Author: Tenneson Woolf

Thanks to Helen Santiago, whom I just met in New York City at an event convened by the Department of Education. Helen is with The College Board Leadership Institute for Principals. She is also Executive Director of New Small Schools, which helps increase students’ college readiness. She works with World Cafe and Open Space Technology. Our conversation included focus on how to use organic process and harvest for traditional audiences.

Helen was one of many great people at this event. Here’s a bit on The College Board: This national leadership institute is designed to build the capacity of school leaders to develop and sustain their own practice and help them develop rigorous and nurturing school environments.

Here’s the report she shared with me.

An invitation I like that came from Maggie Wright. I love the simplicity. An invitation to gather. Naming it’s existing forms. Naming purpose of local food.

Dear You,

I want to invite you to join in an experiment. This experiment has been going on for thousands of years in many cultures, and is alive today in so many forms in our own culture. It shifts and changes with time, circumstances, and the needs and vision of the people involved. It has been known by many names: a talking circle, a roundtable, a speaking-round-and-round, a support group, a base community…

All of these names point to one truth: the power of gathering intentionally and intimately to know one another, and to understand a problem together. A small number of people, gathering regularly over time, to share the joy, challenge, and hilarity of our very ordinary lives, is immensely powerful and creative. It creates the glue that allows us to courageously and critically examine issues that affect our quality of life together.

We are Michigan women who recognize our land’s potential to nourish our families, our neighborhoods, and our livelihood. We have made it part of our work and our celebration to love the food that we eat, to be aware of where it comes from, and whose labor, whose care and intelligence bring it to our table. We brainstormed a constellation of strong women in this community with a creative commitment to local food and agriculture, and we spoke your name.

We are so grateful for your work and your spirit! If you’d like to drop in on a talking circle, please call or email ______________ to find out when and where we will meet.

May you be happy!
May you be healthy!
May you be at peace!

Thank you!

A nice little piece here from Chris Corrigan that we are including in a workbook for an open-enrollment training. Chris speaks something very important here for me. I have noticed in many events that there is a tendancy to think of the invitation as a checklist item. “Just get it done so that we can get on with planning an event.” The invitation actually is one of the first doorways into planning an event. When done well, it brings all of the planners into a deeper sense of possibility. It opens the creative space with each other. I particularly like the reference below to beginning with a conversation on the need, on the purpose. It is also my experience that this focus helps get to the real juice of why this meeting matters and what possibility it holds. It helps move the process from one of “selling” to one of “attracting in” because people share the basic sense of need and don’t want to miss it. This feels particularly important in the meeting-full context in which many of us live.

Reflections on Invitation
Chris Corrigan

When we think of invitation, the first thing that usually comes to mind Is simply a notcie sent out by email or appearing on a buletin board. Invitation as a THING,

Over the years I have come to realize that invitation is not a thing but a process, a lifestyle and a practice. When we host the call of inspiration, we do well to pay attention to how it generates the urge to invite others. Invitation is a process that brings us alive. Compared to compulsion, invitation results in people choosing to show up and being open, curious and enthusiastic. Compulsion results in closed, defensive, judgemental and apathetci participation.

In our work, developing invitations to gatherings is becoming more and more of an art. And the process starts well before the formal “invitation” is issued. As a design principle, it pays to remember that the meeting begins long before the invitation is issued.

The goal of invitation is to attract people fully to the event. So invitation begins very early on in the planning process and continues to build up to the event and beyond. Typically when I am working with a group, we follow something like this workplan:

* Work through the chaordic stepping stones and harvest the need, purpose and people. This becomes the basis for the invitation process.
* Create an invitation list of people who are needed for the meeting
* Begin contacting these people and hosting little conversations to find out what quality of invitation would attract them to this gathering.
* As the design progress, issue small invitations to the growing list of inviitees. Let them know when the dates are chosen, where the location will be, the clarity of the need and purpose as it arises.
* Try to send out more than one invitation. The more important and deep the gathering is, the more information I like to send out before hand. With some communities, setting up a web site, blog, forum, or wiki before hand can begin the converstions before the participants arrive. The more engaged you are with the participants before the meeting, the more engagement arises in the face to face space.
* Within the meeting itself, frame everything as an invitation. Using language that invites people to choose to participate so they participants are aware that the quality of the experience is up to them.
* Support follow up by inviiting participants to connect to one another and continue to find each other. Keep websites in place, send out follow ups and invite connection until the energy wanes and the project moves on.

It’s a lot of work, but it is essential because the quality of any gathering depends largely on how the participants show up. Be creative, be dilligent and make sure the invitation process works well.

From a recent gathering in Florida with the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. This was one harvest from an afternoon cafe on making GMJF a great place to work.

Rap / Poem from GMJF Staff Retreat
Stories of Great. Stories of Challenge.
Suggestions for the Next Year at GMJF
September 2008

GMJF – makin’ it great. Makin’ it rate.
What’s your say? Do you want to say?

Servin’ in the community. Even with a little swervin’ we’re still servin’.
Unity in the community. What could this community be?

In common, workin’ with shared values,
workin’ as family – the human family.

Wow! Commitment is our commitment.
Wow! Responsible for living and giving and fulfilling.

Everyday – Aha! You are there for me.
I can see you are there for me, for we.

Bigger than Miami, the Miami family and more.
All the way to the Soviet Union (20 years ago).

I will never forget that kitchen. Zip lock bags on a line.
Cherish the simple. So fine.

Real people and real work.
Friendship. Super Sunday processing.
World conference mission – we celebrate culture and motivated volunteers.
Givin’ time and rhymes.

Stories of challenge. It ain’t all easy, easy peasy.
But we are committed to seeing, seeing and being. Agreeing with no fleeing.

GMJF. Growin’ it great. .That’s our fate.
What’s your say? Do you want to say?

Difference. Keepin’ us safe.
Meeting everyone in all the difference.

The stress of newness. Where’s the coffee!
The stress of blueness. Where’s the coffee!
Stress with a purpose. Stressin’ without digressin’.

Process? Process? Inner and outer.
Not knowin’ your time line. It’s often a fine line.
Invitin’ without bitin’. Invitin’ to heightin’.

Emotion. The motion of emotion in all different view points.
Stress with a purpose. Stressin’ without digressin’.

GMJF. Living it great. Take the bait.
What’s your say? Your say on this day?

Improoving is the practice. Improoving and grooving.
Perfection isn’t real. Just practice with zeal.

Start with an announcement. Poems.
Songs in a tux. Jokes.

Use the internet to see the profiles of our people,
Our people servin’.

A state of the art gym.
All kiddin’ aside, join this ride.

On site weight watchers.
Data base of resources.
Implement – it’s our rent.
Not just talk. Balking at the talking.

In my white room. Safe space. Safe place.
We need to meet. We need to be great.

Remote workin’. My wife is pregnant again.
Workin’ on ten, and a day care again.

Who is the resource. The source keeps us on course.
$10K from my doc. That ain’t just talk.

Sharing. Improve the knowin’.
Workin’ on accountable. Even just one or two.

Lunch and break room – for engagement.
Meeting for learning. Learning and our yearning.

Well done. Happy Birthday. Go play!

Imagine. Imagine. Imagine.
Learning in our job. Not just gobs and gobs.
What is real? What beyond zeal?

GMJF. Livin’ it great.
Stay by your say. Say on this day.

Servin’ in the community. Swervin’. Servin’.
The parking spot is yours!