General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

May 24, 2017

Working In Patterns

Most of us are trying to pay attention to patterns. See the bigger picture. Work from the macro, not just the micro (and let’s face it, sometimes it’s pretty tough to get beyond the insistent and persistent micro).

This has been true for me in my 15 years of working with The Art of Hosting as pattern. Pattern of practice. Pattern of learning. Pattern of teaching and offering. Pattern of inviting. And it was true for me in the 10 years prior to that working with The Berkana Institute on dialogue, change, and the human spirit.

Lately, I’ve been working with a few groups that are really hungry for a holistic form for retreating together and for doing their work and learning together. I’ve been listening to people speak about their edges. They, we, all want a quality of experience together that is a whole lot more than lecturing with good stuff. They want engagement of their brains and their bodies and their spirits and each other.

With all of this going on, I found myself looking for resources that I could send to help shape some of the expectation and some of the overarching narrative.

Knowns of Working in An Art of Hosting Pattern is a piece I wrote in 2009. I remember it all coming to me in a sparky clarity, and “aha.” It was a few words for the “template” of Art of Hosting that each team shapes into more specific choices.

A snip-it is below. The full list of patterns is in the article here.

we will move deliberately between – energy of the whole and energy of the small group and energy of the individual.
each day will have a theme
each day will include a checkin process – (coming present) and a checkout process (seal our time and release us to other spaces)
we will offer some models, methods and maps to support a world view of participatory leadership –
there are many ways to inspiration – play, music, meditation, prayer, stillness, dreams, methodologies, art, song, – dance. We use them as inspired.
we open and diverge so that we can choose how we converge

May 23, 2017

From Above

As one who gets to fly in airplanes a fair amount, I often found myself in renewed awe of the perspective from 10,000 – 40,000 feet above the ground. I’m the one staring out the window from seat A or F, filled with wonder. I didn’t fly as a kid. But as an adult, I still have a kid in me that is utterly delighted.

Both of these photos were on route earlier this week, early morning, from Cincinnati to Chicago. Lot’s of life in the packaged squares of homesteading, isn’t there. I imagine stories of people who have lived there for generations. I imagine neighbors that help each other. I imagine worries about the crops that they will grow. I imagine planning about water use. Lives are lived in this fields and homes that I’m just peeking at with privilege.

And in the photo below, I love being above the clouds (and yet still below others in this one). It was the swirling in this photo, the eye-like figure in the center that hand be bonking my wonder-filled nose to the window in seat 9A on this trip, getting a close-up view.

It’s just good to see from above, isn’t it.

May 22, 2017

Q T

I so loved hosting QT Chicago at Lina Cramer and Dick Durning’s home this past weekend. Their home is near this beach in North Chicago on the western shores of Lake Michigan. I loved our friends that participated in a memorable experience mixed in circle, light ritual, and occasional song.

The experience, QT, is a format that Quanita Roberson and I have created, and now hosted four times over four weekends. The best description I have for QT — Quality Time, Quiet Teaching, Quanita-Tenneson — is a light structure for friends (old and new) to be deliberately curious together. It doesn’t really need a “so that.” But it’s funny to notice how given the absence of need for “so that” there is plenty that shows up. It’s powerful. Deep connection. Deep curiosity. Surprising clarity. Joy. Communing. As expansive as this lake and beach.

Thank you Lina and Dick for calling this in, for inviting us to offer it, and for all that helps reaffirm in me, and I think the group, the fundamental importance of simply being human together, and how hungry so many of us are for this.

May 18, 2017

An Exercise to Begin With

I’m thinking of gatherings where people are together for a good chunk of time — 1-3 days. But I imagine a shorter version for a shorter meeting.

I’m thinking of groups of 30-40 people because that is what I have most immediately coming up, but I imagine, it could be much more or less.

I want a good start. An interesting start. More than description of an albeit, good program. That description could be, and probably should be, included. But I want a beginning that feels like more than dusting off an old encyclopedia. I want to set a tone that is more than description as the first thing that people experience in a gathering when few people know each other. I want an immediate encountering of self. And each other. And the space that is between all of us, the collective whole.

Step 1 (5-10 minutes) — Individual Participant Work.
On a piece of paper write three words and one sentence to each of the following questions (these are samples):
– What were you good at as a kid?
– What do you love about the place you live?
– What is a superpower that you have (others may know or not know of it)?
– When was the last time you ate spaghetti?
– What scares you?
It’s not meant to be a polished essay. It’s more of an activation of thinking and feeling.

Step 2 (5-10 minutes) — Create Engagement, Groups of 2 or 3.
Share a bit of what you wrote, and what happened for you as you wrote it. Feelings? Surprises?
It’s not fixing. It’s creating friendship and grounding.

Step 3 (5 minutes) — Share in the Full Group
Let’s hear from a few of you. Popcorn style, out loud — are there noticings that you want to share from your sharing with your small group?
It’s not transcribing what happened. It is building expectation to witness each other and pay attention together.

Step 4 (5 minutes) — Create Bridge to Purpose of Gathering
Here’s the bridge for me. I want questions that point to the subjective (there is no wrong answer), the personal (showing up), the unknowable (vast and complex), and the irrelevant (spaghetti, really?). There are no wrong answers in each of these qualities.

I want what can feel like a bit of purposeful distraction that dislocates certainty that people have or that they think they should have as they begin. I want distraction that dislocates certainty and expectation of what people thought would happen to begin the gathering — to wake ourselves up in the context of the gathering. It’s not charismatic hand holding for me. It is fierce commitment to the entity that is the group.

Leadership — here’s the bridge — leadership and being in any form of group together requires an ability to dislocate certainty. Can any of us claim that we know everything that is happening? Of course not. That’s different than knowing important stuff, I understand. In participative leadership, in community engagement, in working with teams — there is a need for us to get good at being in messes and surprises. There is a need to become acutely good at working with what emerges through interaction with each other. That’s the game. Everything that follows — tools, methods, frameworks — all those good things are about helping to build this capacity.

To beginnings.