Like Johnnie Moore I don’t generally set ground rules when I facilitate a meeting. For most meetings, it’s demeaning and it tends to enforce the authority of the facilitator to act as a judge rather than as a host for the conversation. The odd time there are meetings in which the tension is explosive and if necessary I do this simple exercise with a group: 1. Invite each person to reflect on these two questions: How do you want to be spoken to by others in this meeting? How do you want others to listen to you in this meeting? …
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I’m a sucker for principles, because principles help us to design and do what is needed and help us to avoid bringing pre-packaged ideas and one-size-fits-all solutions to every problem. And of course, I’m a sucker for my friend Meg Wheatley. Today, in our Art of Hosting workshop in central Illinois, Tenneson Woolf and Teresa Posakony brought some of Meg’s recent thinking on these principles to a group of 60 community developers working in education, child and family services, and restorative justice. We’re excited to be working nwith these principles in the work we’re doing with Berkana Institute. Here’s what …
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Jack Ricchiuto on simplifying strategy: Every organization, and community, I work with on strategy is very relieved when I liberate them from the inane practice of traditional academic language in the process. I refuse to allow them to waste valuable time debating over the distinctions of: goal, objective, strategy, tactic, and night maneuvers. (I throw in the military reference to “night maneuvers” to inject humor into what is usually a very humorless and uninspired process – and it works.) What do we do instead? We replace these never-agreed-upon jargon with complex words like: where, why, how, and what. To be …
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So far my favourite expression here at the Art of Participatory Leadership is “listen loudly.” People use it to describe a quality of attention where your ears are filled with sound and meaning, even if the person you are listening to is whispering.
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Writing from Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island which is about as far west as you can go without leaving North America. I’m here this week to run an Art of Hosting training with a number of community coordinators for 14 Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities around Clayoquot, Barkley and Kyuquot Sounds. We’re going to be learning together about methods for community engagement and participatory leadership and all of it based very deeply in the concept of Tsawalk (from the Nuu-Chah-Nulth principle of “heshook ish tsawalk” meaning “everything is one.”) Last night I drove out here across the spine of Vancouver …