Tag Archives: Shape Shift Strategies Inc.

Shaping Powerful Questions

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One of the most asked questions at, and after, any Art of Hosting training is about the questions.  Developing powerful questions is a crucial element to creating the conversational space we are seeking.  People are hungry for greater understanding of how to create questions, especially after they’ve tried a check-in, check-out or cafe experience that didn’t quite have the intended result or impact.

Sometimes powerful questions appear, almost like magic.  We know they are powerful because we feel them.  But usually they are developed and shaped with great care – and often co-created with others.  It is not unusual for a whole planning meeting (and sometimes more) to focus just on question development for a process – which may seem a bit crazy until you’ve had the experience of well formulated questions in comparison to sessions where questions have not been shaped with the same care.

This post contains general thoughts on the shaping of powerful questions.  Later posts will focus on specific processes where questions are used, like check-in and check-out, World Cafe, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, Dyad and Triad Conversations and Deep Sensing Interviews.

Three Dimensions of Questions

In an Art of Hosting training in South Dakota this past July, was the first time I heard the three dimensions of powerful questions, coming from World Cafe work and community of practice.  The three dimensions are: scope or scale of the questions, assumptions in the questions and construction of the questions.

What is the scope of the question you want to ask?  If the scope is too big it may shut down conversation (how do we create world peace?) but you might want your question inspirational enough to allow people to gaze higher than they might otherwise (how have you created peaceful moments for yourself/your team/work/family? How could you do that more often or in a different setting?)

People tend to rise to the assumptions made in the questions so it is good to both notice the assumptions being made in the question and also to be intentional about them so the work is more appreciative and aspirational in service of purpose and intention and the greater work being tended to.

In considering how we construct questions, there is a continuum that flows from less powerful to more powerful.  The less powerful questions are ones that can be answered with a yes or no.  Moving along the continuum, more powerful questions begin with when or who.  The next level are questions that begin with how or what and even more powerful questions sometimes begin with why. I say sometimes, because sometimes the why questions also entrench people in their point of view if asked in such a way they invoke defensiveness.  Ask why questions in ways they evoke curiosity and then you’re onto something.

There is a timeliness we generate when we put the word “now” in our question.  “What you noticing now?”  “What has your attention now?”

Purpose and Intention

A key factor in question development is what is the purpose and intention – of your gathering, your meeting, the particular process the question is intended to shape or provide context for, the question itself?  What is the work you want the question to do and then what is the simplist way to ask the question? Purpose and intention is so central to question development that we go back to it again and again.

Language and Shaping

I like to use as much present and active language as possible.  Instead of asking, “What did you learn from that experience?” you might ask, “What are you learning from that experience?”  There is a supposition built into the question – that the learning is active and ongoing. If that fits the purpose and intention of the space you are wanting to create that’s great.  If not, a question targeted to the learning and conversation you want to encourage would be better.

If you are wanting to move in a certain direction, then create questions that presume in the direction you want to go.  “What is the shift you imagine will happen once you leave here and begin to apply what you’ve learned?” This question presume you want a shift and that you will put something into practice post the training.  For some it will inspire their imagination. When it doesn’t inspire someone, they will usually say so without detrimentally affecting the responses of others who are feeling inspired.

It is also okay to take a pulse of what’s happening in a group or process without assuming a direction.  This is particularly helpful when you want to sense into where a group is at, what you need to pay attention to or what might be simmering under the surface.  It is good to have people in a group name their experience sometimes without trying to shift into a particular direction.  The information that surfaces is then helpful in shaping design or process informed by what is present in the room or group, tracking always toward the purpose or intention of why you are in this conversation or work.  Sometimes diversions are necessary to ensure we get to where we ultimately want to go. You could ask a question like “What’s sitting with you now?”, “What question’s are percolating?”  Sometimes I might even ask, “What tension is arising in you at the moment?” but only if I am really sensing tension in the room, wanting to surface what’s there but not create it if it isn’t there to begin with.

Nuances in Question Development

Slight nuances in a question can lead to very different conversations. This is why we often sit with the questions we have drafted and imagine the kinds of responses a question might evoke, noticing how changing the question slightly could generate a different conversation.  Some examples: “What are you noticing in your environment right now?” compared to “What are you noticing in your environment that relates to this project?”  or “How have you been since we last gathered?” compared to ” How has the last gathering impacted you and your work?”  The first version of these questions is far more open ended while the second version is more targeted to purpose and intention.

Co-Creating Questions

It is hard to create really powerful questions all by yourself.  It is much more fun and generative to co-create with others what the questions could be.  Then when a nuance is discovered that makes the question more powerful, the whole group feels it, not just one person.  Collectively we know we’ve gone to a new level of depth.  When we co-create the questions we can start in the ball park of what we want to do and, through the conversation, discover what those nuances are that increase the the capacity of the conversations we are inviting to be meaningful and relevant to the participants we have engaged and the purpose for which we have engaged them.

Powerful questions can shift the shape of an individual and their pattern of thought, a team and its dynamics, an organization and its usual ways of thinking about things.  Imagining they can even shift the shape of the world….

Why Don’t Those Occupiers Just Go Home?

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The Occupy Movement seems to have hit a perplexing moment – yet another one, that is.  Officials in many cities across North America are trying to figure out how to make the occupiers go home.  Fall is settling in to many places and what many assumed was a passing fad hasn’t yet faded away with the cooler temperatures or fiercer weather.  If they didn’t have any demands like typical protestors and no proposed solutions to the problems that others could then shoot down, then why haven’t they just packed up and gone home?

So now, many officials are trying to figure out how to get them to disburse while opinions of the movement and the occupiers vary dramatically within the media and within communities in each of the cities.  Some people think they are an eyesore filled with people, mostly young, who don’t have jobs and are only looking for a handout.  People who have this perception seem to just want them to go home and find a job like everyone else.  Public officials are certainly playing off of the perceived dangers pointing to drugs, alcohol and even some deaths in some cities as reasons to disband the occupiers.

Other people see them as vibrant communities that people flow in and out of, people with and without jobs, people on traditional career trajectories and those on alternative career trajectories, who are standing up for democracy and “voting” by their very presence in public spaces.  My own bias or world view is that there is something more going on here, something deeper, something fundamental to understanding the shifting shape of the world.

Occupiers have been gathering long enough that minimum structures and process have emerged.  These tent villages include library and food tents as central points of focus.   They have been working with consensus decision making and ways of being heard in large crowds where any kind of speaker system has been denied.  The movements have stayed largely peaceful even in the face of being provoked at times.  They are communities that are taking care of each other in some beautiful and perfectly imperfect ways.

They are example of translocal communities that are learning from and with each other and supporting each other.  They exist in individual cities and they are part of a field of attraction that makes them more than any single city.  That the movement spread so quickly and virally from one place to the next points to its magnetic attraction and the sense that there is something more going on here.

Maybe the occupiers haven’t presented demands or proposed solutions because they know we don’t know what the solutions to our problems are and they won’t be solved by a few people locked away in a room brainstorming or strategizing our future.  The greatest likelihood of deep, systemic solutions appearing is the collective curiosity and discovery of what is possible through intentional dialog the likes of which we may have not seen before – like the 1000 table, 10,000 person cafe conversations that took place in Tel Aviv earlier this year – the first of its kind but surely not the last.

Our culture is such that any one person or group presenting solutions feeds into our predominant public and social structure of debate – giving people something to latch onto to elucidate all the reasons those solutions won’t work and dividing us into camps of right and wrong, good and bad, smart and stupid.  What happens when we invite ourselves to see past the dichotomies to hold the paradoxes and allow all possibilities to exist in the same moment?  The very idea is perplexing in a world that has become beautifully complex and yet where some still want to boil it all down into nifty little compartments of thought and action.  We don’t live in that world anymore.  We haven’t for some time.

Our systems – financial, health care, education, transportation, environment, to name a few – are in deep trouble.  For the most part, they no longer support themselves.  They are out of integrity.  Most of them would be financially bankrupt if we let them be.  Officials can try to make the occupiers go home – in fact, as I’m writing this I got a test message saying police in Halifax are forcibly trying to remove the Halifax Occupiers from Victoria Park right now, in the pouring rain.  But taking them out of public spaces does not change the condition of these systems or the condition of the globe in this moment.  It might allow some to pretend that we can go back to business as usual, but we have long since passed that point.

So, if we opt out of the ways we have always done things, where does that take us?  To the field out beyond right and wrong (to badly paraphrase Rumi)?  If enough of us were able to let go of everything we think we know and allow ourselves to surrender into the edges of our learning and experience, maybe collectively we will begin to imagine what’s next and lean into creating the conditions for that emergence – emergence meaning we all left with something no one brought.

The deliciousness of possibility has me salivating with eternal hope.  The inquiries I am in around stewarding what wants to emerge along with the deeper underlying patterns inherent in the work I am called to do make me deeply curious about the Occupy movement, the staying power of it and how it will influence the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people.

What Time Is It In The World?

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What time is it in the world?  This question has never seemed more relevant to me than right now.  It is a question I first heard in Art of Hosting work, often to context the times we are in, moving from a global perspective to much more specific contexts.  In the work and conversations I’ve been in over the last decade, there has been a sense of preparing for a time to come.  Now, in this time in the world, we are no longer preparing.  We are full on in it.  The shape of the world is shifting rapidly and it is a good time to be awake.

No longer are we waiting for someone else to fix the problems in the world. Like the Hopi prophecy says: we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  Ordinary citizens are peacefully showing up by the thousands in public spaces in cities around the world to say, Enough! The Occupy movement has been rolling out across North America since September 17, 2011 beginning with Occupy Wall Street, inspired, whether they know it or not by events in Europe over the spring and summer where people also showed up in the streets of Greece, Spain, and London to name a few places.  It is a movement that started with little fanfare and almost no news coverage.  It is going strong, gaining momentum over the last three weeks or so and still not much coverage in the main stream media.  Thank goodness for social media! People don’t quite know what to make of it because it is not typical of demonstrations and protests where demands are made and violence is more the norm.

As Charles Eisenstein said in his post: Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough  “Occupy Wall Street is the first manifestation in a long time of “people power” in America. For too long, democracy has, for most people, meant meaningless choices in a box. The Wall Street occupation is stepping out of the box.”  With many of our financial and government systems on the brink of collapse, the stakes are high – the highest they’ve been in my lifetime.

Tom Atlee, in his post Dawning Realizations, has noticed that “although Occupy Wall Street LOOKS like a protest and a demonstration (and occasionally turns into one), it is actually something more, something else: It is a passionate community of inquiry acting itself out as an archetypal improvisational street theater performance embodying, in one hand, people’s longings for the world as it could be and, in the other, their intense frustrations with the world as it is. These longings and frustrations reside in the whole society, not just in the occupiers.”

The Occupy movement has all the hallmarks Open Space Technology  – whoever shows are the right people, when it starts is the right time, when it’s over it’s over and whatever happened was the only thing that could have happened.  People are exercising the law of two feet just in showing up.

This is not the first time I’ve heard an Open Space reference made to recent public gatherings.  It was said about the gatherings in Greece and many others in Europe –  a giant open space with quiet conversations happening all over the square that no one individual or group called or planned.  It just began to happen.  And in Israel, a 10,000 person Cafe process was hosted in the streets of Tel Aviv and elsewhere.  Never before even imagined.

These references point me to another observation I’ve been making about What Time Is It In The World?  This observation percolates out of my recent time in Brazil where I was part of an  Art of Hosting training in Porto Alegre and also got to visit friends in Sao Paulo.  The first Art of Hosting training in Brazil was about five years ago.  Since that time a small but mighty group of friends have been building, holding and supporting the AoH field in that country.  In the last year, the field has experienced incredible growth.  After lovely, deep conversations with friends throughout the couple of weeks I was there, I came to the understanding of  a subtle but powerful distinction.  This beautiful group of early adopters and stewards is no longer holding the field – the field is now holding itself.  While these people are still important the field has grown beyond them – just like the field of shift in the world seems to have grown beyond any one individual, organization or community.

And, of course, it is not particular to the Art of Hosting field, which is what makes it even more powerful.  It comes from many fields and many different communities – like World Cafe, Open Space, Circle Practice, the Presencing Institute, Pioneers of Change, Society for Organizational Learning, Berkana, ALIA and many more; the quiet revolution Paul Hawken references in Blessed Unrest.

Sometimes it seems strange to go about my daily life, engaged in ordinary and profound conversations, dropping my son at school, navigating my parents health questions and concerns, taking care of the mundane ordinariness of life while at the same time being aware of the deep shift happening in the world right now wondering what will be different and how it will be different. Without being able to see the path, knowing with absolute certainty that things are different, they are changing and life will never be the same again, feeling in my heart that the things we have been longing for, in my awareness for the past decade or so, just might come to be.

What time is it in the world?  Are you paying attention?  Are you awake?  It is a beautiful and amazing time to be awake in the world right now.

 

Community of Practice – What’s it All About?

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One of the biggest questions arising out of Art of Hosting trainings and related work I’ve been part of these days is, what’s next?  How do we actually practice and sustain what we have just learned?  How do we grow our skill, courage and capacity as practitioners?  How do we create fertile conditions in our organizations or our communities to shift the shape of our future, the way we work and even the work we do?

In March 2011, I co-hosted the Art of Collaborative Leadership in Nova Scotia with good friend and colleague, Jerry Nagel from the Meadowlark Institute in Minnesota.  He shared a model he and Chris Corrigan have been using in Minnesota as a means of thinking about and being in a Community of Practice (CoP).  I refer to it often now as it reminds me and the groups I work with of key elements that contribute to learning, growth and shifting the way we work and are with each other.

Work alone can be drudgery.  Learning alone can be a great intellectual pursuit and might lead to some shift within you as an individual but does little to generate collective learning.  Building good relationships is a good skill to have but in and of itself, you might as well be in a social club.  It is where and how work, learning and relationship intersect that creates the potential for a rich and relevant community of practice.


The intersection of work and co-learning is where innovation happens as people think about the context of their collective or co-learning in relation to work.  Ideas are generated and possibilities emerge.  Without relationship though, there is often no traction or sustainability to the innovative ideas that emerge – they simply dissipate into thin air because there is no impetus to work with them on an ongoing basis.

It is at the intersection of work and relationship that sustainability happens.  And not just any relationship will do.  The relationship needs to be of good quality, filled with respect, trust and deep caring for each other – the quality of field that enables divergent points of view to be expressed, where passion for the conversation, the work, the future and friends is welcomed.  Friendships we will fight for and support.  We don’t necessarily start there but how beautiful when we tend to the relational field with such care and intentionality that so much more can spark without risk of offending anyone, without having to tiptoe around the conversations that are most necessary in our learning, relationship and work.  These are friends with whom we will venture into unexpected places, uncertainty, emergent fields and creative explorations as well as nurture and cultivate the innovations that most spark our  passion and curioisty.  When these people call us because they need something, we respond.   Sometimes we drop everything else and respond.

Powerful friendship, kinship or mates is fostered in the place between relationship and co-learning because part of what we are learning is how to be together in new ways that break old patterns that have defined relationships, at work, home or in other places where we make contributions and commitments – patterns like hierarchy and culture,  old ways of moving work along,old ways of meeting and of thinking about meeting agendas, conferences or programming.

One of the key reasons we want to shift our relationships, aside from the experience of feeling better, working more effectively and enjoying showing up at work and projects is to focus them on achieving something meaningful and relevant in the world – maybe systemic change, maybe some smaller initiative. Otherwise, nothing happens.   We are at such a pivotal time in our human evolution on this planet, a Community of Practice will be most meaningful when we bring our relationships and collective learning  to bear on the shift we are wanting to create rather than putting up with the shift that just shows up.

Having now been in several conversations about community of practice, most recently with emerging leaders in Halifax – none of whom are following conventional career paths,  this model becomes extremely helpful in focusing on the purpose of a community of practice, especially as conversations tend to veer to one component or the other.  The power in the model is that it reminds us that each of these elements is fundamentally important to shifting patterns of work, organizations and communities, as well as individual patterns of relationship.

Communities of Practice could and will be many things – defined by the people who gather in them.  There is some core that attracts people into them – it could be creating an active practice ground in a community or organization for new skills, a safe haven in an environment that seems resistant to new work and new ways of working, an opportunity to grow individual and collective capacity.

The ones I’ve been part of seem to have an energy and magnetic attraction of their own that keep people showing up, an ease of flow and relationship, shared leadership and shared responsibility.  Nobody has to make them happen, they almost seem to make themselves happen.  They are fun.  People who show up really want to see each other, be with each other and dive into deep places within themselves and with each other.  There is some intentionality applied and the CoP is able to follow the path of emergence that points to what needs and wants to happen next to be most meaningful to work, relationships and learning.  Many of these CoPs don’t just know that something different is possible, they are beginning to demand it and showing up together, cultivating deep relationships and imagining what is possible that none of us individually might have imagined on our own while growing skills to support what we are envisioning is one way of creating movement, maybe even creating a movement.

I’ve Arrived – At Least in This Moment

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I’ve arrived.  I didn’t know this was where I was going but, now that I’m here, I can clearly see that this is where I was headed.  Feels good to have arrived.  In this moment anyway.  In the next moment, it might be different. That will be okay too because there will always be a next moment and I get that I get to create or co-create the next moment and the next.

By moment, I mean a period of time, linear time as we know it – maybe just a minute, maybe days, weeks, months or even years.  When it is a tortuous moment that goes on for awhile it doesn’t seem like this moment, it seems like an eternity.  I’ve had a few of those too. Looking back now over the course of my life, I see them for what they are – moments, in time, moments that reflect my journey and shape my life, my outlook, my wisdom and my experience.

Now, though, I seem to be in a moment of amazing open heartedness.  I’m just back from a run in my neighbourhood that takes me to a waterfront park and boardwalk and back again.  Every time I smile, nod or say hello to someone I pass, I crack open just a touch more.  And, so do they.  The moment might pass for them, but more and more I am finding this moment in my life lingering.

I like the feel of this moment.  The joy.  Delight.  Ease.  Beauty.  Love.  Flow.  Noticing my emotional state.  Noticing my reactions. Noticing where or what next to focus on in my own healing journey.  Not in the tortuous way I used to notice it.  Now it is just a noticing.  An observation.  A clue to what to pay attention to.   “Oh, look at that response.  Maybe there is something there to take a look at, a hook to release, an attachment to let go of.”  Surfacing.  Surrendering.  Swift, powerful movement arising all around me, in me, through me.

It is visible to me.  It is continuously reflected back to me because it is visible to others and I am open to receiving in whole new ways.  Some people comment.  Some just notice.  Some come closer.  Some rejoice with me.  In the people close to me, I see how much they love me and I feel how much I love them.  Feeds gratitude, appreciation and joy over and over again.

I have always believed in the Law of Attraction.  I have also understood that I have attracted even the things, people, situations I have not liked (and sometimes detested)  into my life.  Wanting to understand deeply the why of that was one of those moments of determination that led to many moments of revelation over a very long, tortuous moment in my life.

I tried to make the Law of Attraction work and at times I probably gave up – almost anyway – on being able to force it work in ways that work for me.  There are times it practically pounded me on the head while I was looking in other directions, focused on the how of things instead of the surrendering into things where truly miraculous “hows” could then show up in ways I could never have imagined.

Through the continuing journey I am learning how to allow, embrace, surrender and step into it.  Coming from a place of love, joy and delight.  Which is very different than coming at it from a place of desperation.  My favourite Law of Attraction material at the moment is Abraham-Hicks.  I have been infusing myself with their teachings.  One of the things they say is that whenever we want something, that something is actually two things – what we want and the lack of what we want.  Usually we are focused on the lack and not on what we want and we are desperately, pleadingly trying to convince ourselves, through stress and agony, we are focused on what we want.  Focusing on the lack brings, surprise, surprise, more lack.

They also say a belief is simply a thought we think over and over again.  So, I’m becoming aware of my repetitive thoughts so I can shift them and shift the shape of my life more and more to what I want.  Since really embracing this,  I am seeing and, more importantly, feeling the results.  In this moment, I’ve arrived.  I like this place.  I’m not exactly sure where I am headed next but now I know I’ll recognize it when I arrive and I know it will be even better than the place I am in in this moment – as hard as that may be for some to believe – I am aware that life, if I allow it, will only get better and better, no matter how good it is right now.

While I’m in this moment that I’ve arrived in, I’m taking some time to celebrate.  To notice flow.  To appreciate deep relationships.  To see how well cared for and nourished I am.  And maybe tomorrow, when I’m out for my run or grocery shopping or wherever my day may take me, maybe you and I will find each other, smile, nod, say hello, embrace if we actually know each other, say I love you if we are in deep relationship – and both our worlds will crack open just that much more and we will know that we have arrived – in this new moment, for the moment.

Turning to Each Other in this Time of Chaos

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My news does not, for the most part, come from mainstream media.  Long ago I stopped reading the papers and watching TV news.  Far too depressing and non-constructive.  My news comes from other sources like the Art of Hosting listserve that I am part of (and you could be too, if you aren’t already) as well as other social media like Facebook and Twitter.  I am grateful to these sources and the friends I know in each of these media for the sharing of stories and events that show us all the courage, humanity, connection and community that we all know exists beneath and beyond the news coverage.

Government and related agencies, politicians, the news media do not know what to do.  They do not know how to respond to the mounting chaos in their countries and their communities.  They do not have answers – we all know this – and they are afraid to admit it, so rely on strategies that not only don’t work but actually contribute to making the situation worse (beefing up police presence as an example).  As one person from England suggested on the AoH listserve, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone in a position of authoritative leadership would be able to see, voice and make more visible the larger patterns that are at work. Borrowing from his posting:

“We must now ask deeper questions. Why do so many young people believe it is alright to cause such destruction and distress in their communities? Whether it is ‘copycat’ activity or not, why is it happening? What does ‘community’ mean to each of us?  Across the country people are self organising, they are meeting in groups and cleaning the streets. Leaders are emerging. People are talking to each other. This is true community.”

If we are not seeing the kind of leadership we know is needed from our formal leaders, how do we continue to do this work in all the places we, ordinary people all over the place,  show up and influence where we can.  Let’s not undervalue our own systems of influence or own readiness to do what we know works – even if this is “simply” holding space, holding intention, infusing with love the situations and people we know about and the stories that touch us deeply – no matter where they or we are.

I read all the posts on what’s happening in London, Spain, Greece, Egypt, the US and other places from the perspective of ordinary citizens, friends and colleagues around the world who see the human story as it evolves, who sharpen their awareness of the relational field and the growing power to effect large scale systemic change from this place as well as individual one-on-one relationships – holding heart break and growing open heartedness, even in the chaos.  I share these stories with people I know who are not part of or even aware of these conversations.  It makes people hopeful.

My own hopeful heart continues to expand for every post I read.  There is a lot of trauma in this time but if that is what we, the world, needs to be able to see just how much the systems we have created or supported or just lived in do not work for us anymore, then we need to go through this to get to what lies on the other side.  I am imagining, working toward and living into a world and systems that emanate out of love, loyalty and community in the relational field because if we cannot turn to each other in our joy and our agony, there is no one else.  If we cannot turn to each other, we will not create systems that support life and resilience, courage and vibrancy.  If we do not turn to each other, we will live only in fear and isolation that propagates more of what we don’t want.

Everyday I experience encounters with people who are more and more ready to turn to each other, more and more ready to understand life as more than just the physical components that we see, more and more ready to embrace uncertainty and live into resilience, more and more ready to open their hearts in a time when the media reported news events might cause us to want to close our hearts and shut down, more and more ready to be intentional about shifting the shape of the world.  I am holding space for the courageous, the open hearted, the heart broken, the resilient, the cracks, openings and invitations.  I am working and writing where I can in support of a future I want to see emerge out of the chaos we are in these days.

From my heart breaking, open hearted journey to yours.

Hosting Ceremony

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What happens when what you are called into host is not actually what you’ve been called into host and every thing you think you know or have to offer of value is not what is needed? When knowledge and experience of methods, processes, theories and frameworks, though asked for, is not what will actually serve the situation or community you are hosting?

These questions, alive and vibrant, were lived into this past week in Membertou, a First Nations Community in Nova Scotia, that a team of us had been invited to, as part of an emerging leadership program for youth, to offer a three day Art of Hosting and Warrior of the Heart training. We were invited by Pawa Haiyupis from the National Centre for First Nations Governance and a team at Membertou to contribute to a program Pawa has been envisioning for 10 years, since attending her first Open Space Technology session.  We were to work with youth, elders and members of the Governance Committee.

When the Canadian Government cut funding to the NCFNG in the middle of the four week emerging leadership program the plan was thrown into chaos and the shape of our time together shifted frequently and rapidly.  Would there even be an AoH/WoH training and, if so, how many days and with whom?  Financial and energetic support was invited from a circle of eagles from around the world and from the larger Art of Hosting community to fund expenses and to be at our backs  as we hosted this work, the hosting team clearly called to be in it no matter the circumstance.

The hosting team – Bob Wing, Pawa, Sarah MacLaren, Ryan, myself and one other – convened on the beach at Mira Gut to begin our check-in in ceremony and with a little Warrior of the Heart.  Sense of spirit was strong with us and blood memories were being activated.  We asked for guidance from Creator in this work.

We did all the usual preparation for a training, including cracking our overall design and the design for day one.

Then we entered day one.  We knew as soon as we entered the space that we needed to be prepared to let go of much of what we planned as we waited the arrival of elders to begin our time together with a pipe ceremony.  The pipe ceremony was beautiful and powerful, inviting spirit and Creator to guide our path.  It had the full attention of everyone in the room no matter their age.

We followed it with Warrior of the Heart and, yes, a teaching on the chaordic path and some time in triad conversations.  In this day, we became aware of some disruptions in the field.  At the end of this day, we met with the full hosting and calling team and explored what people were sensing and what their concerns were.  We did a little teaching on divergence and convergence for this team.  We invited all questions and all concerns and also celebrated a little bit the successes of the day.  We left feeling a bit of convergence in this team and a willingness to be open to what wanted to happen the next day.

Dinner with an elder showed us that what wanted to happen the next day was ceremony and, specifically a sacred fire.  We all knew it was the right thing and in that moment the hosting team stopped designing process and shifted the most completely and fully I have ever experienced into hosting what wanted and needed to happen in this field and this community.  It wasn’t process, methods, frameworks.  It was ceremony.  Ceremony in service of this community, hosted by the elders.  Ceremony to activate blood memories. We trusted we would know in the moments following ceremony what else could be offered that would serve the community and the intention of this work well and we knew absolutely we were working with the principles of spaciousness and simplicity.

Host team check-ins are always an integral part of any Art of Hosting training and usually serve the design process.  In some ways, they became the design process.  Deep check in.  Clearing and understanding our field.  Strong pull to meditation and other ceremony morning and night to keep intention and presence clear and strong.

We know we were hosted in ceremony by this beautiful community.  We know we also hosted, but exactly what is a little less clear.  We know something happened in this community that would not have happened if we had not been there.  We know something happened in us – individually and collectively – that would not have happened if we had not been there.

I find myself in contemplation of ceremony and the guidance of Creator.  I find myself in a deeper exploration of the non-physical world and the allowing of my gifts to emerge and flourish with new knowing and fuller surrender to what wants to be guided through me.  In the letting go of expectations and any need to show “expertise” in this group and this community, I know we were more fully available in the co-hosting and co-creating of the space.  Sometimes simply being allows things to emerge that might not otherwise.  I am wondering how that informs all my hosting work and feel the invitation to work more and more from this place of surrender, trust and “just” holding space.

As Pawa said, “the teachings are still percolating and the brew smells delicious. More to report on as the teachings are digested.”
A deep bow to the community, the team and the field that held us so well in this journey.

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.

High Performance Result of Human Transitions

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In my last post I wrote about the fundamental discontinuity between good and exceptional organizational performance, after hearing a talk given by Ray Ivany, President and Vice-Chancellor of Acadia University.  That post focused more on the systems side of performance and this one focuses more on the people side of high performance.

High performance organizations are filled with great human beings, not dysfunctional ones and not dysfunctional dynamics – which doesn’t mean that things don’t sometimes get messy. Creating a culture of high performance means paying attention to the “soft skills” of leadership and human dynamics and learning to deal with the messiness before it becomes dysfunction.

Ray Ivany commented, “If you ignore the transitions people need to go through, you will not get to high performance.”  He suggested that in the book Good to Great, Collins overrates leadership and underrates the human transitions people need to make, not just in their professional lives but in their personal lives as well.

The culture in many workplaces supports a fundamental separation of self: “please do not bring your whole self, just bring the part you need to get your job done.  We will all pretend that professional growth is isolated from personal growth and we’ll just focus on that part. And when we don’t get the best out of you, we will just assume it’s because you are lazy, are just putting the time in and really don’t want to take any initiative.”

But take a good look around: People do not wake up in the morning desiring to put in mediocre performance; most people are thirsting for a deeper meaning in their work and believe it is unachievable, believe their initiative is not welcome and so they leave a part of themselves at the door, trying to collect it at the end of the day when they go home.

Too many rules in our organizations – the stated and the unstated – create the conditions that make it extremely difficult to tap into the full potential of our people.  And when we do put the toe of empowerment in the water and are met with resistance we withdraw it quickly rather than persevering.  We often do not support people in transition, we make it more difficult for them to navigate it.

It is the job of the leader(s) to create the environment and set the conditions that allow people to do extraordinary work.  People need help in unlocking the part of the heads and their hearts they cannot get to themselves.  Leaders create these conditions by lightening up on the rules and instead providing clarity and context.  With clarity and context people have enough freedom and flexibility to be responsive to the needs and requests of others and the organization. and to do it in ways that make sense to them.

As a leader, in order to do that well, you need to be in fundamental alignment with the core of who you are and your values. The greater your own personal integrity and center, the easier it is to let people run with their own ideas.  With the right conditions, things you could never dream will emerge in the most delightful and unexpected ways.

This kind of emergence is not likely to happen in organizations that reject failure.  The one thing we are assured off as we move toward higher performance is more failure.  That may be counter-intuitive but failure is where creativity and innovation often meet.  Creating a culture that makes it safe for people in your organization to fail for the sake of learning with no blame attached is a component of high performance organizations.

Where and how does the shape of your leadership need to shift in order to support your organization in a quest for exceptional performance?  What systems can you put in place that allow your people to become the best they can be – an integrated human being showing up in the fullness of who they are ready to offer more than most imagine possible