The big posting from the Systems Thinking in Action Conference on a session with Juanita Brown, Nancy Margulis, Nancy White and Amy Lenzo on conversation as a radical act.
There are days, and this is one of them, when I pinch myself at how lucky I am to be able to call these women my friends.
Just back from an amazing Art of Hosting in rural Pennsylvania. Found this in my email box upon my return, send to me by my friend Toke:
Not just any talk is conversation
Not any talk raises consciousness
good conversation has an edge
It opens your eyes to something
It quickens your earsAnd good conversation reverberates
It keeps on talking in your mind later in the day;
The next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said
The reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness
Your mind and heart have been moved
Your are at another level with your reflections.— James Hillman
This is what it is all about.
My young friend Dustin Rivers nails the difference between the old system and the new system.
Today I ran into an interesting situation. I was in a conversation about a community process I have been designing and a potential participant took me aside and said that she would love to participate but that one of the people who had already agreed to also participate had committed some serous abuse against her partner. She wondered how I would do to resolve the situation.
That was a good one, a little bit out of the blue and somewhat unexpected. I thought for a moment and then, putting my best collaborative principles into practice said “I don’t know. What would you do if you were in my situation?” She wasn’t expecting this answer, but to her credit she stopped and thought about it. We stood next to each other in silence for a few moments.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Well then,” I said. “That makes two of us. Let’s think about this together.”
We shared a little laugh and then I started thinking out loud. I mused about the fact that we needed many perspectives in this process, and perhaps even the perspectives of “abusers” whatever that means. Having all voices in a process does not come cost-free. I also acknowledged her needs for both safety and a way to contribute to the process. The truth of things, as Christina Baldwin has said, is that as a facilitator I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety, but I can help a group create the conditions that would look after its own safety. In that spirit I invited her to join our process and be in dialogue with me about co-creating the conditions of safety and participation that would meet her needs and keep the group functioning well. This was an agreeable proposal to her and so we will be in conversation as our process unfolds to make sure that the group is doing its best possible work. She has taken some responsibility for helping us to understand her experience of the situation and we’ll deal with whatever comes up with inquiry, curiosity, imagination and patience.
It is a great gift when individuals in a group step up to take responsibility for co-creating conditions of safety and efficacy in their dialogic container. It pays to be honest with people and as for help when you don’t know what to do, and see if proposals forward can be co-created. I was reminded today how important that is to adopt as a world view and not just a facilitation trick.
Diamond graphic by Darrell Freeman at Colour
Within the constellation of design tools I find especially helpful in creating spaces for conversation, Sam Kaner’s Diamond of Participation has been very influential. About three years ago my friend Myriam Laberge pointed out to me the possibility that all learning conversations take place along this flow of thinking and since then the model has been an important part of my life and work.
The diamond is a map that points to three phases that groups pass through as they move from questions to insights. Groups begin with divergent thinking, sit for a while in the chaos and uncertainty of “The Groan Zone” and later move into convergent thinking.
Today I found a nice description of these modes of thinking, buried in an article on neuroscience and fundamentalism
Convergent reasoning involves an assembly of known information and results in a solution within the realm of what is already known. Most problem solving occurs this way. It is instilled, for example, in medical school students. If a physician sees a person in the emergency room that has a fever and is comatose, they are taught that there are two possible disorders that might give these signs: an infection or a heat stroke. If this patient is found to have a stiff neck, the physician considers the possibility that the patient’s fever and unconsciousness are related to an infection of the central nervous system, such as meningitis. To obtain further converging evidence the resident doctor may perform a spinal tap; if the analyzed spinal fluid reveals certain indicators there is now sufficient converging evidence to make a diagnosis of meningitis and to start antibiotic therapy.Divergent reasoning, on the other hand, enables a person to arrive at a previously unknown solution (at least unknown to the person who is doing the reasoning). When a person is confronted with a problem and decides that the existing information is insufficient to develop a satisfactory solution, he or she may diverge from the information and imagine,or reason about, new possibilities. William James, who first put forth the concept of divergent reasoning, stated:
Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another … unheard of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy … we seem suddenly introduced into a seething cauldron of ideas … where partnerships can be joined or loosened … treadmill routine is unknown and the unexpected is the only law.
The human capability for divergent reasoning results in a nearly limitless range of creative outcomes, from entirely personal to world changing. Surely humanity’s earliest innovations were life altering, as were the many that followed. Recall our eventual acceptance (against initially unyielding church doctrine) of Copernicus’s unfathomable idea that the Sun, and not the Earth, was at the center of our solar system, or Einstein’s affront to the known laws of physics with his concept that matter and energy are different forms of the same thing. But even more mundane activities, like resolving an unacceptable marital situation by seeking conduct on the part of one of the partners that was previously not considered, discovering a treatment solution for a heretofore incurable disease,creating a work of distinctive art, finding an alternative to war in a tense geopolitical situation, a chef’s creation of a new recipe, carefully arranging flowers in vase, or making up a bedtime story, are examples of creative acts resulting from the ability to diverge from current circumstances and consider or enact new possibilities. Certainly, both convergent and divergent reasoning serve to enhance our well being. But it is an individual’s ability to diverge from what is familiar and move beyond the known into a new understanding which is the essence of creativity, and that which gives rise to advancement. In the words of Frank Zappa, “Without deviation from the norm, ‘progress’ is not possible.” Whether a person chooses to question and think on his or her own or remains unconditionally adherent to religious dogma, might relate to how specific areas of the brain are utilized–or not.
Interesting, eh?
[tags]Sam Kaner, Myriam Laberge[/tags]