#thecircleway • Tenneson Woolf

July 26, 2018

The Big House

I am grateful to work in places like this, called The Big House, in the Noosa Hinterland in Queensland.

It is beautiful on the inside and on the outside.

Just as it is with the people that gathered for The Circle Way.

Just as it is with cohosts Amanda Fenton, and Penny Hamilton.

Circle organizes us. It creates pattern. It reveals the beauty that already is. And inspires it’s expression in work and life.

I learn this over and over again.

I’m grateful for that.

July 10, 2018

The Circle Way — Transforming The Person

Hamish Lindop is a new friend. He lives in New Zealand. He was participant the first series of online classes that Amanda Fenton and I offered on The Circle Way.

Though the class ended in March, the class that Hamish was in has continued to meet for connection and for learning. I suppose I could say that they are continuing to meet because of the feeling of transformation.

Hamish recently shared this appreciation, which moved me. With permission, I share his words here. I love the way that he witnesses the change that is happening in him through connection and circle.

I was reflecting a little more on our circle generally, and noticing how it is gradually transforming me as a person. The more that I get to know you all, and the more that goes into the well that is the centre of this circle, I find that I am gradually changing. I have a thin layer of cement around my heart, and I can feel cracks forming in that, and myself opening up more, to my family in particular. So I want to thank you all for creating this centre with me; and the centre, and you all, are in turn creating a new me.

Thanks Hamish.

June 27, 2018

Dialogue is to Collaboration What Water is to Fish

I enjoyed reading this book recently, Community Conversations, written by Paul Born (2012) from Canada. I haven’t met Paul in person, but he is someone that has been recommended to me by others.

I love Paul’s reference to connect dialogue and collaboration. Essential. Essence. I like the way that he points the narrative to going as community. Collaboration sometimes means the details of getting ducks in a row. Often, however, it means something much less projecty than that. It’s lifeline, the medium of water to fish, that connects us and sustains us in engagement together. It’s lifeline to help us encounter more of the invisible that is created “among” us, not just in any one of us. Ah, shoot, I just love it when people encourage a narrative of wholeness. And, of course, it’s not just about words. Dialogue, and conversation, are just a couple of the ways that we humans get to wholeness, aren’t they.

Here’s a few other insights I found and appreciated in Paul’s book.

“Dialogue is a collective way to open up judgements and assumptions (David Bohm).” — Given that I’m in a summer in which much of the work I’m convening is deep dives into The Circle Way, this concept jumps out at me. It helps respond to the question of “Why go together?” And, knowing that there are many responses to this question, one that excites me is about being able to see together what can’t be seen alone. It’s hard to tickle yourself. It kind of needs another person. It’s hard to see assumptions. We kind of need each other.
“The first skill is the ability to see the forest and the trees (Peter Senge).” — Beauty here, isn’t there. It’s not just one of the two, though some of us are uniquely oriented to forest while some of us are naturally focused on the trees. I love the invitation, and requirement, to cultivate capacity to see both. If I go back to The Circle Way with this, I love the way that circle creates container to see the forest and flip fluidly between foreground and background. With groups, it’s the aha glimpse when someone speaks the ephemeral that is trying to be seen among us and we all nod in delight for the clarity that gives us direction. Or grounding. Forest. Trees.
“The second skill is to nurture the tension between process and action.” — I run into this everywhere. It’s actually a nuanced version of Senge’s forest and trees. Some people are delighted to dwell in process, in the becoming. Process aggravates the bejeebers out of others. Some people are hell bent for action and efficiency. For others, the fixation on action strips most of the poetry from the work. I love Paul Born’s invitation to notice the tension and then to nurture it. That means be kind to it. That means developing an ability to suspend some pretty deeply engrained bias.

I’m glad friends recommended this book to me. I enjoyed the read. I enjoyed dipping in to a fellow Canadian’s words. I enjoyed feeling insights dance within me as the words helped me find some inner music. I enjoyed noticing for a moment, the water.

June 14, 2018

Meetings On The Edge

I’ve been reading a bit on chaos lately, particularly from the book above by Ori Brafman and Judah Pollack. There is much that I love in this book that applies to working with groups to help create good containers for learning and for connection. There is much that I like in the title and subtitle. “Imperative” is a strong word to me. It connotes something that is essential, that you can’t do without. This book helps bring forward more of the narrative about how essential chaos is for all of the good things listed in the subtitle — chance, disruption, innovation, effectiveness, success.

A particular part that I find myself thinking about from this book is about the importance of edges. Edges in systems. Edges in learning. Edges in communities. It’s at the edges, at the boundaries, that some of the most fruitful possibilities exist. The edges and boundaries are where seemingly unrelated things are able to relate. Or, at least mash things up bit. And evolve.

Meg Wheatley is one of the people that I’ve most appreciated for welcoming the narrative of the importance of chaos and life at the edges. It was 1992 when I first met her, beginning what would become now 26 years of working and friending together. Meg had just written Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, which among other things, invited people into a relationship with seemingly unconnected things. Meg wrote about living systems as they connect to leadership. She wrote about chemistry (and how a diagram for a chemical reaction more accurately describes organizational systems than neatly defined org charts). She wrote about biology (and how organizations are living systems, not machines, and thus evolve like living systems). Meg wrote about physics (and how living systems move toward higher levels of order by using messes to get there). Meg connected the fruitful areas of science, new science, to leadership. That helped to change the story and practice of what leadership was all about.

My life of working with change and dialogue began with Meg. In the early 2000s, friendship and colleagueship brought me to The Art of Hosting body of work. More good people working the edges and the narrative of the importance of chaos and non-linearity. Through The Art of Hosting, arose a process technology that combines Open Space Technology with World Cafe — Pro-Action Cafe. It’s a process that, among other things, brings naive experts to small table conversations to support one person’s project (and that they might know little about — working with strangers, temporarily). It moves energy to action. Pro-Action Cafe creates intersection at the boundaries. As Ori Brafman might call it, “planned or organized serendipity.” It’s the kind of evolution that you can’t plan, and that comes from surprise encounters. On the edges.

In the late 90s is also when I first discovered The Circle Way. Learning with Ann Linnea and Christina Baldwin, circle would become a foundational practice for all of the leadership work that I’ve been involved with. Circle creates structure for how people turn to one another. For learning, yes. For connection, yes. For surprise, yes. For honesty, yes. It occurs to me that circle is a format for helping to weave the edges, and to welcome the surprises that chance and disruption give birth to.

I really enjoyed the Chaos Imperative. I enjoyed the feeling while reading it. I enjoyed the content. I enjoyed the invitation to come into more relationship with chaos — not as a “thing” but rather as a way of being that encourages being with life itself.

One further bit for the part of me / us that likes lists. Brafman offers 5 Rules of Chaos. I’ve added a bit of thought to each.

Beware the Seduction of Data and Measurement — It’s so easy to fall in love with data. It’s so attractive for most of us to feel embraced by the sensation of certainty that measurement can bring. Let’s be clear, evaluation matters, and varies across contexts on what is relevant. But too much attention to data abolishes the appreciation for the aliveness, and uncertainty that chaos brings.
Organize Chaos — There’s plenty of methods to use these days that connect groups of people in powerful learning and planning. Open Space Technology is a goto for me. Just enough structure (the bulletin board of offerings) to bring coherence and purpose. Enough freedom to deserve the name of life.
Make White Space Productive — I think of working well in groups as having three simultaneous components that I first learned through pal, Chris Corrigan. Work. Learning. Relationship. They are all productive, and sometimes one needs more attention that another.
Embrace Unusual Suspects — I think of these as wild cards. Often when working with groups that are facing the question of who to invite to a gathering, I encourage them to name all of the regular people, the obvious ones, AND to think about wild cards. Those that aren’t the first wave of people. Those that will help us think differently. Edges. Chaos. Imperative.
Organize Serendipity — This is similar to number 2 for me. Serendipity often connotes a kind of luck. Or surprise alignment. It’s the kind of thing that can happen when people are given opportunity to bump into one another. I use milling exercises. I use a variety of containers / methods to encourage even just the softening into welcoming serendipity.

Here’s to chaos, what we loved as 5 year-olds, and what was schooled out of us.

Here’s to meetings at the edge, and the courage it takes to reinvoke the wonder of difference and the surprise alignment it can create.