Category: General Learning

This post is companion to yesterday’s post. It is more from Jerry Nagel who recently completed his PhD dissertation on Art of Hosting world views. It’s a blurry line between values and principles. I’m fine with that.

As I did yesterday, below are Jerry’s words in red, for which I’ve added a few reflections, particularly when I think of these principles as connoting a kind of action.

Principles:

• Conversations matter and conversation is the way we think, make meaning together and build strong relationships that invite real collaboration. Conversation is action. It’s not the only action, but it is action. Many leadership conversations have focused on the results, and in capitalist systems, the returns. Denying conversation as action (“why are we wasting time; we should get to the real work”) is like denying the hike up the mountain as part of the hike. It’s not just about arriving at the peak. Corny as metaphor, but true, no?
• Meaningful conversations lead to wise actions. We seek to explore what can be done rather than what cannot. See the above. Conversation is just about being nice. And it isn’t just about talking. At it’s best, it is giving attention to shared identity, from which collective, and hopefully more sustainable choices of action can be made.
• We work from a place of appreciation and not judgment, bringing play and improvisation to imagining new ways to go on together. Again, the appreciation isn’t just about being nice together. That’s too pejorative and condescending. Appreciation is often an act of honesty and humility — pretty good practices for working well together — embedded within a complex environment. It’s easy to blame and oversimplify. That’s too often associated with heroism. Appreciation here is for honest acknowledgement that most of us live in complex environments that require interrupting reductionism.
• Curiosity and judgment do not live well together. If we are judging we cannot be curious. They actually fight together. And not just like brothers in a tussle. Sometimes like street fighting. Rough. People get hurt. It’s a great value to say, be curious, or to practice no blame. I find what makes that possible is compassion for a person’s choices. I may hate the choices, but I can still honor the fact that someone chose them with deliberateness, consciously or not, to likely fulfill a need. Curiosity is about seeing bigger pictures.
• Hosting meaningful conversations opens up the space for collective inquiry and finding collective intelligence. We shift from individuals being responsible for decisions to being relationally responsible to each other. Ooh, I love “relationally responsible.” Hearing stories is a learning strategy. Asking questions is a learning strategy. I tell clients that these are two deliberate approaches that we will engage together, so as to give us a better chance of accomplishing what we most long for.
• We work to co-create in friendship and partnership. It was a long time ago that I heard Chris Corrigan say, “friendship is our business model.” That’s not soft stuff. That’s just real. And, OK, enjoyable and natural.
• We listen from a place of not knowing so that we “are more open to other(ness), to multiple voices, and to possibilities”. Yup, always. This one needs a particular value attached to it. For me, I’ve lived with ones like these: “there is always more not know that there is known about any given situation; in every statement of truth there is more that is not true about it that there is true about it.” Not knowing is a commitment to being real together.
• We show up to our work fully present, not distracted, prepared, clear about what is needed and the contributions we have to offer. This is great self work, isn’t it. Freeing ourselves from fears and contractions. Opening ourselves to curiosity, love, and expansions. I love feeling that I have some of this in me, gained over a life of paying attention. It’s a bit humbling, or aggravating even, to realize that all of that present living is tip of the ice berg. I used to feel this when I first learned to speak Korean. I learned it quite well; well enough to know that there was much, much more to learn.
• The practice is the work. Enough said. This is gold.

Recently Jerry Nagel, friend and colleague, offered a statement of values and principles embedded in an Art of Hosting worldview. These were what he discovered through many interviews with practitioners. Jerry was writing his PhD dissertation, for which I got to be a reader and reflective partner.

One of the things I love about Jerry is that he is committed to seeing a meta level. That takes discipline. Worldview has always been at the root of it for me. It’s always felt a bit silly to me to get too serious about the surface of behaviors absent awareness of world view. Jerry is one who gets that.

As posted, Jerry name values as “statements of importance.” His principles connoted a “kind of action.” I’ve included just the values below because, well, I want to hold them spaciously. They are statements (in red) that deserve more than a speed date. With each, I’ve included a few of my reflections.

Values:

• Being curious is essential and being curious means being willing to step into a place of not knowing. Yup, there it is. Being curious. “Be present, be curious” has been a kind of mantra for me over the last ten years. It doesn’t always mean not knowing, but it does mean a kind of relationship with not knowing. A relationship to be familiar with.
• Diverse perspectives open up new possibilities. All the voices from all local forms of life are welcome and invited into the conversation without fear. This one is worth unpacking too. I wonder sometimes if many of us just fear diversity. Or fear the letting go that is required to explore another person’s certainty. Or resist inclusion because it is inconvenient. I do, sometimes. Or I know that feeling in me. There is a rather high cost to these barriers, isn’t there. Absence of sustainability is high on that list.
• We create and hold space for a multiple of local realities to be in dialogue with each other in different but equal relationship. It’s not every day that we get to do this. Nor perhaps need too. But there are some days when this is an absolute must. I’ve heard Jerry say it a number of times, that “the practice is the work.” Creating and holding this kind of space is a practice for a lifetime!
• As practitioners we work toward the common good. We are committed to making the world as a whole a better place. It’s an inspiring value, isn’t it. The world as better place. I would add that this common good occurs simultaneously to the world inside of us, and, to the world outside of us. Movement and attention within each feeds the other.
• We believe in human goodness. We work to support personal aspirations. I relate to this one from my early work with The Berkana Institute in the 1990s. We stated it slightly different — we “rely” on human goodness. Count on it. There are people everywhere in the world that want good and want to offer good. This reality sometimes is obscured by tragedy, pain, injustice.
• We work in the place of emergence without preconceived notions of what must happen, instead allowing what wants to come forth to emerge. We trust in the not knowing. We trust in the generative field of co-creation. Yup. I count on three anchors this way. Emergence. Self-organization. Life, and organizations, as living systems.
• Participation by all is central to the work. It may not be by all. But the movement to more inclusion and an interruption of the mindset that is isolation feels very needed. Very central.
• We take time to be aware of our own prejudices and habits and take time to reflect on our (re)actions as part of our ongoing learning as hosts. This takes courage, doesn’t it. And friendship. I’m reminded of yesterday’s post, inspired by Tuesday Ryan Hart, Relationship is the Resolution. Her and another colleague made their learning public.
• We practice generosity. We share what we know and invite others into the field of co-learning. I’m grateful to know some people who really embody this. Chris Corrigan comes to mind. Many in the Art of Hosting practitioners group. I continue to learn about what this means.

Indeed, a few important things. Thanks Jerry.

This title comes from a blog post that I read this morning. Tuesday Ryan Hart, a friend and colleague is the person who wrote it. There is an honesty in it that I appreciate as she describes an experience with another friend and colleague, Tim Merry.

What’s honest for me is that I too hunger for a resolution. For good reasons. And for convenient reasons.

I love it that Tuesday is committed to keeping the dialogue open and on-going. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t experiments and a “todo” list. It does mean that the fundamental need is to stay in relationship, which doesn’t end.

Here are more of her words from the post. It’s worth reading the whole of it too.

• We have resolution, but it isn’t real, or it is superficial.  It might address the current circumstance but it doesn’t give us any capacity to deal with future occurrences.
• Forcing resolution can lead to short-term alleviation of feelings and discomfort but may have no real meaningful impact beyond making us feel better in the moment.
• Our relationships are not rooted in reality as we move from our lived experiences of each other to a set of “should” or “shouldn’ts”.
• Our relationships become more vulnerable to future disruption.   We aren’t able to build the resilience  – we don’t get the practice necessary – to face future challenges.
• As process facilitators we undermine the work of the group because we don’t allow the discomfort or learning that comes from it.

I was on the phone today with friend Bob Stilger. He spoke this phrase, “hinges of time” to describe my upcoming weekend.

My son is graduating from high school tomorrow. Yes, in a blink, it seems. Even though it has long been visible in front of us. It will mark a change, of course. I’m proud of him. Graduation is a part of that. I’m proud of the person he is and has become.

Immediately after his graduation, I’m returning to my hometown of Edmonton, Alberta to gather with family and honor my Grandpa Billy Gould, who passed away last month. To share stories. To be together. To laugh. To cry.

Hinges. They connect one thing to another. I think of doors to walls. I think of entryways, one room to another.

“Things come through the hinges of time,” Bob said. “They are significant moments that change life or the relational web of life.”

Perhaps.

I’m proud of both of these individuals. At this point, my son enters another stage of adult life. Our relationship enters another phase. There will always be dad and son. This hinge will likely bring on a next stage of adult and adult. With Grandpa, the oldest generation is passing. Now I’m the one telling more stories, just like Grandpa used too. My turn. My heritage.

And I’m grateful Bob and people like him that make it easy to reflect.