Human to Human • Tenneson Woolf

August 31, 2016

Emergence — It Takes A Commitment

I’m enjoying writing this week, inspired in part by my friend and colleague (frolleague) Kinde Nebeker. We’ve been thinking together about emergence. Putting words to it. Getting to the heart of it. Growing our understanding. Understanding and working with emergence is a key part of the series we are offering again this fall in Salt Lake City, The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership.

Here’s a teaser from the three-page thought paper I wrote. The full piece is here.

In the 1990s I was part of several leadership conferences offered in the beautiful Wasatch Mountains at Sundance Utah, where there are a lot of Aspens. Sundance is the resort that Robert Redford built and was original host to the Sundance Film Festival. Those conferences were on “Self-Organizing Systems,” lead by my friends (and bosses at the time) Margaret Wheatley and Myron Rogers. They were three-day gatherings with up to sixty people who wanted to learn of this self-organizing paradigm. Some were consultants. Some were internal leadership. Some were community leaders. Some were C-level in corporations. It was a beautiful place to learn, and that brought out the beauty of those people together.

One of the guest presenters at those conferences was Fritjof Capra, the Austrian Physicist, renowned for his writings (including The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point) and his work at Berkeley’s Center for Ecoliteracy. Fritjof, like Meg and Myron, like many of us that have continued this work, was studying the qualities of living systems, including emergence, and applying those learnings and principles to human systems — teams, organizations, communities.

I remember Fritjof describing an example of sugar in one of his teachings — though he seemed to be thinking it out loud and coming up with the example in the moment. “Sugar is a mix of three elements: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, none of which are sweet.” He continued, “the sweetness,” he paused to peer out into that beautiful forested Sundance setting, “is in, the relationship. It is not in the parts.” In making that statement, his peering outside came back to those of us inside. He’d made a discovery, which got a good chuckle from all of us — in the way that in-the-moment simplicity does.

August 30, 2016

Circle Energetics

Rock Stars

I love this picture above. It is all participants from The Circle Way Practicum earlier this month (except two that were unable to be there — we had collages they created to represent them). I love the picture because it brings back a palpable energy and memory.

One of the teachings that I really found helpful at the practicum was the one on Circle Energetics. I think I found simple words that I’ve been searching for to help describe and understand what I’ve been observing and feeling for a long time in groups about the more subtle yet essential dynamics at play. It comes in these three statements from one of the handouts.

“All living systems emit registerable fields of energy — including us.” I think of it as a vibration. It helps me to think of the first science classes I had when introduced to the properties of waves. They have a frequency (how many cycles in a given time period), an amplitude (height of the wave), and a wavelength (distance between crests). I can see the squiggly lines on paper from those science classes. It helps me to think of those lines when I watch people interacting. I’m making it sound more tangible that I mean it. I mostly feel it, this field of energy. I give myself permission to describe it as vibration to understand even more.

“All interactions between living systems activate these energetic fields.” I think of any human group as a living system. At the practicum, it was the group of 22 of us. My cohost, Amanda Fenton and I designed in a whole lot of interaction for the group — partners, small groups, the full group, solo reflection, play (and of course meals, social time, and sleep). The practicum is more than teaching a methodology, though it is that. It’s activating an energetic field. Now we are getting somewhere, right. It feels like a magician’s secret made clear to help make the uncommon, common.

“Circle organizes the energy emitted by interaction.” This one is the kicker for me that I’m learning the most about. My experience is that Circle creates container for that interaction, and that energy, to make more sense. It creates a kind of coherence that seems fully natural and palpable. One of the things that has helped me learn this more fully is to notice how that energy dissipates when the circle is complete or when the event is over. What felt really clear and simple, becomes fuzzy and more difficult to remember. Almost like a dream — you wake in the middle of the night with it thinking you’ll never forget it. By morning, you wake for the day and it’s completely gone. It is my experience that Circle organizes and clarifies — the best description of depth I’ve found is that it is organizing that energy so that we can access information in another, and often shared, way.

It was a fun piece to teach with Amanda. And it’s been a fun and helpful piece, this clarity of Circle energetics, to notice staying with me. Like the memory of a good meal shared with friends. Or a good party. It stays with us, right. My guess is that it’s the energetic that most lingers.

August 29, 2016

All In A Day — In Questions

I often tell groups I’m hosting that our participative process is embedded with two deliberate learning strategies. One, we will ask questions together. And two, we will share stories together.

Last week I worked with a colleague, Rhonda Rabbit, Dean at the School of Education in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We created a format for 20 faculty, staff, and leadership to build and strengthen a foundation of working together for the coming academic year. We had one day to work with. It is enough to touch some significant aspects together. However, I find one-day formats are more about trying to move the edge a bit. To inspire. To bring some awareness to patterns to continue or to interrupt.

Here’s the questions for the day:

With Partners
What is going on among you that encourages you?
Who sends you?
What is simple in your work together?
What is challenging?
Where do you see trust among you?
What is the bigger story of education that you are contributing to?

With Full Group in Circle
Who are you?
Why did you choose to come here today?
What is going on this year in the School of Education that matters to you?
What is one thing you are good at?

At Small Tables in World Cafe
When have you experienced a crossroad in your life — what was it and what was that like?
Is there a crossroad that you feel the School of Education is at this year — what is that?
What recommendations do you have to help find our way through these crossroads in good learning and relationships?

To Create Working Groups (and Harvest) in Open Space
What conversations do you want to explore that will help contribute to an attractive and desirable future for the next year at this School of Education?
As it pertains to _____ (Open Space Topic), an attractive future to me includes _____ (six word story harvest). Also, harvest templates to include “aha,” “important questions,” “next steps.”

With Full Group in Circle
Is there a commitment that you discovered or felt renewed in being together today?
What is one gratitude that you would like to share?

All in a day — in questions.

August 25, 2016

Coming Home

P1010420

Wow! The last two weeks have breezed by. Helping my spouse pack up more of her parent’s home. Squishing in a full car and trunk load to take from eastern Washington to Seattle. Back to back meetings that get a bit bunched before and after events during which I know I won’t be available. Preparing for and hosting The Circle Way Practicum on Whidbey Island, Washington. Seeing my 19 year-old son at the airport, the first I’ve been with him face to face in nearly a year. It was tear-welling and good for the soul. Now arriving to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania to work with a School of Education planning its coming year.

Early mornings. Full days. Late nights. I’m grateful that most of it has been good or great.

I’m utterly moved by seeing my son. Deeply. I’m so looking forward to witnessing what he has evolved to in these 10 months away. Some listening over dinner. Some play. Some soft voices to share what has happened and tell truths together.

I’m also utterly moved by my experience at The Circle Way Practicum that I co-taught with Amanda Fenton, and fully enjoyed with our other 20 participants. In searching for words to share, the short description that is honest and from the gut, I’ve been saying, “It was like coming home for me. The depth. The connection. The practicality.”

The Circle Way has a pace to it. It’s not a speed date, thought it can be invoked even in that. It’s not a smushed 15 minute small group, though it can be invoked there too. It’s not all serious, ahem, though it is really the best root form I know to enable us to be serious. The Circle Way has a welcoming-in it that brings depth and discovery. The components, I continue to learn, really strengthen the experience. A center. A rim. Agreements. Practices. Depth of a question. A start point. A guardian. They help us remember who we are and who we might want to be together.

I loved the spaciousness of the practicum (though it was not always that way for Amanda and I in our planning and adapting design). But it was spacious in the process. There was room to be heard, that granted, will not happen every day. But the simple reminder, deeply embodied, of this deep presencing and listening together — that changes lives. It did. All of us.

Like coming home.