#leadership • Tenneson Woolf

May 31, 2016

Home

Bells Blooming

I just arrived to Utah, home, for a stretch of what will be 18 days. Greeted by these flowers growing in my garden, that had not blossomed when I last left, and tomato cages ready to be put to work. This period of time “at home” is noticeable to me for its duration. Eighteen days feels spacious and huge. Enough time to do laundry more than once! Enough time to spend an evening with friends.

I’m enough of a geek to want to remember the last time I was home for this kind of stretch. It was December 2015. I don’t know about the time before that. That was likely last summer.

I’ve written about home before. For example, in 2012, this reflection after being in my hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. And in 2015, this post on the geography of home. Today, however, my reflections are about this simple narrative.

For there to be home, there must be intimacy.
For there to be intimacy, there must be friendship.
For there to be friendship, there must be freedom.

I know, these are big categories of words — what does one mean by intimacy, friendship, and freedom, right?

The intimacy I’m speaking of here is a softness in the belly. To be willing or able to share with vulnerability. “I feel this way — wow, you feel that way; tell me more!” To feel a kind of trust that doesn’t arise from warnings or subtle fear-born threats. The intimacy here is a welcome to let go, and to be in quiet together.

For friendship, I’m talking about people that I laugh with. The friends I enjoy the most are the ones that I can be completely serious with, and, completely silly with. I enjoy them because there is a shared ability to turn quickly from one to the other, as needed. It’s as though somehow knowing that there is ability to be in the full range together makes enjoyment of one part that much more vibrant. Sometimes my friends and I are changing the world. Sometimes, we are just laughing at our follies.

The freedom that I’m speaking here is freedom to choose. Not into a manipulated or coerced choice that someone else is lobbying for (unless it is done with great silliness and humor of course). But real choice. Not demands that masquerade as choices. Real choices in which the the very act of choosing, the act of enacting a life through choices both explicitly and implicitly, are respected. Maybe not fully agreed to, but definitely respected.

I love the home that is a good bowl of a favorite soup. I love the home that is seeing the green beans that I planted ten days ago peaking through the ground. I love the home that is my dog laying in the doorway of whatever room I find myself sitting in. I love the home that knows me, welcomes me, that resonates with familiarity like the way my body fits in my bed.

And.

And maybe, just maybe, home is also the place where we are quite wholly and naturally friends, laughing and exploring and even crying a bit over the choices we make and how we are encountering our freedom to be.

May 23, 2016

Head, Heart, Belly

I’m thinking of creating an exercise that I might use in the coming weeks. It combines three layers of engagement with three most basic questions.

The layers of engagement are head, heart, and belly. When I think of these layers I still think of Jane Lindsay, a colleague and friend in Ottawa, Ontario that I worked with a few times five to six years ago. Jane would have people very deliberately speak from these layers. For example, “Say a bit about why being at this event matters to you.” In partners, I remember her having us pair up to speak first from mind. Then from heart, which tended to drop it down a bit. Then from belly, which dropped it even further. It was all a simple process of getting more honest with each other and with ourselves. There are many patterns to interrupt aren’t there — including just staying in our minds, albeit good minds.

The three questions I’m wanting to combine this with are some of the most basic in participatory process. Why talk? Why listen? Why harvest? I find that once people have had some experience with dialogue and engagement, the good experience of that is enough to compel them forward into this next layer of story under the story. They’ve tasted the goodness of good process together. They’ve typically tried some of it back in their offices or in their communities. They realize that they want to go just a bit deeper, and they begin looking for more explicit anchor points to those questions. It helps get rid of some nervousness. It helps ground the processes that they are leading.

I have a few anchors that help me with these questions. I think of them as four pillars.

If you want a system to be healthy, connect it to more of itself. This is a biological principle that I connect back to Humberto Maturana, the Chilean biologist and philosopher. Talking and listening are part of that, right. Telling stories. Sharing observations. Asking questions of each other. To create a healthy system, which is the work of leadership.

If you want to go faster, go alone. If you want to go further, go together. This is an African proverb that I learned in my early days with The Berkana Institute, where we were encouraging process to help us go together. To help us remember a kind of belonging together. Talking, listening, harvesting creates belonging.

People support what they create. This is a principle that starts to lead to action. It’s easy to get that people want to act together. People want to do good. Talking together creates essential condition for that action to occur in a more sustainable way. So does listening. So does harvesting.

Who we are together is different and more than who we are alone. This is one that I learned over and over with my friend, mentor, and colleague Margaret Wheatley. Sine the early 90s she has been encouraging people to see systemically, knowing that engagement with one another gives us access to the magic, or difference, of who we are together.

It’s basic, right. Sometimes, many of us just need a bit of permission to return to some basics to discover out loud, together, some of the things we already know. And that makes all the difference.

May 12, 2016

Oh, These Places

Gambier

This is another photo from Gambier Island, just north of Bowen Island and west of Vancouver, BC. Yes, it is where I’ve met the last few days with a few of the stewards of The Circle Way.

As five of us were departing via water taxi, several of us commented, with awe, on the places that we have been able to meet in. Beautiful, as you can see. Sometimes remote, as this particular location was. Nourishing places, the kind that change you, not just on the outside but on the inside too. I’m not talking luxury of mansions and people waiting on us. I’m talking more of quality of connection, and us taking care of each other.

Combine that with some good process and it becomes a forever-remembered place. “Ah, remember that time on Gambier,” will be the utterance with appreciation. For us, our process was mostly held in Circle. Some in Open Space to help us accomplish our work. Some in training, where peers helped us all move along together in a project management tool that reminded me of the phrase, “if you want to go farther, go together.” Some in decision making. Some in discernment through a few unknowns and niggly issues.

These are places and processes that I know many people never experience. My grandfather for example, would know places like Gambier as a possible summer holiday spot to take his grandkids. But not as a place to work. And not in the way that brings us all into deeper layers of friendship.

I’m in awe myself. And grateful for this place and these people that awaken me.

May 10, 2016

Is The Circle Way for Men — A Call For An Emerging Masculine

I wrote this short article to be deliberate about inviting men and women to participate in the practice that is The Circle Way, and in The Circle Way practicum occurring August 17-22, 2016 on Whidbey Island, Washington. I wrote it to shine a bit of light on some of the underlaying myths that may have men not feeling that this form of leadership is for them.

Below is an excerpt. The full article (two pages) is here.

“I want to re-language the gender-typing just a bit as it pertains to The Circle Way. The Circle Way is a methodology and way of being that is bedrock to the kind of leadership so often needed in these times and in today’s organizations. It is the leadership that is listening, which also happens to be a lifelong practice. It is the leadership that is being smart together. Yup, that’s gender free. It is the leadership that is diving deeply into purpose. It is the leadership that is shared discernment. The Circle Way creates leadership process that invokes the best of what people, men and women, masculine and feminine, can offer as gift.”