More on clear principles that my friend Helen Titchen Beeth shared recently on the Art of Hosting list-serve.
My experiences is that when these kind of principles are created together in a well-held social process, they transition from just words to activated energetic centers. A difference that comes to mind is that “just words” (though usually very lovely maxims) need a lot of push behind them to keep them alive. A kind of rote memorization to perpetuate more of their life. Whereas, “activated energetic centers” have a sustaining life of there own. A kind of imprinting and embodiment in the gut. I suppose in older terms, the activated energy is a deep level of buy-in.
In a very different context, here are the principles developed by the Elise core team that hosted Interinstitutional Workshops for translators to raise awareness of a communication tool for translators, in the context of translating EU legislation into 23 languages – a mammoth task that involves the European Commission, the EU Council and the European Parliament, and more thousands of translators than I care to contemplate…
“Our principles speak of the way we wish to work together.
•Our relationship is based on trust
•We sense, then we act, then we sense, then we act… When we don’t know what to do, we stop and sense until the next step becomes clear (OK, we might have a little panic, first… )
•Awareness is important: we pay attention to each other and to the process
•We trust each other to act when needed
•We pay attention to what is in the centre
•We have fun together, doing challenging, meaningful work
•Our mandate is to succeed, and we do whatever it takes
•We have a clear goal that makes sense to us
•We interact: we work together, we take each other’s advice, we are peers
•We are flexible and we support each other to become ever more flexible”
