Death and Dying – Lessons I Learned From My Mother

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

Never having been present at a death before, I didn’t know what to expect; and, it wasn’t what I expected. My brother, father and I held vigil, practically holding our collective breath, as my mother, Mary Patricia Ann Ritcey Jourdain, drew her last, peaceful breaths on Wednesday, February 8, 2012, falling quiet at 12:30 pm.

Then there was silence. Her silence. No more rattling breaths drawn with some effort through her lungs into her ravaged body; ravaged from dementia for many years and the refusal to eat for many months.

Our silence. In reverence for my mother, her journey and the honour of witnessing the final stages of her transition from physical form into spirit. I already believed much of her consciousness was active in the subtle realms even as her physical presence diminished. With her last breaths I imagined her spirit gently tugging until the last wisps of it were finally released into a delightful little dance of joy and freedom.

My mother’s journey with dementia was a long one. My journey through hers was an inspired one. Her greatest teachings for me may have been in these last few years when she could no longer string coherent sentences together, during the contrast of those times when she seemed to have no awareness of my presence to when I knew she was aware I was there.

I had one of those moments of her awareness the night before she died. We had moved her to a special room where I could stay with her overnight. One of her medication times was missed. I was aware of that but she didn’t seem to be in distress. So, I sat on the arm of the couch, eye level with my mom. I looked into her blue eyes and she held my gaze.

When I say she held my gaze, I really mean she held my gaze. She was just as present as I was. In fact, I was mesmerized. I couldn’t take my gaze away.

So, I talked to her. I told her about some things in my life. I told her how beautiful she is – not was, is. I told her how gifted she is and how loved. I thanked her for being in my life, for being my mom. Mostly, I held her gaze with love. Until she began to exhibit signs of distress and I went for the nurse. And then she was gone again until the moment of her final breath.

Four of us still in the room but now the shape of our lives fundamentally shifted. As long as we stayed sitting in the room, it was like she was still there in her emaciated form. But, of course, now she was free of form. Eventually we had to move and leave her next steps in the capable hands of the Harbourview Haven staff who would transfer her into the equally capable hands of the Dana L. Sweeny Funeral Home.

The staff at Harbourview Haven taught me about human dignity and respect through how they related to my mother. Even up to the last moment, they treated my mother as if she was fully present and aware. They called her by her name. In the middle of the night they would come into our room. “Mary,” they’d say, “We’re going to turn you over now.” “Mary, we are going to give you your meds now. It might sting a little.”

On the morning of her death, a care worker came in to wash her face and freshen her up, providing a depth of love and care, dignity and respect to a woman in her last moments on this physical plane. I can’t say enough for Harbourview Haven and the care they provided, not just in those last few hours but in the three years and eight months (plus a few days) that my mother lived there. And not just care for her. Care for my dad too. For our family. They understand about death and dying. That it is a process and a transition.

My nine year old understands about death and dying. Enough to ask to visit his grandmother with me when I told him I was going to see her. He hadn’t been there much lately. I told him what his grandmother looked like and how she was. He still wanted to come, even when the call came to say it might be her last day. And his older brother and his girlfriend came too. We all sat vigil the day before she died, for hours. Watching my mother with sidelong looks every time her breathing stopped – for the eternity that shows up in a moment.

I am now aware that dying and death requires the same kind of loving care and attention as birth does. It is birth. Birth back to spirit.

When my older boys were young children their grandfather on their father’s side died. Their dad and I had already separated. They went to the funeral and afterwards I asked them how it was. We began to talk about death. They said to me, “We think it’s kind of like this. You know when you dream and when you are in the middle of a dream it seems real? But then you wake up and you know it was just a dream. We think life is like that. It’s really just a dream but it seems real. Then you die, but really it’s like waking up and realizing it was just a dream.” Such wisdom out of the mouths of babes. Closer to source.

I wonder how my mother might be reflecting on the 79 year dream that was her life as Mary Patricia Ann Ritcey Jourdain this time around?

Hosting Lessons from the Field – Dancing with Design Flow in Brazil

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

How many of us have had the opportunity to enter into hosting a day or a training (Art of Hosting style) without any design for the day, completely sensing into what is needed in the moment and fluidly dancing with five other hosts with offerings to meet what was emerging in the field moment by moment? How would you meet that invitation? Excitement? Trepidation? Both and anything in between?

It is one thing to do this on your own or with one other person as Bob Wing and I did last summer in work we’d been invited into that turned into Hosting Ceremony. It is a whole other thing to do it with a new hosting team constellation of six of us on the third and last day of working together – in this case for the first Warrior of the Heart training completed in Brazil in January 2012.

Warrior of the Heart is the work of Toke Moeller and Bob Wing coming out of many opportunities they had to jam together combining Art of Hosting and Aikido practices and principles. Playing together they imagined Warrior of the Heart training into being. I’d participated in a couple of Warrior of the Heart trainings – on Bowen Island in August 2010 and then at Windhorse Farm in Nova Scotia just this last October, 2011 with my 9 year old son. I’d also had the chance to work with Bob where Warrior of the Heart became a component of the Art of Hosting training we were delivering.

In September 2011, after the Art of Hosting training in Porto Alegre, Brazil that I’d been co-hosting, Thomas Ufer, Najara Thamiz and I sat down with Jose Bueno and crafted an invitation to Bob and Toke to bring Warrior of the Heart to Brazil for the first time to seed the field for more and build the ground for the amazing expansion of the Art of Hosting and social change movements happening there.

Working with a larger hosting team for a training the two of them were used to offering on their own invited Bob and Toke to some new learning edges. They invited the rest of us to go there right along with them. There was already a huge reservoir of trust in our hosting field even before we began. We built on it during our preparation and hosting time together. On our last day, it was Toke who invited us into the dance of hosting together without an agreed to advance plan.

I felt in me my own skepticism at the invitation which arrived after morning practice, before breakfast, where we had actually invoked this flow already. I really wasn’t sure how it would work and whether we would all find our own place to play in this day – but I was willing to step into the challenge – because with this team there was nothing to lose and lots to gain.

As the six of us stood in a tight circle on the stone patio outside the training building, a staff was in the centre with the challenge of who would take it first and offer something to the group to begin our day. Silence. A deep collective breath or two. I could feel the tremble in me. Another breath and then I reached for the staff.

I had been preparing during our time together to do a teach with the sword – in this case the wooden representation of the sword – a bokken. Bob had been coaching me. Perhaps because I was preparing to step into the challenge of a teach on something I was still very much learning myself, I had taken Bob’s feedback and coaching in in a whole new way, embodying the teaching and the sword movements with more fluidity and confidence than I ever remembered feeling. I had been preparing for a teach and this was apparently the moment it would be offered.

I started the teach – the four directions – and forgot how to do the step to turn from one direction to another. Without being hard on myself, I asked Bob to step in and help — and he did because he had my back. All six of us had each other’s backs and none of us needed to shine or take up too much space and yet we were all invited to offer our brilliance when we felt the call.

It was the beginning of a rich dance that included all six of us throughout the day. The experience was playful and fun and ended with a touching and powerful ceremony.

Raising the Sword in the Warrior of the Heart (Brazil 2012) Closing Circle

The willingness to let go of control and design flowed into the Brazil Stewards Gathering that followed the Warrior of the Heart – in its own way and to its own degree because, of course, the team and the circumstances were different. But the fluidity of the dance was just as hesitant and joyful in its own way.

I’ve been reflecting on what makes this kind of dance possible? One is definitely trust in the individuals and the collective of the team – knowing that each individual is there to serve the good of the whole and with no need to shine on an individual basis – although, as I mentioned above, of course each person does shine because of the gifts they have to offer in service of the whole.

A sense of knowing when what I have to offer as an individual is exactly what is needed now. This is a complete dance with the subtle energies, with intuitive capacity. The courage to offer it when it is called. A certain level of trust or confidence in my own skills and abilities. A willingness to let other people shine in their mastery or even in their apprenticeship.

It takes a certain level of maturity in each individual, the team and even in the field.

Would I want to completely free flow it every time? I don’t think so. Every situation requires us to be tuned into what is wanting and needing to happen. Different situations will call out different things. And many situations invite a free flowing of design and offerings to different degrees. I and we are already practiced with working with emergence. Practicing to this degree honed my skill and my sensing capacity and invited me into new levels of mastery. It is embodied in a new way. It will always be with me – and with each of us.

Having had the opportunity to host immediately after this experience, I know it’s in me in a new way and for that I am grateful. Looking forward to the next opportunity to dance in the ultimate emergent design – and to all the other variations of that that will show up along the way. Thanks Toke for the invitation and to Thomas, Narjara, Jose and Bob for being willing to dance the beautiful dance that shifted the shape of my hosting experience to new depth.

The Voice of the Judge

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

There is no more powerful limiting mechanism in our lives than the voice of the judge. I don’t mean that other person – parent, spouse, child, teacher, boss, friend, co-worker,random stranger on the street or in the shopping mall. It’s the internal voice of judgment or internal critic that often runs rampant inside of us that we barely notice, if at all, because it is so clever and really good at disguising itself – for self preservation really.

I first became intimately acquainted with my inner judge in 2008-09 during coaching work with Sarita Chawla. She recommended I read Soul Without Shame by Byron Brown in addition to the work we were doing together. I will forever recognize this as a pivotal point in the shifting shape of my journey. I wrote about the voice of the judge back then in an article. I am reviving that article here now in an updated version because it is the season of amplification. My inner critic is activated – obvious to me because of how I feel – and I am reminding myself of strategies I already know that help to deactivate it and release its grip on me.

When I first became aware of the force of the internal judge, I had been working with the concepts of self-leadership and hosting oneself for almost as long as I could remember – still do, of course. I worked with coaches, read books, did courses, took part in and led deep group work. I am generally a positive, optimistic person holding deep appreciation and gratitude for much of what transpires in my life and who shows up. I have transformed negative self talk into more appreciative forms of self talk and into periods of quiet in my mind. I meditate and practice other forms of reflection and mindfulness.

So, imagine my surprise when I discovered a voice of self judgment and self criticism that was booming loud and clear in my unconsciousness, stronger than any external voice of judgment or criticism could possibly be. This voice constantly set the bar for my performance at the best that I had ever achieved. The bar moved if I did better. When I didn’t match my most excellent performance, even when I did extremely good work, this voice told me that I had failed, that I did not measure up and that I never would on a consistent basis. Strong performance was interpreted as mediocre. Criticisms from others, whether justified or not, was reinforced by this inner critic.

When I felt most down on myself or just down in general, this voice played a significant role – and still can in moments I feel most overwhelmed or vulnerable – until I expose it. I didn’t actually hear it as a voice until I began to listen for it but I felt it strongly in many forms: sadness, unhappiness, melancholy, anger, listlessness, lack of motivation and many other emotional manifestations.

While I had been aware of this voice (or at least the emotions it manifested in) to some extent, I also prided myself on my journey of self-transformation and change. Been there, got that medal, surely I must be done now, can I just get on with my life and success? I realize now it was the voice of self judgment that said, “You’ve been doing this long enough, how come you’re not done?”

Part of the reason I had been pretty oblivious to this voice was because, in my quest to be calm and serene and professional, I skirted over my own emotional reactions. I barely recognized I had them except in the odd instances where they overtook me. Oh, was that an emotion that wasn’t calm and serene? Oops. Nope. Couldn’t have been. It must have been something else.

Then, a friend told me I deal with my emotions intellectually. So, I thought about that. And I thought my friend just might be right. Emotions don’t reside in our intellect. They reside in our bodies. We feel them and sense them. We use metaphors to describe them. We say things like, “That packed a punch!” If we stop to notice, we will notice where it feels like we got punched. And if we stay with that, we will begin to notice the impact. And if we stay with it longer, we will notice the uncomfortableness and want to move onto something else. This is where I am learning to stop. I have learned to stay with it longer, until I can begin to discern the wisdom that is held there and that can only emerge when we give it an escape hatch to surface to the light.

It is in these moments that my voice of self judgment has come booming out at me in all of its voraciousness. With all good intentions, all it wants to do is protect me – from failure, from being unlovable. But its methods only serve to reinforce for me my failures, even to the extent of turning successes into failures, thus creating in my mind my own unlovability and unwantability. I have also become aware through the Law of Attraction and the teachings of Abraham that this voice of the judge interferes with flow, abundance and allowing the full vibrancy of life.

I learned to journal in this voice. I am astounded by the punch it does pack. Periodically I sit and check inside of me to sense into what I’m experiencing and feeling and what the impact is. I journal what I am sensing until I feel done. Then I check in again to see what I am experiencing, sensing and feeling, and then journal again. And then again, if that seems required. I am committed to going the next layer deep and the next until I feel the light flood back into my soul and I feel a lightness of spirit and of body. This is what I want to amplify in my life now.

Exposing my voice of self-judgment transmutes it into a gift of understanding and insight after which joy can once again arise and take more of the space that is its, and my own, rightful due. Now, instead of seeing my journey as one that should be concluded and being hard on myself because it is not, I see my journey and myself with a gentleness I could not access before as it was hidden underneath the protective layer of the voice of judgment. I have always known, intellectually, that learning and growth is a life long journey. Now I know it and accept it with a graciousness that only comes from the light. It is a good reminder in this season of amplification.

Turning to Each Other in this Time of Chaos

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

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.

The Art of Stewarding

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

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.

Victimhood, Survivorship – Two Sides of the Same Hook

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

Me In My Meditation Tree

This morning, on my run, I had a revelation. I wasn’t particularly looking for a revelation – it just showed up. The power of it could have knocked me over – except it fully formed when I was sitting in my meditation tree in my back yard after my run – and it definitely brought tears flowing as I felt release from a long held story. The revelation? The story of survivorship is inextricably tethered to the story of victimhood.

I haven’t thought much about being a survivor over the last year as I have mostly felt joy in this new phase of my life. On my run, I was feeling joy and inspiration, alive and vibrant, connecting to nature in the unseen ways that nature is also alive and vibrant. Feeling really good. Reflecting on events of the last week and a half that had me off my ground and my centre and then the three conversations/events that brought me back to my centre and a feeling of being myself.

One of my friends offered me, very bluntly, an acknowledgement of the victim threads buried in the story I wrote to her. It highlighted it so brilliantly at first I was startled and then I laughed to see the truth of it. And seeing the truth of it released it.

As I reflected on this experience this morning I realized I have lived into a story of survivorship probably most of my life, even before I was old enough to be consciously aware that that’s what I did. I survived the story of my birth (a story for another time), growing up in a small town (only half a joke), two divorces, an ectopic pregnancy, job loss under crazy and difficult circumstances, starting a company, merging businesses, separating businesses, difficult and challenging personal and work relationships. After all, the other choice was to be a victim. And God forbid that I would ever be a victim. I will always rise up and overcome whatever challenge shows up on my path. I am a survivor. I am strong. I am resilient. And this is all good.

Except, of course, for my little revelation this morning. In order for the survivor story to be alive and well in me, the victim story is also alive and well but buried deep. Victim and survivor are contrasting sides the same story – two sides of the same hook. If it is only a choice between these two things, then of course, I want to be a survivor. But if the survivor story is alive and well in me, even if I have lost conscious awareness of it, then in order to be a survivor, I must attract circumstances and challenges to myself so I can continue to live into the story of being a survivor.

The core of the revelation: without those challenges I am neither victim or survivor. There are not just two choices. There are a myriad of choices. I can live into my life, path and purpose with freedom, joy, love, eagerness and enthusiasm. I can still attract growth and contrast to my life, but they don’t need to be challenges. They can be offerings from which I can choose the path that path serves the joyful, delightful core that is calling me. I can accept, allow, receive. How much more powerful is that than choosing only between victim and survivor but to release that hook and choose a completely different story and unfolding of my life as this new phase is just getting started.

Deeply grateful to friends, to nudges along the path and the beautiful shifting shape of my life, relationships and work that has only just begun. Hungry for more. Ready for more.

Reflections on the Art of Collaborative Leadership

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Kathy Jourdain

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

Intergenerational Composition

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

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

Hosting the Energetic Component

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strategic Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meeting the Stranger Within

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Kathy Jourdain

You know the stranger within before it is a stranger, when you are very young, before you learn concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. Before you build the constructs around yourself that become essential to your survival – shaping your life so that you fit in, to make people happy – particularly your parents and other figures in your life you look up to or depend upon for survival at a young age.

As a baby, toddler and child, you learn it is not safe to expose this inner being, that somehow it is a threat – usually to others around you. You begin to hide it and so begins the journey of the stranger. You seek it out less often and then you forget where you hid it or how to unbury it, for a long, long time.

This being has shifted into a stranger and you come to believe this stranger within lurks in the shadows. Because you believe this, you are afraid, deeply afraid, of what you might find if you seek it out. After all, others were afraid of it so so should you be. You spend much of your life trying to thwart the stranger, running from your fear instead of facing it. In so doing you create more shadow obscuring the stranger within even more.

Every now and then, the stranger finds an opening and bubbles to the surface. You glimpse it but it is so unlike what you are expecting, you don’t recognize it. Maybe you have been inspired or encouraged by it and now want to find it, but it is elusive. You find it hard to believe that this stranger you have glimpsed lives in the shadows so you begin to look everywhere for it but where it actually lives.

You look to others to validate you and your experiences. You compare yourself to others. You, on occasion, take false joy in your journey because you can measure your progress and success – externally. But deep inside the stranger is rumbling, calling to you, sometimes gently, sometimes with a strength and persistence that rattles your cage. It is trying to guide you but you cannot hear it, cannot feel it except for the deep tremble you interpret as fear.

You believe the stranger is the one that causes your actions to be incongruent with who you fundamentally believe you are – which just proves to you that what lies at the core must be in shadow and is not to be trusted.

These things happen in your life, conspire even, to force you on a journey to discover the stranger, or as Anais Nin puts it: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” It becomes time to intentionally shift the shape of who you are and how you show up in your own life.

As you take those first tentative steps to know the stranger, you step into the shadow and you discover that maybe, just maybe the stranger does not live in the shadow. That this stranger you have feared is at the core of all your failings, all your struggles, all our misguided actions, maybe that stranger is an illusion conjured up by the shadow you have both created and feared to keep you from the exploration of the real stranger – intended to keep you and the stranger safe but instead causing you countless struggles and detours along the way.

Stepping into the shadows is a necessary step to passing through the shadows to where the stranger actually resides – at your core, not in the dark but in a light that is ready to shine brilliantly as you brush away the shadow you no longer need, need to fear or need to build.

Some of the fear and the tremble that shows up is in the knowing that to allow this stranger to walk with power and strength in your life may require changes in your life and your lifestyle, changes in your relationships and changes in you. What you need to let go of to allow your full essence to come into being. These are often not easy shifts to make because they involve other people and they involve you, your notions of who you are, who you think you are and who you are capable and deserving of becoming.

The real stranger is no stranger at all. It is the incredibly gifted, talented, beautiful, authentic soul residing inside of each of us, including and especially you, waiting for the opportunities, the growth, the courage, the love and the joy to burst out in full bloom.

This is what the step into the darkness will expose – that it is actually a step into the light, a journey to the core to the stranger remembered, not as a stranger but as a gift, a friend, an essential self. What is the courage you need to meet the stranger within?

Can Large Organizations Navigate The Shifting Shape of the World?

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Kathy Jourdain

Can large organizations (including government) that have an abundance of structure and control actually navigate the shifting shape of the world and survive? Are they even aware of the degree of shifting that is going on in the world and and the need to dramatically reformat structures, processes and ways of thinking? I’m not even sure they need to be large or have too much control. Maybe we are just stuck in old ways of doing things and can’t imagine it might not be possible to simply tweak what we do to survive.

I didn’t realize the intensity with which I have been sitting with this question until now as I find it bursting out of me thanks to the conversations I have been in with people from around the world over the last six months and the reading that I’ve been doing lately. I don’t think this question was even formulated in my mind but I could feel it working in my being, nudging me this way and that, puckering my brow in moments of concentration, confusion and curiosity contrasted with moments of complete openness and open heartedness – taking it all in, beginning to congeal in the most unexpected ways – for me anyway.

The congealing factors seem to be the book I’m reading by Nick Bilton: I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works and a video on the younger generations and how they experience life and work: We All Want to Be Young.

Bilton writes that “a universal brand is not enough for today’s consumers”, “people will pay for well-packaged offerings – even in the face of free alternatives” and “it is evident that the smaller start-up companies are innovating and pushing the boundaries… They are listening to their customers and creating content that customers are willing to pay for and delivering it to the devices where they want to enjoy it.” This is in his first chapter on bunnies, markets and bottom line, porn leads the way. He does write about other things in this book – texting, video games, how communication is changing, storytelling.

Quite frankly, I was surprised to find myself reading about the porn industry but his points really hit home for me. Bricks and mortar will have a hard time being responsive to what their customers are looking for. The new economy is open source and crowd sourcing. Businesses that have made a living off of protected content and protected product development will find themselves hugely challenged as a result of the new economy. They will — they are — losing their relevance and many are losing their margins on the bottom line.

We have been saying for a long time that our systems – financial, health care, education – are falling apart and/or not serving us well anymore. But we are stuck. We don’t know how to shift the systems and, it is really beginning to dawn on me, maybe they are not shiftable. Maybe they really will collapse before any real shift can take place. I don’t know for sure, but when I think about how technology has shifted the marketplace and made information accessible with a few clicks of the mouse, it is hard for me to imagine how large organizations and systems can actually gain the resiliency necessary to navigate the complexities and the simplicities of the shifting shape of this world.

Organic, emergent networks – like social media, the Art of Hosting, the World Cafe, Berkana – are shifting the shape of how we are in relationship with others and with goods and services. Smaller, innovative organizations know how to tap into these networks in ways that leave larger organizations in the dust.

There is still a big question about how some of these smaller organizations or networks will make money but there are all kinds of conversations going on about money systems, gift economies and finding other ways to recognize or exchange value. It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of a debit card seemed far fetched to me and now I have a few of them in my wallet. Just because I can’t see it or imagine how it would work doesn’t mean it isn’t already on its way.

And, we are underestimating our youth. They represent new language and new behaviours. The way they think has been influenced by technology in ways that older generations cannot comprehend. Instead of really paying attention to how they will shift the shape of the world, they are discounted as are their values and their work ethic. But we are trying to fit them into systems designed for a different time (as this video on educational paradigms so beautifully illustrates) and then faulting them for failing to conform. They gravitate to networks and social innovation. They are the most plural youth in history with extended social networks. Traditional career plans and structures are losing strength as the younger generations seek to unite work and pleasure, not in hedonistic ways but in pragmatic and realistic ways, looking to make small dreams possible. They are already shifting the shape of the world. How will large organizations navigate these shifts successfully? Is it even possible?

In my next blog, I will write about the emergent, networked organizations and initiatives that I am either part of or know a bit about because I’m connected to people who are connected to them – like Art of Hosting, Berkana, World Cafe, the Oasis Game, Swaraj University. All of these networks are modeling new ways of organizing and working in the world. I’m believing that there are huge lessons in them for new business models and when I tell stories about these networks it is often in this context. When I even begin to sniff the possibility of new business models I get excited although I’m not yet sure what they will look like but look forward to co-evolving a few of these over the next few years.

ShapeShift

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

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