Part five of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece Part 4: Harvest 5. Make a wise decision I’ve always thought that the essence of good leadership is the ability to make a decision. It requires a certain kind of courage, especially when it seems that there is a zero sum game at stake. It also requires a high degree of emotional intelligence and compassion and empathy, especially when the decision you have to make could result in harm …
On the Art of Hosting list today there has been a very interesting conversation about some of the Japanese words that are used to describe space and container. As I will be working this spring in Japan with these very concepts, I thought it would be interesting to hear from my colleagues Yurie Makihara and Kazuhiko Nakamura about these ideas of “wa,” “ma,” “ba,” and “tokoro.” Yurie shared her thoughts, on some of these words, including noting that the word “ba” is often cited by foreigners as an example of a word describing the quality of dialogic container that exists …
I’m just coming home from a couple of days in Victoria where Caitlin and I were with colleagues Rebecca Ataya, Annemarie Travers, and Kelly Poirier. We spent two days working on what I can only call “polishing the core” of the Leadership 2020 program that we offer on behalf of the Federation of Community Social Service of BC. We have run this leadership program for 8 years now, putting around 400 people through a nine month intensive program of residential and applied learning. The program has built collaboration, trust, and connection between the Ministry of Children and Family Development, indigenous …
I’ll be away for a couple of weeks, so here is the last set of links for the year. Happy New Year. I am worried about democracy these days. Our electoral politics are ravaged by social media manipulation, an absence of policy discussion, and the influence of money. Governance affords very little opportunity for meaningful citizen participation. Harold Jarche is worried too, and in this pots he tackles the question of how to save democracy head on. Our institutions are failing us. They were designed for the age of print, not an electrically connected one. We need new structures and …
Things change in different ways. A couple of weeks ago, I took a deep dive into Glenda Eoyang’s Human Systems Dynamics, learning about her theory of complexity and getting my hands on the tools and methods that HSD uses to work in complex adaptive systems. (The tools are very good by the way, and highly recommended as ways to both get a good introductory grasp on complex problems, and work within those contexts to make decisions and lead). One of the useful ways of looking at things concerns the kinds of change that happen, and if you’ve been reading …