POET — COACH — GROUP PROCESS FACILITATOR
Enjoyed teaching and hosting The Circle Way today with Caitlin Frost, Chris Corrigan. It’s part of three days of participative leadership.
The colored papers are statements of things that these senior leaders (Deans, Assistant Deans, Provost, Department Chairs, Faculty) are proud of at the university. It was a harvest from a check-in process to start our first day together.
Lots of good stuff spoken.
Lots of good energy shared.
Last year I got to teach and host The Circle Way Practicum in Northern New South Wales, Australia. I hosted with Amanda Fenton and Penny Hamilton, both wonderful and skilled people. The participants were fantastic — very committed to learning and connection. I’ve stayed in touch with a few of them in the way that you can’t not do when you’ve been in deep practice together. It’s fun for me to remember the bird sounds of the rain forest and to feel a gratitude for far travels and big journey.
During the practicum, I remember a participant asking, “What is your favorite component of The Circle Way?” The question is a reference to some key structural aspects of circle intended to provide a steering wheel to help correct what goes awry in many contemporary meetings and gatherings. 
The question was asked in a playful way — like inviting response to what was your favorite vacation ever? My response to such questions is usually a delighted smile, to be asked. And it usually has some, “well, in this moment of reflection, here is one of my favorites….”
If I were responding to this question now, from my learning of the last two months in particular, I’d have to say that my “favorite” component is the guardian, and even further, using bells or a singing bowl as a way of inviting shared responsibility (one of the three principles). In The Circle Way tradition, the role of guardian is to help keep the circle on it’s intended purpose. This is a great thing. The guardian most often sits across from the person hosting the circle. I often say as a caution that the guardian doesn’t police the circle. The guardian is full participant, but gives extra attention to the energetic quality of the circle — is it on track, are we getting tired, are we getting to speedy, is it time for restrooms.
My favorite thing with guardian lately, has been two aspects. First, naming the practice of ringing the bells twice (or another agreed device). The first ring is to pause the action and dialogue that is happening. The second ring is to resume action and dialogue, but before that resumption, to share a sentence about why the bell was rung. Perhaps it was to slow down. Or, to hear what is being spoken. Or ringing the bells just to pause.
The second favorite aspect with guardian is naming that anyone in the circle can ask the guardian to ring the bell. The guardian may be the person holding the bells or has them resting in front of them, but anyone in the circle can ask the guardian to ring them, and then follow the same protocol of pausing, resuming, and sharing what was the reason to ring them.
I have often said that the circle is not about the bells. It’s true that you can circle without bells or a similar signal. I’ve said that what matters is the spirit of being in circle. Both of those orientations remain true for me. However, it’s become much more clear to me that this experience of sharing responsibility for the well-being of the group is transformational. That simple practice moves the circle from “yours to ours” or from “someone’s to all of ours.” It’s coupled with a group agreement to pause from time to time, and to have the full group tend to that agreement of tending to the full group. It’s one of those expressions of leader in every chair.
Learning together, this will always matter. Like it did in Northern New South Wales last year. Sometimes it’s the little things that make such a big difference. Shared responsibility and leadership are tremendous values. Good words. The role of guardian and utilizing the bells to pause is practice, is todo, that brings the words of shared responsibility to vibrant life.
I’m glad to be teaching this again in two months, back to Australia with Penny and Amanda, a bit further north in the Sunshine Coast area.
Come? To ring the bells in learning and connection and cultivation of essential practices of shared leadership.
So, this being wise together thing, that’s kind of important, right.
It seems that many of us know how to be wise individually. And that’s rather important. It seems to matter that any of us have the capacity to think, reflect, and make good choices. There is power in the individual capability.
Wise together — well that seems to be different and more than summing up individual wisdom. Meg Wheatley is one of the ones that taught me that “who we are together is more and different than who we are apart.” It’s further true that “the wisdom we have together is more and different than the wisdom we have alone.”
What a dance. Sometimes a slow waltz. Sometimes a jitterbug. Sometimes complete improvising. But this need to tend to the whole — to develop that nuancing — is ongoing.
I use circle as a primary process to encourage wisdom together. It’s process, yes. It’s process that gives us access to the sharedness of wisdom together.
Let me pull all of that down into a story.
Working with a client, a small group of seven leaders, I could see that this group had plenty of talent, experience, passion, and opinion. Each person was saying very smart things. I could see that the group was moving itself into what I would learn was a familiar kind of stalemate. It was lobbying an opinion and cross-talking to win with that opinion. It wasn’t malicious or ill-intended. In fact, I’d say most of the “winning behavior” was subtle enough to be difficult to see. It was clear, however, that they were getting stuck.
My co-host and I insisted on using circle. Not just sitting in chairs facing one another, but another layer of robustness to hear each voice at the table. So often, the presumption is agreement and clarity, and when you combine that with desire to be efficient, most of us start making assumptions about shared understanding that we hope is present, but really isn’t.
So now what?
The stages and use of circle that we recommended, so as to be wise together, included four steps.
Being wise together is not a simple linear formula. The above steps might need reiteration a few times to get at something clear enough. Too much iteration is what has some people feeling anxious or critical. However, my hope in all of this is a wisdom that when people experience, they remember. They remember how we can be kind and thoughtful together that is different that so much of what contemporary structure limits.
I have hopes. I have hunger. Like most people, to be wise together. To touch even moments of deep collaboration that wake us up to what we are capable of.
I’m grateful for the simplicity of circle to give us container for the dignity of wisdom together.
It was the mid 1990s when I first became involved in change-through-dialogue work. That was through The Berkana Institute, working with Meg Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers. I was a support person for multi-day residential gatherings at Sundance, Utah. Our starting question was, “What is the leadership needed for the 21st century?” These were powerful learning and community experiences that very much shaped and formed me.
It was the late 1990s when I first became involved in the more formal discipline and structure of the dialogue process that is The Circle Way (back then it was called PeerSpirit Circling). That’s when I met Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, who would become two of my dearest friends. That’s when some of Berkana’s work was the initiative, From the Four Directions and I started meeting people from many countries and many walks of life. That’s when I started traveling to not only support, but to begin cohosting events.
Today, The Circle Way is at the core of what I teach. I often speak of it as the tool beneath all tools. It is the most basic and impactful form that I know for helping people to turn to one another in thoughtful, wise, imaginative, and kind ways. Some of that teaching that is coming soon is in Australia near Brisbane. I’ll be teaching with Amanda Fenton and Penny Hamilton, two people that I really enjoy.
Our website lists a few of the areas of focus that the practicum in Australia will include. It’s kind of exciting! Because, these days, containers matter even more than ever. Because, these days, with tensions raising, it feels even more important to be grounded in practices of listening and thoughtful speaking.
Join us. Or for some of the other avenues to learn the circle way.