Dave Pollard sees skillful conversation as a key to the kinds of communities he is trying to create. In this post he revisits his ideas about personal practices for being a good conversationalist. These are great: Tell the other person something you’re passionate about, and why. Tell them passionately. Tell them something they should know that they don’t, preferably as a story, and make it clear why it’s important. Tell them about a possibility you’ve imagined. A real possibility, not just an ideal, a wish or a dream. Tell them a different way of thinking about something, one …
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Regina, Saskatchewan I love it here…big open prairie sky meets wide expanse of earth. And over it all, the air is chilled, so cold that I actually succumbed to the spit test. I spat on the sidewalk and immediately poked at my saliva with my boot. It had instantly turned to ice powder. The thermometer in my ride’s car said -41. By this afternoon it had warmed up to -28, which is the current temperature. If the warming trend continues, it’s supposed to be a balmy -14 by tomorrow afternoon. That is a 27 degree difference: the difference between a …
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Drawing by ritwkdey I have been thinking a lot the past few weeks about the living systems vs. the mechanical systems worldviews. It’s interesting that there is a clear distinction between these two kinds of systems – a system is alive or it isn’t, at least in this point in time – and yet the way we humans think our way through being in these systems seems to fall on a continuum. My conversation with Myriam Laberge here has pointed this out. I initially wrote a post that put facilitating up against hosting as two words to describe different ways …
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The big posting from the Systems Thinking in Action Conference on a session with Juanita Brown, Nancy Margulis, Nancy White and Amy Lenzo on conversation as a radical act. There are days, and this is one of them, when I pinch myself at how lucky I am to be able to call these women my friends.
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Just back from an amazing Art of Hosting in rural Pennsylvania. Found this in my email box upon my return, send to me by my friend Toke: Not just any talk is conversation Not any talk raises consciousness good conversation has an edge It opens your eyes to something It quickens your ears And good conversation reverberates It keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; The next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said The reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness Your mind and heart have been moved Your are at …