Tag Archives: not knowing

The Chaordic Path: The Dynamic Inter-relationship between Chaos and Order

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One of the fundamental patterns used in Art of Hosting offerings – which for many of us includes our consulting practices or as practitioners in-house work environments – is the Chaordic Field or Chaordic Path. Like many of the patterns offered in AoH it is a helpful way to understand what is happening in the world, in our communities and organizations and within each of us individually. It gives us a lens through which to understand the increasing complexity in our environments and a pattern to work with to evoke collective learning and the real-time innovation necessary in a world and in times that are neither predictable nor stable and call for more flexibility as “more of the same” solutions are not addressing the challenges.

Originating with the work of Dee Hock in the development and evolution of Visa to an international network of financial institutions offering “one” credit card, Hock identified the patterns and forces of chaos, order and control that were at play in an animated process that came to the brink of failure at many points along the way.  It was clearly experienced that the greatest breakthroughs and emergent ideas came at the intersection of chaos and order, in a system that was more commonly situated in the realm of control.

Chaordic Path

Just when things seem the craziest is often when new ideas spark, bridges are built, aha’s become apparent and a way out of chaos naturally appears.  These patterns are evident in living systems, where a natural order exists, life cycles are vibrant and the greatest innovations happen at the edges.  While not static, living systems can be stable – or be in order – for long periods of time until disruption comes in some form of chaos – destructive weather patterns or fires – destabilizing the system for a time before new order emerges.

While the chaordic path is the story of our natural world – form arising out of nonlinear, complex, diverse systems – it can also be the story of how our teams, organizations and communities pay attention to human dynamics and function.   In our organizational systems, there is a tendency to want to meet chaos with control, to try to fix the situation or provide a ready made solution.  Many of us as leaders and managers have been educated, trained and promoted to do just this. But increasing complexity means control, particularly as it relates to the human dynamics of a situation, does not often enough lead to a resolution of the problem and may, in fact, exacerbate the situation. Solutions and ways forward are more likely to arise out of accessing the collective intelligence and collective wisdom of everyone, which can, at times, be a “messy” process until new insight and clarity emerges.

When facing new challenges that cannot be met with the same way we are currently working – cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them – new ways of leading and operating need to be learned and utilized to shift the shape of our experience with intentionality. It is during these times of uncertainty and increased complexity, where results cannot be predicted, that wise leaders invite others to share their collective and diverse knowledge to discover new purpose and strategy and decide a way forward.

It is in the phase of not knowing, before we reach new clarity, that the temptation to rush for certainty or grab for control is strongest. We are all called to walk this path with open minds and some confidence if we want to reach something wholly new.

“At the edge of chaos” is where life innovates — where things are not hard wired, but are flexible enough for new connections and solutions to occur.  To lead teams, organizations and communities on the chaordic path, leaders need “chaordic confidence,” to have the courage to stay in the dance of order and chaos long enough to support generative emergence that allows new, collective intelligence and wiser action to occur.

This can be a beautifully dynamic process.  To be in it with awareness and intentionality also means to take care of value judgments or beliefs often brought that one of these modes of being or operating – chaos, order or control – is  better or more valuable than the others. There is a place, a role and a time for each. A subsequent post will explore the upside and downside of each, recognizing that a flow and dynamic movement between each of these modes of being may be the leadership discernment needed for long term success.

Understanding Worldview and How It Impacts Us As Hosts – guest blogger Jerry Nagel

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authored by Jerry Nagel (originally published at Growing Hosting Artistry on January 6, 2014)

Each of us has a worldview and a personal story about how we perceive reality. Our worldview combines the cultural and personal beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, values, and ideas we hold to form maps or models of reality. Our worldviews come from our collective experiences in society – from our parents and friends, the books we read and movies we watch, the music we listen to, our schools and churches. We then interpret these experiences into an individual worldview.  (Jenkins, 2006; Schlitz et al, 2011)

World view eye

In practice, we use our worldviews, without necessarily being conscious of it, to construct complex conceptual frameworks in order to organize our beliefs about who we are and about the world we live in. (Schlitz et al, 2011) These maps or models help us explain how we view the world and why we act as we do in it.

Our experiences within the contexts we live in, be they religious, geographic, or cultural, all contribute to how we interpret reality.  Often this vision of reality is not fully articulated in our conscious awareness. In fact it could be so deeply internalized that we don’t question where it comes from. As practitioners and hosts of the Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter this is an invitation into personal inquiry.  Understanding our own worldview grows our capacity to host others better.  Especially because our worldviews influence every aspect of our lives – what we think about, how we act, what assumptions we make about others, what motivates us, what we consider to be the good, the moral and the true. It gives coherence to our lives. It is the channel through which we interpret reality as we see it.

Worldviews are an individual phenomenon and a group phenomenon. (Jenkins, 2006) Everything we hold to be true is found in community. A community is not just a geographic or placed-based clustering of people living together as a village, town, city or nation. A community can also be a discipline in science, a faith community, a community of practitioners of a type of music, art or sport or a community of practitioners of the Art of Hosting; and these communities are part of a world of “multiple simultaneously existing local realities” (Hosking, 2011). These local constructs or realities are primarily constructed through language based processes such as the written word, art, music, dance, speaking, symbols, sign, etc. (Hosking, 2011). Thus, it is through ‘language’ that we represent our worldviews and it might be through language that we will begin to understand another’s worldview.

Worldviews are not necessarily or always fixed. Individual and community/cultural worldviews often shift or change. These changes can be quite small and hardly noticed at first, but eventually have a transformative impact.

Worldviews can also change quite significantly as evidenced by many changes in the past century resulting from scientific advances (flight, Internet, space travel, atomic energy, etc.). Some shifts can be so transformative (or converting) that people change religions or physical characteristics. So, while worldviews are locally constructed, they can shift based upon changes in local or global constructs as well as individual or collective experiences. On a personal level, these types of changes often manifest in some form of spiritual experience that impacts a person’s view of self in the world (Schlitz, Vieten, & Amorok, 2007).  In effect, we have the ability to change our worldviews with awareness, consciousness and intentionality.

If our worldviews are mainly locally constructed, then we could ask, “What consequences do these local, cultural worldviews have for our ability to work together?” – an inquiry relevant to Growing Hosting Artistry. One answer is that they can create barriers to understanding and finding common ground for working together. Which raises questions of “What to do about it?” and “How can we avoid collisions of worldviews and instead come together in ways that build understanding and respect and allow each of us to hold on to that which is most important?”

The invitation, individually and in our hosting work, is to be in inquiry, to be curious; to be nonjudgmental; to approach hosting from a stance of not knowing; to practice generosity; to value good conversations and recognize that good conversations can lead to wise action; to remember that the practice is the work and to remember that many world views can exist in the same place when we step out of either-or thinking into the welcoming of many different perspectives in the same space and time, celebrating difference rather than insisting on sameness. Growing our hosting artistry on the individual and collective levels creates more invitational space for ourselves and for others to show up in the fullness of who we each and all are.

Jenkins, O.B. (2006) Worldview Perspectives, http://orvillejenkins.com

Schlitz, M., Vieten, C., & Amorok, T. (2007) Living Deeply: The Art & Science of Transformation in Everyday Life. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Schlitz, M., Vieten, C., Miller, E., Homer, K., Peterson, K., & Erickson-Freeman, K. (2011) The Worldview Literacy Project: Exploring New capacities for the 21st Century Student. Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California.

Hosking, D. M. (2011) Telling Tales of Relations: Appreciating Relational Constructionism, Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht, Netherlands.

Hosting From A Deeper Place – Working with Not Knowing and Emergence

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It was a long time in the planning, a conversation begun two years ago in earnest, a few twists and turns along the way with possible hosting team members and dates.  If you trust in the timing and flow of things, it was clear, Hosting from A Deeper Place: The Art of Hosting the Subtle happened in exactly the right timing at the end of February 2013 near Sao Paulo, Brazil at Espaço Arco-Íris.

The gathering was inspired by Marianne Williamson‘s quote from A Return to Love:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Since it was the first gathering with the specific intent of exploring what it means to host from a deeper place, the hosting team of myself, Narjara Thamiz, Gustavo Prudente and Jerry Nagel sensed the need to spend additional time together beforehand, preparing ourselves, preparing the field for what wanted to happen and we decided on three days.  In hosting work these days, there are typical patterns we draw on in our design process.  For this gathering, there were no particular patterns to draw on.  We felt in the not knowing of new patterns, of what wanted to emerge.  We were intentional in inviting ourselves to stay in our own not knowing about what exactly the gathering was and about what was to happen during those days together.

The purpose that emerged through our deliberate enquiry into a statement that would guide our design process was: Joining together in a learning field to deepen individual and collective capacity to host complexity.

We decided to draw on Theory U to map out our five days together and to incorporate the Four Fold Practice as fully and intentionally into each day as we could, looking for the interplay between hosting self and hosting others, and the dynamic relationship between the mystical and the practical and how that shows up in each of the four practices.

four-fold-practice

Day 1, started after lunch, beginning with a walk through the woods of the beautify retreat centre to ground us in the energy of the place, the energy and intention of our time together and then moved to a circle check-in.

The theme of Day 2 was hosting self and others into a deeper place, moving down the left hand side of the U.  We used body movement and guided visualization to invite an expanded sense of being, enquired about people’s experience with not knowing for a powerful world cafe and open space to invite “conversations would help me host myself and others to go into a deeper place”.

As people arrived this was the extent of the design development we had done as a team even after being together already for three days, holding ourselves in our individual and collective not knowing.  Days 3-5 were completely blank other than knowing the theme or intention for each day.  They needed to be that way, to tune into what wanted to emerge from and for the collective.

Flow of our retreat

The theme of Day 3 was Hosting within a Deeper Place at the bottom of the U.  At the end of Day 2, as a hosting team, we recognized the divergence of our own world views in this work from more practical to more mystical.  Wanting to be in service of the people there rather than any of our own individual needs, we invited any who wished to join our hosting team meeting.  When they arrived, first we asked them why they came to the meeting and then we asked them what going deeper meant to them.

I’m not sure we realized we carried an expectation that going deeper somehow meant diving into shadow and fear until someone spoke about how the Marianne Williamson quote had sparked goosebumps and shivers, imagining illuminating our light.  It was one of those moments when shift happens and everything seems to open up.  The design for Day 3 began to emerge and by the time we were done and names appeared next to each design element, I realized I’d hosted myself out of hosting.  A beautiful and disconcerting thing at the same time.

The design for Day 3 began with movement to begin the embodiment of light and playfulness and set the stage for a guided visualization, after which there was a short period of time for reflection through silence, art, poetry, journaling or being in nature – whatever called to each one.  We moved into appreciative triads with the following questions:

  1. Tell a story of a time when stepping into your deepest fear liberated powerful things in your life?
  2. What is the gift you have you don’t fully acknowledge?
  3. What are you learning about your own talents, gift and light?
  4. Who must you step into being in honour of your fullest potential?

This was followed by three hours of silence, including a silent lunch and then back into our triads, paired with another triad to reflect on what we are learning about our hosting now, followed by a long check out circle, people wanting to share reflections and insights gleaned throughout the day. Celebration, story telling and music around the fire at night.

The next day, Day 4, was clear.  Open space all day.  A world cafe at the end to harvest the day.  The field was now hosting itself.  Noticing synchronicities. Hosting from within and out of a deeper place.  This day seemed to invite the deep mystical to show up in many different forms and conversations.  The field was ready to be in this exploration.  And always we carried the curiosity of how does this inform the practice, how does it translate into the practical.

Day 5.  Getting read to go home.  Saying good byes. Departures. Hosting out of a Deeper Place.  Gently.  For re-entry.  More embodiment.  A visualization of taking it home. Back in our triads.  “When I leave here, how will I balance and integrate my knowing with my internal and external worlds? And what help might I need?”  Then an embodied harvest of our days together, angel corridor and collective poem.  Moments of pause and silence.  Nobody wanting to break the circle.

A field alive with all that had flowed in and emerged over our days together, still deeply curious about the mystical and the practical of hosting.  A clear swirling around hosting self as central, core to all the other practices in the four fold practice, core to hosting from a deeper place.

A group so connected and field so alive it continues to spark and shine across North and South America.  Connected in depth.  Connected in love.  Connected in journey of work that calls each of us to step in, lean in further, challenge ourselves in how we show up so we invite others to show up differently and more fully.

The stories of impact are already emerging and we imagine it will only be in the weeks to come that we more fully understand the impact of this gathering on our individual and collective hosting capacity, especially as we work in more and more complex situations.  We plan to touch back in with deliberateness to harvest more, to learn more, to understand how we host from a deeper place and what it means when we are able to do so.

Activation, Amplification, Acceleration

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These three words – activation, amplification and acceleration – have been keywords of mine for awhile now.  2013 is the year I live into them fully and I am already the recipient of the delicious impact of them – which is why I am only now finishing a post I started at the beginning of the month, the beginning of the new year.

These words capture the essence for me of what time it is in the world, what is needed now and what so many of us are living into as we live and work in the ways that we do – fully, as authentically as we know how in any given moment, with heart.  Not trying to solve all the worlds problems, but focusing on what calls us.

These three words – activation, amplification and acceleration – are so alive in my experience of 2013 that they have caught me by surprise. So much is flowing I almost can’t keep track of it so I am learning to trust feeling the flow rather than thinking it.  One of the intentions I had held for 2012 was to become aware of and break patterns that no longer serve me and step into new patterns that serve me better.  As 2012  is still flowing into 2013, there are signs all around me that this intention has borne fruit.  A new pattern is learning how to breathe into flow rather than be overwhelmed by it, so I can continue to receive what wants to show up in the abundance in which it is being offered.

Activation happens individually and collectively.  What is it we want to give life to? What do we want to live and be?  What is it we want to do?  What is the vision of our life journey or path?

It is what happens when we gather to do meaningful work in the world.  We activate patterns.  We activate hope. We activate intention. We activate the possible.  What wants to emerge.  What wants to come to life.

We always have the potential to activate.  Often we do it unintentionally.  I and some of my good friends and colleagues are living into the question of what happens when we do it with intentionality and awareness.  Feeling this year is particularly about activating the mystical in step with the practical.  How do we live with a foot in both realms, each fueling and feeding the other?  And, for me, it is activating with boldness.  In 2009 when I articulated my purpose statement, the word “boldly” included itself – I boldly bring my healing gifts to the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people.  It is only now, four years later, that I feel it truly activated in me and in how I am intending to show up in the world.

Amplification.  What happens when we activate together, in a collective field.  I can journey alone.  We can each work alone in our individual realms.  But, when we activate together we amplify the impact.   It becomes stronger and more powerful.  The energetic field is amplified. This is one reason we host with others.  More happens and more quickly.  The mystical expands and is amplified.  The practical moves more swiftly, carried by more people and stronger intention.

Amplification leads to acceleration.  Things happen faster.  Healing happens faster.  Not necessarily because we intend to go faster but because the conditions emerge for acceleration.  There is a discernment here between being busier at work and in our lives which comes simply from acting and doing, trying to do more, faster.  The kind of acceleration I mean here is the result of tending the field, the spiritual, the energetic, the mystical.  Grounded in this kind of energy, acceleration is the flow that naturally emerges as synergies occur and synchronicities appear.   The things beyond which we could have planned.  The people and events that show up in right time and right place.  As if they have been waiting for us or we have been waiting for each other.

heart on fire

I have been learning about these three words since I started using them a few years ago.  This is the year they are on fire for me.  They are part of what has inspired me to be in the journey of the offering of Hosting from a Deeper Place: The Art of Hosting the Subtle in Brazil at the end of February 2013.  A conversation that started years ago with my beautiful friend Narjara Thamiz and grew to include our co-hosts Gustavo Prudente and Jerry Nagel.  An offering that has seen many potential dates come and go until it finally landed in the first quarter of 2013.  An offering that has attracted friends and colleagues from Brazil, the United States and Canada.  An offering where we will lean into our not knowing, hold the space for emergence and where these three words – activate, amplify and accelerate – will be very much alive for me.

I am in wonder of how vibrant and alive life is as I learn to feel my way into it more, grow my own receptivity to what is emerging and live fully into the gifts I have to offer as this second half of my life continues to unfold in blessed and graced ways.  I am humbled and renewed every single day.

Intentionally Shifting the Shape of the World in 2012

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Wow.  2012 is a breath away. When I started the Shape Shift blog I wrote: “the shape of the world is shifting. It is constantly shifting but never more so than now. This is evident in health care, education, finance, communities, technology, organizations and other systems that have become vital to how we function today.  We can be passive recipients of the impact of these shifts in the world or we can become active participants in shaping the future of the systems, organizations and communities that we feel passionate about – that are near and dear to our hearts.”  This was true when I wrote it, and started Shape Shift Strategies Inc, in August of 2009.  It is even more true as we are on the brink of 2012 – a year that has been much prophesied and written about.

If we are paying attention we can literally and figuratively feel the earth shaking underneath our feet as significant shifts take place – in the natural world and the manmade world.  Earthquakes and tsunamis in New Zealand and Japan, the Arab Spring, Occupy to name just a very few.  I say paying attention with the full awareness that there are many of us who see the greater scope of these stories and feel the significance of them in our very beings and there are many who do not yet see the stories under the stories that show up in mainstream media – a medium that is struggling with seeing and understanding the deeper patterns of these movements in the world.

If I am to imagine into 2012, I can only imagine that the chaos and complexity of our systems, our social structures and  our communities will increase.  This because of the reluctance and deep resistance of letting go of what we know, even when we know it doesn’t work anymore, to embrace what is waiting and wanting to be born.  It is so hard to see new ways when all we can see is what we have already built.  I’ve seen it in the conversations surrounding the Healthier Health Care Now gathering set for Utah early in January.  “We want you to be different, but please do it in familiar ways.  Because we don’t know how to support something that looks and feels different, especially when you cannot tell us exactly what it will look like in the end.  We have to be accountable, after all.”

How do we become accountable for our future when we are anchored to what we know, what we have always known, what already exists?  This is why the chaos will increase.  It is already telling us what we know no longer works.  Our collective response?  Hold on tighter.  Don’t let go.  How deeply shaken do we need to be to let go, let fly into the void of the unknown?

Thank God for the growing pockets of people, teams, communities and communities of practice who see a different future and who steadfastly work toward it in the not knowing.  There are so many I can name – because I am part of them – and so many I can’t because I don’t have knowledge of them but I am not so insular as to believe they don’t exist.  Paul Hawken’s work in Blessed Unrest is just one indicator of this world wide revolution that is taking place right under our very noses – whether we see it or not.

Those of us working and living  in the spaces of not knowing the specific shape of the future or of what new systems could emerge from the old as we are shaken free in the chaos, we are Warriors of the Heart.  To be a Warrior of the Heart and be well, we need personal practices that keep us connected with source and allow us to access our own resilience, courage, compassion, strength, joy and love.  There are individual and collective dimensions of practice. We build personal capacity in our individual practice.  We amplify, accelerate and activate so much more when we come together in our collective work and journey.

2012 may show us more and more the intersection between the relational field (love and loyalty) and the strategic field.  We have treated love and loyalty somewhat dismissively – the soft skills side of the equation.  In business we need to be hard – hard nosed, make hard decisions.  What if this is not true?  What  if our greatest path forward is to embrace more fully the relational field so that our choices are actually more strategic, have a longer term view and value all the things that are important to our survival in a time when so much of what we have always known seems threatened?  What becomes possible when we sink into what we’ve known even longer than what we’ve always known – the wisdom and knowledge accessible to us in ancient wisdoms that become more present to us as we pause and listen deeply – to the earth, to the whispers in our own hearts, to the yearning we have to be connected to something that has deep meaning and purpose. What would a world look like that connected through love and loyalty and then developed strategy for the highest good of us all?

The shape of the world is shifting.  It always has been.  Is it shifting faster now?  Feels that way.  What is the intentionality we can individually and collectively bring to amplify, accelerate and activate the shift we desire to see in the world?  What is the shape of the world you want to live in to?

I experience such deep gratitude and appreciation for my friends and colleagues (the ones I know and the ones I haven’t met yet) around the world.  You inspire me.  You lift me up in the moments when I have lost sight of my own light.  You give me great hope for what is possible in a new world order.  I am humbled and honoured to do amazing work in the world with people I care deeply about – from a place of open heartedness and a field of love and connection that makes possible the impossible – only seeming impossible because we can’t always see the how.  The how stops us.  The vision and intention for shaping a future we want to live into compels us all forward.

Walking the path of not knowing.  Setting strong, clear intentions for what I want to see unfold in my own path of shifting the shape of the world in 2012, letting go of the how and inviting what is ready – and urgently wanting – to show up.