A long time ago I was an introverted person and over the years that has completely changed. If you know me, you’ll know I love talking to others, being around people and engaging in meaningful social interaction. I still love my solitude but I love hanging anround in my local coffee shop and pub more.
As a process designer, creating good meeting and learning spaces for introverts has long been a blind spot for me. Facilitators by definition bring people together. If we are extroverted, the processes we design can often contain an overwhelming amount of social interaction for introverts which actually alienates them from the group and marginalizes their contributions. Sometimes I have run meetings where the introverts never contributed at all. That wasn’t through their fault – it was the fault of my process design that never took their learning styles into account.
You might call it extrovert privilege.
Back in June I was on the hosting team for an Art of Hosting in northern California. A long time friend was there – Tree Fitzpatrick – one of the most deeply intensive introverts I know. She is also a long time process designer and facilitator nd she knowns her stuff. She left after the first hour of the workshop, but not without having a long conversation with me about what she was experiencing. She later made a beautiful gift of sharing her insights with me in a long email on designing processes for introverts. In the past six months, these insights have been a gorgeous gift to my own practice and have radically shifted the way I design, by actually putting the needs of introverted people at the centre of the work. The core of her message to me was this, quoting:
“Please consider integrating some introvert work into your designs. You don’t have to worry about the extroverts: while you give the group quiet time, which is giving the introverts permission to reflect inwardly, most extroverts will just go on doing whatever they want to do but the introverts will feel better if you give them permission to reflect. It only has to be a minute of reflection before speaking but it can make a huge difference to the introvert’s experience in small group talk.”
In the past six months, I have done several things to attend to this.
- Be aware of your “extrovert privilege.” You will know that you suffer from this if silence and solitude seems anaethma to you in a group setting. You will often find introverts confusing and will lose patience with their demands for personal space. You may harbour thoughts about them that are mean spirited, feeling like they are acting out or making some kind of victimization power play. These are your thoughts, and they are not reality. Work on them and recognize your extrovert privilege. I have been working over the past six months to take long periods of solitude for myself just to build up that capacity. I have come to deeply appreciate it as a learning modality
- Introverts need silence and space. When you are working with silence, make sure you build a strong container for it. Sometimes this means really enforcing the silence, but I do this by explaining why this is important and invite people who are uncomfortable with silence to see it as a challenge worthy of their leadership. It’s fierce hosting work, because extroverts are very dismissive of it, and I haven’t always been successful. In Ireland in September we had a particularly gregarious group of Irish language scholars and activists, and I learned about “Irish silence” which something of a dull roar rather than a raucous buzz! Our hosting team was highly amused at my attempts to get anything better than that in the room!
- Build in long periods of silence before asking people to engage in conversation. A minute sounds good but two minutes is better. For deeper conversations even five minutes of silence is powerful. The extroverts will get fidgety, so invite them to write their thoughts down to give them something to do with their hands.
- Provide a meaningful time for reflection at the end of a day. At Rivendell, one of our local spaces for retreat here on Bowen Island, the whole space goes into an hour of silence at 5pm. Anything happening at the facility must also go into this period of silence – it is one of the conditions for being there. For the core group that maintains the space, this is a spiritual practice, although people working there are free to see it in another way. The first time I encountered it I found it a nuisance because at the end of a day of learning usually the groups I am with are bubbly and excited to chat. But working at Rivendell over the years has exposed me to the deep wisdom of building in long periods of silent and solo reflection. It takes all of the learning from the day and plunges it deep into the heart.
- In larger learning initiatives, build in long periods of reflection time out of doors. In Theory U based change labs, the solo presencing retreat is a crucial part of the work. This is where participants spend time alone on the land reflecting. I have been building in long periods of solo time on the land recently. In Ireland our team there uses half day guided walks in The Burren to deepen relationships between people and immerse them in what the land has to offer. I have brought that approach back to Bowen Island and in recent leadership development work we have been doing here, a half day process including an hour long silent period on the land is a core part of the work. This needs to be hosted very strongly…we invite people to hold the silence together from the time we leave, through the solo time, until the time we return. This is a powerful experience for introverts and extroverts alike.
- In smaller settings, building in reflection activities is easy. The reflection toolkit from the Northwest Service Academy in Portland, Oregon is a fabulous resource to share with groups and to invite groups members to lead one or more of these exercises throughout your process. My colleague Jerry Nagel inserted this kit into a training workbook we used with the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation in Minnesota and was immediately useful.
This has evolved into a really fabulous learning edge for me both personally and professionally and I am grateful to Tree for setting me on the path.
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We have opened our Art of Hosting at Rivendell, on Bowen Island. These words are in my ear, words spoken by Elrond at his Council at the mythical Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring. The council was deliberating on who should carry out the quest to destroy the One Ring, and so end the world and nrid it of the domination of the evil Sauron. The question of the humble hobbits ndoing the work came up and this was Elrond’s response:
“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere”
Come, hobbits. The time for work is here.
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Yesterday in our five day residential we invited the participants out on the land for a solo retreat. Bowen Island, where I live, is an incredible place. To get here, you have to take a boat across the Queen Charlotte Channel, a deep body of water at the entrance to Howe Sound. Howe Sounda was formed by glaciers and mountain making processes, and now is a fjord surround by walls of 1200 meters or more.
Entry to Bowen is through Snug Cove, a small and protected harbour that s part of of a bigger bay called Mannion Bay. it is a deep round sanctuary that serves as a channel into the island, and a kind of birth canal when you leave. I have never tired of the process of crossing this threshold.
Once you are here, the Island draws you ever inward, with our one main road branching into three at the crossroads and later into dozens of ever smaller roads and lanes ending at beaches, bays, lakes, mountains or sometimes just petering out into the forest. There are no real loop roads here: once you take a path you have to retunr pretty much the way you came.
This landscape sets us up for a beautiful retreat. When I have helped people have solo experiences here I have always framed them first with a noticing of the threshold that is crossed. Richard Rohr captures the power of these kinds of thresholds here:
The edge of things is a liminal space – a very sacred place where guardian angels are especially available and needed. The edge is a holy place, or as the Celts called it, “a thin place” and you have to be taught how to live there. To take your position on the spiritual edge of things is to learn how to move safely in and out, back and forth, across and return. It is a prophetic position, not a rebellious or antisocial one. When you live on the edge of anything with respect and honor, you are in a very auspicious position. You are free from its central seductions, but also free to hear its core message in very new and creative ways. When you are at the center of something, you usually confuse the essentials with the non-essentials, and get tied down by trivia, loyalty tests, and job security. Not much truth can happen there.
via On the Edge of the Inside: The Prophetic Position by Richard Rohr, OFM.
Once we have crossed the threshold, typically a person’s experience will consist of three phases: a moving out onto the land, a resting phases in stillness and a return. It is a mythic journey in many ways. In going out I invite people to dwell on what they are getting ready to leave. In resting I invite people to be still for at least an hour in the forest or by the sea, which is enough time to let the forest close back around a person and let it reveal itself to you. And the return journey is always accompanied by a gift; you are bringing something back. These little out and back pilgrimages are important and very powerful for people. As I learn more about the way this land works us, I feel like I can let it more fully host me and the people I work with and the insights can come.
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Halfway through our five day residency with leaders from the community sector and the Ministry for Children and Families here in BC. Times like this, at middle of a five day retreat, we turn our thoughts to what comes next and we forget to be present. This is our day of practicing presence however, and later today we will be going out on the land and allow ourselves to be hosted by the forest, the rain and our island. This is the time for a fierce recommitment to the here and now.
My colleague and friend Annemarie Travers, who is on our hosting team and who leads learning in the Ministry shared a beautiful framing for our day together. She and her husband Geoff recently completed the Camino pilgrimage and she wrote dozens of poems during her journey. This morning she shared one that speaks powerfully to what it is like to be distracted by the near end:
Staying “Here”
The closer we get to the end of our walk, the harder it is to stay present
We think ahead to achieving our goal, beginning to be proud of our accomplishmentWe have also started to think about home, and all that waits for us there
But we need to focus on enjoying these last few days as much as we dareWhile we feel the Camino has given us both what we need
We know it’s not done with us yet, their is still more to come, indeed!These last few days are characterized by more traffic on the paths
And as we weave our way through, some draw our wrathThen we remind ourselves of the Camino spirit, and breathe deeply, just let it go
(Hopefully not while passing a farm – we are regularly assaulted by manure smells you know)We forget to be grateful for the simple pleasures of the day
It was supposed to rain today, but the rain stayed away!This all has the effect of limiting our opportunities for meditative walking
Our minds go to the usual worries, and we begin talkingAbout the end of the trip, and what we will do when we return
So we made a pact with ourselves with the intent to turnThe train of our thoughts, to focus on the here and now
Enjoy what this day brings, not the manure, but the beauty of the cow…
Such a beautiful reminder to remain present, to enjoy the source of everything that continues to work with us!
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…is the best wisdom for yourself:
The advice you’ve been giving your family and friends turns out to be advice for you to live, not us. You become the wise teacher as you become a student of yourself. It stops mattering if anyone else hears you, because you’re listening. You are the wisdom you offer us, breathing and walking and effortlessly moving on, as you make your business deal, buy your groceries, or do the dishes.
— Byron Katie
Loving being with my partner Caitlin Frost as she teaches this powerful stuff to a group of leaders whose freedom and resourcefulness makes a huge difference in the lives of vulnerable humans in this world.
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