Author: Tenneson Woolf

I was listening into an invitation phone call yesterday. It was a beautifully hosted. It was friends and possible participants exploring an Art of Hosting event in June that is focused on this core question:

Some of these possible participants were asking why it would be important to be at the event. The spoken needs ranged everything from desparate for “practical tools for the trenches” to much needed “philosophical reeavaluation of the financial and wealth paradigm.”

As I listened, a core question became clear to me that underlies the specifics of the financial questions.

My bias is that we are “facing an unprecedented unknown.” (health care, food and sustainability, education…). I find this helpful to name. It helps name the need for why a project or an initiative matters. For why pioneering efforts matter. For why pioneering process matters.

Learning surfacing through Art of Hosting, Berkana and other groups supporting engagement is that the “how” of “facing unprecedented unknowns” is found in community. This is what I am learning. This is what leading practitioners are sharing. This is what academians are reporting.

More specifically in the “how” is the importance of colearning (think of this as core competency to adapt) in community. And real work that people care about. And relationships that are real and close enough to endure and thrive in the knowing and the not knowing that most certainly shows up in unprecedented unknowns.

Christina Baldwin has been a great example of a “namer” for me. She names what is going on so that we can have choice of what to do with it. It is my learning that naming the magnitude of unknown helps people focus beyond the tools and tricks. It takes us into the core competency needed of creating the new together, gathered in community.

This is one of the best posts / articles I’ve read in a long time on emergence. Peggy Holman, the author, has a unique gift of giving voice and applying it in practice.

I love her story — transforming a prison system where the leader must work with both the tradition needs of a board and yet the visionary needs of the system.

I lover her description of emergence, including the qualities of the new that show up when connected. “Mom’s nose, Dad’s eyes, but still something unique in and of itself.”

I love the three questions she asks to invoke the emergence of the new…

1. How do we disrupt coherence compassionately?
2. How do we engage dissonance creatively?
3. How do we realize novelty wisely?

Her post is here. Enjoy

I have heard and been in many conversations in the last six months about “these economic times.” Meetings with conference organizers concerned about attendance. Colleagues with whom I am hosting events and trainings. There is a strong thread about how meeting together is a luxury, as if it is something we will do again when “these times” pass.

I know the thread well. Yet I also know the need, even more, not to get trapped in the energy of collapse.

I love what Meg Wheatley has written below. It came in an email this morning naming two weeklong semiars she will be hosting during the summer. I love the clarity of description and invitation to support each other in community.

“There has never been a greater need for us to be together –reflecting, learning, supporting each other– as we learn how to sustain our good work in the midst of so much fear and groundlessness. This summer I am offering two seminars that speak directly to the needs of those of us who want to serve others from a place of clarity, peace and sanity. Because this is such a difficult time to be a good leader, each of these seminars will delve deeply into the skills, capacities and perspectives that give us the ability to act well and persevere over the long term.

Even though you may feel you have neither the time nor the money to attend a seminar, I hope you will seriously consider attending. I believe that you will return to your work feeling more focused and confident about how best to serve at this time. And after five days of being in the company of other good and dedicated leaders, you will also feel refreshed, enthusiastic and ready for the challenges ahead. I know this to be true from past experiences and now, more than at any other time, we need to experience the inspiration, imagination and dedication that always blossoms in a community of kindred spirits.”

I just returned from two weeks hosting. One with friends and colleagues in Illinois that are committed to strengthening families statewide. The other with an amazing web in Indiana supporting a movement for wholeness.

I have so many questions living in me from these two experiences. They feel like they happened in a time warp. In Illinois, one person slipped in speaking and referenced us as being together for 16 days. The event itself was 4 days. In Indiana, the communication slip was 2 years. Working deeply and with intention can feel very full.

As I tried to make sense of all that happened, I was reminded of an old Star Trek, The Next Generation episode. What I remember was Captain Picard finding himself on a planet, not knowing how he got there. He was imported into a community and life. He had no contact with the ship. He didn’t know how he got there. He lived a full life on that planet. Married. Aged. I think, raised children. Lived in community. Learned to play a small flute. He learned to accept the life he was living and began to wonder if the Enterprise was an illusion. The episode ends with him waking on the Enterprise, doctors hovering over him. He had passed out for a minute or two in Enterprise time. He retained the whole of his planet life, including his ability to play the flute. I’m wondering what the flutes are of the last two weeks.

One, a few notes anyway, may be what this awareness of “learning as what we do.”

In Indianapolis these wicked questions were present and nibbling at the edges: What is the most meaningful harvest we can imagine from a large scale café? What core purpose does it serve? I loved what one of the participants named and received it as a gift – “we are not looking for an answer. We are looking for a journey.” What if learning is what we do – sometimes applied to particular projects etc. But the core is supporting the capacity and ongoing process to learn. What if this learning is just the flow of life, in us, through us, around us that enables imagining and manifesting the next level of system that serves?