On the Art of Hosting list we have been having a conversation about using language of participatory process. Often the language of these new social technologies can be jargony and off-putting for people who aren’t used to it. That can cause unnecessary defensiveness among participants. So I had some thoughts about using good language AND holding to a core centre…
Don’t fall in love with your processes and tools and langauge and conepts: instead respond to people’s needs and offer what you can and when they ask what it is called, or wonder if you are just making it up, you can point to the body of work, research and experience to be found when you Google “Open Space Technology.” or “World Cafe” or whatever. That will give them comfort if they need it without “selling” them on what we think is good for them
When we put our tools above our client’s needs we are putting ourselves above our clients. When we join a field of learning and curiosity and possibility with our clients and offer what we can, we become co-creative and participatory.
But while we must be careful that in taking care to help people understand the processes that we are not abandoning our centre. So it is a balance, a dance between what is known and unknown. Working at the edge of fear and anxiety can help people come to the next level. Too much comfort is a poison for our times.
I have found that, ALMOST more important that the language I use is the centre I hold. If I am strong and grounded in my centre, the skeptics cannot knock me about, and in fact they are rather drawn to where I am, curious and a little cautious. For you to bring the new into a system – true for any pioneer or leaders – there is a firmness in conviction that comes with an undying trust in possibility and emergence and is helped by having the scars of battle upon you. For sure experience helps you to temper and hold your centre, but you will not get your experience unless you feel what it’s like to stand for something and take the buffeting of uncertainty around you. And occasionally you will fail and that will be your greatest teacher.
So I think you need skill in holding the centre and skill in speaking about it. And that skill comes from practice.
So my business card says: “Asking inspiring questions, hosting powerful conversations, harvesting for wise action.” To the unfamiliar eye that is a tricky set of words to understand, but I stay unapologetic in my use of them, and I have, over the year, developed some facility in explaining them in a way that invites whoever I am speaking to to join me.
In conclusion, practice.
A beautiful extended reflection on the methodology of study in a coast Salish context from author Lee Maracle:
The object of ‘study” from a Salish perspective is to discover another being in itself and for itself with the purpose of engaging it in future relationship that is mutually beneficial and based on principles of fair exchange. We study from the point of view, that there is something unknown to be discovered, that all life contains something cherished, but hidden from us and that if we observe from as many angles of perception that we can rally, engage one another in exchanging observations, and consider the internal dynamics governing the behavior of the being observed from the perspective of its perfect right to be, we will understand it in relationship with ourselves. We do not believe we can fully understand the being under study, but we can come to see it clearly enough to engage it in relationship.
This process is a collective process, requiring many different sets of eyes, many different points of view. This is because if we examine something from one subjective angle [and all human observation and thought is subjective] then we will only understand an aspect of the being under study and we are very likely to engage in huge errors, leap to absurd conclusions based on subjective assumptions and so forth. We engage one another in this process on the presumption that all points of view are valid, but they must be POINTS OF VIEW, not biases. The points of view are accepted. They are never right or wrong, just different. No argument, attempt to persuade one another is useful here and thus we do not need to compete to see who has the best eyes, the clearest vision. The process of discovery requires different points of view, different sets of images, and different perspectives about the being under examination in order for the collective to be able to discuss it’s possible internal dynamics. We first see how it moves, see how it conducts itself, mark its sense of movement, its sense of time and being, we connect its conduct to its own being and then we connect its movement to its desire, its sense of time to its longevity and its behavior to its condition and its history.”
When we do this, we come to see that the end result is a powerful story, a long lasting relationship and this fosters, beauty, hope, heart and song.
via transCanada.ca / Keynote Speakers and Other Participants.
This is a gorgeous inspiration for the power of collective harvesting.
I’m sitting in a hotel ballroom in the basement of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Atlanta with about 350 people who work for the exoneration of wrongfully convicted and imprisoned men and women all over the United States and in eight other countries besides. We are at the annual gathering of the Innocence Network, a network of groups and projects that help free wrongfully imprisoned men and women, Among the participants here are 86 men and women who have been exonerated for crimes they did not commit. One of these people, James Bain served over 35 years in prison in Florida for a murder that he didn’t commit. I am here with my colleague and friend Ashley Cooper working with another dear friend, Angela Amel. Angela is a social worker with the Innocence Project in New York city and she invited me to work with a small core team of exonerees who helped design an Open Space track for exonerees this year.
Today we held a circle with about 50 people, just to hear who was in the room and what they did time for and where. It was incredible to hear some of these stories and beyond to see what these men and women are doing now. Not a single one of them has had an easy go of freedom and yet to a person they are doing what they can to free others who have been wrongfully imprisoned. This ranges from running groups, and starting organizations to meeting exonerees at the prison gates and pressing $100 bills in their hands to get them started. Unlike guilty convicts who are able to access a system of resources upon serving their time, exonerees are often assumed to be satisfied with freedom and justice itself. But when you have spent 10, 15 , 20 or more years in prisons like Sing Sing, Utica and Angola, freedom is not an easy transition to make. So to have 86 exonerees gathered here together is a precious moment, to connect and share stories, ask questions of each other and establish bonds of experience and support. Tomorrow we will Open Space with them so they can create and be in the conversations that are most important for them to be in.
Last night we went out for dinner with a couple of amazing people. Curtis McCarty served 22 years in prison in Oklahoma, 19 of them on death row for a murder he did not commit and Fernando Bermudez, who got out in November from Sing Sing where he was incarcerated for 18 and a half years. What strikes me about these two and the dozens of others I have met is that they are at the same time some of the happiest people I have ever met, and yet there is a deep core of sadness for both what was taken from them as well as what is being taken from others who are behind bars because of mistakes, lies and ignorance. They are imbued with a core purpose that awakens the potential in others, that inspires and invites and draws others to their cause. Curtis is a tireless advocate for social justice, a photgrapher and a death penalty abolition activist whose wife Amy is an ACLU lawyer. The Innocence Network is growing and expanding around a fierce core to extract truth from power and restore freedom to people who are losing decades of their lives to some of the worst prisons in the world as a result of atrocious and tragic miscarriages of justice.
I was struck today how much the United States is tipping towards a culture of presumed guilt. In receiving an award for an investigative series, two journalists from the Columbus Dispatch related the fact that the question they are most asked is “How do you know if someone is innocent?” It is a question that forgets the foundation of justice in the United States and Canada: that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It is a sign of the times that people are being forced to prove their innocence. Every person in this room is working with every ounce of will to ensure that justice is upheld in this country.
I am amazed and humbled at their work, their commitment and their stories.
Jessica Nagy captures why it is I can work with skeptics but not cynics. Much of my work has to do with at least having a sense of possibility. You can doubt the outcomes or the effectiveness of something, but if you are turned to possibility and hope then you can at least make a contribution. Cynics have both doubt and hopelessness and unless they offer some alternative, then they become corrosive to processes that are just beginning.
I find in general many people who declare themselves cynical are actually skeptical. They want some thing to work out, they hold out hope for things, but they hedge their bets. The trick in doing transformative change work is to work with cynics to unleash the skeptic within. And if you can’t do that, then you have to jettison them from the process. I have had several projects where cynics have had a dominating influence on our work, and we usually get what they are looking for, which is a grinding halt.
When I am working with core teams to host the core of a process I welcome skeptics but try to establish a principle early on that cynics aren’t welcome in the core process. Once we build a process and a container for our work that is robust enough to hear from everyone and to move forward, cynics are more than welcome, but only when the container is strong enough to hear what they have to say without their influence destroying what is being built.
Having said that, there are times when things need to be taken down, and THAT act of discernment is one that is a practice. For example, does it pay to be cynical or skeptical about last year’s Copenhagen process? I was cyncial about Stephen Harper’s participation in that gathering and said so on my blog here. So my call to embrace skepticism and cut loose cynics is not a polyannaish call to embrace only the positive and ignore the shadow. A moral compass helps determine what it is you lend your hope to.
Where do you draw the line between skepticism and cynicism? How do you work with both?
Good Friday.
- Geoff Brown on doing great things by working with authentic story and having a ball too.