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Art of Participatory Leadership, day two

December 4, 2009 By Art of Harvesting, Art of Hosting, BC, Flow, Learning One Comment

Day 2 flow

This group we are working with in Estonia is cracking a lovely design for a six month learning journey around hosting, harvesting and participatory leadership.  They began in September with a little Art of Hosting retreat, are together now in the Art of Participatory Leadership and in February they will gather one more time.  In between workshops, they are working on projects in their organizations and communities, deep in real practice and real life.  As a result they have much to share with one another and it is only up to Toke and I as teachers to offer a few bones and move out of the way so they can accelerate their learning.

These guys are not afraid to go deep with their work either.  This morning we checked in by working with a little ritual. We had everyone go to sleep at the end of Day One with a pillow question: what do I need to let go off to take my work to the next level, and what do I need to embrace?  When we began, each of us wrote down the thing we needed to let go of, and then we very carefully placed it in the fireplace.  This is always a powerful ritual, and it was for me today too.  Following that we wrote a note or two on what we need to embrace, and we joined another person to speak that aloud.  The conclusion of those little dyads ended in an embrace of one kind or another: a handshake, a hug, a touch on the arm.  It was about making connection and seeing each other in the vulnerability of opening to what we need to let come.

Toke and I offered a little teaching on the art of hosting and harvest conversations and the group released into a set of conversation about the applications of various methodologies.  In many Art of Hosting trainings, we refer to this as a knowledge camp, or a knowledge cafe, where people dive deeper into a method or a design tool.  Usually we have experienced practitioners host these conversations, but today the learners themselves hosted these conversations.  The learning was deep, and each table (Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe, Circle and Powerful Questions) produced some insights which Toke and I riffed on a little.  One thing that became clear was that in Estonian there is no word for “Purpose” at least not in the sense that we have been using it.  It seems that it is usually translated as “goal” or “aim” and we have been struggling to understand that instead of a goal that lies outside of yourself, it is more like the inner engine that drives you forward.  It has been fun playing with the translation of concepts finding that no one word seems to capture the concept, but many words will do!

After lunch, Open Space, and the participants dove into their projects and their questions, also very rich.  We finished with a little check out and retired for dinner.

What happened next was astounding.  We dined on salmon and carrot salad and rice, and beer and wine and “snaps” began to flow.  Conversation was pleasant, but at one point one of our participants, Margus, rose to his feet and began to tell the story of his people.  He is a Setu, a tribal indigenous group from southern Estonia, a people that have been in the way of Estonians, Russians and others for thousands of years.  They have a tradition of every year electing a “king’s master” who is responsible for producing a type of vodka produced from rye.  The drink is very strong and the tradition is that the one who carries it pours a glass for party goers and asks who you are and where you come from.  Margus travelled the room offering shot after shot of the spirit, in a powerful and ritual way.  That loosened up the voices of the Estonians who broke into song and we sang for hours afterwards.  Song after song flowed around the table, folks songs, Eurovision songs, novelty drinking songs (one of which involved us standing on our chairs and singing a verse and then sitting under the table singing a verse!).  We sang and told poems and played tunes until the wee hours.  As some drifted off to bed, a group of us went down to the sauna and indulged in that Nordic ritual for the rest of the night, singing and drinking and sweating together.  It was four in the morning by the time I finally got to bed.

This is the joy and pleasure of a field, of a shared culture, of a group of people who cling to their learning and to each other, and who can explore any territory together.  It was a sweet, sweet day.

(Photos are here and the group has started a blog too.)

Art of Participatory Leadership, day one

December 2, 2009 By Art of Harvesting, Art of Hosting, BC, Leadership 3 Comments

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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.

Into the Estonian countryside

December 1, 2009 By Travel One Comment

Leaving Tallinn this afternoon, we headed for Estonia’s west coast to a retreat centre on the edge of the Matsalu Nature Preserve.  This is a lovely house, built by German Churches originally for young people to use for education, but it hosts conferences and nature retreats now and is a popular spot with birders who come in the fall and spring to watch the migrations along the Baltic flyway.  We’re very close to the seashore here.

Estonia reminds me a lot of southern Ontario, even though we’re at 58 degrees north, almost as far north as the Yukon border.  The land is flat out here, with stands of deciduous trees in the wetter parts and scrubby pine forests in the drier and sandier areas.  The whole region seems like a big glacial sand deposit.  You’d think you were anywhere in the southern Great Lakes basin except for the odd 400 year old church and stone barns or the more recent, and more run down former collectivist farms.  We passed a big one just before arriving here near the town of Haapsalu that had its own power plant and barracks for the farm workers.  While Tallinn seems to have built over the scars of the Soviet years, there are still structures that remind one of how recently the country was devoted to collectivist agricultural production and TV communications in service of the Communist dream.

Out here in the country though, history takes on a decidedly geological flavour, and the history of humans coming and going over the land seems to disappear into the drizzle and the forest and the call of little winter birds in the bush and gulls on the beach.

Our Art of Participatory Leadership workshop begins tomorrow.

Triangulating learning

November 30, 2009 By Collaboration, Learning, Organization 2 Comments

Nancy White has posted a very nice “white paper” (pun intended!) on what she is calling “triangulating learning.”  Essentially she gives a clear picture of how to reach outside of your organizational boundaries to put social connections to work to increase creativity, collect inspiration and ground-truth ideas:

Triangulating learning through external support from individuals, communities and networks can provide significant, low or no cost support to innovators and learners within institutions. This triangulation requires networking skills and a willingness to learn in public – even possibly loose part of all credit for one’s work. The rewards, however, are increased learning, practical experience and ultimately the ability to change not just one’s self, but one’s organization.

via Full Circle Associates » Need Your Feedback on my Triangulating Thinking.

Those of us freelancers that have blogged for a long time are certainly familiar with this idea, but Nancy provides some very practical notes about getting started especially for people who work within organizational constraints.

Cruising Old Tallinn and reflecting on Estonian history

November 30, 2009 By Travel 3 Comments

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is cool and quiet this morning. There is a stiff breeze off the Baltic Sea and the sky is grey and overcast.  I’m ensconced in a cozy cafe on the Old Town Square that bears a striking resemblance to a hobbit hole, drinking strong coffee nibbling chocolate and eating a late breakfast of a spiced meat pastry that is like a cross between a croissant and a samoza.

It’s a lot of travelling to get here from Vancouver.  My adventure began with a bracing water taxi ride from Bowen Island to Granville Island in Vancouver, lumping through a southeasterly wind on Saturday evening.  I hopped a British Airways 747 bound for Heathrow and populated largely by old Sikh men and women.  Turns out 180 of us on the YVR-LHR flight were heading on to Delhi.  It was a good flight, watching the surprisingly good remake of the taking of Pelham 1-2-3 and the surprisingly drawn out Australia.  I managed to sleep in all the right places and stay awake in all the right places, and the jetlag was almost completely taken care of.

In London we landed in a bad squall which set the plane into a quiet desperate prayer session, but once we pulled up at the gate, the storm had moved on and an incredible rainbow graced the new Terminal 5.  I ran for a connection, got stuck behind a huge group of Japanese travellers going through security and made my connection as the door was closing.  The Finnair flight to Helsinki was fun; the video screen showed a shot from the nose of the aircraft on take off and landing, so it was like watching a real time live flight simulator.  Not much to see in the dark, but perhaps the flight home will reveal more.

In Helsinki I had a bit of a layover, so I wandered around the airport.  It was after 9:00pm when we got in and the late hop to Tallinn didn’t leave until 11:45, so I caught up on Skype – Estonia’s most famous high tech export! –  with friends in North America who were beginning their Sundays.  Helsinki airport is a lot like Ottawa’s airport.  Everywhere I go, northern cities strike a home chord with me.

Noting that the further away I got from Canada, the more English was spoken on planes, I boarded a Finnair commuter flight to Tallinn, which is a short 35 minute jump over the Gulf of Finland.  The two cities are only 85 km apart, almost as close as Vancouver is to Victoria.  During the Soviet era, Estonians tuned into Finnish TV and radio all the time and were constantly exposed to western culture over the air.

Arriving in Tallinn at 12:30 I was met by my friends Piret Jeedas and Robert Oetjen, with whom Toke Moeller and I are running an Art of Participatory Leadership workshop this week.  We drove through town, which in the dark reminded me a little of Winnipeg, and I arrived at my hostel accomodation in the old town.  We woke up the landlady who hadn’t been told of my arrival.  She was sweet and got me settled in and I quickly fell asleep.

I’m pretty good at dealing with jetlag, but today was a masterful triumph.  I awoke at 8am refreshed and ready to go.  Today is my day to explore Tallinn a little and hang out and relax.  I have spent the morning walking around the old town, seeing some of the places that featured prominently in Estonian history, especially the Toompea, which is the Estonian Parliament.  In 1991, a Russian minority protest against Estonian independence outside the Toompea almost became violent when the group broke into the castle and caused alarm amongst the Estonian politicians who were besieged inside.  The political leaders called for Estonian citizens to come to their aid and a huge crowd showed up to barricade the Russians inside the castle courtyard.  When it came time to let them go, the crownd simply parted and the Russians left.  Anger and the threat of violence had been met with non-violence and song, and the singing revolution continued to work its remarkable magic.  Here is a video of that day.

This morning I walked around the area that is shown in that video, the parking lot outside the Toompea where the Estonians rallied after the Russians broke in.  Just knowing the recent history of that place deeply tuned me in to the sense of Estonia.  For a long time I have been drawn to this place, sensing a connection both in the northern nature of the country and the indigenous struggle for freedom from hundreds of years of colonization from Danes, Swedes, Germans and Russians.  Estonians I think have always craved their own self-government and cultural sovereignty and it’s clear being here that given the chance to take hold of their country, they have chosen an identity that is fiercely national without being nationalistic, and open minded to the rest of the world and especially the west.

Walking around here it is hard to imagine what it was like when Tallinn was a Soviet city on the Baltic.  Near to where I am staying is the old KGB headquarters, a building that is still held in contempt by Estonians.  When the Soviet Union was in control here tens of thousands of people were exiled to Siberia, imprisoned or killed, and the KGB and its predecessors took care of all of that.  The fact that a mere 25 years ago, writing this blog post would be a dangerous prospect  for a Canadian visitor is a testament to how far Estonia has come in embracing democratic freedoms and human rights.

One morning of walking around obviously does not make for a complete picture, and for sure there are lots of complex questions and conditions here with the economy, questions of European union, dynamics between ethnic minorities and relations to Russia, poverty, exploitation and all of the problems that come with capitalism, but the overall sense here is that Estonia has struck a balance that reminds me a lot of Canada.  Estonians have lived on this coast as long as Skwxwu7mesh people have lived in Howe Sound – for 9000 years.  Language and culture is intact, thriving even amongst the ruins of castles and TV towers built by those who have sought control of this country.  Hanging out here, in a hobbit hole coffee shop on the old town square, it is clear that despite it all, they have survived.