News from Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea about upcoming PeerSpirit Circle trainings, including a new advanced course. This may be some of the finest learning you will ever do with respect to learning about and working with groups:
The PeerSpirit Circle Practicum gathers small groups of people at retreat centers for four-and-a-half days of intensive, experiential learning that blends council time with significant skill development.
via PeerSpirit : Circle Training, Circle Process, Circle Practicum.
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Responding to an inquiry about the copyright of materials on my site, I wrote back:
Everything original on my website is for free, non-commerical use with attribution. Of course there are things I link to that have different copyright schemes, but in general I only link to resources that are also freely shared. You should of course acknowledge those sources distinctly (sometimes people say “I found this on Chris Corrigan’s website” but what they really found was a link to another source. That’s not fair to the original authors). Formally, it’s a Creative Commons, non-commerical, attribution license. Practically, it means that you can do anything you want with those materials as long as you attribute my original work to me and you don’t sell it. Basically, I ask people to err on the side of sharing. In other words, share first and ask permission later!
How do you share your stuff?
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A colleague emailed today and asked me this question: “which tool do you use when you have to analyse the content of your harvest with groups?”
My answer was that it depends on so much. Which means there is no one rule or tool but rather a principle. The principle would be this: “Participatory process, participatory harvest, simple process, simple harvest” The primary tool I use in complex decision making domains is diversity.
A story. Once, working with the harvest of a a series of 4 world cafes that had about 100 people in each, I ended up with 400 index cards, each containing a single insight which we later transcribed. It would be folly for me to work with a taxonomy of my own design, so I invited eight people to help me make sense of the work. We all read the 18 peages of raw data and noticed what spoke to us. From there we created a conversation that drew forth those insights and organized them into patterns. The final result was a report to the 400 people that had gathered that was rich and diverse and as complex as the group itself without being overly complicated to implement.
So it depends. If you use the Cynefin framework, which I have been studying and using a lot lately, you will see that different domains of action require different harvesting and sense making tools. So be careful, use what is appropriate and try to never have a place where one point of view dominates the meaning making if you are indeed operating the realms of complexity, chaos or disorder..
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I am preparing some questions tonight for an exercise I am running, and I rediscovered this elegant and simple process for constructing questions that elicit stories, courtesy of the Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles.
Build the question.
People remember events when they can picture an image reminding them of a specific situation. Combine this idea with the suggestion of adding emotion and you have the two building blocks to create good questions.
First start with an image-building phrase:
- “Think about…”
- “Imagine…”
- “If…”
- “Consider…”
For example, ”Think about a time when you were given advice by your manager.”
Add an additional sentence or two to enhance the image:
“This might have been done formally in the office or perhaps outside the formal environment.”
Then add the open question with the emotive words:
“When have you been annoyed, ecstatic or perhaps just surprised by what you were told?”
Notice there is a spectrum of emotions, which increases the chances of a memory being triggered by the question.
Simply asking people to tell stories rarely results in stories being told. In fact people are often confused when you ask for stories, thinking they might have to concoct an event or perhaps demonstrate Hemingway-level storytelling. Consequently, we suggest you avoid the term ‘story’ and use terms like: examples, illustrations, experiences.
So simple and results in great questions.
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Researchers working on communication with dolphins came up with this list of 20 questions to ask our ceteacean cousins should we every be able to conduct a conversation with them:
- What name does your species call itself?
- What is the social structure of your pod? Of your general species?
- What species of Cetaceans are able to communicate with each other?
- Why do entire pods strand themselves?
- Are there environmental changes are that concerning to cetaceans?
- What are the most important things that we can do to help you?
- Do you have some way of preserving your knowledge, such as an oral tradition and mnemonic devices? If yes, what is the oldest memory or oral tradition that your species has?
- Does your species remember living on land?
- Do you perceive that your echolocation has an effect on human bodies?
- Do dolphins purposefully use their echolocation to affect humans physically, mentally or emotionally?
- Why do some dolphins save human lives?
- Do Cetaceans believe in a powerful entity that created the world?
- Do Cetaceans believe in an Afterlife?
- Is there important knowledge about the ocean which you think mankind is unaware of? Will you share that information with us?
- What would you like to know about humans that you have not been able to understand?
- Our evolutionary science/fossil records show that modern cetaceans evolved long before modern man. Some ancient human texts and several aboriginal creation legends claim that cetaceans have been observing mankind for a very long time and that you have played a role in our development. Is this true?
- Are cetaceans in communication with other animals on this planet?
- What ocean animals or organisms do you fear? ?
- Are cetaceans in communication with life forms beyond this planet?
- Does your species know what this planet looks like from space?
Some of these strike me as a little strange. For example, I think I’d like to know how dolphins think they can help us before I’d like to know if they are chatting with extraterrestrials. However, it’s an interesting exercise to think about. You might consider designing one similar to it if you are working with a group of people that is confronting another group for the first time, such as between cultures, or merging organizations or having a large company move into a small community, or even blending families.
(PS…the dolphins might not be as interesting to talk to as we thought they were…)
via SpeakDolphin – The First 20 Questions – From Humanity to the Cetaceans.