Here are four key insights from a conversation on designing good invitations for Open Space meetings. This is the real work of hosting self-organization. It’s not JUST about facilitation.
It’s undeniable that in the time I have been publishing on the web (and before that on usenet and bbs’ dating back to 1992) we have seen a shift from protocols to platforms. Back in the day, people made protocols so we could all talk to each other, regardless of the platforms we used to do it. The web today runs on these protocols, which allows us to use all kinds of different platforms to communicate. Think email. We all use different email programs, but when I send a message, it gets to you regardless.
The enclosure of the commons that I wrote about last year is the fundamental shift in the way we communicate and talk to each other. It creates walled gardens of activity that regulates what happens inside and which limits connection to the outside world. I used to be able to publish my blog posts directly to Facebook for example, but that functionality was removed a long time ago. Facebook will not allow users in Canada to post hypertext links to media sites, which is a pretty reliable indicator that they want to own the web and not participate in it. Platforms limit possibilities and are driven by control. Protocols open up possibilities and enable self-organization and emergence.
Mike Masnick’s paper on Protocols,Not Platforms traces this history very well and makes these arguments for focusing on protocols that “would bring us back to the way the internet used to be.”
I came to Mesnick’s paper after reading an article in the New Yorker about J Graber and her involvement with Bluesky. I was struck at the parallels between the work I do with social technologies and the work that people are doing around social network technologies. When I first got into working as a facilitator, I focused on large group work (and I still do) and my focus was on the platforms of Open Space Technology and later World Café and Appreciative Inquiry and other methods of large group interventions.
These methods for large group dialogue are platforms, but what underlines them our protocols of organization and facilitation the protocol I use is the Art of Hosting, a simple four fold practice, which is applicable to a variety of contexts from meetings to structuring organizations to planning large scale change work. The art of hosting is a protocol that enables more collaboration, more creation, and more resilience among individuals and groups who are leaning into complexity and uncertainty.
On Friday, I’m going to talk about this more and I think I will use the Protocols, Not Platforms idea as the way to talk about how we do change work, and you could join us. The organizational development world is besotted with methods, and a good method for the right need is a good thing. All methods are context bound, however, so to really make change in complex domains, one need to be aware of the context for the work and rely on a context-free protocol to help engage and work. So if you join in on Friday you will learn about how context matters, how complex contexts in particular are composed, the simple protocol for working in complexity that is rooted in the four fold practice, and then maybe some stories of using methods that fit the need.
The set up for the weekly staff meeting at the Alaska Humanities Forum offices in Anchorage.
We spent the day yesterday with our colleagues at the Alaska Humanities Forum (AKHF) preparing for the Art of Hosting that begins this morning. AKHF is an organization that has long embraced the Art of Hosting as a way of operating both their internal organizational functions and their relationship and gatherings with their partners and programs. All over the world there are organizations like this, not always obvious or seen by the global Art of Hosting community, because they labour away on their own work. But until the pandemic every staff member of this organization was sent south for an Art of Hosting once they were hired on. It has been six years since that happened so we are here to partly fulfill that need and to work with several of their partners.
What’s great about this is Kameron Perez-Verdia is on our team. As President and CEO of the organization, he is embodies the practices of participatory leadership which he first learned at a Shambala Institute Authentic Leadership in Action workshop back in 2008 with Toke, Monica and myself. Kameron was raised in the whaling village of Utqiagvik, which is the most northerly point in Alaska. We talked a lot yesterday about the kinds of community gatherings that take place there when the whale hunting crews bring in humpbacks for the community. We talked about the importance of presences and check ins in meetings and how that grounded start to important work is a critical aspect of every part of day to day life, from whaling to a staff meeting in Anchorage.
Kameron and I were talking about the balance between chaos and order yesterday as we were exploring how we could teach the four-fold practice together and he shared with me a term that Yupik elders had taught him about dynamic balance: Yuluni pitallkeqtuglluni, which translates roughly as “just enough to live a good life.” It refers to the amount of connection that we need in a gathering or community, or the amount of structure in a meeting or a process to bring about a feeling of family (tuglluni means family) but allows for agency. We talked about “balance” which in the Yupik world is not a stable equilibrium between two competing forces, but a dynamic, constantly sensed state that is reposnsive to the context.
Perhaps this will be come a theme of our work in the next three days, but it’s a helpful way to contextualize the practices of the Art of Hosting: presence, participation, hosting and co-creating. Each of these are context dependant, which is why they are practices. Bringing just enough to live a good life is the art that implicit in the name of the practice “Art of Hosting.” While many folks seek a stable, always applicable tool or way of doing things, the art of hosting or participatory leadership is about the application of a world of practice to an ever changing context. In being sensitive to what is needed, and how to do it depending on conditions, we constantly create the right balancing moment between too much and not enough, just enough to live a good life.
We start in 2 hours.
The “Art of Hosting” is a term that has taken on a life of its own in the world of participatory facilitation and leadership. It came into use some 25 years ago to describe the fundamental practice at the heart of participatory facilitation and it has become a bit of a cipher. I’ve had a couple of conversations in the last few weeks that reminded me that it’s probably time to again bring a bit of clarity – but not too much! – to how the term is used. Here are three things it is and two things it is not.
A pattern of practice
First and foremost the Art of Hosting is an art. Of hosting conversations that matter. The practice is summed up with what we call “the four fold practice” which is derived from the idea that good conversations are made better by having participants be present, participate, be hosted in a way that invites everyone to play a role and to co-create. It’s called hosting to signal that it is a form of facilitation that does not involve itself in the midst of the conversations, but rather seeks to create the conditions for conversations to take place. As a simple practice, it invites facilitators to create the conditions for effective dialogic containers rather than . As a leadership practice, it invites participatory leaders to practice self-hosting, participation, hosting others and co-creation. And because the practice is so context dependant, it is literally a practice. One is constantly practicing, responding, learning and reflecting as a facilitator and a leader who practices the art of hosting.
A community of practice
The Art of Hosting is also a name given to the global community of practice, a loosely connected and chaordic network of practitioners and global stewards. For more than 25 years folks on every continent and in hundreds of different contexts have connected themselves to the Art of Hosting community to share learning, contribute thinking and explore participatory practice through a common language and inquiry. The stewards are experienced practitioners who stay connected locally and regionally and help organize trainings and maintain a global coherence to the community. The global community has an online home at www.artofhosting.org and an active Facebook page with more than 16,000 members.
A workshop
All over the world experienced practitioners offer Art of Hosting workshops giving folks the opportunity to learn and engage with the art of participatory facilitation. Sometimes, especially where the workshop is focused more on community and organizational leadership, it is called “The Art of Participatory Leadership.” While these workshops can offer differ significantly in terms of material offered and pedagogy, in general you will leave these learning experiences having learned about:
- the four-fold practice of hosting and harvesting participatory process;
- complexity concepts, such as the chaordic path or the Cynefin framework;
- Frameworks for planning and facilitating participatory gatherings, such art the chaordic stepping stones of the Diamond of Participation;
- Exposure and practice of facilitation methods such as Open Space Technology, World Cafe, Circle, ProAction Cafe, Collective Story Harvest and others.
- Self-hosting and inner practice work
You’ll find upcoming workshops listed on the Art of Hosting website. As I write there are workshops offered in Zimbabwe, India, France, Switzerland, Canada, Croatia, Netherlands, Brazil and the US. These workshops are taught primarily by local stewards and practitioners and can be very different expressions of the same basic material. It’s always fun to travel around and see how folks are teaching and practicing the art of hosting in different cultural and organizational contexts.
Two things it isn’t
It’s not an organiztion. The Art of Hosting is not a company you hire to work for you. It isn’t an organization or a certification scheme. It is a chaordic community that supports learning and practice worldwide
It is not a method. Sometimes people confuse the Art of Hosting with a method like World Cafe. That’s understandable as many people are introduced to participatory methods in Art of Hosting workshops, but there is no Art of Hosting method per se. Neither is the World Cafe, for example, a method of the Art of Hosting. The World Cafe is a method although, as Amy points out below, it is not MERELY a method. The Art of Hosting is a practice that can help facilitators better use that method. It’s like the different between music theory and music performance, or the study of poetics and the practice of writing poetry . One is the theory and the other is the practice, and together the Art of Hosting – the four fold practice – is praxis: the unification of theory and practice towards more participation.
The Art of Hosting is one way we point to what is sometimes spoken of as “the central garden” which is a common space of inquiry held by people who are interested to learn about how participatory ways of being together can help shape a world that values diversity, difference, and multiple perspectives. Thanks to my friend Amy Lenzo, who in the comments, points this out so eloquently.
Does all of this seem only half-way clear? Well, that ambiguity is something of a feature of this whole world. It allows and invites people to bring different expressions and experience to this global inquiry while also having some shared language and concepts that help us to learn together and evolve in the service of groups of people who are trying to build or reclaim spaces of humanity, dignity and sustainability. It continues to be an essential community of friends and colleagues for my work, for which I am constantly grateful.
Back in 2015, Caitlin, Tim Merry, Tuesday Rivera, and I were travelling around the world offering a workshop called “Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics,” in which the four of us were sharing our extensions of work that we had developed emerging out of the common root of the Art of Hosting community and our practices. It was a rich experiment, and we met really interesting folks in Canada, the US and the UK. It started some longer-term partnerships and friendships, and from time to time, I ran into folks who were at those workshops.
I met one of them last week again. Dr. Nomusa Mngoma is a health researcher at Queen’s University, where I was last Monday delivering a day-long workshop on the Art of Hosting basics for the Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change. Nomusa saw the invitation and showed up. When I met her, I had a vague recollection of meeting her previously, but I couldn’t place it. We both thought for a while, and of course, it was at our Beyond the Basics retreat in Kingston in 2015, the last time I had taught in that city.
We caught up and went through the day, and as we were leaving, Nomusa handed me her business card, which wasn’t for her job at Queen’s. It was as the owner and instructor of Dansani Dance Company, a local business specializing in Latin Dance and Ballroom Dance lessons. The moment she haded me the card I had a flash of recollection.
“Wait!” I said. “Didn’t you propose this idea as a topic in the Pro Action Cafe at Beyond the Basics?”
She thought for a minute and, with delight, realized that she had indeed! “That conversation changed my life,” she said.
Wow. I love that.
Later, I was talking with my friend Michelle Searle, who brought me to Queen’s, and she wondered how Nomusa had received the invitation to our event. The workshop was open, but the invitation was only sent out through Queen’s and to a few partners. I told Michelle that Nomusa is an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Health Research Scientist. Michelle expressed delighted surprise because, although she didn’t know Dr. Mngoma in that capacity, apparently, Nomusa is famous in Kingston for leading free outdoor dance classes downtown in the summer!
Nine years from a template full of notes in a workshop to joy unleashed in a community and one happy and fulfilled human being.
