General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

February 1, 2017January 28, 2021

Low-Hanging Fruit of Participative Leadership

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I continue to learn that saying hello, a check-in, is one of the low-hanging fruits of participative leadership. Low-hanging, like the peaches on my trees from several years ago that were already ripe and did not need a ladder to be reached and picked. They were just available. Immediate harvest. Immediately delicious.

I also continue to learn that saying hello, a check-in, is often a missed step for people convening. I’m guessing that it is because people are really eager to get to work, perhaps a bit anxious about “wasting time.” Or it is just too obvious. Check-in is critical, not just nice. When shaped with a good question, check-in is what brings the group to life. It also brings the issue at hand to life. Immediate harvest again. And generally, immediate satisfaction.

One of the struggles that I’m seeing in people, even those committed to check-in, is that they treat it as obligatory rather than as opportunity. The step that you have to do but don’t really want to do. Like standing in line before being able to ride on the roller coaster ride. Those check-ins can lose value quickly.

Ok, so here’s a few tips to bring out the value that is a check-in.

Treat it as essential. Like tying your shoes before trying to walk in them.
Setting a boundary for check-in, not as a restraint, but as a kindness. Let people know when they have 30 seconds and when they have three minutes.
Precede a check-in with a moment of centering, a start point. The easiest is thirty seconds of silence. Or offer a poem with just a wee bit of introduction, “As we check in, I wanted to offer this poem that means something to me and I think connects to what we are doing together today.”
When the group is large enough that you feel you can’t hear from everyone, invite them to pair up or join groups of three. Two minutes per person in a small group does more to help people show up than a rushed 12 seconds each in the larger group.
If you use small groups, invite a handful of people to share to the large group what they experienced in the small group. It helps weave together the energy of the group.
Choose and vary your question. Sometimes the question is general; “How are you arriving?” Sometimes it needs to evoke direction: “What is important to you in our work today?” Sometimes, the question is just to invite a playfulness and imagination: “What is one thing that is making you curious these days (and why)?”
Remember, that responses to a check-in question are rarely about right and wrong. We are just saying hello, not drawing uncrossable lines in the sand.
Bookend the completion of a checkin with a simple acknowledgment. “I’m glad we are here together. Let’s carry the spirit of this hello with each other into the work that we’ve come to do today.”

There’s many other things you can do to improve and experiment with checkins. My suggestion is to remember that showing up is at least half of the work. Hello, a check-in, is just easy to reach as a simple step.

See also these reflections and list of questions from Amanda Fenton posted on The Circle Way website.

January 31, 2017

Evolution

Evolution. It’s encouraging, right. Accept when it is not.

I laughed when I saw this photo this morning on a friend’s Facebook page (who is actually celebrating his birthday today). So promising (evolution, that is). So much progress. But then again, oh yah, that hunched over thing.

I use the language of evolution a fair amount in my work. My friend and colleague Kinde Nebeker and I have created a series on the “Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership” (Series I, Series II) I use the language of evolution to invoke an attitude and disposition. Not in the geologic sense that is over centuries and millennia, though I suppose that could be relevant too. But definitely as “evolving the nuance of who we are and how we are together” in the coming months, years, and even decades. It’s a fundamental invitation rooted in desires to collaborate. Not just collaborative as in, helping the neighbor rake the leaves. More at the layer of evolving the edges of who we are becoming as a species, as nations, as teams, as people on the edge of difficult or untenable circumstances.

Untenable. Hmmm…. There feels like a lot of untenable that is rising up in the world. It feels more accurate to say that it has always been there — it’s just reaching more visible edges of those not normally confronted with anything called untenable. Yesterday I became aware of a person based in Canada that felt she could not send two people as participants to a leadership training that I’m cohosting the next four days near Seattle, Washington. She was worried by protests she had seen at American airports over Donald Trump’s executive order limiting visa and entry status for people from predominantly Muslim countries, and the ripples from that order. She was fearful of police efforts to disperse crowds using pepper spray. She was alarmed by a growing and overarching perception that the United States is an unwelcoming and unsafe place to be.

Whether those participants from Canada come or not (I hope they do), this week’s Art of Participative Leadership training includes 40 participants. We gather for three days at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. We will learn and share stories and questions about participative leadership. We will explore models and ways of being together. We will practice — as in do leadership — through the model that is hosting. We will evolve edges through our learning, our work, and our relationships together. I think of it as essential practice to try something different together, to create deliberate encounter together, to dislocate patterns and certainty in a place that is safe enough to do so — no pepper spray in the supplies list for this gathering.

It is imperative, I believe, to evolve the edges and the nuancing of who we are together and what we can become. And, with a tone that I’m hearing a lot more these days, “now, more than ever.” But lets be clear, now more than ever isn’t returning to “hunched over.” At least I hope not.

January 30, 2017

Presentation of Learning

My friend Quanita Roberson has an annual commitment. She asks people to share their “presentation of learning.” It’s anywhere from 10-30 minutes of reflecting on what has been important over the last year. No right answers. No wrong. Just what was important. Quanita does some in person — people gathered in her home to share over an evening together. She does some of it virtually — recording a shared screen through Zoom.

This weekend Quanita and I met for a reflecting back on 2016. She was asking me for mine. She’ll be posting that soon on her site. However, in the mean time, I had a peek at the “presentation” I shared with her two years ago. It’s a 25 minute video that includes these themes:

Popping to a new resonance together / the composite being that is a group, whether two, twenty, or more.
Saying no to good things / relationship to time and the courage it takes to discern and say, no.
In anything is the everything / connection of energy and opportunity. I learn this particularly with my friend Roq Gareau.
Nothing less that who you really are / radical honesty. Quanita is one who calls this out.
Things you can’t not do / lessons learned from my dog Shadow.
Hunger for essence and simplicity / be honest, be clear, be real.

I don’t like the camera angle that has me looking down and away at my notes, but it was my own doing. I’ve always been one who learns and integrates best with a visual reference and a few notes, from which I then just try to speak extemporaneously. The content stirred me up again today — realizing some of where I am two years later.

I’m grateful for friends like Quanita who insist on learning.

January 26, 2017

Either / Or Typology

Fill in the blank, please. Don’t overthink it. First responses are best.

There are only two kinds of people in the world — _____ and _____.

One of my favorites, because it is so relevant is “those that arrive five minutes early” and “those that arrive five minutes late.” I tend to be the former.

Duality is absurd, isn’t it. It’s rare that it creates an accurate depiction. It hides more than it reveals. It’s common that duality compresses reality into a spectacled farce. Forced choice has its moments, I suppose, but seems to be more about imposed bravado than nuanced understanding.

I was with friends recently who offered this duality, gaming style — “There are only two kinds of people in the world — a sack of shit and a son of a bitch. Which are you?” It was a great invitation to legitimize shadow. After all, few of us want that forced choice to define us. And to be fair, these friends offered complete freedom to choose and identify. There was beauty and honesty in both.

Absurd, right.

I have to admit I’ve been a bit grumbly when I hear people reference the need for non-duality. It’s triggered an odd, nested duality response — “you’re either for duality or not.” There’s no gain in that. But, I’m coming to realize that as simple as it sounds, this duality disposition is alive and well in much of contemporary society. It’s a sneaky and skilled hider — it can find the most simple stones, thoughts, experiences, expressions and such to hide behind. You can do a “duality sweep” of a room, or group, or self, and find it clear, only to come back five minutes later and find duality infestation. Yikes!

Absurd.
Punishing.
Disregarding.
Merely convenient.
Made for bad TV movies.

There’s five big red flags for me about dualistic thinking. I think I’ll play with this for a while. Call a few absurdities out to the front porch, so as to be seen and deliberately invited to stay and dwell for a while, or live somewhere else, or something else.