Category: Edited

I’m working with Berkana friends (Debbie Frieze, Martin Siesta, Lauren Parks) to plan a learning event this fall. We’ve had a few calls now that I’m appreciating as a good beginning. Exploring together some of the heart of why this gathering matters, what we would intend to harvest from it, who we imagine as participants (Berkana Board, leaders in several of Berkana’s initiatives), and the beginnings of an invitation to reflect our calls. Specific design will come later. For now, however, it is important to know that the tone of this gathering will be sharing stories.

Berkana is doing and living what I’m hearing as a desire from so many groups now. To connect, and for a time, journey side by side to hear and share stories and learnings. It’s not a casual thing. The stories are big enough that we really need to honor them in a space of together.

I’ve loved some the harvest below from our calls: a few of the intentions and principles for the event. I’m sharing them here, aware that for many people that lead in networks and communities of practice, these are helpful names for needed strategic learning together.

-support the experience of individuals and how they are connected to initiatives and the whole of the network / movement
-connect to the vision and center of working in the network, as side by side journeyers / practitioners
-meet in different way, co-created to harvest from shared story and experience (including the harvest of relationships and energy)
– connect little fires to big fires
-see the whole and practice, as a way of living, the belief that the whole is different and more than the parts (a long held belief that arises from work over the last two decades in self-organization and emergence)

Deep principles. Important and needed. And really good to be working this with friends.

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