really liked about this group and gathering is that we worked toward creating a specific product — essential inclusions for a Participative Leadership Series that we will offer March – August of this year. It was a way of creating together. Inviting inspiration together. I found what the group created and shared to be immensely helpful. The harvest is reorienting me on what can be of better use.

Looking forward now to offering and creating next levels of practice through the form of our monthly Leadership Development Series and then a September Art of Hosting deep-dive training.

A few of the harvests yesterday are below. With appreciation for all who participated and to Erin and friends at UCC who offered the space in which to meet.

Invitation
Checkin Circle — Dialogue Poem
What Rocks Cafe — List of Essential lnclusions
What Rocks Cafe — Wordle Word Graphic Generator of Most Common Words
Photos, Flipcharts, Notes
Resources