If you would like a flavour of what happens at workshops on the Art of Hosting, here are some links to give you a sense of things. Audio from the Art of Hosting workshop in southern Indiana last fall. These files were made by Jeneal King, one of the participants who took an active role in harvesting the event. Lots to listen to here. Best I think to download and listen off line. Update: No longer up as of August 12, 2008. Ravi Tangri in Nova Scotia has been making a number of videos about Art of Hosting teachings …
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Dave Pollard sees skillful conversation as a key to the kinds of communities he is trying to create. In this post he revisits his ideas about personal practices for being a good conversationalist. These are great: Tell the other person something you’re passionate about, and why. Tell them passionately. Tell them something they should know that they don’t, preferably as a story, and make it clear why it’s important. Tell them about a possibility you’ve imagined. A real possibility, not just an ideal, a wish or a dream. Tell them a different way of thinking about something, one …
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Those of you interested in exploring the Art of Hosting, our pattern language for working with conversational leadership in living systems, might consider joining Teresa Posakony, Tenneson Woolf, Christina Baldwin, Ann Linnea and I at teh Whidbey Institute near Seattle in the New Year. Invitation and information is here. You presence is desired!
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A combination of quotes from two different emails today on certainty. First from Ashley Cooper, quoting Daniel Sielgel: “When we are certain we don’t feel the need to pay attention. Given that the world around us is always in flux, our certainty is an illusion.” And then this, from Tenneson Woolf, who currently has my copy of Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview. From that books is this is a story of Keetsa, an Ahousaht whaling chief who runs into trouble when the space is no longer held for him: Every protocol had been observed between the whaling chief and the spirit …
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A stump in a forest hosts life in a living system Photo by alastairb * NOTE: I changed the title of this post to better reflect the both/and nature of this conversation, rather than the unhelpful either/or way I originally wrote it. At the Art of Hosting last weekend, it finally came to me – the simple description of the different between facilitation and hosting as I understand it. So here are a few simple metaphors and a more detailed meditation. At the simplest level, you can think of a party. A facilitator is like a party planner, or …