My friend Peggy Holman is about to write a short series of posts on how to manage the tension between hearing from luminaries and hosting participation in gatherings that aim to:
- Make the most of the knowledge and experience of the people in the room;
- Support participants to make great connections;
- Bring the wisdom of luminaries – respected, deep thinkers – on whatever subject drew people together; and
- Deepen collective understanding of a complex topic.
Peggy notes that:
A common design challenge with such gatherings is to work the tension between hearing from luminaries and engaging participants. When the mix is off, it shows up in missed expectations and at its worst, a revolt by participants. (It didn’t go that far at this gathering, though I’ve been on the receiving end of a revolt. But that’s another story”)
I left this conference contemplating four design choices to support the four goals I mentioned above. They are:
- Invite thought leaders with different world views so that participants benefit from a tapestry of ideas.
- Mix theory and practice so that they inform and amplify each other.
- Do activities that make the experience in the room visible so that we meet kindred spirits, discover each other’s gifts, and learn as much as possible about what works.
- Take a co-creative stand, so that the unexpected becomes a source of engagement and learning.
As a participant from time to time, I find that I can be cynical about how I am hosted (as if I am a perfect facilitator every time!). But what I like about being hosted is the opportunity to practice participation. Let go of the “perfect container” and show up as curious and committed to learning as possible. IN this way I can honour the host (and sometimes help a process succeed by moving the conversation towards substance and away from process). It will be good to read Peggy’s thinking, as always.
via Designing for Community: Luminaries and Engagement | Peggy Holman.
Share:
It had to be an Irish politician that finally suggested this! Ireland has been leading the European Union the past six months, including chairing and hosting the EU’s meetings. Micheal Ring tried a different approach to having all 27 ministers show up and read a speech.
Sports Minister Michael Ring might actually have made a difference. At the Council of Sports Ministers in Brussels, the Ringer pioneered a new approach to these meetings. The usual drill sees each of the 27 ministers reading a prepared script outlining their country’s viewpoint. It’s tedious stuff.
Minister of State Ring decided to change this. He announced to his fellow sports ministers: “No scripts today! If you cannot speak without a script for thee minutes ye shouldn’t be in the job you’re in.”
The politicians looked a little uncertain. Their civil servants looked horrified.
”Let me tell you this,” he continued, “I came through Westport town council and the county council, I’m in the Dáil and now I’m a Minister and we had more debates in the town council than we’ve ever had here.” The ministers were discussing drug misuse in sport. They had brought their scripts, but after initial misgivings and a bit of cajoling from Michael, they decided to throw caution to the wind and have a proper discussion. Ring banished officials to the margins and let the ministers do the talking.
“It was mighty. Mighty altogether,” he tells us. “I was told this was the most successful meeting in Brussels for 20 years. We had a lively exchange of views and a frank and open debate. The place was packed and the meeting went on for nearly four hours.”
Share:
Last year in Slovenia, a group of Art of Hosting practitioners gatherd for a week at a well loved 17th century manor to be together. I suppose you could call it a “conference” but we all called it a “Learning Village.” And it was a learning village. The agenda we set was for a five day Open Space gathering. there was music and local wine drinking and a learning journey on the land, and the teenagers cleaned out an old stone chapel that hadn’t been dusted for 300 years. We talked about our work, did tai chi and aikido, played football and made art. Our kids fell in love and broke up!
It was a village, and there was tons of learning. And no action plans, no next steps, no commitments, no necessary reports. A few months later there was a harvest document lovingly stewarded by a few people. This is all appropriate and good.
And sometimes, there are gatherings where next steps and action plans are important and necessary and are the reason why we are gathering. But always? No.
I have begun to notice that when I see conference agendas with “next steps and action plans” attached to them (and especially attached to the end of the last day when everyone is tired and most people have left), I become sad. Actually and emotionally a little sad. i think it is because doing this unconsciously reduces the pure experience of being together and intenstly learning into something “productive” in order to justify doing it.
So please, think really carefully about whether or not you gathering needs action steps, especially if you are planning a conference where the purpose is for people to simply be together learning and connecting. That alone is significant action. Do we really need to justify it any further?
Share:
How many of you live in communities where community meetings are boring affairs punctuated by outrage? How many of you feel like influencing your local government means showing up en masse with a pettion or an organized campaign to get them to make a small change? How many of you are just plain disillusioned with your local government and have given up trying to help them involve citizens in decision making?
And how many of you are leaders that are frustrated by citizens who just yell at you all the time? How many of you don’t actually know what you are doing, but could never admit that in public? How many of you have tried to involve the community once, failed and vowed never to do it again? How many of you have strategic communications strategies (public or secret) for dealing with your own citizens?
This is what it has come to in many places. In my local community, not unlike many others across Canada, our local Council was elected on a tide of resentment that was stoked against the previous Council. For most of the previous Council’s term, a group of citizens mounted a campaign of smear and slander, including starting a newspaper funded by developers devoted to criticizing almost every Council initiative and culminating in an election campaign where four of the sitting members of Council were branded “The Gang of Four.” And even subsequent to the election 18 months ago, there has been an ongoing litany of blame against the old Council and people considered to be nsupportive of the old Council (and I count myself as one of them). The result is, on our local island, there is a real sense of cynicism. The new Council has not created any new initiatives with respect to involving citizens, and has, if my records are straight, only one “town hall” meeting. We have been short on dialogue and deliberation and if there are any decisions being made at all, they are being made without the invitation of the community. It feels sad, not because somehow the old Council was better than this one, but because our community can be so much more interesting and engaged.
Over the years citizens on Bowen have self-organized not just is lobby groups to advocate for particular policy decisions, but to actually build things that local governments should otherwise be doing. A group of citizens from across the political spectrum participated in a unique group called Bowen island Ourselves, which sought to undertake these kinds of initiatives to compliment local government services and functions. As a result, we did things like develop a crowdsourced road status tool, hosted a parallel process of Open Space dialogues alongside the formal consultation process for our official community planning process, sponsored deliberation meetings on issues such as local agriculture and the proposal to create a national park on Bowen Island, organize and implement BowenLIFT as an alternative transportation system. Lots of stuff.
But when the well becomes poisoned and citizens and elected officials begin just screaming at each other, fear takes over and stuff like that shuts down. We are in a period like that right now on Bowen, and the result is that a number of decisions are being made that have a significant impact on the future of our island, especially with respect to our village centre, without having any creative public dialogue. There is simply no place for the public to be a part of co-creating the future. We will get open houses on the plans that Council designs with a few advisors.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are thousands of tools out there that can help people do interesting and creative community engagement. This list of decision making tools from the Orton Family Foundation came through my inbox today. What is required to choose these tools?
Well first, a local government must be brave enough to stand in front of it’s citizens and ask for help. Assuming that you have the answers to complex questions is unwise. Better to be learners in office than heros. Second, a local government has to trust it’s citizens and create a climate where ideas can be discussed respectfully. Sure there are always going to be people wanting to take shots at you (especially if you played that way before you were in office) but as local leaders, there is an art to opening space where citizens can be in dialogue rather than debate. Third, local governments have to be serious about using what they learn and being clear an transparent about why they are choosing some ideas over others. Lastly it helps if local government leaders actually relish their jobs and see their community members, even the ones they disagree with as interesting and worthwhile neighbours. I have heard many local elected officials over the years express outright contempt for their citizens (although rarely does it happen while the official is sitting in office)
If you get some of this right, things can open up. If that’s what you want. But it takes leadership, and not just the kind that massages agendas and works behind the scenes. It requires leaders to stand up in front of their citizens and declare their willingness to make a new start and to leverage the best of their community’s assets. It requires leaders to trust their citizens and to relish working with them to create community initiatives and services that are loved and enjoyed by all.
I’d love to hear stories of local governments that changed their tune midstream to become open and excited about inclusive and participatory decision making processes. It would inspire me to hope that maybe something like that is possible where I live.
Share:
Imagine you are stuck in traffic. By the side of a road is a billboard that changes it’s message every five minutes. You glance over at it and read this:
“Some claim. One race in Canada should not have to work for a living. That this race should receive millions in funding without accountability. That the elite of this race should be allowed to defraud their regular people. How can anyone support this? How can anyone slam Conservatives for not supporting this like the NDP/Liberals?”
How would you feel? Would it make you angry? Would it make you happy? Would you wonder how a message like that – containing three of five common racist assertions against First Nations peoples, got put up on a billboard for thousands to see?
The billboard is by the side of a road, and the person who has written that has done nothing to warrent the eyeballs that are staring at it. They didn’t pay for the space, they haven’t had their comment fact checked for accuracy. They haven’t even signed their name. It appears that no one even cares if it is hate speech.
And then what if a headline on the billboard declared “Join the Conversation!” and had an ad attached to it? Would you feel like there was a conversation to be had? Would you wonder who was profiting?
This is exactly what comments sections on newspaper web site are.
The above is an actual comment from an anonymous poster that has been allowed to stand in an article about how the Conservative government refuses to make legislative changes to Bill C-45, which is what the Idle No More movement has been protesting.
As a practitioner of real conversation, it drives me crazy that the Globe and Mail among other outlets invites us to “Join the Conversation.” What happens on newspaper websites is not a conversation. It is shrill hit and run racism, unsubstantiated opinion, outright lies and conjecture. It is often targeted personally (the comments against Teresa Spence and Shawn Atleo in recent weeks have been shocking) and it cheapens the idea of conversation and free speech and poisons the environment of public service for those who wish to enter it.
The fact that newspaper comments sections are moderated matters not at all. I don’t believe newspapers are doing society any favours by allowing this kind of discourse to happen.
I am not advocating for a restriction on free speech. What bothers me about this is that anonymous posters are using the reputation of newspaper to get views on their comments. These posters have done nothing to warrant thousands of people reading their vitriol. So why do newspapers cultivate market share, and then allow this stuff to stand? Money? The longer you linger on a page – and outrage is a cheap thrill – the better the bottom line. Pandering to the basest forms of rhetoric works for papers. No matter how much newspapers disclaim the opinions in their comments sections, the fact is that by providing thousands of readers per comment the are enabling hate speech and giving it a wider audience than it would get on its own.
But this stuff absolutely destroys the calibre of public discourse. Those of us that are part of Idle No More or who have been advocates for progressive solutions to First Nations issues spend all of our time addressing myths and not creating substantial proposals for change. And when we do table substantial proposals for change, we are met with contempt by mainstream society and policy makers, who often repeat the lines that are propagated in comments sections.
So here’s what needs to happen. Let free speech thrive in it’s own free market of ideas. Newspapers should close down their comments sections and invite people to join the conversation by creating their own blogs where they can publish their opinions as much as they like. If the opinions have merit, they will get a following. People can invite comments on their own posts. If newspapers want to actually foster conversation, they should convene large World Cafes where human beings can meet each other face to face and share their opinions without hiding behind anonymous pseudonyms.
in the absence of that, newspapers surely must see that they are complicit in the falling standards of civic discourse. Has it come to this, that the only stream of revenue for newspapers is link baiting and outrage? Responsible journalists write the articles and anonymous Canadians provide the juicy violation of media laws that bring in the page views and therefore the revenue. I wonder if anyone has the steel to change this.