This afternoon Caitlin and I were in a delightful conversation with new colleagues that ranged across the landscape of the work we are all trying to do in the world, supporting leadership, supporting quality and addressing the ineffable aspects of human experience that pervade our work on leadership. And in the conversation we found our way to the idea of friendship. In our Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics offering we are exploring friendship as a key strategic pillar to transforming the nature of engagement, organizational life and community development. And today as we were discussing friendship as the highest form …
Caitlin Frost, Tim Merry, Tuesday Ryan-Hart and I have been loving offering our Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics workshop over the past nine months. We’re really pleased to announce that we are coming to Minnesota May 6-8, Staffordshire UK July 8-10 and Ontario this fall. And we’re really happy with the video invitation. If you have been working with participatory methods and are curious about extending these tools and forms of leadership to systemic challenges, please consider joining us!
I’ve been using the Cynefin framework for many years now. For me, I think I’ve internalized it through practice and it becomes second nature to not only talk about and teach from it but to use the way it was intended to be used: to help make decisions. Today Dave Snowden posts a very useful set of guidelines for working with complexity that are captured in the framework. This list is useful for us to tuck away as it provides very clear guideposts for moving around the complexity domain: The essence: In any situation, what can we change? Out of …
Yesterday in our five day residential we invited the participants out on the land for a solo retreat. Bowen Island, where I live, is an incredible place. To get here, you have to take a boat across the Queen Charlotte Channel, a deep body of water at the entrance to Howe Sound. Howe Sounda was formed by glaciers and mountain making processes, and now is a fjord surround by walls of 1200 meters or more. Entry to Bowen is through Snug Cove, a small and protected harbour that s part of of a bigger bay called Mannion Bay. it …
Halfway through our five day residency with leaders from the community sector and the Ministry for Children and Families here in BC. Times like this, at middle of a five day retreat, we turn our thoughts to what comes next and we forget to be present. This is our day of practicing presence however, and later today we will be going out on the land and allow ourselves to be hosted by the forest, the rain and our island. This is the time for a fierce recommitment to the here and now. My colleague and friend Annemarie Travers, who is …