The view from the Rockefeller Foundation meeting room, looking south towards the Empire State Building. Today I worked in this location with friends Willie Toliver and Kelly McGowan supporting the work of a group of executive leaders in the New York City municapl administration. I was struck by how, despite the responsibility and magnitude of influence these people have, that they are nonetheless human beings – vulnerable, falliable and authentic as the rest of us.
Here is the poem that was created from the checkout.
We are just poor weak human beings,
Resisting the call
Because we cease and desist
our belief in all we can offer
Somehow we have created
single places upon which everything hinges
and when we are put in those spaces
we confront our smallness, see it in
perspective because none of us are
big enough to be the change others expect
and we have long stopped fooling ourselves.
To confront our own smallness is terrifying
especially when people project bigness on us –
the scale of challenge, the scope of our capability.
The I we are through other people’s eyes
is never the me we see through our own.
Know this – you have been chosen only to live.
It is never over until you leave.
the only line you ever cross
is the one you choose to draw..
I’m back in Johannesburg after three days on the veld west of the city running an Art of Participatory Leadership workshop with my friend from REOS Social Innovation. The weather here has been crazy – constant rain showers and thunderstorms for the whole time we were away, and there is flooding locally here. Driving back into the city we went fender deep through many intersections; major thoroughfares were rendered into fords, water coloured with deep red soil flowing everywhere.
Usually its easy for me to write about these kinds of workshops, but I have to say that South Africa is an overwhelming context. It does not at all lend itself to a simple set of observations. In many ways it is the quintessential study in contrasts: squatter camps next to luxury suburban malls, torrential rains in Joburg and 30 minutes away, lovely summer weather on the safari. Somehow these things have much in common. You are always taken by surprise by the contrast while at the same time struck by how normal it all seems.
REOS Partners is working with two major teams right now, both of which are present at this training. One is Kago Ya Bana (Building together for our children), which is a program that works in the municipality of Midvaal, aimed at ensuring that every child is cared for. The other is a team of people who work with distance learning at the University of South Africa (UNISA). On the face of it, these tow teams have nothing really in common, but in mixing together over the past three days they discovered much in common about moving towards a culture of participatory leadership with stakeholders, funders, learners, parents and children. One project even got started that uses KYB leadership with some support from UNISA folks to build it and see it off.
I think South Africa is a country that exists only because of partnerships and particiption. But much like Estonia, two dynamics are at play. First of all, with the struggle against apartheid now over, a creeping complacency has set in. There has long been extraordinary expectations on the ANC government, but what is catching people by surprise is the decreasing impulse for people to take charge in their communities. I heard this often over the course of the workshop – that there is a hunger for the kind of community leadership that was present in the struggle days, but which has seemed to have waned in the past 15 years. And secondly, like Estonia, South Africa is an emerging country and as such it is trying to perform well on the world stage. To do this, it makes a point of meeting the world’s expectations of it, trying to prove that things are going well and that progress is being made, and I notice that some people re reaching the breaking point in encountering the culture of management by measurement. This was another frustration spoken by many.
Participatory leadership is simply the application of what we have learned from hosting participatory meetings to bigger and bigger contexts. It asks the question what if we applied these principles to ongoing team, organizational and social contexts. To that end participatory leadership offers some relevant antidotes to groups that are suffering from the apathy of a surfeit of chaos or control. This week we found that out in spades I think. People are just quite open and interested in a way of doing things that involves others, that engages that somehow returns humanity to work.
In our work we shared models of hosting participatory meetings, described maps and practices that help us stay grounded and open, and explored ways of harvesting that were inclusive and holistic. In the end, several people stepped forward to crack open and lead projects within their workplaces to make work more inclusive, to work more with clients and learners, and to explore ways to apply some of these ideas and skills. One thing that I love about this work is how REOS is offering it as a part of an ongoing capacity building initiative with their clients. In doing that it continues a shift of seeing in ways that one participant described as “Changing the way change works.” With an ongoing relationship, coaching, and real work at hand, those that take up the practices and explore them in their own contexts will embark on a cool learning journey together, and my sense is that people will begin seeing the results they are looking for as their projects become more inclusive and co-owned by the people with whom they are working. And that is the whole point.
Canada is about to be roundly shamed at the Copenhagen summit, and it can’t happen swiftly enough or with enough emphasis for me. Our government is showing itself to be a dinosaur when it comes to tackling climate change. Here is Stephen Harper touting a total myth:
“Without the wealth that comes from growth, the environmental threats, the developmental challenges and the peace and security issues facing the world will be exponentially more difficult to deal with,” Harper said in an address to South Korea’s National Assembly.
via Harper Says Global Recovery Must Precede Environment (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
The truth is actually the other way around, but Harper is so willfully blind to the realities of system thinking, climate science and global consensus that he has chosen to act as a bully and a coward all at the same time.
George Monbiot recently wrote a slamming indictment of our potentially negative contribution to these climate talks coming up. It seems that, doing the bidding of big oil, Canada will try to scuttle the talks by dividing and conquering the conference. The Saudis will be hiding behind our skirts delighted that they don’t have to be the bad guys.
So, rest of the world, you need to know that Harper has never governed in Canada with a majority of Parliamentary votes, nor has his government ever had anything close to a mjority of the popular vote. It is a particular set of regional political anamolies that has resulted in him becoming Prime Minister. Canadians have never wanted him to govern in numbers that would give him a mandate to speak with such surety about what we want as Canadians, or what our role in the world should be. He has refused to govern cautiously as a minority leader, and has refused to even try to build consensus, choosing instead to be a brinkman of the highest order and calling the bluff of the Opposition parties who have ended up supporting his bullying through a fear of their own political hides being hung out to dry.
So knowing this, world, and speaking as a Canadian, I hope you will not hold back in exposing Harper for what he is, and challenging at every turn his right to speak for Canadians. He should be a marginal curiosity at this summit, and he will be if YOU ALL put him there. Please do not accord the Canadian government’s position at this conference with any of the respect that is usually accorded to us. We sometimes are allowed to punch far above our weight, but in this case, call the man’s bluff. He does not speak for most of us.
My friend Robert Oetjen was a key member of our hosting team at Altmoisa. He brings a lovely capacity to the work, being the head of an environmental learning centre in southern Estonia, he understands the deep connection between human and world, and is a practitioner of the most ancient arts of human kind: tracking and fire building. He is a man who is a beautiful learner from his environment. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, he moved here in the early 1990s as a Peace Corps worker, teaching English in the days in which Estonia was hungry to claim it’s relationship to the west. But like all good improvisers, he allowed the climate to change him, and he began deeply intimate with Estonian culture and language, married and Estonian woman and moved into becoming a steward of Estonian natural places. He speaks the language fluently and beautifully and Estonians, who are normally wary of outsiders, embrace him and respect him, and always forget that he wasn’t born of this land. I can imagine, after being here for only a week, how it must have happened that he became so quickly embraced here. The land and the people are reserved but when they open to you and you open to them, the embrace is deep and multi-layered.
Robert brought this consciousness to the beginning of our third day, leading us in a check in exercise on the land that taught so many things on so many levels. We simply stood for a while in the cold gloom of an early Estonian autumn morning. The air was very still, but an occasional light breeze reminded one that one still has bones. Robert invited us to first of all become aware of the extent of our vision, noticing how wide it extended on either side of us, and how high and low a soft gaze can perceive. From there we closed our eyes and let our ears open to the subtle soundscape around us. For me this was wonderful because this is my morning practice at home. here the soundscape is similar, but the sounds are totally different. Many birds were quietly moving in the trees and shrubs around us, among them bullfinches, bushtits, creepers and hooded crows. A raven called far away and a dog barked softly across the fields. Deepening into this sense of place, Robert invited us to smell the mud, and the leaves on the ground, the apples that had fallen from nearby trees and were slowly decaying, turning sweet and pungent on the ground. Our senses fully awakened, Robert then taught us how to walk again.
One foot softly in front of the other, gaze open, like a hunter becoming aware of every sound and movement around us. Each foot develops eyes of its own, feel its way on the land, so sensitive to what is underfoot that it’s is possible to walk without making a sound . You become a part of the landscape, joining it completely, becoming enmeshed within it, so that everything that happens happens WITH you rather than as a RESULT of you being there. This is a huge and important teaching about harvesting. As you learn to walk in this way – Robert called it “foxwalking” – you become a little quicker, a little more sure footed, you are able to move deliberately and yet not disturb anything around you. It was a powerful way to experience hosting and being hosted, joining the field and harvesting in the moment, becoming fully present.
And it was just the first of two morning acts. Following a walk on the land in this way, Robert invited us inside and proceeded to make a fire, using his tools of a fireboard, a firestick, a bow, a handhold and some dry moss tinder. He gave a beautiful teaching about the archetypal elements of this practice, the fundamental unity of male and female with the firestick and fireboard, the notch that allows dust to come into the space that is created by the friction to birth the spark, the notch is the womb and the spark emerges from the union, the bow that turns the stick through the four directions, gathering the energy of the circle to create powerful life. Such a rich practice, such a beautiful fundamental teaching about application. It continued to resonate through our final day. As I left Estonia this morning, Robert gifted me a set of these tools for my own, a deep invitation into practice and learning this ancient art, the first act of survival to build a fire out of nothing, and the primal act of community building. the spark begins the possibility of coming together.
The rest of the day flowed. Toke and I gave very simple teachings on application. I talked a little about the improv principle of “notice more and change less” speaking about the fact that what we had experienced is a more profound way to open to possibility than feeling that we need to change all the time. the world changes enough as it is. If we can simply stay still long enough in one place, everything we need will flow past, timing will present itself and pass away, the possibilities for action become expansive.
The group went into Open Space to work through their design questions for projects that they are deep within. We rolled and flowed and talked and drew and at the end of the day, ran a little intention grounding exercise that involved milling around and collecting questions on our next steps, and then we checked out with voices of appreciation and gratitude and an eager commitment to meet again in February when this cohort of learners will assemble for their final co-learning journey.
It has been a great pleasure to spend time with this group, to make many new friends who are cracking good work in Estonia, exploring the leading edges of participatory leadership in a country that is slowly coming back to life, and to remembering its deepest gifts and resources. Many stories, practices and inspiring thoughts are coming home with me, right into work with First Nations on the west coast of Vancouver who are reclaiming their own resources of cultural strength and the renewed use and management of the marine ecosystems on which they depend. My big learning is that the skills and practices of participatory leadership are all around us, deep in the ground of the cultural legacies we have inherited as humans on this planet. And when we can talk and learn and share between traditional indigenous peoples, we discover so many modalities that are from the same root.
Sad to be leaving, but happy to be coming home from four days of teaching, fuller than when I left.
Toke and I along with our Estonian colleagues, Piret, Robert and Ivika, began our three day participatory leadershipworkshop today. We were join at Altmoisa by 20 young-ish leaders who have been training together since the summer in the Art of Hosting and who have been using participatory meeting methodologies in the places of work. Tis workshop is intended to take the exploration of those practices deeper, and extend the learning that comes from hosting into the realms of leadership.
This is the first Art of Hosting workshop I have done in a language different from mine. Although most participants speak English (and I speak no Eesti) a few need whisper translation to follow along and Toke and I have someone whispering in our ears when others are speaking. It’s going well, and I’m getting used to connecting with the speaker rather than the translater when folks are sharing thoughts and insights.
In the opening circle, which was around the questions of Who am I today and What has been a recent example of participatory leadership, I made a long poem harvest from the stories that were shared. It’s clear here that people are both pressed for time, and feeling the need to feed a hunder in their organizations and communities for more participation. Like everywhere, when folks get a taste of participation, they want more of it, and most folks are here to continue their learning and sharpen their skills in offering.
One thing Toke and I are doing is trying to reduce all of these concepts and practices to basics. What are the basics that you need to host participation, whether in a meeting, and organization or a community? We riffed today on the four fold practice of the art of hosting, and explored the basic practices of being present, cultivating participation, being purposeful and practicing co-creation. We taught for a while, combining a little aikido in with our work and then the group met in triads to crack questions for their learning agenda together. We taught a little more and then went into a cafe to ground our learning, discovering where these basics show up in our lives and work and what the next level is regarding cultivating a deeper practice of these ways of working.
I like this idea of going back to basics, teaching the essence of practice and then having people find out how those things can take root and grow in different ways in their own lives. It is a lovely way to take what ones learns as a host and extend it to other parts of one’s life, whether its parenting, living in community or be a participatory leader.