
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]
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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]
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“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]
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My partner Caitlin is a master of compassionate inquiry. For years she has been working with Byron Katie’s work, using it with herself, in her coaching practice and with our family. She was recently interviewed for Byron Katie’s next book on how the work has changed her parenting, and that interview appeared today on Katie’s website.
A bonus she has discovered in her new way of being is that her children involve her more in their processes. They trust her to be present and simply curious with them about whatever they’re dealing with. Together, they come up with ideas and create solutions to problems and conflicts. “They know I’m with them–present in the moment and not gone, lost in all those thoughts as I search for my Parenting Plan and Theory…In that clear place we can really hear each other and connect, and there are so many more options and possibilities.”
It’s what we try to do daily with our kids and also in working with clients.
[tags]Byron Katie, Caitlin Frost, parenting[/tags]
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“We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy and the one facing what we do to the enemy.”
–Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, p. 301
Three Day Road is about two Oji-Cree soldiers who fight for Canada in the first world war. They survive the fight with the enemy on the battlefield, but they lose the war to the other enemy, the one that lurks on the inner front.
It is only *I* that holds others as “enemies.” No one is born into this world as my enemy. I create that story. My prejudices are my own, whether they appear to be generated by others or not. How do I know this is true? Because not everyone treats everyone else the same way.
In my martial arts training, we speak of our “enemies” as opponents. We offer respect to our opponents by bowing to them because having an opponent helps us to discern our real enemies – our thinking. It is very difficult to best an opponent if you think of that person as an enemy. To fight and survive you must be clear. You must be engaged with what is happening, not your story of what is happening. The moment you forget this is the moment you stop fighting your opponent and start fighting your enemy and is the moment your opponent has beaten you. Truly, you have beaten yourself. A bout with an opponent, whether it is in dialogue or in the dojang, should lead us back to confronting our enemies and they, as Pogo said, are us.
There is no relationship between winning or losing on the mat and in the mind. You can lose a bout on the mat but overcome one more prejudice in the mind. And, like Boyden’s characters, you can win on the mat but what is unconfronted in the mind will destroy you. For me, peace is the when I eliminate my true enemies – the thinking that imprisons me. And so, I bow to my opponents for their helping me discover what it is I need to confront in myself.