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Monthly Archives "June 2009"

Day zero at ALIA

June 22, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Poetry

Day zero here at the Shambhala Summer Institute here in Halifax.   The staff of the ALIA Institute have been working hard to get everything ready for us, and today people started to arrive.   Over the past could of days the faculty have been meeting in a little pre-institute retreat, building our own field and grabbing the chance to have conversations with one another.   We’ve been getting a little taste of each other’s modules, playing with some of the creative process that is going on and generally catching up with each and getting a sense of our field.

Today we held a little open space and one of the things we were invited to do was give some thought to what is alive in the field of the Institute this summer.   Sensing like this helps us to be able to pay attention to the collective experience and gives voice to what is showing up, and what we can serve.   At the conclusion of the Open Space, we checked out and I harvested a little poem that captures something of the flavour or what we’re in.   Part of the set up for this poem is knowing that today the weather has been wild with high winds and driving drizzle, and even though the air is warm, there is a sense that the winter/spring part of the year is keen to leave its legacy on the summer/fall part.

Here’s the poem:

What’s alive in this field

We’re going to be at home.

The depth of passion that we own
expands out to connect
the alternatives that sing, circumspect,
from the hill tops,
that reach the ears of the young
who stand in the storm, sung
songs of drenched longing,
wanting to tap creative energy
to quiver with the joy that
lives in the edge of death and life
the light that redraws the breath of summer.

The directions are called,
the integration invites a falling into place
a space of compassionate embrace
of all we are related to.

My daughter – an image held in the hand,
at arms length, on a touch –
there is much that is held here,
much that isn’t here.

What is clear is not-knowing –
uncertainty growing like the clouds
of drizzle that shower our container

Can you feel the wind?
Can you feel the breath?

Settle down.   Then step.

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June 21, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Uncategorized

Day zero here at the Shambhala Summer Institute here in Halifax. The staff of the ALIA Institute have been working hard to get everything ready for us, and today people started to arrive. Over the past could of days the faculty have been meeting in a little pre-institute retreat, building our own field and grabbing the chance to have conversations with one another. We’ve been getting a little taste of each other’s modules, playing with some of the creative process that is going on and generally catching up with each and getting a sense of our field.

Today we held a little open space and one of the things we were invited to do was give some thought to what is alive in the field of the Institute this summer. Sensing like this helps us to be able to pay attention to the collective experience and gives voice to what is showing up, and what we can serve. At the conclusion of the Open Space, we checked out and I harvested a little poem that captures something of the flavour or what we’re in. Part of the set up for this poem is knowing that today the weather has been wild with high winds and driving drizzle, and even though the air is warm, there is a sense that the winter/spring part of the year is keen to leave its legacy on the summer/fall part.

Here’s the poem:

What’s alive in this field

We’re going to be at home.

The depth of passion that we own
expands out to connect
the alternatives that sing, circumspect,
from the hill tops,
that reach the ears of the young
who stand in the storm, sung
songs of drenched longing,
wanting to tap creative energy
to quiver with the joy that
lives in the edge of death and life
the light that redraws the breath of summer.

The directions are called,
the integration invites a falling into place
a space of compassionate embrace
of all we are related to.

My daughter – an image held in the hand,
at arms length, on a touch –
there is much that is held here,
much that isn’t here.

What is clear is not-knowing –
uncertainty growing like the clouds
of drizzle that shower our container

Can you feel the wind?
Can you feel the breath?

Settle down. Then step.

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From the feed

June 19, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Uncategorized One Comment

Morsels for chewing upon from the RSS pantry and the tap of tweet:

  • Viv McWaters goes open source with her facilitation methods.
  • Tweeting the revolution

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The price of pomposity

June 15, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Being, CoHo, Collaboration, Design, Emergence, Facilitation, Leadership 3 Comments

Thank you Euan.

Now, there is a time and a place for judgemental skepticism and cynicism (I suppose) but somehow there is a widespread sentiment that associates these two stances with expertise and prudence.  Now I don’t want you to think that I am all about squashing opposition or creative tension, but I have to say that when I am working with groups of people to create processes that will help take people out of their comfort zones, there is a particular cynicism that does not help.  Euan Semple calls this “pomposity” and that certainly seems to capture the holier than thou effect that this kind of stifling aloofness has on groups of people.  And Euan names the price that it takes:

  1. Every time someone is faced with a pompous response to a suggestion or idea they take one step back and become much less likely to ever offer their heartfelt thoughts again. Imagine the impact this has on the creativity and innovation that organisations depend on.
  2. Many, many meetings could be done in less than half the time if there wasn’t a need to feed the ego of the chairperson or more vocal participants. How many times have things gone on way too long because someone likes the sound of his own voice?
  3. How many millions and millions of pounds have been spent because someone was too pumped up and full of themselves to admit that perhaps the major project they are sponsoring should be aborted?
  4. How many fledgling social media projects get squashed by IT departments because “professionals” have had their nose put out of joint at “amateurs” thinking they know better?
  5. How many bright, committed and intelligent potential senior managers have failed to step up to the mark because they couldn’t face the antler clashing and ego massaging that goes on in the boardroom?

I have recently had the experience of people saying to me that the work I do would never work with such-and-such a group of people.  My response to them is nothing will work with people if you don’t believe them capable of doing something different or trying something new.  I have been responding to these kinds of limiting beliefs with two questions:

  • How do you show up with a group of people when you believe they are not capable of something?
  • How do YOU show up when something thinks YOU are incapaable of something?

That tends to take care of the holier than thou attitudes.  A little empathy, a little creative tension, a little mutual compassion for the other helps makes designs for new and difficult things easier.  These questions force us to really consider whether we are more capable than someone else.  It forces a conscious awareness of the choice you are making when you adopt the pompous stance.

I choose to believe that people are capable of engaging in all kinds of things, from sitting in circles (the scariest thing in the world, if you would believe some) to radically letting go of huge projects they were working on because they weren’t going anywhere.

Lately I have been making an explcit request of clients that we create design teams for events and processes that DON’T include cynics.  That is not to say that we don’t need people bringing concerns and challenging questions to the work, it’s just that when you have someone in a design team that does not believe in the possibility of what you are trying to create, so much energy gets taken up catering to the unhelpful pomposity of the rightous skeptic that the design suffers and in the worst case scenario, the result is a design that just serves the status quo.  I have, in the last couple of years actually “fired” a client who wanted me to help create the illusion of a participatory event but who could not allow himself to actually let a participatory event unfold.  He was completely unwilling to let go of control and unwilling to trust people.  He even described the people he was working with, government employees in First Nations communities, as “children that need to be shown the answer.”  There is a huge cost to this kind of stance in time, trust and the ability for groups to actually hold the real fears and concerns that they have.  What do you think is possible when you work with someone who considers an important policy gathering to be like a daycare?

So start with possibility and create the space for inquiry, curiosity and yes even judgement to arise.  But if you start with these things, you will not be able to create creative spaces of possibility because you will get mired down in the energetics of unhelpful politics, posing and pomposity.  Staying in possibility is hard, but it is the only way we get to new places.  More of the same is too deceptively simple.

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41

June 13, 2009 By Chris Corrigan Uncategorized 2 Comments

The sun is shining here on Bowen Island and I am relaxing on the porch enjoying my 41st birthday. Hope all is well where you are

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