Chris Corrigan Chris Corrigan Menu
  • Blog
  • Chaordic design
  • Resources for Facilitators
    • Facilitation Resources
    • Books, Papers, Interviews, and Videos
    • Books in my library
    • Open Space Resources
      • Planning an Open Space Technology Meeting
  • Courses
  • About Me
    • Services
      • What I do
      • How I work with you
    • CV and Client list
    • Music
    • Who I am
  • Contact me
  • Blog
  • Chaordic design
  • Resources for Facilitators
    • Facilitation Resources
    • Books, Papers, Interviews, and Videos
    • Books in my library
    • Open Space Resources
      • Planning an Open Space Technology Meeting
  • Courses
  • About Me
    • Services
      • What I do
      • How I work with you
    • CV and Client list
    • Music
    • Who I am
  • Contact me

Category Archives "Practice"

What is in our centre

February 23, 2008 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Being, Collaboration, Conversation, Facilitation, First Nations, Leadership, Practice 4 Comments

2008 091

Last wekk I was working with some good friends – Kyra Mason, Thomas Ufer, Ruth Lyall, Jennifer Charlesworth and Nanette Taylor. Together we designed and delivered a one day workshop on what we called “Chaordic Leadership in Changing Times.” The focus of the workshop was collaborative leadership practice and we were asking questions about collaborating around a movement in the child and family services sector in British Columbia.

Collaborative leadership practice has a couple of key capacities. First is the ability to be in and hold space for conversations that matter. The second is the practice of developing and holding a centre. Conversation practice is important because the nature of the systems we are a part of is entirely determined by the quality of the relationships between people in those systems. Quality relationships are important and central to those are quality conversations. That is why I put a lot of emphasis on helping people talk together creatively, generatively and with excitement and energy.

But to build a movement, it’s important to share a centre. That centre is both an individual centre as well as a collective one. In our workshop we were playing a lot with the idea of building a centre, especially as it related to children. We began by learning that the Kwa’kwa’la word for child is “Gwaliyu” which means something like “precious one” or “treasure of my heart.” It implies a treasure that you would give your life for. We began our day by asking people to imagine what it must be like to have that definition of a child in mind every time your used the word “child.” In our workshop no one in the room could describe the etymology of the English word “child.” We had devoted our lives to a word and we weren’t even sure what that word meant. So to find our own centre, the place to which we could always return, we began the workshop with an exercise. We asked people to first write on a piece of paper what the treasure about the children in their lives. We next asked them to write, on another piece, what those treasures expect of them. The first piece of paper then became a definition of child that we could really sink into “curious, innocent and playful” and the second sheet of paer contained our mission statement in the child and family services world: “to make safe space for children to grow and flourish.” It’s simple but what it does is to help us find a centre that we can return to especially when things are pushing us around. From this centre it is a simple matter to come to a conversational space in which we invite a similar set of principles to be at our centre.

This is how, over the past year we have settled on “Children at the centre” as a basic organizing principles for the work we are doing with the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transistion Team as we build a new system for Aboriginal child and family services. What would a system look like that put children in the centre?

The founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba was famously quoted as saying that his advantage in a fight was his ability to return to his centre faster than that of his opponent. In the body, the centre lies just below the navel, in the area the Japanese call the hara, or what Koreans called “tan jun” or “tan tien “ in Chinese. This is both a pivot point for the body’s centre of gravity – a fact well known to martial artists and athletes – as well as the central point from which one’s life force – “ki” or “chi” is projected. Likewise in a group, which is just a body operating at another level, the centre is the pivot point around which we act – our purpose or intention – and the source to which we always return.

Today I am on board a plane heading down to the Navajo Nation to work with a wonderful community of Navajo facilitators involved in health promotion. We are looking at, among other things, these concepts and I have much to consider about the notion of centr ein Navajo thought and practice. I am most curious about how this can be brought to the simplest form of knowing, in the body, heart and mind, to be useful for leadership and hosting practice.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Samurai Creed

February 19, 2008 By Chris Corrigan Leadership, Practice 2 Comments

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this piece, A Samurai Creed, but it speaks volumes about practice.

A Samurai’s Creed
Anonymous, Circa 1300I have no parents; I make the heaven and earth my mother and father.
I have no home; I make awareness my dwelling.
I have no life and death; I make the tides of breathing my life and death.
I have no divine power; I make honesty my divine power.
I have no means; I make understanding my means.
I have no magic secrets; I make character my magic secret.
I have no body; I make endurance my body.
I have no eyes; I make the flash of lightning my eyes.
I have no ears; I make sensibility my ears.
I have no limbs; I make promptness my limbs.
I have no strategy; I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy
I have no designs; I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design.
I have no miracles; I make right action my miracle.
I have no principles; I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.
I have no tactics; I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no talents; I make ready wit my talent.
I have no friends; I make my mind my friend.
I have no enemy; I make carelessness my enemy.
I have no armor; I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no castle; I make immovable mind my castle.
I have no sword; I make absence of self my sword.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Personal practices of conversation

February 5, 2008 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Conversation, Practice 6 Comments

Dave Pollard sees skillful conversation as a key to the kinds of communities he is trying to create.   In this post he revisits his ideas about personal practices for being a good conversationalist.   These are great:

  • Tell the other person something you’re passionate about, and why. Tell them passionately.
  • Tell them something they should know that they don’t, preferably as a story, and make it clear why it’s important.
  • Tell them about a possibility you’ve imagined. A real possibility, not just an ideal, a wish or a dream.
  • Tell them a different way of thinking about something, one that sheds new light on what it means.
  • Don’t argue. Just don’t.
  • In all of the above, make sure what you tell is actionable. But don’t tell them what to do.
  • And above all, keep it short, clear, and simple or entertaining. A conversation is a mutual gift.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Principles for flowing finances

February 4, 2008 By Chris Corrigan Collaboration, Practice

I work with lots of colleagues and in general the flow of money is pretty straightforward.   With some fiends though, we often sit with each other and think about what else we could do with the economy.   Being clear about money is a life practice – in North American culture money holds all kinds of traps for energy between people.

My friend Tenneson Woolf has just blogged on this and he and his colleagues from a recent workshop worked these principles:

  • Whereas the old model for these decisions is more transactional, the new model is energetic. It is not about who did what work. It is about how we collectively invite, create, hold a field to work in before, during, and after the event.
  • As with design, work on logistics with open heart, enaged conversation, and clarity of action — beautiful.
  • Agree to this as a conversation each time, not a formula, to listen with attention and act with love.

And in a coincidental post, Jack Ricchiuto offers this wisdom:

Interesting chat yesterday with my friend Jean Russell of nurturegirl.net and the new blog, thriveability.net. She suggests that thriving communities practice a sense of “currency” that embraces both economic and social capital. Currency is anything that “flows.” A community’s flow experience then can include all forms of purchase, barter, and gifts.

What’s interesting is that anonymous monetary currency doesn’t build community. It only, as Jean suggests, “outsources connections.” When I trade my time helping someone start a wiki website for their business for their time doing plumbing or editing for me, a relationship builds. When I hand someone ten dollars for an item at Target or Whole Foods, no relationship builds in that transaction. In a monetary currency economy, flow occurs without the building of relationship. In a gift and barter economy, relationship is formed.

[tags]tenneson woolf, jack ricchiuto, money[/tags]

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Certainty

December 16, 2007 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Emergence, Facilitation, First Nations, Leadership, Practice One Comment

A combination of quotes from two different emails today on certainty. First from Ashley Cooper, quoting Daniel Sielgel:

“When we are certain we don’t feel the need to pay attention. Given that the world around us is always in flux, our certainty is an illusion.”

And then this, from Tenneson Woolf, who currently has my copy of Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview. From that books is this is a story of Keetsa, an Ahousaht whaling chief who runs into trouble when the space is no longer held for him:

Every protocol had been observed between the whaling chief and the spirit of the whale. Keesta had thrown the harpoon, and the whale had accepted it, had grabbed and held onto the harpoon according to the agreement they had made through prayers and petitions. Harmony prevailed, whaler and whale were one, heshook-ish tsawalk.

All of a sudden something went wrong, some disharmony arose, some disunity intruded, and the whale turned and began to tow Keesta and his paddlers straight off shore. Keesta took inventory. Everyone in the whaling canoe remained true to the protocols – cleansed, purified, and in harmony. Prayer songs intensified. Still, the great whale refused to turn toward the beach, heading straight off shore. Keesta and the paddlers had kept true to their agreements, and now there seemed nothing left to do except to cut the atlu, the rope attached to the whale.

Keesta took his knife, and as he moved to cut the rope, Ah-up-wha-eek (Wren) landed on the whale and spoke to Keesta: “Tell the whale to go back to where it was harpooned.” Keesta spoke to the whale, and immediately the great whale turned accourding to the word of Wren, the little brown bird, and returned to where it was first harpooned, and there it died.

After the whale had been towed ashore, Keesta discovered, as he had suspected, that the disharmony and disunity had intruded at home. When his wife had heard that the whale had taken the harpoon, she had roused herself and prematurely broken away from her ritual in order to make welcome preparations. At the point when she began to go about her life in disharmony from the rest was exactly when the great whale had begun to tow Keesta and his paddlers off shore.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

1 … 18 19 20 21 22 … 32

Find Interesting Things
Events
  • Art of Hosting April 27=29, 2026, with Caitlin Frost, Kelly Poirier and Kris Archie, Vancouver, Canada
  • The Art of Hosting and Reimagining Education, October 16-19, Elgin Ontario Canada, with Jenn Williams, Cédric Jamet and Troy Maracle
Resources
  • A list of books in my library
  • Facilitation Resources
  • Open Space Resources
  • Planning an Open Space Technology meeting
SIGN UP

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
  

Find Interesting Things

© 2015 Chris Corrigan. All rights reserved. | Site by Square Wave Studio

%d