Community or Organizational Engagement – Conditions that Support Success

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Kathy Jourdain

What does it take for engagement – community engagement, organizational engagement, team and workforce engagement – to be successful? Recently, working with volunteers and staff at the United Way in Halifax the skills and requirements for successful engagement and what is at play when it doesn’t work so well were explored. We drew from both Shape Shift Strategies and United Way’s experiences to illuminate the points being shared with you now in this post, which focuses primarily on engagement through a meeting or gathering in the community or organization.

Intentionality of Planning Process

Strong engagement processes are not simply a matter of calling a meeting, sending out a notice and planning the agenda. Intentionality and thoughtfulness exist at each stage of the process. This intentionality includes clarity of need and purpose for the meeting, clarity about what success at the end of the day looks like, understanding who needs to be in the room, inviting them in a way they feel invited and designing a meeting process that elicits engaged participation.

Clarity on Need, Purpose and Outcomes

Understanding the need being addressed and the purpose of a meeting is a fundamental first step toward successful community or organizational engagement. Need and purpose may evolve over the course of the planning process, requiring the planning team to check back periodically to see if need and purpose are still clear. It is an iterative process. If there are multiple phases of planning or engagement, then clarity of need and purpose needs to be revisited at each phase.

In addition to understanding the purpose of the gathering, articulating the outcomes you are aiming for is important. Is the need for people with diverse perspectives to be in conversation with each other? If they have never been able to be in a conversation where they discover points of connectedness that help them work together on issues that matter, the conversations themselves might be the outcome. If there is a need or desire to create a plan, then articulating a plan may be the outcome. If an action strategy is needed, than well formulated next steps might be an outcome. The outcomes being aimed at will also help guide the planning and design process.

Who to Include When

In the end, it is pretty simple really. If it is about us, don’t do it without us. Who needs to be part of they process, why and at what phase? Sometimes engagement fails because the planning team is not representative of the community, the organization or the group intended to be engaged.

A well-crafted invitation for each of the intended audiences will have potential participants tuning in more fully, especially if they can see themselves in the invitation. This includes words and images. Who is doing the inviting and how can be just as important as what the invitation looks like. There are some people who have enough sway in a community or group to bring people in. Are these people part of your planning team?

If the people you want there are not responding to your invitation, it might not be that they don’t care enough – which is often the first assumption made. It might be that they don’t feel invited, valued or like their contribution will either be welcome or make a difference. Instead of assuming they don’t care, go back to the drawing board with your invitation and invitation process. Take the time to find out what it takes for people you want at your meeting to feel invited. It might mean you have to go talk to them and not rely on email or social media.

Authenticity of Intention

Even though you might be working with a purpose toward outcomes, the quality of intention with which this is done is fundamentally important to the success of your engagement. Is there a hidden agenda? Does the team, or do some team members, want to drive toward a pre-determined outcome and not to what wants to emerge from the group? If these issues are alive in the organization or the team or the meeting, engagement strategies will be flawed because participants will sense underlying dynamics and will more likely leave dissatisfied and even disgruntled.

An outcome of discovering what issues a community wants to pursue is a whole lot different than wanting the community to name the issues you already have on a list. Pretend engagement backfires. It generates mistrust and it is always hard to recover from that. However, if you have a list and you want community or organizational members to explore that list of issues so you can learn more, then, that could be a different story. Being clear about that up front changes again the nature of the engagement because the purpose and outcomes are different.

Design of the Meeting Process

A meeting process designed by a team will be stronger than one designed by an individual and it will have more support. An engaged team generates an energy about it that lends itself to an engaging atmosphere in your larger gathering, especially as team members hold a welcoming attitude for all who show up (even those people you might not be so thrilled to see).

The purpose of the meeting or gathering you are planning provides context for the design of the meeting or the agenda. When details overwhelm or sidetrack the planning process, tuning back into purpose will bring things back on track. Choices of methodologies, how they flow together and questions that guide the conversations are decided within the context of the purpose.

Divergence-Convergence Diagram_000001 You may like to draw on a pattern like divergence-emergence-convergence to both inform your initial design and remind your planning team of the natural pattern of human dynamics that do show up in most community and organizational gatherings.

The team should be prepared to revisit and refine the design over a few meetings and take caution about becoming too attached to design flow or questions that have been formulated or to their own brilliance in the process. The less attached we are to our own brilliance the more likely the brilliance of each team member will show up and the more collaborative the team will likely be. When there is time, allowing things to gestate and gel often improves initial thought processes so revisiting design with the intent to improve can impact the quality of the meeting.

Be mindful of the language you use. Will it resonate with your community or your organization? What is the balance between using language intentionally to shift habitual patterns in a group and using language the group recognizes and will respond to? Know your audience.

Working with Partners – Don’t Host Alone

There are times when the human dynamics challenges have been deeply entrenched in a community or an organization. When those patterns have been reinforced over and over again in many ways, they can be hard to disrupt. Anyone trying to lead or host alone becomes an easy target for transference or projection. Disruptive individuals or groups will sometimes try to assign blame or transfer responsibility to a facilitator or sole leader. This is much harder to do when there is a team hosting the engagement process. This is because leadership is shared and rotates. There are many eyes, ears and senses tuned into what is happening in a room – so more of the total picture is collectively known – and if any one person runs into trouble (projected on, trip over something in the room or something within them is triggered or activated), other hosts can step into leadership in those moments.

However, a cautionary note, if there are dynamics in the team – team members don’t get along, vie for status or other unresolved issues – they will show up in the larger group in one way or another. It is part of the work we must tend to around shadow.

Collaborative Leadership, Guidance and Letting Go

There is a difference between letting go of control and letting go of leadership. Collaborative strategies do not mean there is no leadership, but leadership looks different. Sometimes it is “invisible” in how the meeting space or energetics are held by a team. Sometimes it is in the offering of a good question, a well-placed observation or the provision of a good process or set of processes. Sometimes it is in clarity of decision-making processes – who makes what decisions when. But letting go of control, of the meeting or conversation needing to be a certain way, allows for participants to be in the explorations that are important to them, allows them to be more engaged. Coaching your team for skills and process that encourage shared leadership, shared responsibility and engagement can make a big difference to understanding what it takes for collaborative leadership to succeed.

What Ideas Want to Advance?

Recognize that not all ideas will have enough energy, passion or commitment to advance. Let them go. It is not a sign of failure other than perhaps failure to pay attention to what is alive in the room. If it is your pet idea but nobody, including you, has enough enthusiasm to step up to leadership, it is not meant to be materialized in this moment. It might come back around later or elements of it might show up somewhere else. But be prepared to offer support for the ideas and people who do come forward. Sometimes there are competing priorities. If it is clear that this is what’s going on, then choices can be made with greater intentionality.

Celebrating and Communicating Success

Throughout the planning process you will want to identify what is the harvest, or documentation, that will help you share your message with intended audiences. Invitation is a form of harvest. Follow up reports. Social media sites. Initiatives moving forward. All forms of harvest. Who needs what information in what form? Share how the gathering met the purpose and outcomes – or didn’t. Share the success stories coming out of the work. Help people understand the wins and the work ahead. Remind people that in addition to small wins along the way, growing results, growing momentum and growing engagement takes time.

Oh. And, have fun! Relax into the process. Bring your most invitational and welcoming self and be prepared to be surprised.

Six Simple Guidelines for 21st Century Leaders

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Kathy Jourdain

In an exploration with Saint Mary’s University in Halifax (one of my alma maters) about an upcoming series of leadership workshops, the team there asked me some evocative questions, worthy of sharing on the Shape Shift blog. One of their questions was: what are the simplest rules you offer to the leaders you interact and work with. I have a hard time thinking of it in terms of rules, but six simple clear guidelines emerged pretty readily:

Say what you mean, mean what you say. Simple, but we are not always aware of where and when our words and actions are out of alignment. In the perspective of Worldview Awareness, this is the idea of Taking Whole or interconnectedness. In this situation, our words are interconnected (or not) with our actions. Coaching, mentoring, peer support or simply the willingness to receive reflections from others provides helpful guidance and reflections for you to learn what is out of alignment and sense into how to bring it back into alignment. But if you don’t want to know the answer, even if you ask the question, people will know it and tell you what you want to hear rather than what helps you most.

Learn to listen. Fully, completely, without judgment and without filling in the blanks as the other person begins. Too often we think we already know what the other person is going to say or where they are headed. Often, we are wrong and have shut down the opportunity to find out what the other person wanted to share with us and that opportunity may never come around again. When we do not fully listen, the other person will also tune out or become frustrated and we are left with little of value, cross communication and unresolved issues. When we fully tune into another person or a group, the space is enriched, truth shows up, generative space is created, people are heard, validated and seen. A couple of favourite expressions about listening: “When we change the quality of the listening, we change the quality of the conversation.” “When we truly listen, we can listen another person into being.” It goes a long way toward creating new levels of consciousness in a team, organization or initiative.

Ask good questions. All the time. Ask more questions than the number of answers you give. A good question evokes thoughtful responses, helps you understand the situation more fully and helps others you are with find their own way. There is a craft and an art to framing questions. A simple way to begin is to imagine the responses that a question will evoke: yes/no responses, short answers or thoughtful responses that will have the person reflecting on their own rather than waiting for you to give them the answer. Also, imagine how you are asking the questions, the energy that makes it an inquiry and not an inquisition. Learning to craft good questions takes practice, and it is a practice well worth developing.

Bring genuine curiosity and compassion to every conversation. Curiosity and judgment cannot exist in the same space. Defensiveness doesn’t sit very well in a curious space either. Neither does dismissiveness. When you notice yourself in a place of judging someone else or yourself, you find yourself defensive or dismissive, make a mental note to switch to curiousity. And then do it. Become curious about the other person, the situation or your own responses. And invite yourself into compassion too – for yourself as well as the other person. It creates a space for people to show up in the fullness of their humanity, a generative space where ideas and opportunities flow. It creates an environment “safe enough” for people to risk sharing ideas and sharing passion for what they care about.

Humility is an asset, more than that, a way of being. You don’t have all the answers. Nobody does. Especially not in today’s complex world. And oftentimes, leaders are removed from the points of intersection between the organization, its customers, stakeholders or the problems or issues that emerge. Twenty-first century leadership asks us to draw on the wisdom, knowledge and experience – the collective intelligence of a team, group or organization to solve problems, take risks and try new things. Finding the place of humility within you will enable you to listen more fully and access the brilliance in others in the most remarkable of ways.

Set a few simple guidelines and get out of the way. The more you try to control a situation, the more you shut down the potential for better things to happen, the more you send the message to other people you do not trust them to offer good solutions or strategies or to get the job done. Then the less they will demonstrate their own leadership, autonomy and sense of responsibility. Trust yourself, trust your people and trust the power of the guidelines you set – preferably determined with the people most able to get results, closest to the situation. Let people do what they are capable of and support them in the process.

The 21st Century is calling us as leaders to build connectedness in a world of highly divergent cultures, experiences and perspectives, to learn and work together more effectively. Often, less is more.

Conflict Resolution: The Allure of the Role of the Prince

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Kathy Jourdain

When you are engaged in conflict and can’t see your way out of it you often wish that someone would come along and rescue you: a White Knight in Shining Armour. And very often you do find a version of the white knight. This is the Prince in the Princess-Dragon-Prince* framework that was introduced two blog posts ago. It is the Prince who rescues the Princess from the Dragon in our traditional fairy tale stories.

The Prince is perceived by the Princess (the one telling the story of conflict) to be a supportive, possibly neutral third party providing an unbiased perspective. The storyteller is validated when the Princess perspective is acknowledged and confirmed by this neutral third party. When the Prince agrees that the Princess had no choice but to respond the way she did, the Princess can feel justified in adopting behaviour that, under normal circumstances, might be considered inappropriate. The Princess or victim perspective is further supported by this validation.

The danger is that it is easy for the Prince to get caught up in the Princess’ story or worldview and see the conflict solely from the perspective of the Princess. In this way, the acknowledgement comes with emotional emphasis that serves to strengthen the validation. The trap is that the Dragon is rarely ever as horrible as it is made out to be. If the Prince validates the Princess without exploring the Dragon’s side of the story, there is no real rescue and the Princess is likely to become more entrenched in the victim aspect of the story.

Another way the Prince may come to the rescue of the Princess is by stepping into the middle of the situation and solving the problem with the Dragon or by removing either the Princess or the Dragon from the situation. In so doing, the Princess never develops the skills needed to solve the problem on her own or deal effectively with the Dragon or the issues it represents. The Prince is counted on and expected to solve the problem, and the Princess never owns it. The Princess continues to be a victim, helpless and powerless.

It is quite common for the Princess to find a rescuer because the allure for the Prince of coming to the rescue can be strong. The Prince may derive some sense of self-worth or identity from always being able to help. It may be a way that he defines purpose and meaning in his life. There are some people who are best able to be in friendships or other relationships only when they are able to play the rescue role. When everything is going well, they retreat.

There is power in having other people need to rely on you for problem solving. When you solve other people’s problems for them you exercise some control over their lives and you may even shape part of who they are. It is always easier to see other people’s problems than it is to see our own or what we bring to a situation and it is therefore easier to provide solutions to someone else. In accepting this kind of help, the Princess stays helpless and the Prince gains power.

Business or personal coaches, counsellors, consultants and health care providers may be particularly prone to the allure of the role of rescuer. These professions all work with individuals to help them change aspects of their lives. There is a fine line between helping someone solve their own problems and rescuing them. If a client or patient becomes dependent on you, you are an enabler for the Princess or victim and her continued victimization. It should be incumbent on a professional in these roles to make themselves redundant as their client learns to take control of their own life.

As a professional providing assistance it is always a good idea to question your own motives and your role in assisting your client or patient. You can always be asking yourself what it is you gain from intervening in the problem. As a friend, colleague or family member of the Princess, you may also want to consider your response to those questions, especially if you frequently find yourself in the middle of someone else’s conflict. It is meeting a need within you. If you unearth the need, you may find a better way to meet it or perhaps you may change or grow beyond it. You learn to define or know yourself beyond the rescue role.

As you learn to extricate yourself from the middle of other people’s problems you may find your friendships or your work relationships shifting and changing. As you understand what motivated your need to intervene, you may find yourself more frustrated and less satisfied with the nature of those friendships because the needs they met are either met in other ways or no longer exist. Those people may still be stuck in the need to be rescued. If they are stuck in that need, then they are usually stuck in the problem that generated the need and make no progress on the issue.

In my university days I volunteered for the Help Line. We responded to a whole range of calls from immediate crisis to ongoing needs for support. One summer I had a job that took me on the road and so wasn’t able to volunteer for about 3 months. After a 3 month break, I was astonished to notice how many of the regular callers were still calling with exactly the same problems and issues they had had 3 months ago. They weren’t interested in moving on. They were looking for a rescuer but they weren’t really interested in solving the problem. I moved on.

The most effective rescue roles are those where we help people learn how to become their own Prince and rescue themselves. This doesn’t hold the same allure for many rescuers because you allow people to discover things for themselves instead of supplying them with your own solutions. However, the benefit to the Princess is that the solutions are more personally relevant and they are longer lasting.

When you find yourself in the role of the Prince, consider the allure for you and the motivation for being in the role so you don’t inadvertently turn yourself into a different kind of Princess – someone who always has other people’s problems dumped on you.

* While the Princess is referred to “she”, the Prince “he” and the Dragon “it”, all of these roles are played by both men and women.

Not Enough Time

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Kathy Jourdain

Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? – Mary Oliver

Not enough time in the day. Not enough time to get everything done. Not enough time to begin a project, to have a conversation. Not enough time with a loved one. Not enough time. Not enough.

I am certain that in a world that seems to move at an ever increasing pace, almost every one of us has, at some point, uttered the wish for more hours in a day. Because of the pressure of to-do lists that never get completed, have you ever jammed more than is humanly possible into a day or tried to eliminate sleeping hours from your schedule? Has your feeling of not enough time, not getting things done ever been turned into a story of you not being enough?

Time. It is relative. When my older sons were little I remember one of them saying to me after I probably said, “Just a minute”, “Mom, minutes are long.” Minutes are long. They are short too. The day I stood on the mountainside in Gold Lake, Colorado in 2009, minutes were timeless, time out of time. Minutes can be 60 seconds and it can be a turn of a phrase where we have not assigned it a finite meaning of time.

Have you noticed that jamming the day full to the brim of all those endless to-do’s doesn’t seem to solve the problem? Often it exacerbates it because time to refresh and renew is not scheduled in, leaving less opportunity for intentionality – intentionality in the stories you tell yourself and intentionality in your actions – so your stories count, your actions count, your passion is tapped into and surfaced so you feel yourself more alive in any of those precious moments.

What to do? There are many things to do to address the feeling that there is not enough time. Here are seven offerings on how to MAKE IT COUNT.

1. Tell yourself a better story – even if, as you begin it it doesn’t feel true – because neither is the story you have defaulted into. Tell the story that supports how you want to be, how you want to show up, how you want to feel about time available to you and about your life, your path, your journey. Tell a story that makes these things count.

2. Who are the people you value – in life and work? Significant other? Children? Parents? Friends? Colleagues? Work partners? Others you work with or for? Schedule them in. Make the time for visits, phone calls, checking in. Otherwise, opportunities are missed and one day we may come to regret it.

3. Know your own priorities and dedicate time to work on them without distractions. One distraction is the priorities that others land on you. Do they need to become your priorities or can they be handled in a different way or at a different time? Surprise yourself. Ask the question.

4. Say no. Not arbitrarily but with intention. It makes your yes more powerful and you can be more committed to your yeses when you know you have not taken on things that don’t fit with your passion, your goals, your context, because you thought you should, because you felt obligated, because you were asked. Things that end up being done half heartedly because your heart wasn’t in it.

5. Turn off email. Yes. It is possible. It can be done. Pick a time or two of day when you will respond and be disciplined about it. Do you have your social media linked to your email that keeps distracting you back to social media? Turn it off. You can visit social media whenever you want, and you can schedule it. You really won’t miss that much.

6. Do you know what renews you? Exercise. Quiet. Music. Meditation. Walking. Sleep. You name it. Go do it! Schedule it in. You will be able to tackle that to-do list with more energy and move through it faster.

7. Need a half day for a project but can’t find it. What are you doing with those 5, 10, 15 minute slots of time that show up between calls, before lunch, before heading out to a meeting? What if you opened a document? Formatted a proposal? Captured a few thoughts? Read a few pages in a book that inspires you? You might be surprised how those brief intervals of time can add up to meaningful segments when you approach them with more intentionality and the same spontaneity you bring to surfing the web or other distractions that come your way.

Distractions are not all bad. But time is a precious commodity. Doesn’t mean every minute has to be filled with doing. It’s better if some of it is filled with being, renewing, remembering. There are enough hours in the day, in the week. Make them count.

The Importance of Resilience and How to Cultivate It – 10 Principles Overview

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Kathy Jourdain

A favourite keynote of mine (and larger body of work too) is on resilience – why it’s important and how to cultivate greater resiliency. When I went looking for a formula or guide for resilience, I didn’t find any that spoke to me about my experience and the experience of my clients with resilience. Inquiring into what I was learning about resilience through my own experiences of shifting the shape of my life and through that of my resilient clients shifting the shape of their culture, team or organization, generated a definition and 10 lovely principles of resilience.

Resilience is the ability to find the inner strength to bounce back from a set back or challenge, to recover quickly from illness, change or misfortune and it is your sense of knowing that you have the resources and abilities to handle anything that comes your way. For many of us, this does not come easy. It comes with having survived and navigated many different curves in the road – some when we imagined we must have been through enough already.

Ten principles for cultivating resilience are listed below and each of these will become a little post on its own that you can look for over the next few weeks.

Principles of resilience:

1. Inquire into what works, especially what works for you – since we all have good stories about when we have rebounded or recovered from a set back. When you know what has worked for you and why, it helps you generate more and more of what works – principles from Appreciative Inquiry.

2. Notice your self talk – don’t believe everything you think. Your mind is a powerful tool and it often seems to have a mind of its own. Not really. You can program it. You can wrest back control and use it for your advantage rather than be at the whimsy of unintentional thoughts or stories.

3. Networks of support. We all have people who are our champions and biggest fans, who will catch us when we fall. Of course, you have to let them and that often means you also have to let them in. Those walls you’ve created are meant to keep others out but what they really do is keep you in or insulated and, in the long run, that doesn’t work.

4. Be present. Lao Tzu offers this: if you are depressed you are living in the past; if you are anxious you are living in the future; if you are at peace, you are living in the present. It takes some conscious effort to keep yourself present in the moment and too often we allow ourselves, our minds, to wander to the past or the future. You will know where you let your mind go by how you feel.

5. Lean in – be aware of and still the voice of your inner judge. Running away from any problem only increases the distance from the solution. The easiest way to escape from a problem is to solve it. Counter intuitive perhaps but true.

6. The Miracle of Story. You are always, always expressing yourself in story in one way or another. Usually you – most of us – are unintentional about how you do that. I love Charles Eisenstein’s reflection on story and miracles: “We have to create miracles. A miracle is not the intersession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. A miracle is simply something that is impossible from an old story but possible from within a new one. It is an expansion of what is possible.”

7. Intention. Develop clarity of intention, then let go of attachment to it. Hold it with lightness and see what shows up. Know it is an iterative process – you don’t just do this just once. Sorry. Or not. Depending on what’s showing up in the iterative process for you.

8. Act. Take steps. Look for openings, invitations and ease and also examine your limiting beliefs.

9. Life Throws Curve Balls. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out. Everything is running smoothly and life begs to differ. As you welcome it all in, you sit with it in a different way. A more accepting way. Then those curve balls lose their power to completely throw you off course.

10. Nourish Yourself. In the Art of Hosting world, we often call this hosting self – the first of the four fold practices. Embrace it all.

Power and the Four Fold Practice

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Kathy Jourdain

~co-written by Jerry Nagel, President of Meadowlark Institute and Kathy Jourdain, Founder of Shape Shift Strategies Inc.~

“Power is the strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another. It is being able to place a circle of power at your feet and not take power from someone else’s circle.” – Lynne V. Andrews, Flight of the Seventh Moon

One of the underpinnings of the Art of Hosting Conversations That Matter is the Four Fold Practice. This is a set of practices that invite us to host self, others, processes or groups and to be in co-creation or community of practice with others. Serendipitously coming across the above quote in a little offering about the energy of the magician, generated a whole new level of reflection about power and the first two practices for us.

The first practice for the Four Fold Practice is to host yourself, to be present or have presence. When you focus on and grow this practice you know your center and ground and the strategies, personal practices or disciplines that enable you to access this place within yourself. You can then stay present more often in more and more challenging situations and you can find your way back to presence more quickly should you find yourself off balance for any reason – as we all do from time to time in the flow of life. In essence, you become more powerful in presence because, like the above quote says, “power is the strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another.” Your understanding of who you are is internally rather than externally validated. For us, what this affirms is the benefit of having a regular practice of self-reflection, not as a process for self-criticism, but out of knowing self or seeing self. This is a life practice.

The second practice in the Four Fold Practice is to participate by hosting another and allowing yourself to be hosted. It is a reciprocal relationship when you are tuned in enough to feel the balance between listening and speaking for each of you, which does not necessarily mean equal time. Sometimes you listen more, sometimes you speak more. Sometimes you need to host someone else and sometimes you need to be hosted. “It is being able to place a circle of power at your feet and not take the power from someone else’s circle.” If you show up powerfully present you have no need to try to take away someone else’s power nor do you feel threatened by them because your sense of self comes from self rather than from needing anything from another.

“Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.” Tao Te Ching

This does not mean you cannot be in a space of shared power. When you are truly powerful, you are also able to fuel the other person’s circle of power without lessoning your own, inviting and allowing them to step more into their own humanity and to bring it fully into the space between you and shared by you. Through this you build the relational field. This is particularly important when you are part of teams, building the relational field to host groups and processes from a place of individual and collective presence and attention to what is present in the moment. It lends itself to the conditions for co-creation in a team or in a community of practice. It opens up the possibility to move into the generative space at the bottom of the U (from Theory U). And this is where we often say magic happens – the magic in the middle.

“Magic makes it possible to use the limitless power of spirit to reshape the world in accordance with the fondest desires of the soul.” Donald Tyson, New Millennium Magic

This is part of the exploration we will be in at the end of January 2014 as we co-host with others Growing Hosting Artistry, to be offered in Minnesota. A sneak peek, since the invitation is not quite ready, is that we will explore world view as a lens to deeper work, what it takes from us as hosts to create containers for powerful work, become curious about new narratives that want to live in the world now, how to skillfully deal with shadow and projection, the impact of the relational field including among members of the team on our hosting artistry and how to design for the work at hand. Hosting artistry begins with knowing self and our power and being in the place of centeredness with individual and shared power.

Jerry-me-others outside for opening ritual

Jerry Nagel and Kathy Jourdain – co-authors, co-hosts, friends and colleagues

Journey to Open Heartedness

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

Love is the conversation we need to have. A post from Dogma to Divine I read this morning illuminated for me what to write about today. Love. Not romantic love. Not love with attachment or conditions. Love as a way to be in the world. Love as a way to hold space – with others, for others, for ourselves, for conversations that want and need to happen. Love as a healing energy. Love as a pathway in the world. Love as an illuminator.

open-hearted (1)

Fear tries to obliterate love. The inner voice of the judge tries to shut it down. We have come to associate so much disappointment with love, we are afraid of love. Afraid to let it wash over us, our relationships, our way of being in the world. We are afraid we will be disappointed, exposed, hurt. Afraid we will be vulnerable in ways that allow others to take advantage of us, our good heart, our good intentions – in which case it is no longer love but something posing for love.

We are afraid to know ourselves from the field of love. We are afraid to know others from the field of love. Yet it is who we are at the core.

It is hard to love others when we do not love ourselves. It is hard to let love in from others when we do not love ourselves.

Love is misunderstood. We have come to attach so many conditions – or feel conditions attached – to it that rediscovering what love is becomes a practice, a journey to open heartedness. If we allow it. If we invite it. We are not even aware of the conditions and the expectations we attach to it. To those we love. “If you loved me, you would….” Yup. Fill in the blank. For any one you are in relationship with. We all have many of them.

If you loved me, I wouldn’t have to tell you what I feel, what I need from you. If you loved me, you would just know. Because you don’t know, you don’t love me. Now I am hurt. Now I shut down.

If you loved me, I wouldn’t have to love myself. But if I cannot love myself, I cannot let your love for me in. I deem myself unworthy, undeserving of your love. Not romantic love. Human to human love. Spirit to spirit love. Soul to soul love. Just love.

We discover love and how we relate to love through relationship with others. Yes, romantic love counts here too. And it is so much more than that. Children. Parents. Siblings. Friends. Colleagues. Acquaintances. Strangers on the street. Those who love us. Those who challenge us. Those who don’t even know they impact us. Or don’t know how much.

Disappointment arises when expectations, hopes, conditions we are carrying are not met. When we harbour this disappointment it casts shadow over the field of love. When we replay it over and over again, it grows. Then we feel the need to armour ourselves because we have learned love only leads to disappointment. Anger shows up. That we would be treated so. That someone else doesn’t care enough about us. That people are only mean and selfish anyway.

The journey to open heartedness invites the inquiry – into hurt, pain, grief, disappointment, attachment. It invites the release of whatever shows up during the inquiry. It invites forgiveness. Of self. Of others. An opening up of space. Expansiveness. Generosity. It also invites inquiry into joy, beauty, delight and love itself. It is a pathway to peace. A practice we don’t get perfect but we can perfect the practice of inquiry and deepening the journey to open heartedness.

Practicing love does invite us into our own vulnerability. A vulnerability that comes from our willingness to see ourselves fully and allow others to see us. In all of the imperfectness of who we are. Vulnerability that invites us to be in our strength and power. We can be in a field of love and make different choices about different relationships. To be in some. To not be in others. To make conscious choices. To appreciate our choices. To make choices that invite generosity of spirit, not from a place of hurt, anger or denial – although some of the choices may start there. We have the opportunity to shift the shape of the story at any time. It comes with hosting self. Growing awareness. Growing practice.

Generosity and a willingness to love others without an expectation of performance in return for love or even having that love returned in the same way. This is a difficult practice at first. To let go. To not follow a path of hurt or shame. Just to offer love.

Love is the conversation we need to have. Now. Always. With each other. With ourselves. As we journey deeper into open heartedness, we grow our acceptance of self. Of others in their journey, wherever they are in their journey. It doesn’t always require words. It can simply radiate from the heart. Become a way of being in the world. The more it becomes this, the more people respond, even when they don’t know that they are, or what they are responding to. Love is the conversation we need to have. All of us. Every where.

Hosting Self: Practice Informs the Practice

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

Practice does not make perfect, thank goodness. Practice informs the practice. If we pay attention, lean into what we are discovering and allow ourselves to be in the place of not knowing or in the space before the naming, just long enough for an awareness to arise, shift to happen, peace to arrive, clarity to emerge. Maybe just one of those things, maybe none of them, but something that signals to us that a shift has happened, is happening, within us.

This is all part of hosting self. Like you, I don’t have it all figured out. I’m in the thick of learning every single day. Learning to be in my experience in any given moment – the moments I enjoy and the ones I’d rather not be in.

This is not always an easy practice, particularly in those days when we are experiencing challenge. Hosting self is only something we can draw on in those times when we really need it if we have been in the practice on a regular basis. In the practice on the days we don’t think we really need it. Days that are inspired, beautiful, peaceful, joyful. And on the days that are just kind of blah. If we are not in the practice during those days, on the days when hosting self is most needed to help reground and centre we will have no practice from which to draw on.

There are wearying days . Even for people in regular, ongoing practice. When I posted that sentiment on Facebook recently – that sometimes this hosting self thing is wearying before it transmutes into peacefulness and joy, someone asked me what I do to host myself. A beautiful invitation into a little reflection and exploration.

There are a number of practices I cultivate on a regular basis to draw from on those days I most need to host myself. In the midst of feeling challenged or feeling hooked, hosting myself usually starts with a noticing that I’m feeling “off” or hooked, acknowledging something is “rumbling” in me that I have not yet named and am not yet able to articulate with any clarity.

In the soonest moment I can – which might be immediately or in a few hours or after a few days – I become curious and invite myself into a little bit of sensing to see if I can source what’s been triggered in me.

It is important to acknowledging that whatever’s been triggered, whatever is rumbling, it doesn’t have to completely influence everything else that is happening in the moment or my day, week or month. It is simply one thread, not the only thread. If I allow myself to notice, I may also notice that many of the other threads are light, positive, purposeful, delightful. It is okay to absorb those threads too. Just because one “rumble” might need some of my attention, it is not a disservice to it to still allow in joy and light.

My Shape Shifting Lion Friend – on for the Soul Journey

I’m not sure why those moments of challenge call so loudly for attention we think we need to cloak ourselves in them. We don’t. We can learn whatever it is we need to know without becoming lost in it. Most of us have become so conditioned to going full on into it we have to teach ourselves to slow down and broaden our view with deliberateness. We also need to give ourselves permission to relax a bit and to treat ourselves with compassion. As we sense into what’s going on we can also sense into what form of hosting self is being called forth within us. There are many possibilities. Here I offer a few I personally draw on with regularity. You may also have some of these and likely you have many more of your own.

Physicality is a good antidote to those off moments. Sometimes I run or do other exercises. Aside from wanting to enjoy a certain degree of health, mostly I crave physical exercise or movement to take me out of my head and into my body, to release tension or let my body have the movement it craves. When I start to run or exercise, my mind is still often on whatever challenge has my attention. I need to remind myself to let go of the thoughts or to intentionally bring in thoughts and images that will make me feel better. Usually surrendering into the moment allows images or symbols to arrive on their own that contain beauty, joy and meaning.

Meditation is a great way to host yourself. It’s not as difficult as most of us think. There are many approaches, no one right way and, thankfully, perfection is not required. I meditate almost every day even if for just a few minutes and usually for fifteen to thirty minutes. It’s a great way to start and/or end a day. Often I use a guided meditation because it helps to keep me in my meditation longer – even if I am not always (or even usually) tuned into the words, I know they are getting through to my unconscious. In the moments I lose focus I am less likely to go into full distraction mode and get up and go do something else after just a couple of minutes.

One of my practices is to devour all the positive reflections, mantras and good news messages I can, to really absorb them – especially in those moments I’m feeling off. It is amazing what they can do to lighten my spirit when I allow it.

Gratitude and appreciation are two amazing counter acting forces to those rumbling, grumbling, or worse kinds of days. I remind myself of all the things I’m grateful for, the path I’ve journeyed, how far I’ve come. There is an abundance of things to be grateful for and they are a good reminder of how things always work out and sometimes in surprising ways. It is helpful to remind myself I don’t have to have the how of it all figured out in order to begin. Time over time I discover that when I let go of the how, miracles really do happen.

Journaling is a beautiful way to reflect. Just sitting to write for a few minutes in stream of consciousness can shed light on whatever has been triggered, make patterns and themes visible and bringing new insights that create the space to release what has been troubling us.

Finding a friend willing to listen with curiousity and compassion, without judgment. Just to be there. Not even to offer advice and certainly not to commiserate with us in a way that keeps us stuck. Sometimes in talking it out, insights arise that help us move forward or understand how to address an issue or challenge or conversation in a way that serves us and whoever or whatever may have triggered us.

Tarot cards, prayer or other spiritual practices are another way of hosting self. Anything that helps us be more present and aware.

It is good, almost essential, to remember that what’s happening in this moment is transitory and doesn’t make me – or you – a dismal failure, just like successes do not lead to infallibility or guru-ness, just real human beings doing the best we can every day. Some days are better and more masterful than others, but it’s all there in the mix. Just people on a journey with good, delightful moments and challenging moments too.

All in the flow of things. There is far more flow of things when we are in a regular ongoing practice of hosting self. How do you host yourself? What are your practices? What do you come back to over and over again that helps you regain your ground or stay centered? Where you grow your self awareness, your curiosity and your self compassion?

Hosting self is an integral aspect of being able to host others. It is the first practice in the Four Fold Practice for a reason. It is a beautiful inquiry to be in every day and in any given moment – not by making yourself a self improvement project but by surrendering into the unfolding journey.

Four Fold Practice

Ingredients for Hosting Team Success – An Inquiry

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

How is it we can take a group of people who may or may not know each other, throw them into a prep or planning day together and have them emerge out the other side as a team, ready to co-create and co-host a three or four day Art of Hosting training, to greater or lesser degrees as a cohesive, fluid team?

In the last few years, I have had powerful experiences of this happening in Atlantic Canada, in Brazil, in the United States, as I’ve invited or been invited onto hosting teams with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience, different levels of readiness to step more fully into hosting and different size teams from six to fourteen. And these days, in my experience, although individuals on the team know each other, the whole team has only met each other in person on that prep day.

Cohesive, fluid hosting teams hasn’t always been my experience. Especially in my early days of hosting. Having contrasting experiences offered me opportunities to notice and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Hosting myself, I became aware of how to, more often, invite the kind of experiences that work well. Recently a good friend invited me into a deeper inquiry of, in my experience, what makes strong teams possible? What are the ingredients for hosting team success? These are not definitive by any stretch of the imagination, but they are some of the themes I’m noticing that consistently support strength and capacity in hosting teams I’ve been part of.

Some of it is in what happens in prep day. Most of it is the quality of invitation to all of us on the team whether we are seasoned hosts or stewards, practitioners, apprentices, or logistics coordinators to show up fully. We are all equally human, equally beautiful, equally valuable and each of us holds a part of the whole.

There is no question the space for this invitation is held by the stewards. It is not just a verbally issued invitation, it is one that is fully and authentically supported in all our actions and in our energetic field, in the space we create and hold for others to step into, in the responsiveness to all the voices that show up. When, as seasoned hosts, we are able to step into our own humility and support the field from what might seem a less visible place, we open the space for others to step in more fully.

There are, of course, times that what we have to offer from our experience is what is needed – a thought, an observation, a question, a teach, a framing for what’s in the room, making something visible, stepping into our own brilliance in service of what is needed now. Knowing when to step in and offer what is needed now is also important – a part of the art. Doing it in a way that builds on what others have offered, in the spirit of expansion and illumination, is a gift to self, a gift to others and a gift to the field in which we work.

To seed this field of invitation I want to have at least one other person on the team I know well, where mutual full trust exists, with whom I know we can handle anything that comes along. With a minimum of the two of us (and one or two more is even better), we can hold the space for whatever wants or needs to show up in the team – and then in the gathering we are co-hosting.

Co-hosts and apprentices are wanting to know and understand their role, what they can contribute and how welcome their contribution may or may not be. We are all wanting to know where all our learning edges are, what each of us wants to step into and how this can best be supported. In particular, I am wanting to support people stepping up to their next level of learning, hosting or offering. It is a thing of beauty when people publicly step into their learning edges, usually with some fear, some trepidation and loads of courage.

Prep day itself begins with its own welcome, framing and flow. And an invitation to the full team to find the places they want to step in. We begin open heartedly. Infusing the space with welcome, invitation and confidence. We move to a check-in process. First on a personal level. What draws us to this work? What are we most excited about? Whatever question that personally brings us into the work and into the team. Then we move onto what we know about who is coming, what their questions are, what they might be hoping for.

The harvest from these two rounds of check in is a co-created purpose statement to guide our planning and design process. From there we take a first crack at design. What is the invitation for each day? How will we invite people in, invite them to stay in, create the space for what they want to do and the opportunity for them to reflect on what they will do when they leave. It is at this point I often notice the energetic threads weaving amongst the team. People connecting more deeply. Similar thoughts and ideas emerging at the same time. Laughter in the room as synchronicities show up. The awareness we have tapped a deeper place.

We take a look at what we’ve crafted. Identify day hosts, hosting opportunities, coaching opportunities. We invite hosting team members to offer where they most want to play. We step in where we know our wisdom, knowledge and learning will most serve and we look for balance in the offerings. We create a field of caring and intention and we prepare ourselves to welcome the larger group in the same open hearted invitation instilled with curiosity and generosity.

As a team, we stay tuned into and aware of each other in subtle and obvious ways. We continue to invite each other’s brilliance and to support each other. We work with the ebb and flow of individual and collective energy and know that we have each other’s backs. We ask for what we need and offer what we can. We invite each other. We check in at the beginning of the day and we check out at the end of the day. Openly. Honestly. Speaking what is in our hearts, minds and awareness. Tuning in to what is in the space.

I don’t know if this is a recipe for hosting team success. I know it’s been working in the places I’ve been and in the teams I have the pleasure of being in learning with. I am certain there are other ingredients, other recipes that work equally well and will continue to be in co-learning and inquiry to continue to grow my own capacity to support hosting team success.

A question very much alive every time we step into a team, those we’ve worked with before and those we are working with for the first time is: what is the humility, generosity, open heartedness and also the brilliance that needs to be present and available in me, in each of us and collectively that supports the environment of co-learning in service of the field we are entering and committed to holding?

Credible Vulnerability?

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

No wonder we are so challenged by the idea of vulnerability, especially personal vulnerability. It was a revelation to me to do an internet search on the topic. What came up first and most was this kind of explanation:

the inability to withstand the effects of a hostile environment
window of vulnerability as a time frame within which defensive measures are reduced, compromised or lacking
Achilles Heel
capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt
open to moral attack, criticism or temptation

No wonder most of us shudder when the topic of vulnerability comes up. It is in our collective consciousness and organizational cultures as weakness not as strength although much research confirms the power of vulnerability as pointed out by Brene Brown – beautiful and powerful in her own vulnerability.

I an in a renewed deep dive into this exploration thanks to the conversation that may have surprised and delighted me the most at The Art of Participatory Leadership and Social Innovation in California at the end of August 2012. A conversation I did not expect to be witness to or our high tech company participants to be in.

It arose out of a World Cafe conversation on complexity in response to the third question: what’s stirring in you now as you contemplate complexity (after exploring complexity they’ve been in and barriers and supports for being in complexity)? My attention was caught by a table where two men and two women were deep in a shared reflection of where vulnerability meets credibility.

The conversation went something like this:

“Yes, I know it’s a good thing to be vulnerable, but how do I be vulnerable and still be credible as a leader, in my organization.”

“It’s not safe to be vulnerable. You are seen as weak. How can you be vulnerable and not appear weak?”

“I would lose credibility.”

“First you need credibility, then you can be vulnerable. But how much credibility is enough?”

“Maybe allowing yourself to be vulnerable will show your credibility.” Is there such a thing as credible vulnerability? What does that even mean?

All of this led me to wonder what we mean when we speak about vulnerability – what’s in the field? A lot about weakness and protection it seems. This resonates with my journey personal journey, one of Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Open Heartedness. The invitation was to move beyond believing emotions make me weak to understanding them as a guidance system that will never steer me wrong if I pay attention. In the context of leadership, particularly participatory leadership, vulnerability does not equal weakness, defense systems do, but how and why is that so?

Thankfully Brene Brown is turning vulnerability (shame too) on its head so we can lean into it differently. She says, “Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky, but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy ~ the experiences that make us the most vulnerable.” And also make us the most human.

Sounds pretty personal. What does it have to do with work? Because as much as we try we cannot be one person at home and another at work. We suffer from the incongruency and it shows up wherever we show up. People sense it, even when, especially when, we try to hide and know, from the place of deep knowing, when they have encountered someone in the fullness of their authentic journey and their vulnerability. They often name it as courage.

Brown says what we are most seeking is connection. It is why we are here, it gives meaning and purpose to our lives. I hear the yearning for it in so many people who are drawn to Art of Hosting and related gatherings. In order to have connection, we have to let ourselves be seen. Truly, fully, seen. But then we risk people seeing our weakness, our shame, any inauthenticity or lack of integrity we feel we may be carrying. We make ourselves vulnerable.

Interestingly, when I looked up the definition of credibility it is the quality or power of inspiring belief; the quality of being believed or accepted as true, real and honest. Seems to describe what I think of as one aspect of vulnerability. And it’s simple.

Given this definition, the relationship between credibility and vulnerability is so intimately entwined it is hard to separate out which comes first and which you need more. If we can begin to see vulnerability for the strength and authenticity that it is, instead of as a weakness we cannot show others, our credibility instantly begins to rise. But how?

There is no simple solution to this. It requires courage and risk and a path of hosting yourself, growing self awareness and presence. It requires the courage of being imperfect and of compassion – for self and others, particularly for self. Finding the way to allow ourselves to be vulnerable without inviting criticism or recrimination – the fear of which intimidates us and makes us believe we need to protect ourselves. This is the conundrum.

Vulnerability is part of an intentional journey of learning to find our voice from the depths of our strength, our sense of worthiness, love and belonging, from the place of whole heartedness. It is also part of the art of what we do. The only way to trust is to risk. The only way to risk is to trust. The only way to do this is to do it. Risk as much as we dare. Pause. Reflect. Learn. Embody. Trust. Risk a little more. Eventually we shift the shape of our experience, our understanding, our credibility and our vulnerability. We live into it as the asset it is rather than the deficit many of us have experienced it to be. It is not our vulnerability that is the challenge. It is our fear of our own vulnerability that brings the weakness.

We didn’t name this conversation. It showed up in an unexpected place. Speaks to the yearning. Speaks to what’s missing. Speaks to the invitation. Speaks to the first step. Easy. Difficult. Complex. Simple. Choose.

ShapeShift

The shape of the world is shifting… embracing and being intentional about it

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