Tenneson, Caitlin and I are running a three day leadership course for MacEwan University here in Edmonton. It starts tomorrow and we are having a great conversation at Remedy chai cafe about why meetings matter for folks studying leadership. Here are some of the insights. —- Meetings are microcosms for leadership practice. They are places to encounter one’s own leadership gifts and leadership challenges. What you learn when you host a meeting is very much related to how you lead a team or and organization or a board. Meetings are a place to confront what’s real and meaningful. They contain …
I was going through some old emails today and found one from 2020 from my friend Susan Phillips in Minneapolis who shared a really moving message about the closing of an important Youth Leadership Initiative (YLI) back then. It relates to how to end a container. If you’ve been with me in real life you know that I like to end a gathering in a crisp and decisive way. I think it’s important to know when you are done, when the work is complete and when the next thing happens. So for years I have used a practice that I …
When we are teaching dialogue practice and participatory meeting design, I often draw on the example of organizational and team staff meetings. Every organization I’ve worked with has these meetings and they ae almost nearly the same: an endless re-iteration of what people are doing, and rarely nothing more compelling that an email wouldn’t take care of. There is rarely even time for discussion becasue you have to get through everyone’s update in the 30 minutes assigned for the meeting. So I often advise folks who want to bring more participatory culture to their organizations to focus on staff meetings. …
I’m back in Tlaoquiaht territory on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This is a place I once described as The Land of Tsawalk as it is the cradle of a philosophy and cosmology of interconnection and interdependence that has been refined by centuries of Nuu-chah-nulth philosophers, leaders and families. We’re here to do an Art of Hosting with the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust and 40 or so local leaders and organizers. This will be the fourth Art of Hosting I’ve done here and they are always different, responsive to the land and the ocean and the people and the way …
I’ve been going down a bit of a rabbit hole these past few mornings, looking at some commentary and writing about Kurt Lewin. Lewin, who died in 1947 was a psychologist whose theory and research had a tremendous influence on the modern movements or organizational development, action research, Gestalt theory, change management and group dynamics. To read his writings now is to read a person deeply interested in the complexity of human systems long before there was much language at all available to even discuss complexity. His ideas – or more precisely other people’s ideas about his ideas – have …