{"id":4918,"date":"2015-08-31T08:25:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T16:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=4918"},"modified":"2015-08-31T08:39:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T16:39:31","slug":"returning-to-the-basics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/returning-to-the-basics\/","title":{"rendered":"Returning to the Basics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 TS Eliot<\/p>\n

Our Beyond the Basics team is about to host our last gathering of the current cycle of offers, back in North America.\u00a0 Over the past five Beyond the Basics offerings I have learned more than I feel like I\u2019ve shared. I can feel that my practice has changed as a result of doing this work, and I\u2019ve become interested in the way our team\u2019s ideas and lessons from working at scale have begun to outline a form and practice of leadership that is needed in much of our work now.<\/p>\n

Perhaps these things were always needed, but here are five top of mind insights that are part of what I\u2019m discovering about how we can be helpful when working with organizations, communities and larger systems.\u00a0 Taken together, perhaps these things are something of a new set of basics for my own practice, or a return to some after a long journey away.<\/p>\n

Theory helps.<\/strong>\u00a0 As a result of work I have been doing around the illumination of the field of Dialogic Organizational Development, I have become very interested in theory.\u00a0 In Beyond the Basics I have been holding the torch for the imperative to understand why things work.\u00a0 Diving into complexity theory, cognitive science, philosophy and anthropology and sociology has become deeply important to my practice.\u00a0 When I understand why things work I become more resourceful in designing and carrying out process work and supporting good strategic decisions that help us work with change.\u00a0 Understanding theory takes us past methods and into deep practitioner territory.\u00a0 I\u2019m challenged these days to make theory clear and useful to people I am working with, but I\u2019m also not shying away from encouraging people to confront and wrestle with the theory that tells them why things work.<\/p>\n

Personal practice is important.<\/strong>\u00a0 More than ever I see that without personal practice, we are unable to confront the kinds of situations that test our patience and abilities.\u00a0 Hosting oneself has certainly always been central to the Art of Hosting, but a without an ongoing rigorous practice of self hosting and inquiry, I find my fears and anxieties overwhelming my ability to stay resourceful and present with people and systems that are challenged to become something that have never been before.\u00a0 I\u2019m learning a ton about why my brain likes me to avoid personal practice, and what delightful resourcefulness lies on the other side of the stories I tell myself to feel good.<\/p>\n

Not having answers doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t help.<\/strong>\u00a0There is a misplaced cult of the expert in our society.\u00a0 We put great faith in those that can seemingly ride in on white horses, explain our dilemmas and help us find solutions.\u00a0 But I am discovering something more powerful in my practice: the humility to work with people when none of know what is going to happen next.\u00a0 Not having the answers frees you to move from expert to host, and to return to the simple practice of creating containers in which people can discover their next best move together.\u00a0 I\u2019m struggling with how to be a useful provider of ideas and knowledge while still letting go into the unknown and emergent, and this is a question I think that many of us confront in our everyday practice of hosting and leadership.<\/p>\n

We have to learn our way past our blockages.<\/strong>\u00a0 I am so captivated by the cognitive science and theory that I am reading and working with these days.\u00a0 I\u2019m confronted everyday with new ideas about how to create conditions for people to make sense of their context and make choices based on what is before us.\u00a0 So many organizations and systems we are working with are becoming more and more stuck in regulation, process, accountability and constraint.\u00a0 When they finally become free to act and move, many groups stay entrained in the patterns that are familiar.\u00a0 I am finding powerful breakthroughs when groups are able to see and learn about what holds them in place, and when people begin to understand how their entrained patterns of thinking limit what is possible to do together.\u00a0 For me, learning (and unlearning) is perhaps the most important strategic capacity we have, especially when we feel blocked and stale and unable to move in any direction.<\/p>\n

People need to be hosted.<\/strong>\u00a0At the core of change work is a deep conversation that we all want to have. We saw this in our Europe gathering, where the question of European history, politics, demographics and aspirations was present in our group.\u00a0 But in North America we are currently witnessing election campaigns where the debates rage around scandal, accountability, party platforms, and who said what or did what.\u00a0 Where are we actually hosting the conversations about the democratic, social and economic systems of our time?\u00a0 Where do we connect the dots between the work we do in the world and the impact it has when combined with others?\u00a0 Who hosts the space between ideologies and competing aspirations for better outcomes, better worlds, better results? Whether you are in a corporate setting, a small business, a non-profit, government or community setting, it seems like there is very little time for the question of Why?\u00a0 Hosting these conversations is about creating the container for the deepest stories to surface.\u00a0 We avoid these conversations because they go to our values and the nature of the impact of our decisions on ourselves and the world around us.\u00a0 And yet, in almost every engagement with which I am involved, people are deeply interested in reconnecting with their \u201cwhy\u201d but there are so few people who will host this fundamental exploration.<\/p>\n

For me, Beyond the Basics has taught me to return to basic practice as if for the first time, informed by what I have been learning about power, friendship and the depth and breadth of systems and the nature of the problems we face.\u00a0 The basic strategic questions has always been \u201cWhat is happening and what do I do now?\u201d\u00a0 The four of us are deep into the question of how to help people address basic strategy, and in some ways it is a return to the simplicity of practice.<\/p>\n

As experienced practitioners, what are some of the basics you find yourself returning to, with new eyes and renewed interest?<\/p>\n

We invite you to join us October 21-23 in Kingston, Ontario<\/a>\u00a0for conversations about why, for ideas about how and for the connection with a diverse community of people who are all in this together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.\u201d \u2014 TS Eliot Our Beyond the Basics team is about to host our last gathering of the current cycle of offers, back in North America.\u00a0 Over the past five Beyond the Basics offerings I have learned more than I feel like I\u2019ve shared. I can feel that my practice has changed as a result of doing this work, and I\u2019ve become interested in the way our team\u2019s ideas and lessons from working …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Returning to the Basics #aohlive #facilitation #leadership","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[29,44,6,56,16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-of-hosting","category-design","category-facilitation","category-featured","category-leadership","category-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-1hk","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4920,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions\/4920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}