Toke and I along with our Estonian colleagues, Piret, Robert and Ivika, began our three day participatory leadershipworkshop today. We were join at Altmoisa by 20 young-ish leaders who have been training together since the summer in the Art of Hosting and who have been using participatory meeting methodologies in the places of work. Tis workshop is intended to take the exploration of those practices deeper, and extend the learning that comes from hosting into the realms of leadership.
This is the first Art of Hosting workshop I have done in a language different from mine. Although most participants speak English (and I speak no Eesti) a few need whisper translation to follow along and Toke and I have someone whispering in our ears when others are speaking. It’s going well, and I’m getting used to connecting with the speaker rather than the translater when folks are sharing thoughts and insights.
In the opening circle, which was around the questions of Who am I today and What has been a recent example of participatory leadership, I made a long poem harvest from the stories that were shared. It’s clear here that people are both pressed for time, and feeling the need to feed a hunder in their organizations and communities for more participation. Like everywhere, when folks get a taste of participation, they want more of it, and most folks are here to continue their learning and sharpen their skills in offering.
One thing Toke and I are doing is trying to reduce all of these concepts and practices to basics. What are the basics that you need to host participation, whether in a meeting, and organization or a community? We riffed today on the four fold practice of the art of hosting, and explored the basic practices of being present, cultivating participation, being purposeful and practicing co-creation. We taught for a while, combining a little aikido in with our work and then the group met in triads to crack questions for their learning agenda together. We taught a little more and then went into a cafe to ground our learning, discovering where these basics show up in our lives and work and what the next level is regarding cultivating a deeper practice of these ways of working.
I like this idea of going back to basics, teaching the essence of practice and then having people find out how those things can take root and grow in different ways in their own lives. It is a lovely way to take what ones learns as a host and extend it to other parts of one’s life, whether its parenting, living in community or be a participatory leader.
When I was 10 years old, my family moved to Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, just on the north edge of London and eight miles away from White Hart Lane, the home of Tottenham Hotspur. I lived in the area for three years which were glorious years to be a Spurs fan, as we won two FA Cups and had a great team with the likes of Glen Hoddle, Ozzie Ardilles and Ricardo Villa. I grew to like football alot, and although I lost touch for a number of years, the rise of internet video has made it easy to follow my team once again, and so I have been, especially this year, when we are having a great season.
English football runs on a very different system than North American sports. As a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan, I have recently abandoned a 40 year addiction to NHL hockey because the league is screwed. In North America, the league owns the teams. there are no real home teams, and with the exception of a few that will never leave, the NHL can whimsically move franchises hither and yon, even to the desert of Arizona if they wish, which on the face of it doesn’t seem like a very good place to move a team from Winnipeg. And it wasn’t.
In short, the League controls the teams and top down control mechanisms are a little disingenuous when it comes to fan support. Fans give the impression that the team is theirs but it really isn’t.
In contrast, British sports are very much a bottom up model. Although the Football Association is well established, it is a chaordic structure that is based on an agreement. The FA looks after the national teams and runs a tournament called the FA Cup. Teams choose to play in the Football League, or not, which structures home and away fixtures through several divisions. Teams play in one division and can move up and down depending on how well they do year to year. At the highest level, teams play in the Barclay Premier League, the elite league, and yet another chaordic structure. The Leagues do not determine which franchises will play where, nor whether or not a club can exist. Each one simply sets rules of engagement for it’s own tournaments, and everyone signs on. The result is that in the FA, you have teams who are owned by multi billionaires and you have teams that are owned by supporters. Certainly to compete at the highest levels you need the talent that money can buy and so the teams at the top usually have a big backer or two. But the nature of promotion and relegation within the League system means that little fish can enter the big leagues, and so you get these family owned clubs like Wigan (who were the butt of jokes as a fourth division team when I was a boy) entering and staying on at the top flight with the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and my beloved Spurs.
And that structure and sense of family, and reliance on the supporters for their ongoing existence means that gestures such as this one are possible: Last week Spurs racked a record win against Wigan, beating them 9-1 at White Hart Lane. The Wigan players were so ashamed of their performance that they got together and offered to refund Wigan fans who attended the match OUT OF THEIR OWN SALARIES: (See Wigan refund fans who witnessed Spurs massacre.) That kind of bottom-up accountability comes with a longstanding relationship between players, owners and fans. That would never happen in North America, where players and owners are immune from performance, where all that maters is money and if you lose, you move. Wigan can’t move. They either survive or fold. And their survival depends entirely on their supporters.
So I’m doubly impressed this week, with the Wigan players for displaying great integrity and for Spurs for kicking their asses!
I’m off to Estonia on Saturday to run an Art of Hosting workshop with Toke Moeller and Piret Jeedas. To say I’m excited is an understatement.
First, this is only the second trip to Europe I have made since I left the UK in 1981 after living there for three years. It’s interesting to see how things have changed in Europe over 30 years. On this trip I am intending to connect in London, during a brief stopover at Heathrow, with one of my school buddies from those days, who I last saw when I was just 13 years old.
But the real highlight of the trip will be the time spent in Estonia, a nation that has one of the largest traditional repertoires of folk songs. Only a million people live there but there are tens of thousands of songs that are shared and sung by everyone. So important are these songs that it was through music that a cultural movement was born in the 1980s that led to Estonian independence from the Soviet Union without a single drop of blood being shed. There is a terrific new eponymous movie about The Singing Revolution which we watched last night as a family. The essence of the film was that Estonian culture, language and tradition formed the basis for a slow and patient awakening of cultural sovereignty and pride that led to mass meetings and gatherings, and the singing of traditional songs of affection for the nation. From that current flowed the courage and will to establish political sovereignty that resulted in the self-liberation of Estonia from more that 50 years of occupation by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
To offer a workshop on the Art of Hosting powerful conversations in a nation that has done that seems a trifle hubristic. But the Estonian story is one that lauds the power of vision, courageous commitment and self-government and it provides both a tremendous ground for our work and inspiring lessons for those of us whose nations are still labouring under colonial administrations. With so many First Nations in Canada clinging to language, culture and music, what I am about to learn in Estonia can provide me with some important lessons about how cultural expression, skillful dialogue and courageous participatory leadership can result in profound social and community transformation.
From Alex Kjerulf’s Friday Spoing. Behaviour change at it’s best!
A lovely paper by Mark McKergow from the UK which defines the art of hosting as a leadership practice: the essence is that the host creates space and is active within it.