One session in Camden last week that really grabbed my interest was hosted by my dear friend and colleague Father Brian Bainbridge from Australia. Brian is another remarkable man, generous, dry in his humour and open hearted. He has been working on a little book for a while about brining Open Space to parish life, which documents his stories of working with the parishoners of St. Scholastica’s in Melbourne. In a little over two years, Brian has been exploring the transformation that comes about from shifting from the managerial worldview to the open space worldview. What he has found is a renewal in the life of the parish, and in the spiritual life of the parishioners. What interests me about this transformation is how it relates to the spiritual teachings that lie at the heart of the parish. In other words, is an Open Space worldview compatible with Christian teachings?
Brian was good enough to host a session on this topic which was attended by folks from many faith traditions. For me, it became very clear that Open Space invites us as individuals to connect with the deeper sources of creation in our world. Almost all major religions teach both a path for individual spiritual practice and a path for collective spiritual community building. Whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, Baha’i, Jew, Taoist, Muslim, Hindu or you practice a traditional spirituality, there are precepts for the life of spiritual communities that, I think, invite us to notice the source of creative energy as it flows between us. Living in community is a spiritual practice. Open Space, it seems to me, offers us a chance to connect with one another in a deeper way by connecting with the source of creativity in the universe. We call this by many names. Religious people migt call it Spirit, secular folks will see it as self-organization, Taoists call it the Tao. Whatever it is named, it is possible to experience it, and Open Space seems to create the conditions for that experience. This explains to me why many people report a much deeper experience in Open Space than in many other process I work with.
This theme surfaced at the Art of Hosting workshop I took part in later in the week in Indiana, where there was a large contingent of participants who were exploring the roots of their leadership practice and discovering that at a certain point they converged with their spiritual paths as well. This continues to be interesting for me, and I wonder what your experience of leadership, Open Space in particular and spirituality is?
Henryvlle, Indiana
I’m here at the Wooded Glen Retreat Centre in Henryville, which is in southern Indiana running an Art of Hosting with my mates Teresa Posakony, Tenneson Woolf, Tuesday Ryan and Howard Mason. It’s hot and humid here, punctuated by heavy downpours which feels as if the air is just wringing itself out. By contrats the rooms we are in are cold enough to hang meat, as Howard said, so it’s a little funny.
Prior to being here I was in Camden, Maine joining Harrison Owen and 40 Open Space faiclitators at a little Open Space on Open Space. I have lots to report on from that gathering, and I feel like just doing it in bits and pieces, so here’s the first set of notes, focusing on Open Space and life.
In Camden I joined with 40 or so Open Space practitioners from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Korea and Taiwan. Harrison Owen, in all of his eminence grise, hosted us beautifully, inviting us to explore the question of Open Space in our lives and in the world. There were some really juicy sessions posted and great connections made among friends new and old. It is quite remarkable to be in conversation with 40 people who, as one participant said, could step up and run a 500 person Open Space at the drop of a hat. It is a real privilege to be able to take a couple of days just to talk shop with people who have as strange a view of organizations, communities and work as I do. And it was especially lovely to be with a large number of people who have been close to Harrison for many years, helping him form and shape the practice of Open Space in the very early days. Open Space Technology was a very early and radical departure from facilitation theory and practice and it shone the light on new ways of looking at human organizations in the OD world. Many organizational development professionals who discovered Open Space in the eighties began rethinking their approach to OD, looking at organizations as living systems and looking at change with an entirely different set of eyes. Many of the folks who walked that path 20 or more years ago were in attendance in Camden, and it was a real treat to meet them and hear some of their stories.
What is interesting to me these days is the application of Open Space practice in everyday life, indeed, the tagline for this weblog sorts of states this as my overall learning mandate. Consequently, I took in sessions that had more to do with the Open Space life, and what I call the Open Space worldview rather than sessions about the process itself. For example, Suzanne Maxwell held a beautiful session on living with cancer stemming from the fact that she was informed of a positive diagnosis for breast cancer on the way to Camden. She came anyway, and opened herself to us, her fear and resolve and confusion and sadness palpable as she posted her session. I caught the end of the circle and heard stories of others who had lived with frightening health issues. What was brilliantly clear was that a life spent practising Open Space is solid training for facing the biggest fear in one’s life. I was reminded that everything we face is training; from a martial arts perspective, you train constantly in the dojang so that in that one moment, when your body is called upon to parse a moment into thin slices in order to defend yourself, you can find the resourcefulness there. The way Suanne opened and held space showed the expereince and wisdom that comes from a lifetime of working with oneself in the service of others is the training that is needed to deal with the fear and uncertainty of a big unexpected space being opened. How else could one deal with a cancer diagnosis except to open space?
On a similar track of exploring Open Space in life, Phelim McDermott hosted an interesting session on Open Space and love and relationships. It was another candid and open conversation that explored an Open Space worldview taken to interpersonal relationships. It was really great to meet Phelim and spend time with him He’s a remarkable person, a theatre director, Open Space artist and a generous soul. He showed a brilliant 15 minute time lapse film of a two-day Open Space held at the Battersea Arts Centre in London which stunningly captures the motion, flow and life of a group of people working in Open Space. We’re going to work to get it on the web soon.
[tags]openspacetech, osonos, harrison owen, phelim mcdermott, suzanne maxwell[/tags]
On the OSLIST, Doug wrote:
Chris and all–
Fields work…
Hosting…
living in open space…
You seem to have these evocative phrases swimming about you, Chris. Would you be so kind as to wax a little more poetic about them, put some more meat on the bones? They are, I think, getting to the heart of the question that started this thread….
The thread was about whether or not the facilitator can take an active role in an Open Space meeting, and what or why not. It has been a good thread. I responded to Doug this way:
Well Doug, these phrases are sort of short descriptions of the work I do, and there is a strange thing about them. The more I try to define them, to less important they seem. To first phrase of the Tao te Ching is something like, “The eternal Tao is the Tao that cannot be named.” So if you can accept that anything I am going to say on these matters is actually NOT the practice of these concepts, and that defining them somehow constrains what they really mean, then we can proceed.
In terms of “fields work”, let me say this. I don’t know much about this subject so I describe it more as experience. I’m willing to be that most have us have had the experience of arriving at a venue for a gathering before everyone else, scoping the place out, senseing what it feels like and imagining how our event will go. Then we facilitate an open space meeting and, being the last ones to leave we notice that the physical feeling of the space is different. I wonder why this is?
I think that it has something to do with the quality of our personal experiences in these spaces. When we are engaged in an amazing collective experience, it creates some deep change, even to the point where a room “feels” different. We participate in these kinds of collective activities all the time, but to do so consciously – not in a controlling way, just in a more aware way – seems to be the essence of working in a field. It is then we become aware of things like the impact of our presence on the field (Lisa’s awareness of her power in a group) and we can do things with that presence. The essence of doing the right thing in Open Space with that presence is of course, not doing anything at all, or rather to use the taoist concept, non-doing. That is we make a conscious choice about what we choose not to do and in doing so, we help support a field that supports emergence, self-organization and real empowerment. Field working in this respect is dependant I think on our ability to work on ourselves first, hence when we adaopt as a practice, living in open space, it changes the way we see every field of human endeavour, and it does bring us much more in line with the essentials of running an open sapce meeting.
You ask about hosting as well. I’ve been working for a few years now within the community of practice gathered under the name “Art of Hosting” and, like Open Space, I can’t describe what it is very well. I think my book, The Tao of Holding Space (which you can have for free by downloading it from http://www.chriscorrigan.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Papers) is my attempt to describe hosting from the perspective of “holding space.” Hosting has to do with all of the capacities we use when we engage with clients around an open space. Some of these might include:
- Seeing and sensing patterns in the organization that help to find “accupuncture points” for change,
- Taking a courageous stand for clarity.
- Encouraging others who are finding their own leadership.
- Offering teaching where it is of benefit and having the humility to be learners in th every next moment. Being “TeacherLearners.”
- Trusting in the people and holding helpful beliefs about the potential of the people.
- Being prepared to be surprised, and delightedly hosting that surprise like a long lost friend coming to pay a visit.
These practices (among many others and we all have our own) are hosting, and if we extend these into the way we live our lives, it becomes very much a case of living in open space. For me, the four principles and the one law of opens spce (plus my friend Brian Bainbridge’s “Be prepared to be be surprised” and “It’s all good :-)”) are actually very useful principles for life. I really do consciously try to live my life this way, and in doing so, I have stumbled upon the idea of fields, hosting and so on. It has made me no longer a facilitator per se but more of what John Abbe and others call “a process artist,” living as an artist, trying to find the art in everything about process, including how I ride the bus and step into a venue to open space. Our family lives in open space: for example, our children do not go to school, instead they practice – consciously and fully – the principles which my partner and I share with our clients. They work with mentors aong the lines of “whoever comes…” They explore the world along the lines of “whatever happens…” and they are not constrained by artificial timeframes on things like learning to read and write, creativity or learning.
If we are in the world saying to clients that “If you are not learning and contributing, go somewhere where you can” why would we not practice that in our family and life? It is my ten year old daughter’s favourite principle for her life – last week she wrote it out on a piece of paper and taped it to the dining room wall.
Living in Open Space is a constant life practice. It is about living in alignment with an Open Space worldview. It helps support “that feeling” we get from a good open space meeting, and bringing it into other parts of our lives.
It seems to me that when we live deeply out of that place, the role of facilitator and participant seems somehow transcended, so that, while I appreciate the distinction in some settings, and I honour it quite firmly, I find that it is a distinction that in many other settings doesn’t necessarily serve. Living in open space means living in that flow, discerning the right time for the right view and being open to whatever happens as a result.
[tags]openspacetech[\tags]
Presence is a very difficult thing to talk about and to explain. I think most of us know it when we see it, and perhaps recognize it when we feel it as well.
This video of 14 year old Jennifer Lin playing piano at a TED conference embodies presence. Why do you think she is so able to project her confidence on stage?
[tags]Jennifer Lin, presence[/tags]
“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”
— Henry Miller, The Tropic of Cancer
He would have loved blogging.
[tags]Henry Miller[/tags]