Over the past few days several friends of mine have blogged pieces that capture their vulnerable moments. I don’t know what it is about the timing of things, but here are a few posts that talk openly about daily struggles that people face. It is a litany of honesty and thoughtfulness from people who otherwise need to project a more solid image to the world. Laurie Kingston, an old friend from university days has been blogging for years about her life with cancer. A couple of weeks ago, she published a letter about where she is in her journey which …
Today a client emailed me with a small anxiety about setting up a meeting room in a circle. The work we will do together is about rethinking relationships in a social movement and the concern was that it was already unfamiliar enough territory to work with. Setting up the room in a circle might cause people to “lose their minds.” I get this anxiety, because that is indeed the nature of doing a new thing. But I replied with this email, because I’m also trying to support leadership with my client who is doing a brave thing in her calling:
Back in the fall I got to finally do some work with my friends Peggy Holman and Stephen Sliha (and Carol Daniel Kasbari too!) with the fabulous organization Journalism That Matters. I was able to do a little process hosting and participating in the developmental evaluation that was going on during the two day conference in Portland. Last month Peggy published an overview of what we learned in that conference. Embedded in that report is this video made by some of the students on the evaluation team. It contains interviews with many of the participants who had epiphanies about what …
Depending on who you ask, the Art of Hosting as a community of practice has been around since about 1999. Since that time, it has evolved and morphed and changed and developed. It does so based on the inquiries that come from practice and that are captured in the workshops that are delivered by various people all over the world. It is a community and a movement of learning that I have never quite seen the likes of, although I am sure that there are others. It focuses on dialogue, participatory leadership and making tools for these things accessible to everyone, …
Over many years I have been using the chaordic stepping stones as the basis for all work I do with clients. This is a tool that I first heard of in the Art of Hosting community in about 2004. It was originally based on the chaordic lenses that Dee Hock developed to design organizations that took advantage of both order and chaos. It has been useful and rich and created all kinds of outcomes that would not have been possible other wise.