Photo of the rock wall at Window Rock, on the Navajo Nation, where I was visiting and working last month. Links that I have come across recently: A comprehensive list of theories about how we think, feel and behave. From Vision in Action, a long piece by Elisabet Sahtouris on a Tentative Model for a Living Universe – parts one and two. Thanks to Dave Pollard. Otto Scarmer on The Blind Spot of Leadership. Jordon Cooper prints his list of useful (and mostly free) tools for Windows machines. Peter Merry’s blog. This is my friend Tim’s brother. Helen Titchen-Beeth is …
Just announced…Tatiana Glad, Tenneson Woolf, Teresa Posakony , Cheryl De Paoli and I will be working together to host an Art of Hosting retreat near Calgary, Alberta, June 9-11, 2008. We invite any and all to join us for three days of inquiry, exploration and learning into organizational leadership, community development and strategic and meaningful conversation. The invitation and registration form is now available for download. For more upcoming Art of Hosting events in Boston, Tampa Bay, Ireland, Bowen Island and elsewhere this year, visit the Art of Hosting website.
Photo by jurvetson Being a Canadian means watching US politics like most people watch major sporting events. You admire the players, ooo and ahh at the spectacular moves they make, but ultimately you know you will never have a chance to play. It’s all entertainment. Except that it isn’t. The President of the United States is often styled as the “leader of the free world” which is true in some ways, although the leader the rest of us in the “free world” might choose for ourselves is very often not the ones Americans choose for us. So, in case any …
A design for a recent workshop, based on Theory U. Three years ago, I spent some time reflecting on the principles that underly my work in an effort to describe authentic facilitation practice. Lately I have revisited this question because I have been asked to design and deliver several facilitation training workshops and I have found myself wanting to go deeply into the core of facilitation practice, rather than focusing on tips and tricks. As a result, I have been reflecting a lot on what is at the core of my practice: how to I design and then sit in …
I ran a workshop last week for the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association of British Columbia. The taske was to to spend a day and a half reviewing the high level vision and direction of the organization and to come up with some streams forward to present to the organization’s membership at the AGM. In thinking about the design of the gathering, I chose to consciously use Theory U to help structure a series of exercises. I proposed a five phase process for the day: Sensing needs and purposes and reviewing the world outside Appreciative Evaluation of the organization’s …