
In the OSLIST discussion on circles and presence, I added some thoughts, which I thought I’d republish here…
My experience of the circle is first of all, that there has never been a group I have worked with – not business people, airplane engineers, entrepreneurs, government officials, community members – that hasn’t been just fine in a circle. No one has ever asked me not to set the room up a different way, although plenty of people have expressed their doubts that any of it would work.
I’ve also done OST in other formats as well, like lecture halls, semi circles and squares, and they seem to work fine, although it’s definitely ME that is more uncomfortable in those settings. I also think things don’t flow very well in general. It’s harder for people to get to the centre to put their issues up and harder to move around when there is a different geometry.
Still, I think sometimes facilitators might make too big a deal of the circle. We all know why it works, and that’s why we use it – as Harrison and others have said. But to discuss circle energetics, or ancient forms of human communication in the opening of an open space event can be distracting. But it isn’t the circle that is distracting, it’s how the facilitator shows up.
Presence is everything I think in this work. It’s really all we have to offer the group once the logistics are taken care of. We can show up and drone on and on about the topic and the energy saps. We can be bored and the group will get bored too. We can show up too excited and the group will eye us as a nervous puppy. Presence is many things, but at a core level it’s about rapport with the group and the topic. My own presence in open space tends to focus very clearly on the work at hand. I don’t tend to fill the group in on what’s “under the hood” of open space. Most of us don’t need to know how a car works in order to use it. How we hold space I think is what gives it the “granola” flavour. Or not.
Probably most of us know that open space “works” without a circle. The point is that, for all the disappearing the facilitator does, I think it really matters how we DO participate for the small amount of time we are before the group. Present AND invisible. I would say that the quality of our presence even transcends the geometry: I have seen terrible facilitators in a circle make a hash of open space. The good news is that, with a good invitation, the momentum of the group is nearly always able to overcome anything we put in their way.
For more on this ineffable quality, download The Tao of Holding Space.
[tags] openspacetech[/tags]
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Here is a selection of interesting papers for your summer reading:
- Is it time to unplug our schools? – Almost everything published in Orion is interesting. This article looks at what schools are doing to teach a deep relationship to nature.
- Altar calls for true believers – on the challenge of practicing what we preach with respect to sustainability. This is a good piece on why systemic change in general doesn’t necessarily correlate with necessity.
- Horse Power – Old technology for a new world.
- No coffee – A great piece on Jurgen Habermas, coffeehouses and the power of conversation.
- Modern Cosmology: Science or folktale? – I think the cosmic story is both. This article argues the same, but from the perspective of a skeptical scientist.
- World Bank economist Kirk Hamilton on the planet’s real wealth. – It turns out that the greatest resource the world has is “intangible capital” – people’s wisdom and labour.
- Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero. A review of a new biography about the Italian patriot Giusepe Garibaldi, for whom my local extinct volcano at the head of Howe Sound was named.
- Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch – Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom think it’s possible we live in The Matrix.
- Heretical thoughts about science and society – Freeman Dyson muses about the global warming crises. But he might be wrong. He’s been wrong before!
- The quandry of quality – a great blog post from Bob Sutton on what is hard to measure but essential nonetheless.
[tags]nature, sustainability, change, horses, Habermas, coffee, conversation, cosmology, big bang, human resources, Garibaldi, Matrix, Nick Bostrom, freeman dyson, robert crick, global warming[/tags]
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Harrison Owen muses on circles, presence and Open Space on the OSLIST:
As I have listened to this conversation (a very rich one!) random thoughts came to mind – which may actually fit together? The first one went something like this. We speak, understandably, about “doing an Open Space” – but I suspect that may box us into a corner we need not be stuck in. “Doing and Open Space” implies that we are following a certain set of prescribed procedures, after all Open Space Technology is a method. This is true, but it may also hide a larger truth, I think. We don’t do an Open Space – we are an open space in which we and our fellows find meaning and purpose, or not. For some of us that space may be very constricted, and those lives tend to look pretty much the same way – narrow and locked into set patterns and expectations, which may even become comfortable, like old shoes. Others seem to occupy a much more commodious space in which change and possibility are constant companions and experiencing that novelty is a real high. All of us have the potential to expand our space, or maybe more accurately, to recognize and acknowledge the larger possibilities which could be ours. I think what happens in an Open Space event is that we are invited to consider those possibilities and make them our own, if we so choose. I once wrote a book, “Expanding our Now” (Berrett-Koehler) which attempted to make precisely this point. So we might more fruitfully understand that all of life is open space and an Open Space gathering is simply a moment in time/space when we are encouraged to go exploring. So it is not so much about “Doing an Open Space” as about being fully and intentionally present in the infinity of life space available – at least so far as we are able. Corollary to this would be that the Open Space event is not something strange, unique and different – it is just life. All of life is open space. We must choose whether that space is expansive or constricted for us.
Then I thought of a song I have always enjoyed, “All of Life’s a Circle,” sung by a favorite whose name has disappeared in a senior moment. You might think of this as variations on a theme. It is true that we may square the circle, bisect the circle (semi-circle), even go around in circles – those are choices which may be quite appropriate under certain circumstances. But that does not change the fundamental reality that all of life is a circle. A circle of friends, a circle of peers and colleagues, a circle of power and influence, a circle of life and death. We may attempt to reduce life to straight lines (“A career path”), sharp angles and squared intersections (the standard PERT chart and project management schema) or even get life in a box, a nice, neat rectilinear box. But at the end of the day, and indeed on every day, life will go its own way as a circle, the transformation of circles, the inter-connection and overlapping of circles, all contained in a larger circle.
Presence is our way of being in the great circle(s) of life. This may be a grudging presence, a distracted presence, a frantic presence, or something approaching a full, intentional, appreciative presence in which the infinite possibilities (good and bad) of life are acknowledged and engaged. To a certain extent the nature of our presence is a matter of choice, but no matter the choices made or the constraints encountered there is always the possibility of an expanded presence in the great open circle of life. I think.
And Open Space Technology? For me every Open Space gathering becomes an opportunity to practice our presence, should we choose to do so. On the surface it will appear that important issues are raised, problems solved, plans made, organization grown, products designed. All important, and for most participants probably sufficient to meet expectations, or not. But beneath (above?) it all I experience a practice of presence – becoming more fully engaged with our selves, our fellows, and our world. Just living more intentionally in the great open circle of life. Or something.
[tags]openspacetech, harrison owen, presence[/tags]
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“Basically, there can only be two answers. One is to overcome separateness and find unity by regression to the state of unity that existed before awareness ever arose; this is, before man was born. The other answer is to be fully born, to develop one’s awareness, one’s reason, one’s capacity to love to such a point that one transcends one’s own egocentric involvement and arrives at a new harmony – at a new oneness with the world.”
– Erich Fromm
It’s amazing how the stories we tell ourselves perpetuate our own suffering and inability to fully participate in the world. When we think that we are in control or that we are the only ones with the answer, it doesn’t take long to discover that the world has no trouble making a mockery of us. Control and certainty are illusory. All we have is our own meager dependance on each other. The more we are related and understand one another, the safer we truly are, because we are better able to address the vagaries of the world if there are many eyes, hearts and brains making sense of a situation.
I think it’s a worthy effort and it makes things easier in the end.
Photo by 油姬
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Nick Smith has a nice post on common vision and team building in which he offers a few useful approaches for building common bonds, prefaced by this:
I’ve never been comfortable with the word ’empowerment’. It’s speak to me of something manipulative and I’ve never found that motivation works that way. I tend to agree with what Henry Miller said, “The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.”
I like that.