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Building Our Legacy Together: leadership comes home

March 2, 2005 By Uncategorized

Prince George, BC

This week I’m here in Prince George, smack dab in the middle of British Columbia facilitating a two day roundtable conference on economic opportunities for Aboriginal communities. There are people all over BC here, and we’ve been treated to a performance tonight from Juno nominee (and new friend) Marcel Gagnon as well as tastings of the wines of Nk’Mip, North America’s first Aboriginal winery.

As fun and interesting as all this is, today’s proceedings were stolen by several acts of overwhelming generosity. It all began in the evening news part of our program, during which I invited people with anything to share – projects, ideas, partnerships.

One of the groups in attendance here are the executive of Building Our Legacies Together, the youth network I have been working with over the past couple of years. The youth forum in Fort Rupert last month was planned by them. They received a little planning money from the federal government, but then locally they raised funds to hold these forums. They are now embarking on bringing this forum model all over BC. It is a two and a half day event whereby we line up inspirational speakers, rappers, and other musicians to do an evening of fun, and then launch them into a day and a half of Open Space to work out small scale local solutions to the issues they face.

So the coordinator of this most excellent scheme, my friend Crystal Sutherland, rose today to give her pitch. She began by introducing herself in her language and recited her connections to her families and clan at Ahousaht on the west coast of Vancouver Island. She quickly told the BOLT story to these leaders and then cleared her throat and said “Now here’s the hard part: we need money. We raise local money to hold these forums and we need money to put these on around the province.” She invited people to get in touch with her if they could help.

Without dropping a beat a man from Campbell River stood up and pledged $500 from his organization and challenged other Aboriginal development organizations to the same. Within five minutes there was $3000 dollars in the bank and then Chief Shane Gottfriedson of the Kamloops Indian Band rose to say that he would be happy to host a forum, that the youth would have the pick of the facilities in his community (including a new meeting centre and their new school gym) and that the band would take care of all the food while the youth were there. By the end of evening news, ten minutes later, the youth had cash, a host for their next forum in Kamloops and two other offers for the same.

And, as one leader said in rising to pledge his stake, it was all about respect and the way these young people came to ask for funds with a track record of work and with integrity and honesty in their request. Real leadership recognizes real leadership.

If you want to add to the pot, supporting the work of these young leaders, drop me a line (chris at chriscorrigan.com), or leave a comment and I’ll hook you up.

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Notes from a small scheming mind

March 2, 2005 By Uncategorized

My four-year old son: Mom?
My wife, Caitlin: Yes?
Son: You know when you get really old?
Caitlin: Yes.
Son: And when you’re just about to die?
Caitlin: Yeeeesss….
Son: Just in that moment…
Caitlin: Yes?
Son: Can you tell me where your wallet is?

The kid’ll do anything for an advance on his allowance!

Songs and poems about hosting

March 1, 2005 By Art of Hosting

A propos of my post on facilitation and authenticity, I am becoming more keenly aware of the ways in which artists have been describing the process of “hosting.” Today, my pal Andy Boprrows posts a set of poems that speak to me, including this one by Wendell Berry:

The Real WorkIt may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

— Wendell Berry

I’ve also been looking for songs online that describe “this work” and so far have collected a few into a playlist at Webjay. Just follow the link and click play to hear them. Additions to that list. which is composed of free and legal online media, are welcome. And if anyone can find me a copy of Alanis Morrissette’s song “Utopia” send me the link. As a poem about conversation it is amazing:

Utopiawe’d gather around all in a room
fasten our belts engage in dialogue
we’d all slow down rest without guilt
not lie without fear disagree sans judgment

we would stay and respond and expand and include
and allow and forgive
and enjoy and evolve and discern and inquire
and accept and admit and divulge and open
and reach out and speak up

This is utopia this is my utopia
This is my ideal my end in sight
Utopia this is my utopia
This is my nirvana
My ultimate

we’d open our arms we’d all jump in
we’d all coast down into safety nets

we would share and listen
and support and welcome
be propelled by passion not invest in outcomes
we would breathe and be charmed
and amused bydifference
be gentle and make room for every emotion

we’d provide forums we’d all speak out we’d all be heard
we’d all feel seen

we’d rise post-obstacle more defined more grateful
we would heal be humbled and be unstoppable
we’d hold close and let go and know when to do
which we’d release and disarm and stand up and feel safe

this is utopia this is my utopia
this is my ideal my end in sight
utopia this is my utopia
this is my nirvana
my ultimate

I’m Skypable

February 26, 2005 By Uncategorized

Skypable? Is that a word? At any rate, I’ve finally got with the times and signed on to Skype. So feel free to find me and get in touch.

Values, tools and authentic facilitation

February 25, 2005 By Appreciative Inquiry, Art of Hosting, Being, Collaboration, Conversation, Facilitation, Open Space, Organization, Practice 4 Comments

I’ve been facilitating groups for as long as I can remember, going back probably 20 years to high school when I ran both informal and organized youth groups with my peers. It has probably been about twelve or thirteen years ago that I started to actually pay attention to what I was doing. But only in the last five or six years, as I have been facilitating full time, have I noticed a deepening in my practice.

Work as practice. And by practice I mean something akin to a spiritual practice, whereby one undertakes a life of value and meaning through living in a particular way. When I feel my facilitation practice deepening, I notice that what I do is becoming more and more aligned with who I am.

I am starting to see just how important that is in the work I do with groups. When I was first starting out, I used to collect “tools” for working with groups. I had what amounted to a cookbook of ideas for working through different processes. I got some success in simply following the instructions and helping the group get to where they wanted to go. For most groups, and perhaps even a lot of facilitators, this is enough. It certainly served my work for a number of years.

The thing that changed that, and caused me to deepen my practice, was noticing what happened when things went wrong. Occasionally groups strayed far from the expectation I had for them and when the movie departs from the script, the facilitator’s REAL work begins. In these situations What I noticed was my own anxiety and panic about being in the unfolding chaos. I had very little idea what to do, and on a couple of occasions, things just went very wrong.

In reflecting on these experiences I realized what I was lacking was chaordic confidence, a term I appropriated from my friend Myriam Laberge. Chaordic confidence describes the ability to stay in chaos and trust that order will emerge. It’s a subtle art, but it is essential to working with groups who are themselves confronting chaos. If you can stay in the belief that order will emerge from what Sam Kaner calls “The Groan Zone” then the group has something to hitch its horse to, so to speak. But if you are married to your tools, and things go off the rails, you feel like a fish out of water, and you flop around unable to deal with the uncertainty around you. I’ve seen it happen – we probably all have – and it’s not pretty.

Developing chaordic confidence is more than acquiring more tools. It is about integrating an approach to life and work that is anchored in a a set of principles and values that serves our clients. For me these values include believing in the wisdom of the group, trusting that chaos produces higher levels of order and seeing conflict as passion that can be harnessed in the service of progress.

I began looking at some of the tools and processes and approaches I was using and started to realize that the things that worked for me and that brought a better experience to my clients, were processes rooted in the same values that I try to live. This weblog,tagged as “living in open space” is largely about that journey to live and work with the principles of Open space Technology – principles that amount to creating a practice of invitation. Living a life of invitation is a blast.

And there is more. My repetoire of approaches is expanding into a full range of what Toke Paludan Moeller calls “hosting practices.” And as I adopt and work with things like the world cafe and appreciative inquiry, I realize that the values and principles underlying those processes feel authentic to me. When I use those approaches to working with groups, my clients are getting ME, and not just a set of tools. I try to bring my whole self to this work now, with a large dose of chaordic confidence rooted in principles and values that link what I do with who I am. Doing and Being meet in the board room or the retreat centre.

We facilitators don’t talk much about this stuff, but I think it actually preoccupies a lot of our time and thinking. My own preparation for group involves many hours of design and reflection on process and principles so that I can go to work offering the highest level of service to the people with whom I am working. And for me, this means reflecting on what is core to my life and work.

So this is a long winded way of offering some insight into facilitation practice, perhaps mostly for those who are new to this path and who are realizing, as I am, that there is a life time of learning about oneself involved in this work. So as a service to those who might be interested in developing this deeper connection between life lived and tools used, I offer a set of links to principles underlying the processes I work with (and some I don’t work with!) in groups and communities. I offer these up both as a guide to group work and as a compendium of principles and teachings about living. See what you think…

Principles of process and life

My recipe book is changing. It’s no longer about tools for group work, but is instead a collection of teachings about living a true and good life of service to heart and community.