Some notes from three days of teaching a small cohort of leaders in the art of participatory leadership. —- When we teach the four fold practice of the art of hosting (also the art of participatory leadership) I’ve taken to doing it in a World Cafe. We use Cafe to essentially recreate the conditions that created the insights of the four fold practice 25 or so years ago. We invite people to tell stories of engaging and meaningful conversations they have experienced, look at these stories together for insights about what made them engaging and meaningful and provide and three …
Tenneson, Caitlin and I are running a three day leadership course for MacEwan University here in Edmonton. It starts tomorrow and we are having a great conversation at Remedy chai cafe about why meetings matter for folks studying leadership. Here are some of the insights. —- Meetings are microcosms for leadership practice. They are places to encounter one’s own leadership gifts and leadership challenges. What you learn when you host a meeting is very much related to how you lead a team or and organization or a board. Meetings are a place to confront what’s real and meaningful. They contain …
Today, I was working with a client designing a one-day conference for their members. As always, my focus was on the chaordic stepping stones as a way to design, which defers decisions about structure, agenda and logistics until after we have focused the groundwork of the event. Participatory events are not highly engaging without tapping into the group’s urgent necessity and a clear sense of purpose for the gathering. From that point, design becomes easier, and invitation becomes alive. Today, we focused on necessity and purpose. I kicked us off by asking, “What is happening that makes this gathering important? …
A detail from the monastary at Mont St Michel in Normandy showing a person overwhelmed with ripening fruit. He’s probably rushing off to his next zoom meeting. So much has changed since the pandemic began, and it is hard to notice what is happening now. I feel like my ability to perceive the major changes that have happened to us since March 2020 is diminished by the fact that there is very little art that has been made about our experience and very few public conversation about the bigger changes that have affected organizational and community life in places like …
Sometimes a line runs right through people and communities, and sometimes that line is in the middle of road we are all travelling on. …how to address the polarization that is currently plaguing our world. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have some ideas, maybe only one idea. But I’m not sure that there is much work that can be done in facilitating conversations across political divides. Instead, I think we need to focus on shared work. This isn’t a new idea to me. I first saw Tuesday Rivera (Ryan-Hart) grapple with this reality back in 2011 when we were …