The Basics: What I Do
It’s meeting design and facilitation. It’s strategic visioning. It’s participative leadership. It’s workshops to multi-day retreats. It’s coaching individuals and teams. Helping us be smarter together.
The Subtle: How I Do It
The subtle here is a reference to what is underneath. It is true to me that there are some basics. Maps. Methodologies. Models. These are very important. And, if I did not speak about the subtle, I would not be being totally honest. I often use the language of hosting. Or convening. Underneath that, what I believe we are really hosting and cultivating when working with group facilitation is consciousness, wellness, wholeness, and resonance.
The Theory: What I’ve Learned
“Make sure that whatever processes you choose to use or create comes from a deliberate underlaying theory of change.”
This was the advice offered to me from two important early mentors, Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner Rogers. It was a commentary on some of what we were seeing group facilitators do that sometimes felt confusing to participants. Since then, it has always felt important to me to connect group facilitation to theory. Not so much extensive detail. But as root, or bedrock, to clarify criteria for choosing what to do and what not to do. Theory is the story that helps make sense of the past, and, discern what is useful now and into the future. I often speak of the three theory bases that inspire my work:
- Living Systems — that organizations are living systems.
- Self-Organization — that groups of people experience “order for free” when centered in clear values.
- Emergence — that insight and change happens from what arises when a system encounters itself.
Partners in Group Facilitation
I have made it policy to most often work in partnership. The work is so much more than mechanical check lists from the front of the room. I’ve worked with really fantastic people all of my life. People I trust.
- Chris Corrigan and Caitlin Frost, with whom I continue to host a university-wide participative leadership program.
- Krista Betz, whom I loved creating with in the Next Generation Leadership Initiative.
- Glen Brown, whom I loved working with when we created and hosted a 6-month Leadership Development Program and Cohort for a corporate setting.
Group Facilitation Clients
I have so enjoyed working with such a range of groups and systems over the last 25 years. From faith community councils to university-wide senior leadership. From labor unions to corporate leadership teams. From health care practitioners to school teachers. In contexts ranging from coaching explorations to meetings to retreats to large conference redesign.
Kind Words
“Tenneson Woolf reflects a peaceful soul coupled with outstanding facilitation skills. He is wise, and he helps each participant feel wise as well. He has a rare gift for reaching directly into each participant’s mind and heart.”
Phyllis Winter
Wisdom’s Way Alumni
“You are a medicine man, a bridger of worlds. This is such a wonderful piece (In Troubled Times of the Heart, p 4). I love the spaciousness and humility and trust of your invitation.”
Jeremy Nash
Creator and Convener, Poetry Tribe
Tenneson is a thoughtful and inspiring leader and coach. He has walked alongside me on my journey into wise leadership, manhood, and healing of self. He is the kind of leader we need at this moment – kind, insightful, with a firm guiding hand.”
Prentiss J. Haney
Co-Executive Director, Ohio Organizing Collaborative
I’m grateful for kind words offered, appreciations from things very personal to institutional. A few more of them are here.