One of my favourite photos of Harrison Owen, courtesy of Peggy Holman This morning I got to play the role of host/interviewer to my mentor Harrison Owen, the guy that accidentally invented Open Space Technology and unknowingly changed my life. It was when I participated in my first Open Space conference in 1995 that I knew I had found the core of my path in work. Truth be told, interviewing Harrison is the easiest job you could ever want. You basically do what you do when running an Open Space meeting: ask the question and get out of the way. …
Part three in a series: Part one: Just what I needed Part Two: Where did this come from? Part three: a collection of patterns for design and facilitation. As I heard the story, the four fold practice was something of a flash of insight tied in with the original Art of Hosting offering made by Toke, Jan, and Monica. Somewhere in the forests of Northern California as the team was preparing to offer its first Art of Hosting training, somebody woke up one morning, after a few days of discussion and design with the strong sense that meaningful conversations had …
Part of a series. Part one: Just what I needed Part two: Where did this come from? Something Harrison Owen said to me somewhere along the line drove me to understand that facilitating Open Space Technology meetings required a tremendous amount of personal practice. He talked about rising at 4am the day of his Open Space meetings and meditating for an hour. The work of actively letting go takes a tremendous amount of energy, especially if, like most of us, you have control instincts to overcome. When one is facilitating an Open Space meeting the desire to control things, even …
To begin the new year, I’m offering here a series of posts on the core practice of the Art of Hosting, the Four-Fold Practice. Since 2003, the Art of Hosting community has been my primary learning and practice community as I have learned and grown my facilitation and leadership practice. Central to that community is the four-fold practice, a simple framework that describes both what the actual Art of Hosting is and what it does. Part one today describes a bit of my own journey that brought me into contact with this community. Over the next few days, I’ll share …
One of my mantras that helps keep me focused when I’m designing a process is “I’m not planning a meeting, I’m planning a harvest.” This helps me focus on need and purpose and helps me choose or create processes that make good use of our time together. Facilitators can be guilty of the sin of falling in love with their methods and tools. Especially when we learn a new thing, we are desperate to try it out, sharing our zeal for this fresh thing we’ve discovered. In my own experience, many times that results in the meeting being about my …