Category Archives: Art of Hosting

The Power of Vision, Activating Blood Memories and an Ask for What’s Needed

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Ten years ago, while in her mid-twenties, Pawa Haiyupis attended her first Open Space Technology training, meeting for the first time good friend and colleague Chris Corrigan who became a mentor. Unbeknownst to Pawa at the time, a vision began to take root: a vision of First Nations youth connecting back to elders and the land, bringing back ceremonies like rites of passage, naming and grieving ceremonies, language; essentially activating blood memories.  We know when blood memories have been activated because we get little energy shivers in our bodies; the more powerful the activation, the stronger the shiver but even subtle little activations can have profound impact that reverberate in our awareness.

Four years ago, Pawa began working for the National Centre for First Nations Governance (NCFNG) out of British Columbia, with a focus on youth leadership.  During this time she also stepped more deeply into her own leadership journey through Art of Hosting and Warrior of the Heart, including a journey a year ago to Kufunda Learning Village in Zimbabwe.

Her vision grew and began to take tangible form with the development of a Nation Rebuilding project piloted in the First Nations community of Membertou in Nova Scotia this summer focused on helping young people, ages 14-19, learn about identity and belonging, reactivating their creation stories, inviting the ancestors through ceremony and a traditional territories tour to guide this process. A combined Warrior of the Heart/Art of Hosting training was identified as an essential component of this work because it cultivates the conditions for emergence based on what each Nation knows.

A hosting team of Pawa, myself, Bob Wing and Sarah MacLaren converged for this exciting work with 50 youth from Membertou, actively supported by up to 20 elders in the community as well as the young team from NCFNG.  In the middle of the 4 week Nation Rebuilding project, NCFNG’s funding was cut by the Harper government, potentially putting this work in jeopardy.  Except for the questions asked by the Membertou Governance Committee about how to make this work despite the funding cuts.  Except for the hosting team deepening their dedication to this work by agreeing to volunteer these four days of their time.  Except for the strong vision that Pawa and her team have been cultivating for years that refuses to be drowned out by resistance that shows up in the form of funding cuts and seems to now have taken on its own force independent of the individuals who first dreamt what was possible.  As one member of the team said, “The work will continue because the ancestors are strong and we are strong… we can make it work because its in our hearts.”

Pawa turned to a circle of “Eagles”,  stewards of the Art of Hosting, who are at our backs holding the rim of our circle with us, to ask for help.  She wrote:

“I email you all with a heart request to help financially to keep the movement going and help bring this work to Indigenous youth in Membertou, Cape Breton Island NS.  I know that financially at this time the world is in chaos. It is easier to give up which is precisely why I want to move this work forward. It is these practices (art of hosting and warrior of the heart) that help us lead in complex times with courage. It’s what is needed most. If the only thing the Emerging Leadership team does this year is finish this PILOT to be inclusive of art of hosting and warrior of the heart, it sets this work up to happen again in the future.

“It is crucial that the art of hosting and warrior of the heart be included in the Emerging Leadership Program for reasons that you all know, it works when changing systems. The government cut NCFNG’s funding drastically days before the scheduled training was to take place. Training that I have been waiting years to happen. Either the art of hosting gets cut from the program or we find alternative resources to make it happen. This is where you come in. Eagles, with vision. We honour you by asking for help.”  Pawa also made the initial personal contribution offer of $450 toward expenses of about $3,000 which includes Bob’s travel from Colorado.

The Eagles have been responding with small and large offers of financial support and adding their individual and collective consciousness to this work which may set a pattern for what is possible in First Nations communities across Canada.  We are broadening the call for support to the larger community.  If you feel called, if you sense the power and possibility of activating blood memories, you could offer financial support here WiseActions.net and whether you can offer financial support or not, your holding this work from where you are and adding your conscious powerful intention for the highest good of the work, the people and the hosting team are all meaningful contributions.

In the words of one of the eagles:

“Pawa, yes certainly, to offer what I can here.  When the revolution comes ( and it wont be televised) we will go kindly to Ottawa, sit the treasury board in a circle and pass the feather til the wisdom of mutual stewardship becomes our national fiscal policy….  ….until then I take this an an investment in the leadership needed to see that day…”

The last 2 weeks of this program are being combined into one.  We will incorporate hosting and Warrior of the Heart with a traditional territories tour, naming ceremonies and community celebration.  We will host and be hosted.  As a hosting team, the work we have been pulled into is shifting literally by the minute.  We will be called upon to be highly present, tapped in, resilient and resourceful to the fullness of our capacity as we hold this space with the people of Membertou.

The response of the Eagles has already astounded the good people of NCFNG and of Membertou who are interested by and curious about this generosity of spirit from people they do not know.  The response is also showing pathways to what’s possible when we think we don’t have money or other resources to do what is calling to be done.  We are more resilient and powerful than that and we have abundant resources available when we turn to look and when we continually offer prayers to the ancestors and ourselves in service of their bidding.

This work of and in Membertou is another of the illustrations of how resilient we are as human beings, responding to the vision of what’s possible in the world.  It is a time of quiet revolution and we are shifting the shape of the world as we know it.

The Art of Stewarding

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Anyone who has ever wanted to call an Art of Hosting training has, in all likelihood, been told how important it is to have seasoned hosts – or stewards – as part of the hosting team. What does it mean to steward and why is this role so important in the Art of Hosting community and in individual training offerings?

I wanted to ground the word steward with a definition but none of the ones I found resonated until I came across this on Wikipedia:  it is desirable to increase capacity within an organizational system.  The Art of Hosting is a system – an interconnected, self-organizing global network – and since it began almost two decades ago, it has been increasing capacity in the network, within and across organizations, within and across systems and within and across individuals.

Even before there was such a thing as the name Art of Hosting, conversations were being hosted in many places around the world using different dialogic processes, including World Cafe, Open Space Technology, Circle Practice, Appreciative Inquiry  (and still are being hosted by people who have not heard of the Art of Hosting). Those who have become known as Art of Hosting Practitioners were intuitively and intentionally sensing into questions like: what is underneath this process, what are the patterns we can make visible, why do these processes or this way of convening a meeting produce different results?  They were deeply curious about the answers to these questions and the more evocative questions that were often provoked through the conversations stimulated by these questions.

Stewards sense and hold the deeper patterns in the field.  They don’t just hold this particular piece of client work or this particular training, they sense the patterns of the larger field and bring those patterns into the specific work and conversations they are involved in.

They have skill, wisdom and expertise in holding space, creating the conditions for powerful work (setting the container) and in working with emergence by paying attention to what is wanting and ready to happen in an individual, group, organization, or community or with a pattern.

They practice self-leadership or self-hosting and bring with them a presence often forged through the many fires of chaos, disruption and intensity they have found their way through which often enables them to keep their centre or ground in the most challenging of situations.

They have no need to hold centre stage although they find themselves there because of their willingness to share knowledge and learning while hosting fields where people are hungry to learn.  They bring clarity without doing the work of others or disempowering them or disconnecting them from their own sources of clarity, wisdom and knowledge.  They witness growth and ignite even more growth – within themselves and others.  They are flexible and diverse, growing the depth of field through co-learning with others.  It is precisely this co-learning, co-creating and collaborating on the edges of what they do not know that makes them most excited  – more so than presenting their expertise.

My awareness of stewarding has heightened over the last year or so as I have found myself in many stewarding conversations with good friends in the Art of Hosting, World Cafe and Circle Practice networks (most recently at ALIA in Columbus) and as I have the privilege to co-host with other seasoned practitioners in a variety of situations where the ability to draw on accumulated wisdom and knowledge has been powerfully beneficial to other hosting team members including apprentices hungry to learn as well as the full group involved in the training.

What do I know through some of my experiences? Stewards are able to check perceptions with each other to sense more fully into the field in which they are working, arriving at more informed choices of action, often to surface tension, move through groan zones, understand when divergence or convergence or some other intervention or process is needed.  They are comfortable with silence and with chaos, have no need to rush in and they can weave with each other through and across the field.  This does not mean there is never any tension but it does mean they have the capacity to work it through without detrimentally impacting the group or the overall experience.  In how they work together, they are often living, breathing examples of the beauty and power of co-creation.

I have had the opportunity to work more extensively with youth in the last year – in Canada, the US and Brazil – and see how sharing experience, asking good questions and holding space expands the depth of field in any given place and creates the opportunity for individual and collective expansion – by holding the space of curiosity with the space of experience.

In One Art of Hosting Does Not A Practitioner Make, I wrote that each Art of Hosting has its own flavour influenced by the hosting team, the calling questions, the people who show up, whatever is emergent in the field, whatever we choose to call the training and the place in which it is hosted.  It’s like seeing only a slice of the bigger picture.  One reason why stewards are necessary to these trainings is that they carry with them the depth of the patterns from across many trainings and client consulting work and they can help illuminate these patterns and this depth through how they hold the space and the questions they ask.

In any given training we will often say it is not about the methodologies – although when we use them we want to use them well.  It is about the purpose and intention of what we are about, what we want to achieve and how to create the conditions to meet purpose and intention and make more things possible.

Stewards illuminate the connections between people, places, trainings, theories, processes and patterns.  They bring the weave of the whole network into the space and disturb the training ground in subtle and overt ways, based on the imprints of their many experiences, helping shift the shape of the experience, enabling individuals to shift their own shape and ultimately influencing the shifting shape of the world.

This work is not for the feint of heart or lone wolves.  It is for those who are willing to show up more fully in the relational field, ask for help when they need it, offer what they can and sink into their own learning.  Stewards want to learn from each other and the more we work with each other, the deeper the relational field, the deeper the friendships and the richer the space we hold for others.

Becoming an AoH Practitioner

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One of the things that stands out from my Envision Halifax days when a team of us co-designed and co-delivered a nine month leadership program, meeting with the group once a month for either a retreat or a learning day, is how often people talked about getting their Envision “fix” – essentially being able to step out of the craziness of their workplaces into a deep breath of a different kind of space, where we often began with check-in circles and always entered into a conscious, intentional practice field of learning focused on self-leadership, team learning and community reflection and engagement.

The desire and need for this “fix” is directly related to how challenging people find it to bring their learning about new ways of interacting with people, creating the conditions for different conversations that lead to different results back into their work environments – and it is also what I hear from people who have just stepped out of their first Art of Hosting training ground.  “It is okay to do this here, but back at work, well, that’s another story.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, becoming a practitioner of anything takes…. well… practice.  And, I am aware of how risky it feels to try out new group processes or new ways of inviting conversation at work.  How many times we hear things like, “I could never use a talking piece at work.”  “I could never get our group to agree to use World Cafe.”  “People I work with would find this language strange and it may turn them off of even trying something new.”  Yes, all true AND there are always ways to begin practice.

People feel their credibility and reputation are most at risk trying something new with the people they work with all the time.   So one of the simplest possibilities is to look for other places to practice – with another team or department, in a volunteer capacity, with someone else who also wants to practice.

When we just begin to know the many and varied practices that are available through the Art of Hosting field and have little experience with them, we have less confidence in and knowledge of how the processes work and how people can be well and fully engaged in them.  Our own lack of confidence and fear can influence how the process unfolds.  For example, if the group has never participated in an Open Space before, it  may take a few minutes for them to warm up to inviting their own conversations when we open the space for their questions.  With experience, we know to be easy in that pause.  Without experience, it ignites our fears and then we want to jump in to make it happen, often over facilitating the space or the process, sometimes resulting in less than hoped for outcomes.  As grow our own experience and confidence in the impact of the process, we relax more which invites more flow and synchronicity into the space.

As for language, if it will be a barrier, don’t use it.  Rather than talking about circle practice, you could just say, “I would like to make sure we hear from every voice.  Maybe we could just go around the table and as each person speaks, the rest of us could just listen well to what they have to say.” Or, of course, whatever language suits you best.

Begin your practice in little ways.  Take little risks.  Change how you listen and see what difference shows up.  Use more questions, powerful questions, that invite people to respond differently.  Bring more curiousity to the conversations you have in the work you do.

Find places to practice the skills you want to develop more.  Find people to practice with.  Look for like minded people inside your organization with whom you can have conversations of discovery and potentially opportunities for practice.  Think of how you can intentionally shift the shape of your world.

Look for places outside of work to practice.  Take yourself back to another Art of Hosting training to deepen your understanding and skills and grow your courage.  Share success stories, small and large, so you and others can see the impact of making even small shifts.  Maybe you have an opportunity to be part of a calling team for an Art of Hosting in your organization or community.  You could look for an opportunity to apprentice in an Art of Hosting training with experienced practitioners and stewards so you learn to pay attention to and look for the nuances that can influence design, hosting and results.

Grow your confidence through practice and your practice will grow.  Don’t be discouraged easily.  Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunity, openings and invitations.  If you look for them, you will be delightfully surprised at how often they show up.

Join a community of practice.  If there isn’t one in your area, start one – even if it is just with a few people.  Join the on-line conversations and communities.  Observe and contribute when and as you are ready.

Whenever and however you can practice, do so.  Grow your courage through small victories and those victories will also grow.  You didn’t show up at an Art of Hosting training because you are risk averse.  You came because something called you.  My guess is, this work will continue to call you and you will continue to respond.  And there is a global field of practice that responds with you.  Be intentional, thoughtful and mindful and practice well.  Before you know it, you will recognize the Art of Hosting practitioner that is you.

One AoH Training Does Not a Practitioner Make

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From the last few Art of Hosting trainings I have co-hosted there are two things that I am increasingly aware of: what it means to be a practitioner of the Art of Hosting and the value and contribution of stewarding to the field and the learning and growth of all.

People come to Art of Hosting trainings hungry for any number of things: to learn more about the methodologies and practices, to connect into a sense of community, to find refuge from the craziness of the worlds they live and work in, to deepen their own self leadership, to find new ways to be in the world, to discover mates they can work and play with in the world, because they have been part of a process somewhere that has drawn from Art of Hosting and they want to learn more and many more reasons I’m sure.  And they go away refreshed, curious, hungry for more and a bit hesitant around how they can bring this back to their life and work.

Two things I am aware of: to really be a practitioner of an Art requires practice and one Art of Hosting training does not a practitioner make.

The Art of Hosting field is incredibly rich and diverse and linked to so many other fields: World Cafe, Circle Practice, Open Space Technology, the Chaordic Field, Theory U, Appreciative Inquiry and more.  When we call a three for four day training, the breadth and scope of the days is shaped by the intended purpose and the people who show up – responsive to the collective need of the group, no matter whether it is a public or client offering.  There is no such thing as a set agenda.  It is a fluid process that the host team and the participants all contribute to.  It also means that the host team is having to pick and choose among the vast array of possible offerings that could flow into the training.  It is not possible to do them all.

All of these things – the hosting team, the purpose, the participants, the choices made within a training ground – contribute to the look, feel and shape of each training, while some underlying things always remain – paying attention to the field, holding space for co-creation and emergence, recognizing the interplay between the dynamics in the field and the learning needs of the group, between self hosting and collective hosting.  No two offerings are ever exactly the same, even if the same hosting team is in place – because the hosting team is also in its own learning individually and collectively and because of the responsiveness to each new training ground.

One Art of Hosting training offers a slice of the Art of Hosting field, even if it is a large slice.  Another Art of Hosting training will show different nuances, different strengths, different emphases and be just as relevant and meaningful as a reflection of the field.  If we leave an AoH training believing this is the way it is – and the only way – we will have missed something fundamentally important – that a key underlying principle is responsiveness to need, co-creation which influences the flow of any training or practice ground, paying attention to what’s in the space and what’s wanting to happen.

It really does take a number of trainings to have a more fulsome understanding and experience of AoH and what’s possible and really understand how AoH contributes to the shifting shape of the world.  We become practitioners when we practice and learn from what we practice.  The next post will explore some ways that practice shows up and how to ask for and offer support in the practice and a future post will look at the questions and observations that have been occurring to me about the role and importance of stewarding.

“Soft Skills” – A Real Misnomer!

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Ask anyone.  The hardest thing we ever do is relate to other people, especially as leaders in our organizations or communities, but also in our personal relationships.  Ask anyone what the most difficult component of their job is: relationships, interpersonal dynamics, people.  Ask project managers why most projects fail: inadequate communication and team members moving in different directions or having differing priorities.  Ask teams their greatest challenge: getting work done – because of interpersonal dynamics that get in the way.  Because people challenges interfere in getting the job done, slowing us down.

Empathy, leadership, communication, sociability, ability to laugh, optimism, common sense, responsibility,  integrity and motivation are some of the skills identified as soft. Somehow soft has become interchangeable with expendable so when budgets become tight the first thing to go is soft skills.

Soft skills are not about being nicey nice.  They are about creating the conditions for relationships to grow, enabling individuals and teams to engage in difficult and necessary conversations, not so we can all live in some kind of utopia but in service of getting work done, achieving results, having impact, shifting systems, seeing possibility, opening to emergence.  We do our best work with people we like, people we care about and people we love.  We have our greatest resilience in systems that care. We reach our highest potential in supportive environments that encourage growth.  We take our greatest risks when we know someone will help us up and dust us off when we fall so we can all be ready for what’s next.

There is nothing soft about soft skills.  They require discipline, practice and self awareness.  They require risk and letting go of control, trusting others to step up and in when we create the space for them to do so and they require discernment about what is the right amount of leadership, coaching and support required to allow teams and individuals the highest possibility of growth and contribution.

One of the reasons I gravitate to the Art of Hosting Body of Knowledge is because of the emphasis on creating the field or conditions from which wise action, results and impact will flow, flowing out of a well tended relational field.

We will not shift the shape of the world only through projects.  We will shift it by paying attention to the quality of the relational field and our relationships.  The greater the quality of the relational field, the greater the power to engage in actions with such purposefulness that the shape of the world cannot help but shift.

Reflections on the Art of Collaborative Leadership

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A week after the Art of Collaborative Leadership it is still hard to find the words to articulate the fullness of my experience in a succinct and coherent fashion, there were so many facets at play.  This post will focus on three: crossing an intergenerational divide, hosting the energetic component of dynamic space  and strategic results.

Intergenerational Composition

When we looked around the room at the 22 of us gathered at Pottery Lane, a beautiful day retreat centre right on the Northwest Arm of Halifax, we noticed that there was a pretty even representation of younger and older people (older being mostly around my age, give or take a few years).  In my own experience, this spontaneous even mix of generations has not happened before.  The gatherings I’ve been part of have generally leaned in one direction or the other.

This made the hosting team of myself, Jerry Nagel, Sophia Horwitz, Rachel Derrah, Ryan Deschamps and Marcello Lacroix (supported on the rim by Nancy Eagan and Martin Siesta) curious.  We became aware that the composition of our group was directly related to the composition of the hosting and calling teams and I realized this was likely true of all the hosting teams I’d been on.  As an example, in Brazil last October, the local callers and hosts were all young and the majority of people who showed up were young.  In the future, I know I will be paying even more attention to the composition of the hosting and calling teams in relation to the purpose and intention we are calling in and the richness of the intergenerational exchange.

Hosting the Energetic Component

The hosting team noticed early on in our three days that the energy in the group (showing up through individuals of course)  seemed at times fiery, at times disenchanted, at times hopeful, at times curious – and most often all of those things at the same time.  The energy seemed to be jumping all over the place – like soap bubbles floating in the air and popping.

It caught our attention and we began to wonder just exactly what was in the air and how to hold the space with lightness, intentionality and discernment.  In writing about it now it all sounds very professional, easy and sage.  In the moment, it requires intense presence to tune into what is in the space without overreacting or pouncing on individuals who bring very diverse perspectives but allowing all of it to show up in the room, while at the same time deliberately inviting in the opportunities and space for people to practice new skills they are learning in the moment.  A good reminder (if I needed it) about why it is important, even imperative, that we never host alone and that we create beautiful and strong relationships with our co-hosts so we feel fully supported and are able to observe the space from many different points of view and experiences.

In our design of the three days, we had already decided to invite participants to go on a silent hour long walk after lunch on day 2.  As we debriefed at the end of day 1 and talked about the energy in the room we needed to decide how far to delve into the energetic dynamics that were showing up so we could clear the air, wanting to balance it with our clearly stated purpose of learning more about collaborative leadership and the conditions that support it and carving out time for people to take projects and ideas they had walked in with to the next level of thinking and clarity.

We decided we would take half of the hour long walk and invite a dyads conversation, asking people to share with each other where they were experiencing tension and where they were hopeful.  We began to wonder if there was intergenerational tension in the room, so we further determined we would ask people to pair up with someone not in their age group.

The invitation into this walk became a defining moment of our collective experience.  As people were invited to pair up with someone not in their age group you could see the uncertainty as they looked around the room, wondering who on earth they were going to pair up with and who would do the inviting.  It was a momentary collective holding of the breath, obvious to all and quickly surpassed.

People walked and talked.  And when we all arrived back into the room, something had clearly shifted.  The energy had settled down and the room was even more ready for the learning that was to come.  Intergenerational tension was not the only factor in the tension in the room but the dyad conversations became a leverage point for releasing various aspects of the tension.

Strategic Results

We moved into a proaction cafe in the afternoon and five ideas flowed into the space looking for a next level of clarity and wise action steps.  Some people came with ideas just beginning to form and others came with critical issues they would be facing as they went back to work following this training.  Some left with a beautiful level of precision on their work.

At the end of this second day, when we were debriefing as a hosting team, we reflected on the waves and weave of the day.  We knew we’d hit the summit of the experience and our last day was about arriving home well.  We recognized that we still had a day we needed to enter with deliberateness and intentionality.  The day was a mix of personal leadership and more tools, models and methodologies to help people frame their work and experience well.

We brought in a compassionate listening exercise from Jerry’s work in Minnesota, taught the new model that Jerry, Chris Corrigan and others had evolved for resourceful communities and the two loops of systems change, and did a little methods cafe.  We allowed time for people to wrap up any unfinished business with people in the room and moved to a beautiful closing circle.  There was a greater hopefulness in the room than when we began, an excitement about results and, of course, a sadness in leaving.

The hosting team has committed to calling this group back together on April 11 in Halifax.  We want to continue to learn and grow from each other.  People who live elsewhere are invited to participate from their locations.

I am deeply curious about what more will emerge from this amazing little and powerful gathering. I am grateful to the hosting team for stepping so fully into this journey with me and have experienced new levels of depth in each of those relationships, individually and collectively.  My world is forever transformed and expanded because of this gathering.

My dear friend Marcello, who had committed to coming before we were even sure we were doing this, has had a lot of opportunity to reflect on this experience and a previous Art of Hosting experience as he prepares for the Art of Hosting training he is calling in Porto Alegre where he lives in Brazil in September – the subtle nuances, the dance with energy, the focus on results and the amazing power that can show up in well cared for and well tended spaces – because all of us cared for and tended the space.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Roberto and Anke from Conscious Catering who were as much a part of our experience as the place we were in – preparing food lovingly for us.

This is just a portion of my reflection from the Art of Collaborative Leadership.  There is so much more, including the shifting shape of my own leadership learning experience from start to finish and beyond.  Many more reflections to be sure from such a rich and enduring hosting experience.

Prototyping Collaborative Leadership at Capital Health – Citizen Engagement and Accountability

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Citizen Engagement and Accountability Portfolio

In May 2009, the creation of a portfolio within Capital Health with the title of “Citizen Engagement & Accountability” presented a rare opportunity to create something that had no precedent.  The portfolio was launched in response to the strategic stream of Citizen Engagement that came out of the Strategic Quest work in 2007.

Lea Bryden was tasked with bringing together three functional areas under this new portfolio: Marketing and Communications, Community Health Boards and Patient Representatives.  In looking across the country, they found themselves virtually alone as there were no models to inform the portfolio development.

In January 2010, Kathy Jourdain and Tony Case, through Shape Shift Strategies Inc., were contracted to assist in shifting the shape of this portfolio.  The intent was to truly create a new portfolio with collective purpose, principles and streams of work and not just perpetuate the three existing functional areas under a new name.  Some of the functional work would be the same and new work would emerge through the process but all of it would be informed by the collective purpose.

This work was given context and framing by the following pre-existing pieces of work:

  • Our Promise
  • Declaration of Health
  • My Leadership: Being, Caring, Doing
  • Citizen Engagement Strategic Stream
  • 2013 Milestones

In addition to wanting to honour CEO Chris Power’s intention in asking the question: “What kind of future could we create if the vision of Our Promise and belief in our Declaration of Health showed up at each of our touch points in the course of our day?”, Lea also wanted to uncover the unique gifts and contribution of each member of the portfolio and understand how they came together as a collective.  And, it was  very much a mechanism to create a cultural shift to even greater transparency and accountability.

This process invited a design team to co-design the process.  There was initially a very specific invitation to a member of each of the three functional areas. As the process unfolded participation in the design process was completely open and transparent and those with the greatest interest and passion continued to participate in the process.  Some people showed up in the beginning because they thought they should and then kept showing up because they saw how their contribution directly influenced the design of each session.

This work took place over a period of four or five months to establish collective purpose, principles, priorities, and strategies.   It took into account other work that was underway in the organization, incorporating things like the budget planning process or the response to Capital Health’s community engagement recommendations right into the process so the portfolio could learn how and when to respond as a portfolio to other moving parts of the organization.

We knew we were making headway when we hit the groan zone.  The collective purpose and principles were articulated and we began to hear, “Oh good.  We have what we need.  Can we be done?  Can we get back to our regular work now?”  This was a signal to push back.  Lea did this by asking a simple question, “Where are we seeing evidence of our collective intention at work?”  The responses were amazing, informative and represented a turning point.

A philosophy of our work as consultants was to transfer collaborative leadership skills into the portfolio so it could flourish once our involvement came to an end.  The portfolio created a transition team to continue to guide the work and this team is also working collaboratively.

A key contributor to the success of this initiative was Lea’s willingness to foster collaborative leadership and her openness to growing her own awareness and skills in the process.

Like all significant culture shift initiatives, there are certainly bumps along the way.  But there is lasting change in the way this portfolio views itself, understands its work and engages with the public.

Prototyping Collaborative Leadership at Capital Health – Infusion

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In March 2007 Capital District Health Authority (CDHA) in Halifax, Nova Scotia took on a planning process called Strategic Quest.  A significant component of Strategic Quest included public participation in an unprecedented way, shifting the shape of awareness and thinking at Capital Health.  The results were revealing and the impact continues to reverberate throughout the organization today, strongly influencing ongoing public participation in a number of areas and inviting collaborative leadership as a strategy to accomplish many of its goals.

One initiative I was involved with where Collaborative Leadership was an essential part of the process was Infusion: a gathering in November 2008 of 70 leaders from across North America, in our local community and within Capital Health, convened to inform what bold and unique leadership development within Capital Health could look like.

The planning process for Infusion, championed by Lea Bryden and led by Shape Shift Strategies, invited and modeled collaboration, shared leadership and shared responsibility.  A diverse group of people from across Capital Health were invited into the planning process.  Many identified the planning process itself as a leadership development opportunity as they experienced collaborative leadership in new ways, stretching beyond their original assumptions about how and what they could each contribute to this unusual event.

Achieving clarity of purpose was the first task.  It required a significant investment of time – several meetings.  It was a difficult task because there were multiple overlapping components all alive and unfolding as we were in this planning process.  We stayed in the conversation until sharp clarity was achieved and then rest of the planning process unfolded rapidly because it was guided by this clarity of purpose.  We also actively worked with Theory U in the planning process and for the event itself.

The planning process always had a forward momentum, even when people missed meetings.  As they came back in, they found their place in the process and continued to contribute constructively.  They could step into and out of the flow of the process without having to back track and rehash decisions made when they were not present.

The two day Infusion event drew on the talents of everyone on the planning team.  Invited guests: leaders from a vast array of backgrounds, many of whom were leadership consultants, were asked to bring their knowledge and expertise in a participatory way.  It was at times a challenging field to hold.  The team was able to hold its ground as we went through the fire of chaos, adjusting design in the moment and holding space for some anger and frustration that unexpectedly arose within the group because of the collaborative leadership we had been growing throughout the planning process.

Infusion did not end in a nice tidy wrapped up bundle and Lea Bryden, myself and the team were good to leave it that way while taking away the gems that guided the development of My Leadership – a truly unique leadership development initiative inside of Capital Health with a bold vision and goals that has since had 500 leaders complete and won a number of regional and national awards.

 

A 1500 Day Collaborative Journey

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In November 2006, the Council of the College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia (CRNNS) embarked on a 1500 day collaborative journey, the likes of which they could hardly imagine was possible at the time.  What was clear was that the College had a vision and a mandate to grow inter-professional collaborative practice (IPCP) from pockets here and there across the province to a more widespread practice as one of the responses to a health care system in need of shifting the way services were delivered.

They knew this was not a mandate that could be achieved alone and they weren’t quite sure how to invite other professions into the conversation.  They contacted an Art of Hosting colleague of mine who invited me into the process and we worked with a team from the College to begin to clarify the work.

Early on we identified that this would likely be a long term process that would use Theory U to define the journey and Art of Hosting as the operating system. Before the journey could even begin, others needed to be invited into the conversation so that other people and organizations could identify what contribution and what level of support or commitment they were willing and able to offer.

The College hosted its first assembly in November 2006 to announce its mandate, speak what they were hearing in the system and being called to do, invite a broad array of health care professionals into conversations using processes like Appreciative Inquiry, World Café and circle which many participants experienced for the first time ever that day.

Out of this assembly a core team of about twenty-five people and financial support from a broad range of health organizations self identified to commit to a multi-year process that included two Art of Hosting retreats (one a sensing retreat and one a presencing retreat) to train the core team, deepen their understanding of the purpose and principles of the work and identify a strategy to move this mandate forward.  We called on Art of Hosting colleagues doing similar work in Ohio and in England to come and also support this initiative, bringing with them a wealth of experience and weaving in the stories from other places that increased the anticipation of successfully shifting the shape of collaborative health care in Nova Scotia.

The collaborators included: Annapolis Valley Health, Capital Health, College of Licensed Practical Nurses of Nova Scotia, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, Dalhousie University, IWK Health Centre, Nova Scotia Association of Health Organizations (now Health Association of Nova Scotia), Nova Scotia Department of Health, Pharmacy Association of Nova Scotia, Registered Nurses Professional Development Centre and the Pictou County Health Authority.  The team included people from many of these organizations and was itself inter-disciplinary.

In between the two retreats, the core team embarked on a series of sensing strategies to broaden their own understanding of the health care system in Nova Scotia, identifying challenges and opportunities without assuming they already knew all the answers.  One purpose in this was to also engage a more stakeholders and learn from them what would capture their support, interest and imagination.  Seven group interviews and thirty five individual interviews were conducted, designed to elicit their private voice more than their public voice.  It is in the private voice that deep despair and incredible hope both reside.

The information that came back from these interviews was powerful.  So powerful it was used to invite back a large assembly of stakeholders in May of 2008 to hear the results and, most importantly, to hear the voices of the system spoken back into the room.  In response, somebody said, “What we are seeing is a crisis of the soul.”

We asked people: “What would you do that you’ve never done or dreamed of doing to change the future of healthcare?” They responded:

  • Change the way we deliver health care
  • Change the focus of health care
  • Change education of practitioners
  • Change what we say to communities
  • Change governance of health care
  • Change relationships and how we work together

We asked, “What should the purpose of the health care system be?”  To which they responded:

To create and maintain holistic, accessible support and care so that Nova Scotians may live well in a place they call home.

 

To facilitate and empower the individual and the community to create and maintain

optimum health as defined by the individual.

 

The purpose of the healthcare system is evidence based, person-focused, preventative, holistic, and uses a collaborative approach to optimize the health, safety, wellbeing and environment of people within their communities.

People made commitments that day and the College made a commitment to check back in later with their last assembly to acknowledge and celebrate progress.  That day happened in June 2010.

Six champion collaborative practice teams currently providing services in Nova Scotia were invited to present at the Assembly, modeling the way and illuminating the steps to successful collaborative care in Nova Scotia.

Have all the ideas identified in May of 2008 been implemented?  No.  But in 2010, there was far more collaborative care in Nova Scotia than there was in 2006 when the College began its quest and invited in collaborators, retaining its willingness to be a champion of this work and, at the same time, “letting it go” so that it could be co-created throughout the whole journey with those who stepped forward to share the leadership and responsibility of this work in Nova Scotia.  Other initiatives focusing on Collaborative Care also emerged during this time helping to expand awareness and the field of practice and this does not lessen the impact of the Inter-Disciplinary Collaborative Practice initiative in generating impactful responses to a system in need of change.

Some things have fundamentally changed.  Some things are still to come.