Human to Human

Earlier this week was in a good skype call and video with friend Chris Corrigan. The beauty of skype video — seeing Chris’s deck, yard, garden and sharing a bit of the duck ponds out my window. I loved our exploring. As is always / often the case, much shows up in our interaction that feels like a gift.

One was the sense of “learning edge” being at the center. Quite often in our work together we encourage ourselves and others to go to the learning edge. Most often I think of this as something “out there,” something that is far away. In fact, I’d asked Chris something about what was the most “far out” learning that he felt he was in. He shared some of his. I shared some of mine. And then we began to notice some of what makes things feel far out. Uncertainty. And in particular, uncertainty when it has implications on the lives of the ones we love. Such is life indeed — an invitation to many uncertains. And such is the process of being awake or alert — an invitation to go to those uncertains. It can take us to what feels like an edge, often marked by such things as “conventional wisdom” or “majority perspective.”

That conversation helped us both realize something anew. It is the process of coming to have radical trust in our own wisdom. Or in the wisdom that is not as apparent in “conventional wisdom.” And then this gem — that to come to have radical trust in our own wisdom is to come to trust our own core. To shift the learning edge is to shift the identity at the core of who we are. To be at the learning edge is to live into the very center of who we see ourselves to be.

Interesting to think of the invitation that this provides for any of us and our clients. Go to your learning edge. OK. Go deep into your center to recognize what is at the core. Be willing to recognize what might be audacious in your belief or action, and dare to find at the learning edge, the very center from which “unconventional wisdom” is trying to be born.

A good one to play with. A gift of another way of seeing it.

A few reflections from Labour Educators at an Art of Hosting in May. I love what shows up in closing reflections as participants are making sense of their experience together. A closing poem and a participant feedback also below.

Closing Circle Reflections, Intentions
See also: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/1007857/CLC_Reflections

– Implementing hosting in IDEW and CAW training
– Specific direction
– Inner peace of mind
– Excitement about changes I can make at home
– Meeting other union labour educators – I haven’t done this for a long time
– We can do more in the collective than we can alone
– Enthusiasm and confidence to use these skills
– A respectful process for me to integrate
– I’m so full I’m leaking!
– Taking away a community
– Worked on a real-life planning event
– I don’t always need the answer
– A sense of caring
– Plans and ideas for an international postal conference
– What might a world café look like without words
– Quickly put ideas in place
– Renewed and increased respect for crafting friendship
– Human rights planning program
– Going away with a lot of work!
– Stable enough to be sustainable; creative enough to deserve the name of life
– I go away with the feeling I have when I dance – humming, soaring, electricity
– Aware of an invisible presence in this country
– I’ve got a heart going – yippee!
– Bringing the right people together for getting to answers
– This has transformational powers
– I feel like I won something
– Group wisdom
– Accomplished a lot in a few days

What in your life is calling you?
The Terma Collective

What I you life is calling you?
When all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside,
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls at your soul?

In the silence between your heartbeats
hides a summons.
Do you hear it?

Name it, if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?

Participant Feedback

“This learning circle was like the force of gravity that shoots a spaceship around the moon. I had no idea the power of joy that would be created. I feel hopeful, renewed, rewoven into a community, and surprised. I needed this filling.”

There are many definitions of hosting that my colleagues and I are evolving into. I laugh when I remember back to an event earlier this year, where, at the start Chris Corrigan offered a definition and named it as one of 87 that we would offer in the coming three days together. He laughed. I laughed. We all did. What makes humor funny is it’s truth.

Here’s a definition that I like from the Community of Practice in Upper Arlington, Columbus, Ohio:

“Hosting is an emerging set of practices for facilitating group conversations of all sizes, supported by principles that:

– maximize collective intelligence;
– welcome and listen to diverse viewpoints;
– maximize participation and civility;
– and transform conflict into creative cooperation.”

What I like about this is that it comes from many years now of work in the area around conversational leadership. I also like that it names as practice in form and in value of some very basic things that most systems want. It’s good, direct language.

I also would add a bit further through another lens. Hosting is what we do to create basic conditions so that the energy of people in the room can co-mingle and entangle. Co-mingle is to mix, to invite a shared wholeness and creation. To entangle is to become a new entitity and remain as such in some manner. It is an emergent entity. I heard Edgar Mitchell, founder of IONS speak this recently, “resonance is nature’s way of transfering information.” Hosting, from this view, is about giving us access to each other’s resonance. It is often in the form of conversational practices that are deliberately focused on particular questions. However, it is more — the silence, the play, the shared inquiry, the poetry, the agreements, the listening, and the like — each creates additional ways to come into a shared resonance. From the living systems view of “people support what they create” this means that hosting is about creating conditions so that this resonance sharing can happen, and thus support of what is created.

Hard to find words for it. But I sense it is what is happening and what is most promising when I think of how we respond to the challenges of this day. Or when I try to make sense of why so many past AoHs have gone so well — in client systems and in open-enrollment learnings.

I have used variations of this journalling process now in several events. The source comes from Otto Scharmer’s work and The Presencing Institute. I typically use them to invite a level of personal sourcing, and to clarify intentions. Everything from 10 minutes to a couple of hours. Colleague Martin Siesta hosted a sweet version of this last week in Colorado working with financial planners. It was followed by time in wilderness and then a partner discussion.

The full questions and context are here.

The questions in brief, follow:

[ 1 ] Challenges: Look at yourself from outside as if you were another person: What are the 3 or 4 most important challenges or tasks that your life (work and non-work) currently presents?

[ 2 ] Self: Write down 3 or 4 important facts about yourself. What are the important accomplishments you have achieved or competencies you have developed in your life (examples: raising children; finishing your education; being a good listener)?

[ 3 ] Emerging Self: What 3 or 4 important aspirations, areas of interest, or undeveloped talents would you like to place more focus on in your future journey (examples: writing a novel or poems; starting a social movement; taking your current work to a new level)?

[ 4 ] Frustration: What about your current work and/or personal life frustrates you the most?

[ 5 ] Energy: What are your most vital sources of energy? What do you love?

[ 6 ] Inner resistance: What is holding you back? Describe 2 or 3 recent situations (in your work or personal life) where you noticed one of the following three voices kicking in, which then prevented you from exploring the situation you were in more deeply:

Voice of Judgment: shutting down your open mind (downloading instead of inquiring)
Voice of Cynicism: shutting down your open heart (disconnecting instead of relating)
Voice of Fear: shutting down your open will (holding on to the past or the present instead of letting go)

[ 7 ] The crack: Over the past couple of days and weeks, what new aspects of your Self have you noticed? What new questions and themes are occurring to you now?

[ 8 ] Your community: Who makes up your community, and what are their highest hopes in regard to your future journey? Choose three people with different perspectives on your life and explore their hopes for your future (examples: your family; your friends; a parentless child on the street with no access to food, shelter, safety, or education). What might you hope for if you were in their shoes and looking at your life through their eyes?

[ 9 ] Helicopter: Watch yourself from above (as if in a helicopter). What are you doing? What are you trying to do in this stage of your professional and personal journey?

[ 10 ] Imagine you could fast-forward to the very last moments of your life, when it is time for you to pass on. Now look back on your life’s journey as a whole. What would you want to see at that moment? What footprint do you want to leave behind on the planet? What would you want to be remembered for by the people who live on after you?

[ 11 ] From that (future) place, look back at your current situation as if you were looking at a different person. Now try to help that other person from the viewpoint of your highest future Self. What advice would you give? Feel, and sense, what the advice is—and then write it down.

[ 12 ] Now return again to the present and crystallize what it is that you want to create: your vision and intention for the next 3-5 years. What vision and intention do you have for yourself and your work? What are some essential core elements of the future that you want to create in your personal, professional, and social life? Describe as concretely as possible the images and elements that occur to you.

[ 13 ] Letting-go: What would you have to let go of in order to bring your vision into reality? What is the old stuff that must die? What is the old skin (behaviors, thought processes, etc.) that you need to shed?

[ 14 ] Seeds: What in your current life or context provides the seeds for the future that you want to create? Where do you see your future beginning?

[ 15 ] Prototyping: Over the next three months, if you were to prototype a microcosm of the future in which you could discover “the new” by doing something, what would that prototype look like?

[ 16 ] People: Who can help you make your highest future possibilities a reality? Who might be your core helpers and partners?

[ 17 ] Action: If you were to take on the project of bringing your intention into reality, what practical first steps would you take over the next 3 to 4 days?