Category: Edited

I work as a consultant. Often I reference myself as a facilitator. I’ve found this an easy way to start talking with people. I design and lead meetings. Why? To help people be smart together. All of my work is from a participative leadership perspective. Living systems, self-organization, and emergence inspire my work. This is one version of a simple starting description that is authentic for me.

I learned something important this week in working with a client. On the surface, it appeared to be personal. And perhaps silly. Yet it has extreme relevance to the professional. And feels quite seriously helpful. Interesting how this is often so. Like a professional coach or partner showing up right before us through the experience of the seemingly unrelated personal.

I was with a corporate client. We had finished our event, three days together in a leadership retreat. It was fairly involved, mixing together dynamics and needs of third and fourth generation family owners, senior management, and external directors on their board. It was time to say goodbye. Some shook hands. Some hugged.

As I approached one person, she somewhat jokingly said, “Do I have to hug you?” I’m a hugger. Very comfortable for me. I responded playfully, yet honestly. “You don’t HAVE to hug me, but you are welcome to.” She had already reached out to hug before I’d finished speaking. “Oh good,” is what I said. We both laughed.

Through reflecting on that personal experience some important principles crystalized in me that are good for the professional. I see them as important, reaching principles of invitation, welcome, and freedom for working in participative leadership formats. And as a practice of kindness.

1. Differentiation
I don’t really know what to call this, but this is the best I can find now. It is removing need. Perhaps decoupling. Removing requirement or obligation. It is a welcome of an individual or group to be where s/he or they feel they need to be. It is removing any of the imposition that I might subtly have of wanting them to want what I want. With my story, an energetically clear, “if you need to not hug, then don’t.” In organizations and with teams, a deep and significant invitation for them to reclaim their freedom and authenticity. For those of us who are consultants, this helps us pay attention to the distinction of what we want (or want them to want) and what they need. I often experience this through the process methodology of Open Space Technology. I often describe OST as a simple process for creating self-organized working groups. Yet, at deeper levels, it is an invitation to reclaim freedom of choice. And something in that, though different as operational practice, is kind.

2. Appreciating
Appreciating the person or the group being in their learning. Whatever that might be for them. This is of course related to the differentiation. It is honoring the individual place and timing of learning. Of observing. Of sense-making. In my story, it was honoring, the place of learning for that person, even if it might be different than mine. Celebrating it. High-fiving it. Way to go. Brought forward from the awareness of a smart and thoughtful person before me. A good, capable human being. Not needing that person or organization to be in my learning, but rather in hers / theirs. This is a kind of Bodhisattva positioning that seems grounded in appreciation of that persons journey. It is not just tolerating another persons learning, but trusting the right-timing of it for that person.

3. Offering
This is kindness and responsibility to me. A responsibility of kindness even. It is what ties together the differentiation and the appreciation. It offers the kindness of welcoming the person to their own timing of readiness. The offer is, “If you want to invite me in to exploring more of that with you, you are welcome to do so. As a listener. As a witness. As a friend. As a thinking partner.” It is important to note that this is not a requirement. And that it must be genuine. Perhaps it is more kind not to offer when the offer is not genuine. Hmmm…. Just an offer that encourages people to notice the resources and the kindness around them. It is interesting to me that there is some relationship to this principle and the intimacy of relationship. On the one hand, intimacy creates an already open channel for this to offering to be in place. And also, from another view, intimacy creates some blocks or old habits that are more hard to get past in these steps.

4. Empathy
Again, I’m not sure if this is the right word, but the best I can come up with for now. It is a kind of awareness that there are times when each of us are clear and, in this framing, could stand in clear differentiation, appreciation, and offering. However, as it seems so often, most human beings don’t stand there all of the time. There are times when I may need to ask for the first three things of you. To not need something from me. To simply appreciate and celebrate that I am learning or that I am being worked in ways that are helpful. And to welcome my ask for some help. It is a way of saying, “I’m good with where you are. And clear. And now I can offer something. At others times, it may not be so. I might ask the same of you.”

Yes, it’s all a personal story. Seemingly silly. But not, really. What if these were practices and understandings on teams, across teams. What if they were agreements of compassion and learning with each other. Agreements of honoring the natural timing and evolution of the things we need to work on together. Practices of kindness to bring out the best of us in the the best timing possible. That all feels… helpful to me. And inviting.

Appreciating this collection of resources and case studies that the hosting team for an event in California has compiled. Also loving the beauty of their invitation and the ease of accessibility and information shared.

CASE STUDIES

AOH SUCCESS WORKS EVALUATION REPORT 2011 (1.1M)

HERO TO HOST: A STORY OF CITIZENSHIP IN COLUMBUS, OHIO (3.5M)

LEARNING TO CO-CREATE THE SOLUTIONS WE SEEK: THE ART OF HOSTING A NONPROFIT (2.3M) Written by Jeannel King for The Master of Nonprofit Management Program at Regis University in 2007. Presented research explores the potential of Art of Hosting methodology and practices applied in a non-profit context.

PRACTITIONERS GATHERING, EUROPE 2012 (992K)

THE LOTUS: A PRACTICE GUIDE FOR AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY (15M) This practice guide is the result of thesis research by our very own Dana Pearlman, as well as Christopher Baan and Phil Long, for the Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, in 2011. Their research consists of literature review, and interviews and surveys with 33 facilitators, hosts and change agents working on trans- formational change and/or sustainability, from around Europe, North America and Africa.

Kathleen Masters is one of the people in the world that I am so enjoying right now. She is with Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. She does a lot of inspiring work with church and community workers.

The context today for a phone call was to begin a regular rhythm of convening some of her colleagues to explore what they are learning as they convene groups of people and community together. To share stories and questions that increase capacity for all of us in participative leadership frameworks, practices, principles, and methodologies.

One thread of today’s call was about speaking the unspoken. How healthy this can be. How useful and sweet it is to invite voice for the things that we only whisper. Or the things we feel we can’t say. Or the things that we as humans beings are afraid to say. It is a pretty big category.

My experience is that by inviting this kind of voice in a well-hosted process, much is released. In relief of not needing to hold or protect the unspoken anymore. And in inviting through that release some of the thriving qualities that have been longing to brought forth — that way that many humans just want to be together.

One of the models that I use for most of my facilitating is what I have learned with friends in the Art of Hosting community of practitioners. Though many will speak of the Art of Hosting as a thing, as a brand, or as a program, I think of it as a pattern for helping a group of people to be smart and real with each other. The pattern is anchored in three simultaneous places of attention: 1) learning — the ongoing process of paying attention, sharing stories, and asking questions with each other, 2) relationship building — another ongoing process of feeding a quality of friendship, trust, and love that can enable a group to see more than any individual in the group can, and 3) getting to work on projects and programs — working with clarity and depth of insight on the projects that we have been asked, or even told to do.

Looking forward to more with this beautiful community of faith, church, and community leaders.

Last week 9 of us gathered for our monthly Participative Leadership Practitioners Circle. It was a reconvening after taking the summer off. It was opportunity to welcome my good friend and colleague Roq Gareau to share some of his experience, particularly on working with stories and symbols, from the mythic to the personal, as navigation systems for working with complexity. Another way of saying that is, “Working With What Is In Front of You to Make Things Better.”

First, a check-in that included invitation to share a bit of story about what people experience as complex in their lives.

Second, the telling of the story of “Half Boy” (see further here from Michael Meade, author and men’s movement leader). From the telling of the story, Roq invited each person to pick one thread, or one symbol that stands out to them from the story.

Third, we chronologically reordered how we were sitting based on the threads and symbols that we each chose from the story. Then we spoke to why that symbol caught our attention and how that connects to the earlier checkin we spoke on complexity. It was a reweaving of the story from each of the individual lenses.

Fourth, some continued exploring and a check-out of appreciation and learning.

I experienced it as powerful learning. Helpful process. To me, the skill of noticing the symbols that hold our attention are the ones that create the most helpful learning. It is a question I often ask of people — what has your attention now? This can be asked of a meeting, a project, a dream, a mythic story. The symbol catches what we are projecting and how we are creating meaning and narrative. Thus, attention to the symbol can offer rich, rich learning.

It is my experience that working in this way creates a helpful and needed alternative to working with more analytical and linear ways of thinking. And that people quite like it.