Stories to move us through grief Any time people have to accept loss, the grief cycle is triggered. To various degrees people experience shock and anger, denial, acceptance, letting go and reframing. This process is subtle for small things like having a trusted colleague moved to a different project but it can be full blown if people experience a trauma such as a death or a similar emotional upheaval. Change brings loss, and because change is constant, so is the emotional response to what is being lost. In other words, as my colleague Birgitt Williams is fond of saying, “there …
A second way that I use stories is perhaps the most traditional way: to hear a deeper truth embodied in the story. Stories as expressions of our truths I facilitate a great many meeting where the subject matter is dry: public policy, goals and objectives, interests and agreements. In many ways, a lot of the work I am called on to do involves holding space for richer communication between people. And for me that means truer communication. So, for example, when I am listening to a community member trying to describe a policy issue to a government person, I�ll ask …
How I use stories As a facilitator, I work a lot with stories. Both in organizational and community settings, stories and storytelling are important to my practice. We understand stories to be the fabric of our cultural and social worlds. Within organizations, storytelling is becoming more widely recognized as a critical mode for the transmission of knowledge. In this series of posts I want to discuss the ways in which my engagement with stories in Aboriginal communities and organizations has informed my practice as an organizational development consultant. My story about my work. I have a story that I tell …
Many of you know that I am a devoted Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Tonight though, I share most of Canada’s fervent hopes that the Calgary Flames will win the final game of the Stanley Cup Final and bring the Cup back to Canada. Go FLAMES! And no matter where you are in the world you can follow the action at Calgary’s FAN 960 radio and when the game’s over, join the fun at Hockey Pundits.
Tom Atlee is one of my heros. For years he has been running the very excellent Co-Intelligence Institute from which I gather lots of information and inspiration. Recently he sent out an email on the emergence of collective intelligence as a field of practice here’s what he has to say: “Collective intelligence, as a field of study and practice, is taking off. Some really interesting work is being done, quite beyond the dialogue and deliberative democracy realms we focus on at the Co-Intelligence Institute. It turns out that even when thousands of people don’t talk to each other at all, …