I’ve just finished co-hosting the Art of Hosting training with my mates Tenneson Woolf, Teresa Posakony and Brenda Chaddock, We spent four days with 27 people learning the art of hosting and convening meaningful conversations. There is much that I learned in that, as I always do when I am teaching, but what seems most present for me this morning is Tenneson’s persistent quest to find the simplest way to host meaningful conversations.
As a facilitator, I believe strongly that we should meet only when there is a need. It is best to hold a meeting when you don’t know what to do. And when you are at that spot, a meeting serves to help you and your colleagues find the wisdom, however large or small, to make good decision and act smartly.
In the Art of Hosting we teach the “chaordic stepping stones,” essentially a collection of things to pay attention to as you think about designing meetings, projects or organizations. These include knowing the need, knowing the purpose of the meeting and knowing who should be there.
And then, once you are together, there are a few simple tools that come in handy:
1. Be present. Being present means simply turning off all of the distractions that take us away from the question at hand. If there is a more important place we need to be we should be there rather than in a meeting. And so, if this meeting is the most important place to be, be here in this meeting. This is a tough one to live in a world of cell phones, blackberries and wireless internet, but our best work requires us to be fully present to the task at hand.
2. Have a good question. It is harder than you think to find the most important question for the need. But a meeting that is called around a question that matters is a meeting that will work an be worthwhile. So even if it is a regular Monday morning staff meeting, drop a good question into it…”What is up for you this week?” “What challenge do you think we need to face together this week?” “How can we be a little smarter together?”
3. Use a listening piece. A listening piece is a physical object that helps slow down the conversation. When you hold the object, you speak, when you are finished speaking, you put the object down. For important conversations, there is a need to speak deliberately and listen deliberately. The listening piece focuses our attention on what is being said and causes us to speak wisely. I don’t use a listening piece all the time or even all the way through a meeting, but at least a meeting where we begin with it and end with seems to make the conversation that much more deliberate. And, if you find yourself getting off track in the middle when contention and struggle arises, return to the listening piece to slow it down so we can get back to the wisdom that is in the room.
4. Work with mates. It is always better if there is a friend working with you. Someone to hold your back, bounce ideas off and help to discern things. We are wiser when we are working together, not when we are striking out on our own. When we are stuck, having a team mate matters.
5. Harvest. Find a way to harvest what you are learning, Take notes, draw a mind map, make commitments, conclude with an agreement. Harvesting is an art in itself, but a good meeting is always judged by it’s ability to produce a good result, and harvesting, in it’s many forms, ensures that that will happen.
6. Be wise. Take wise decisions and act wisely. After all, the whole reason for meeting in the first place was to do things a little smarter and a little better, wasn’t it?
Yesterday, we were sitting in the forest, after the Art of Hosting was over and talking about this simple pattern and what it means to find a few simple practices to hone our skills. I had a strong insight about how one learns to do this. It’s quite simple really: practise. There are countless opportunities in a lifetime to meet people in formal and informal settings, in meetings, at work, on the bus, at parties, in families…If you really want to get better and better at facilitating and hosting conversations, practice the simplest tools everywhere. Next time you meet someone at a party get a little curious, and throw a question out there: “What do you do? Really? What is it like to do that in the world?”
Repeat as necessary.
[tags]artofhosting, Tennson Woolf, Brenda Chaddock, Teresa Posakony[/tags]
For the past two years, I have been active in the Art of Hosting fellowship. This is a global community of practitioners dedicated to uncovering the new and emerging forms of meaningful conversation and organizational shape. Together we have been conducting trainings, working together on projects and deeply learning our patterns.
Several of our mates in this fellowship have been working hard to bring about an online presence for our work, and today it went live. So I introduce to you the brand new Art of Hosting site, a place that describes what we are doing, how we are doing it and invites you to join us. Please take some time to poke around there and draw some inspiration from the amazing resources and content that has been assembled.
And if you are interested in exploring this pattern more deeply, there are several opportunities to do so in upcoming trainings, including one here on Bowen Island BC in a couple of weeks.
[tags]art of hosting[/tags]
Just a poem that came to me today, a day in which I’m opening space here in Prince George:
The sense of things
I have seen the texture of space
felt the sound of silence, falling in a wide open offering
tasted hesitancy and the sweetness of light
touching timewe sense into the most astonishing places together, you and I
into the tight cracking of possibility
screaming for releasewe let the humour of despair rest on our tongues,
choke our eyes with tears and scour our nostrils
with tendrils of acrid smoke.we walk together in circles
dizzy with the sensation of silent music
anxious that the soft holding
be strong enough to withstand the wails of pain and joy
that accompany liberationI have seen the music of leadership
arise to dance with chaos;watched the bitterness of hunger
fade into the dark recesses of the palette;heard the smooth and cool surface of flow
course through networks of veins;tasted the colour of peace:
its pure yellow flavour flecked with crimson notes;smelled the birth of worlds and the shifting of lives;
in ever opening space.
From whiskey river
Only to a magician is the world forever fluid,
infinitely mutable and eternally new.
Only he knows the secret of change.
Only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness
to become something else
and it is from this universal tension
that he draws his power.
Been quiet here the last couple of weeks but not in my life. Two weeks ago I visited The Shire near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia to teach with Toke Moeller, Sera Thompson and Tim Merry in the Art of Hosting. It was a beautiful time, working on the land, working with people from Yarmouth, Montreal and the eastern US who are doing deeply important work with youth, food and community. And it was great working with my mates.
A couple of pieces have showed up around the web about this training. Here is a post from Brian Hurlburt, a truly generous soul in Yarmouth who hosts web sites for community groups:
The Art of Hosting training is open to leaders, managers, teachers and pioneers from all walks of life who want to see and act from a new perspective on leadership that sets free one another’s creativity and intelligence. Helping those who want to learn to lead without being possessive, to help without taking credit, to let go in order to achieve more for the common good.
This practice may well require a shift in our thinking and ways of doing things, however since having left the Shire I’ve had more meaningful conversations with my family, friends, and associates! The exclamation point is purposely used because I’ve been to these types of things before; you know those leadership getaways where you get all fired up and then when you leave and return to reality your left with an empty useless feeling! This was totally different!
What I learned there, and what I experienced there was real, meaningful, and lasting! Easily applied in the real world and very affective and effective! In fact I find myself having more meaningful conversations without even trying!
No that’s powerful, when a way of doing things becomes a practice that becomes a natural way of doing things and can be applied in meaningful ways in daily life the course / conference becomes one that will benefit anyone who is open to it and makes themselves available to attend.
It was also great to see Rob Paterson there, who has been recently investigating the nature of “trusted space” on his blog and who found something in what we were talking about to animate those spaces. In the Art of Hosting, we use the term “fellowship” to describe our way of working together and we often refer to each other as “mates.” In talking with others, like Peggy Holman, the word “communitas” is another way of describing it, in perhaps a less gendered way. Regardless, this is a deep form of organizational structure and Toke, Tim, Sera, Rob and I along with others explored this deeply at The Shire.
Essentially, as Rob put it:
I am still amazed that I can know someone I have never met so well. I am not alone in going to work, as I did with Johnnie Moore, on a very dangerous piece of work with a person that I had never met before. There is some weird property of the web that enables Mates to notice the connection. Cyn has helped me overcome my fear of using my body and has put me on a path to keep healthy and fit. She lived only a mile away but we met for years online. Chris arrived at the Shire never having met Tim before. I came to the Shire because of Chris’ request knowing that it would be great. I have only met Chris once before. Many of you have similar stories about finding ‘Mates” in the ‘sphere. I find no separation in these relationships. Reputation is critical in this world…Fellowship is when Mates decide to do the world’s great work together. There is great work to be done that requires exceptional courage and often more than a lifetime to accomplish.
I think that is a lovely description, and it certainly validates my experience of working deeply with others, connected over long distances, engaged in the work of making good in the world. You probably have your own example of this type of organizing and working together. You work on a simple but mammoth task together, not tied to timelines or outcomes but simply knowing that one another are behind you. It is the shape of a circle moving outward from it’s centre, the essential shape of the expansion of the universe. We remain connected in our origins and our committment, and even over vast distances, we seem able to sense what the others are doing, and know when help is needed.
So, I’m curious, what is your mammoth task? And who are your mates? How is your fellowship working?
If you would like to explore more of this way of working, and the role that meaningful conversation plays in it, there are two Art of Hosting trainings coming up this fall. Here on Bowen Island, British Columbia, Tenneson Wolf, Brenda Chaddock, Teresa Posakony and me are hosting a gathering September 24-27, and there is still space. Sera Thompson will be hosting a gathering with Toke and Tim in Boulder Colorado.
[tags]Art of Hosting, Toke Moeller, Tim Merry, Sera Thompson, Rob Paterson[/tags}