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PEGGY HOLMAN
Preparing to Mix and Match Methods
Great leaders are identified by their ability to perceive the nature of the game and the rules by which it is played as they are playing it. In other words, the act of sense making is discovering the new terrain as you are inventing it.
—Brian Arthur
A question that often arises when working with whole system change is: Can you use multiple methodologies together? While the simple answer is yes, the practical answer is much more involved. Mastering the art of blending and innovating new practices looks easy on the surface, yet it is a lifetime’s work.
The work begins with preparation. Preparation is vital because change work affects people’s lives and livelihoods. It is an awesome responsibility to support organizations and communities who wish to engage people in shaping their future. We, as practitioners, do so by creating “containers,” energetic and psychic spaces that support people in learning and working well together. Well-prepared containers are grounded in purpose, engage a relevant diversity of participants, and involve mindfully chosen processes and environments that serve the purpose and people well.1 Such containers “create circumstances in which democracy breaks out, environments in which it just happens.”2 They enable people to take control of their own situations, compelling facilitators and traditional leaders to move more and more out of the way. As projects involve more people and larger systems, the stakes get higher and the choices more complex.
With growing complexity, mixing and matching methods calls practitioners to act with a unique combination of respect, audacity, and humility that comes from being comfortable with oneself. Well-prepared designs for complex situations open to and hold the dynamic tensions between individuals and collectives and their needs for reflection and action (figure 1). Blending methods requires skills for sensing into the underlying energies of a roomful of people, an organization, a community, or a culture. It involves knowing the principles that inform the individual methods so that resulting designs are an alchemical mix of the individual and collective, reflection and action, such that desired outcomes emerge. At their core, good blends engage people and systems in communications that connect them to ideas, to each other, and to some larger sense of the whole system. Blend mastery is rooted in knowledge and experience in designing processes that creatively use the natural tensions among these forces. The range of skills required is one reason that whole system change consultants rarely work alone. While the challenges preparing for this work may seem daunting, it is extremely rewarding and exciting to learn and grow in this field. For those called to do it, there is really nothing quite like it. And the good news is that there are plenty of smaller, less-complex opportunities for learning the craft.
Figure 1. Blend Mastery: The Dance of Dynamic Tensions
What’s Involved in Mastering the Art of Blending Methods?
Using our own experiences and interviews by Steven Cady’s graduate students, ten seasoned practitioners told us about their practices for integrating change processes. We asked them:
• When do you consider bringing multiple methods to a situation?
• How do you decide what to use?
• What do you need to know to blend methods successfully?
Whatever their background, the answers to all three questions were consistent. If you want to mix and match methods, you need to prepare in profound ways. They suggested three forms of preparation (figure 2):
• Know the situation
• Know the processes
• Know yourself
Figure 2. Preparing to Mix and Match
Only then are you ready to mix and match—and perhaps move beyond mixing and matching to fluid creativity in the moment.
KNOW THE SITUATION
While the underlying patterns are common, every situation is unique. Fundamental to the work, whether one or many methods are involved, is getting clear about the desired outcomes, who should participate, and how to engage them. Large group events may be the sizzle, however, the vast majority of the effort happens before anyone steps into the room and continues long after they leave. A clear understanding of the whole situation equips practitioners to determine what method or methods can best serve.
When bringing multiple approaches to the project, many consultants do not always name the processes they use. They start by becoming intimate with the issues and their context—the culture, history, power dynamics, underlying patterns, and dissonances. They seek understanding of the true interests of the people asking for support. They draw people out by asking questions and sharing stories. What is the heart of the situation? Why do they care? This richer, more nuanced understanding creates a strong foundation for exploring possible approaches.
Sense the Energy and Dynamics for Insight into Fit
As important as the practical details of the situation—what’s going on, who’s involved, and what outcomes they want to achieve—what’s unspoken but rather discerned intuitively also informs the practitioner about the fit between situation and methods. Without calling methods by name, simply describing how the work might play out, a seasoned practitioner and client explore the match among need, culture, and approach. It is an art, finding the learning edge where people are not necessarily comfortable but are willing to play. This cocreative dance ultimately leads to choices made from the head and the heart.
One last aspect to remember in any design: The specifics are rarely more than a tentative road map for implementation. Life is sure to get in the way. For many practitioners, that’s where the “juice” is—and where opportunities arise for mixing, matching, and process innovation.
A Story: Change in a Complex Context
Follow Chris Corrigan3 and Lyla Brown, and their process choices to reach an almost invisible community:
In 2005, the federal, provincial, and municipal governments in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, came together to create an Urban Development Agreement to address inner-city issues including poverty and homelessness. To engage with the urban aboriginal community, we used an appreciative frame to tap and build on assets and we implemented it using ToP’s Focused Conversations, Open Space, and World Café. These methodologies were chosen to serve four areas of practice: opening—cracking the veneer for what really matters; inviting—connecting people and drawing them into the process; holding—creating the conditions for emergence; and grounding—aligning resources, and creating and supporting action.
To open, we invited our government clients to invest their hearts, asking, “Why does this engagement with the aboriginal community matter to you personally?” We also asked members of the community what was most important to them, and as a result, we built a substantial amount of Coast Salish cultural protocol and process into our work.
The way you invite Coast Salish First Nations people is very complicated. My partner is of Squamish and Cowichan ancestry and active in traditional venues. She went right to the streets and took her time. One afternoon, she spent two hours sitting with a couple of guys outside the Salvation Army trading songs. After that, she handed them a hundred invitations, and they said, “Yeah, yeah, for sure we’ll hand these out.” They were our biggest boosters. They went all over, handing out invitations to people and telling them they ought to check out this lady they met who knew all these songs. We also contacted people one on one, asking how their communities wanted to be engaged. Using that information, we structured focused conversations to explore economic, physical and environmental, and social issues.
The first day, two people showed up. With all the work we had done, and all the invitations distributed, we had two people show up. Now, I’m cool with that because we started at zero and we went to two. I’m looking at exponential growth. The government people are looking at sheer numbers, so two people are not a lot with all the time and money we put into this. But we knew that these two people were connectors—advocates for street people—with deep, deep connections in the homeless community. The conversations started with objective questions: “What are the economic issues?” then reflective questions: “Can you tell me some stories about this?” followed by interpretive questions: “What might happen to change this?” and then decisional questions: “If we were to use this process to affect things, what will we do?” The outcome was a list of priorities made from the heart. One idea was “Cedar Village,” a cultural precinct like a Chinatown, a living community with economic activity, health centers, and social gathering places.
On the second day of focused conversations, six people came and talked about traditional uses of food—growing food in community plots, harvesting wild foods and importing them from all over Vancouver Island into Victoria. On the third day, we had ten people, and the government sponsors realized that we now had a cadre of community leaders with whom they had not previously worked and who had amazing ideas and commitment. The number one change we achieved was activating previously untapped local leadership.
The practice of holding—creating and maintaining the conditions of emergence—continued as the invitation went out for a community feast and gathering, a cultural tradition. The gathering, which lasted two days, featured an Open Space on the first day, with 100 people participating through the day. The community created its agenda and talked about its issues, moving into planning around issues such as the Cedar Village concept.
The last day, we grounded the work with a World Café, asking the 45 community services and homeless folks who came, “How do we make sure that this work stays off the shelf and that stuff happens?” In the end, a small committee of people volunteered to ensure that ideas would stay alive.
When the Urban Development Agreement was signed, it began a five-year process of getting “stuff” done. Our work contributed a few high-impact, emergent ideas aimed at addressing complex issues: Cedar Village, food production, local governance conversations, and a few other tangible, community-driven, community-owned projects supported by many levels of government. The conversation continues in Victoria within the community and with government partners.
When asked why they selected the specific processes they used, Chris Corrigan responded:
We chose to use these processes for a number of reasons. For the preliminary conversations and the focus groups, the Focused Conversations methodology allowed us to develop a consistent framework for guiding both interviews and focus groups. It tends to work well with a short time period, moving through the four phases of conversation to come to deeper decision points faster. For the community gathering on the first day, we used Open Space Technology to open the agenda to community members. Day two was conducted using The World Café in order to develop ideas that would ensure the community’s voice would continue to be heard in the process. We chose World Café over a traditional Open Space action planning process because we were most interested in focused conversation that would propagate ideas quickly throughout the room. We built the day as a feast, and advice that we had from community members caused us to build conscious feast protocol into the day. Food was provided and participants were gifted with blankets for their involvement in the gathering. We opened with a prayer from Elder Skip Dick and opening comments from Chief Andy Thomas of Esquimault, who implored us to take careful notes of what the community was saying and to not let the energy of the gathering wane. We concluded day two with a celebration of the local community, including Métis jigging and songs from Victoria’s Unity Drum Group.
KNOW THE PROCESSES
More than any other advice, every practitioner interviewed emphasized knowing the theory and practice of each method as designed before blending anything. What does it do well? How does it work in this situation? How might it blend with other methods being considered? What is your affinity for it? Susan Dupre put it this way:
Before mixing and blending, live the methods, make sure they are in your bones, your tissues, in the cells of your body so they’re not a bunch of activities.4
For many practitioners, the principles behind the methods become a life practice. They cease to be discrete processes. As Chris Corrigan said:
Align who you are and what you are doing with the methods. They will change you if you do them enough. What you’re doing is NOT integrating methodologies. Instead you are simply embodying the kind of change you want to see. You come to each situation fresh. If you focus on integrating methods, you’ve taken your eyes off of what you are doing.5
It is a bit like language acquisition. Acquiring a fourth or fifth tongue becomes simpler because there is an intuitive grasp of some deeper pattern. As practitioners integrate more essential practices into themselves, they tap an underlying stream of why things work—the social psychology of emergent systems. From this foundation, it is possible to wisely bring together different processes.
“Living the methods” is a deeply rewarding challenge, like living one’s values or sustaining a spiritual practice in the midst of everyday life or immersing yourself in a different culture. Blending them is something of a cross-cultural experience.
Work With the Underlying Principles
Just as learning what another culture values prepares us to be good neighbors, working with the principles that underpin the processes helps practitioners discern the likelihood of a good relationship between them. Principles inform practitioners of the synergies and tensions among methods, supporting them in deducing what might happen when used together—something that is not always easy to predict! For example, practitioner Kenoli Oleari considers the connection between Future Search and Robert Fritz’s work:
Principles give me a framework from which to hang the practical work of design and facilitation…. For instance there is an underlying conceptual flow behind Future Search [that] inform[s] the various stages and the progression of the group dynamic…. The past-present-future-common ground-action pattern … parallels Robert Fritz’s patterns for human creativity…. Notice that Fritz addresses individual creativity and Future Search addresses community creativity. “Getting” the principles can help us make these bridges between levels of development…. In all the work we do, things are taking place at all these levels and need to be attended to at all these levels. It is instructive and hugely useful to see the intersections, how principles compare and apply at different levels, and to understand the interactivity.6
A Story: Creating the Metalogue Conference
Principle-based blending is a skill to be cultivated. In the beginning, it is an experiment of bringing together different elements that seem to fit based on their underlying principles, and learning by doing. Here’s an example of what can happen:
In 1997, Christoph Mandl,7 Hanna Mandl, and Markus Hauser8 participated in the 15th Annual International Conference of Organisation Transformation (OT)—the first Open Space conference in Central Europe. The meeting left them wanting a different quality of communication in the community meetings and the workshops. They used their experience as dialogue facilitators, the inspiration from participating in Harrison Owens’s OT conference and Juanita Brown’s World Café. Joined by three other Austrian consultants—Rudolf Attems, Kuno Sohm, and Josef Weber—they designed and organized a dialogical open space conference, the Metalogue Conference (Metalog-Konferenz), in 1998. (The term “metalogue” originated with Gregory Bateson, describing a conversation where the structure is relevant for the content.)
In a preparatory meeting, as the six consultants shared their experience of organizations transitioning from hierarchy to something not yet clear, the conference topic emerged: “Leadership—Between Hierarchy and…”Interesting aspects of this topic like self-organization and complexity management emerged in the large group dialogues and became topics of inspiring workshops. Especially notable was participant feedback on the smooth and unpretentious comanagement by the six consultants. The conference structure—starting with a café atmosphere, plenary dialogues between workshops, and an evening ritual—created a meaningful experience. This highly successful conference resulted in a book published by the organizers and some of the participants writing on their workshop topics. Since then, public Metalogue Conferences have occurred every year and a half on topics like the war in Kosovo, transition times, and spirit in organizations. They are organized by a growing number of consultants and researchers from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland who are part of the metalogikon network.9
Metalogue Conferences are also successfully used for consulting to organizations, especially for strategic issues. For this purpose, the conference structure was refined into four distinct phases:
Phase 1: Setting the tone—conversation in rotating groups
Phase 2: Unfolding the structure of the conversation—introducing dialogue principles and holding a large group dialogue
Phase 3: Thinking together about the issue—open space workshops
Phase 4: Bringing forth the future—a reflective dialogue and then self-organized workshops for next steps
The first phase is crucial to enhance curiosity and openness. The dialogues foster community spirit and a dialogical attitude in all conversations. The last phase ensures commonly acceptable decisions and personal responsibility for implementation.
This wonderful blend emerged largely because among them, its six creators understood the methods and their underlying principles. It is also a testament to successful cocreative design, modeling the whole system principles it espouses. Successful collaborative design is a sign that blend mastery is present because a key ingredient of the capacity to cocreate is comfort with oneself.
KNOW YOURSELF
Some consultants believe that personal maturity, presence, confidence, and the ability to welcome and work with conflict, dissonance, and change are more important than any methodology—that methods are simply the structures through which our essential humanness plays out its power. This can be seen within any community of practice. Some people have special qualities above and beyond their method that make them particularly effective. As you step further out of the supporting structures of a given method into the more fluid environment of mix and match, your personal centeredness, flexibility, and insight become even more important. Many practitioners experience a deep sense of calling to this work. While loving what you do may not be a requirement, once touched by the power of change in whole systems, there is a compelling incentive to continue honing your craft.
Whole system change develops many skills—rational left-brained design, intuitive right-brained sensing; the masculine/yang capacity to set clear intentions, the feminine/yin capacity to let go and move with the flow. The personal capacity for complexity, experimenting with different methods, and having faith and trust in the process and people grows with practice.
Practitioners use terms like flexibility, authenticity, genuineness, and compassion for yourself and others to describe themselves at their best. They talk of being good listeners and observers, being present, using all of their senses, the ability to adjust midstream—to “change the wheels on the car while it’s rolling,”10 to let go of things (e.g., don’t get too attached to your design). They describe themselves as tools, part of the process. More wisdom from Chris Corrigan:
You have to know who you are. The practice of doing this work is the practice of making yourself whole. You can never offer to people something you don’t have. And that’s not methodologies … so really get to know yourself.11
Rick Lent eloquently describes his transition from traditional facilitation to the mindful practice of whole system work:
When I read Productive Workplaces in the late 80’s it began to shift the direction of my career and my practice. Several years later I saw Marvin Weisbord facilitate a group discussion. At one point he did something completely different from what I would have done in that situation. As I watched, I was stunned by the move he made at that point and thought, “I can’t believe he did that.” From that day, I began to change my whole stance to the consultant’s role, revisiting the answer to the question, “What is my role?” away from “providing expertise” and toward “helping the group do what it was ready and able to do.” This shift began to affect my work in obvious ways. At the time I was working with another consultant on a client engagement. He told me that he was nervous as he saw me coming to client meetings with a totally different preparation than before. Now, rather than researching a situation and having a report or recommendations, I came with an agenda that engaged the people in the room with the questions that they felt needed to be addressed. I no longer brought new data, new surveys, or new information into the room. I had begun to act from the assumption that with the right people in the room, the necessary information would already be present. Enabling this information to come out would be the value I brought to the client.12
Rick’s description is a marvelous lens into the journey to mastery: growing past the need to have the answers, to the art of bringing the questions. These are the visible signs of a deeper transition experienced by those who make change their life’s work.
Learning to Center and Ground Yourself
Human systems are remarkable in their complexity. No matter how prepared we are, when inviting the whole system to show up and welcoming the conflicts that are an inevitable and a vital part of the mix, it is a given that the unexpected will occur. In fact, because mixing and matching always contains an element of the unknown, the likelihood of the unpredictable increases. How we handle the unanticipated is a measure of mastery: for example, what to do when someone has a heart attack during the opening circle, or how to meet the expectant look on the client’s face when she shows you the room that has never held more than 1,500 people and in which almost 2,000 street kids will gather in two days.13 In the face of such challenges, the capacity for equanimity matters. How do you prepare yourself for the unexpected? It comes through lifelong practice, learning to center deeply in oneself, an ability to call on all aspects of your being—head, heart, body, and spirit—and by staying grounded in the purpose of the work. Kathie Dannemiller counseled Kenoli Oleari:
You’ve got to do your own work if you’re going to work with groups, or else you’re going to be your own client when you’re standing up in front of a group and won’t be able to serve your paying client like you should.14
The ability to stay unattached to outcomes, to be present and in service to the clients—not just those paying the bills, but all who have shown up, entrusting themselves to you—demands that you do your own work. Part of this, according to consultant Kenoli Oleari, is
being inviting in a way that brings a person fully forward as we step out of the way (or stand with, not above, them). We fully meet and never become “bigger” (or smaller) than anyone in the room. We understand the huge amount of power standing in the shoes of a facilitator gives us and we don’t abuse, fail to acknowledge or deny that power.15
A Story: Work With Violent Intergroup Conflict
The power of service is humble, and it empowers the people you’re working with. This kind of empowering humility requires developing a very clear and open sense of who you really are. Knowing yourself equips you to ride the waves of the unexpected. Even so, as Susan Coleman16 discovered, stepping in can sometimes require a lot of deep breathing:
In early 2000, we provided collaborative negotiation and mediation skills training to political representatives from Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a larger capacity-building initiative funded by the State Department and run through the International Conflict Resolution Program (ICRP) at SIPA, Columbia University. The participants were representatives of the PUK and the KDP, the two main political factions, whose competing attempts for political control had resulted in armed conflict. Our job was to design and deliver a five-day skills training in negotiation and mediation, and in the process build an atmosphere of collaboration between the two sides. None of the participants spoke English, and we did not speak either Kurdish or Arabic.
The initial part of the design was straightforward. We had delivered negotiation and mediation training programs for thousands of people around the world, set up a conflict resolution program at the United Nations and at Columbia University, and had run many programs using direct translation. We knew the training could move us toward the program objective, but to create a climate of engagement, with people talking directly to each other in a safe way without a translator required something else. That brought us to Open Space.
When the participants arrived in Ankara, Turkey, on their way to New York, the atmosphere was more than chilly. People sat on opposite sides of the room, avoiding eye contact and all conversation. Group members had lost family in the war between these two sides. For these representatives, this was a paid trip to New York and an opportunity to go to Columbia University, but a passion for reconciliation was not in the air.
The first three days of the program were collaborative negotiation skills training.17 According to participant accounts and our observations, it was a full, rich, and transformational experience that had some of the following effects:
• The training mixed the two sides in seemingly arbitrary and face-saving ways to resolve simple conflict issues that deescalated the polarizing tone. People laughed and got playful. We gradually increased the complexity and heat of the issues, ending by role-playing PUK/KDP real-life issues.
• Participants’ experience in Kurdistan was normalized. Through presentation of theory and reenactment of conflicts mediated in other parts of the world (such as Mozambique), participants began to see the predictable phenomenon of adversarial conflict of which they were a part. They also were introduced to the alternative of a collaborative approach—a real eureka to them that such an option even existed.
• Participants learned models and skills for negotiating collaboratively that they immediately put into practice in the Open Space laboratory that followed.
On the fourth day, we “opened the space,” focusing on the theme “Exploring and Expanding Areas of Cooperation Among Us.” To our surprise and definite concern, most of the participants took us literally when we said, “we have breakout spaces, but you are free to go anywhere you like.” Indeed they left, and rode the subway from 125th Street to Macy’s at 34th Street to shop. That was the most anxiety-provoking moment in the design! A senior representative confronted us: “What’s this about?” We calmed him. Holding space sometimes takes nerve.
Why did participants do that? Who knows? Perhaps after three days of intense training, they needed to breathe before they could really talk to each other. Perhaps they just wanted to go shopping. My hunch based on years of cross-cultural work is that the shift from a training run by “professors,” however interactive and empowering, to an open space where the responsibility was squarely on their shoulders, was too much in the beginning.
The good news is that everyone also took us at our word when we said, “Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, be here at 4:30 P.M. for ‘evening news.’” That’s when things started cooking. One by one, participants summoned up the courage to hold our talking “stone,” heavy in their hands, and talk to each other about the Kurdistan issues weighing on everyone. The stone, they said, often a weapon of war in Kurdistan, now might be a symbol of peace. The momentum continued through “morning announcements” on the fifth day, to various topic discussions, to an exciting action planning session on the collaborations. Day five ended emotionally with hugging, tears, and singing Kurdish songs. In the program aftermath, through ongoing support from ICRP, the parties created a bilateral conflict resolution center that supports on-the-ground collaboration in many ways including the use of Open Space as a process for high-conflict problem solving.
Did our design work? We could have just done conflict-resolution training. We could have just done an Open Space. It’s our view that the combination added real value. Participants gathered for “training” without committing to work the issues. They had a shared experience with low-stress exercises and topics. Important ideas and skills were imparted that could not have been conveyed in Open Space. In Open Space, participants found the passion and responsibility to talk directly to each other about what mattered most. With newly learned skills, and momentum behind them, the space was opened, and held by a neutral third side, as they worked the core conflict issues of their time.
A final note about “knowing yourself.” When we first presented the funders of the project with a design that simply said “Open Space” for days four and five instead of the detailed mediation training they expected, they balked. It took a lot of knowing the situation, the processes, and ourselves to have the courage to reassure them that mixing these processes was the way to go.18
Figure 3. Mixing and Matching: the Visible and Invisible Aspects
Putting It All Together:Lessons in Mixing and Matching
It should now be apparent that mixing and matching methods is the by-product of a complex weave of knowing that encompasses both the visible world of the situation, the methods, and one’s own skills and experiences, as well as a deeper knowing that requires sensing energy and dynamics, discerning the synergy among underlying principles, and delving into one’s own being (figure 3). Because the field is young, we are still finding our way. When guided by the quality of knowing that shapes successful blending, here are some lessons we have learned so far:
• Chemistry matters. Between practitioner and client, method and practitioner, client and method. Sense what is right for you and be willing to say no if it isn’t a fit.
• The client doesn’t care what methods are used. They want their need met in a way that fits their situation.
• Trust your intuition. When deciding where to start, bring both your head and heart to the decision. It lessens the confusion among the myriad choices.
• Take your time. Add new practices as they feel right to assimilate given the situations you face and your own temperament.
• Don’t be too helpful. If you solve someone else’s problem, they think you are a hero. If you don’t, they have someone to blame. Either way, they have missed the discovery that they can do it themselves.19 Remember, messiness is merely a step on the path to a new coherence.
• You are not in control. Anytime you think you are, you are likely to find out the truth the hard way. Think again.
• Keep it simple. If it feels like you are working too hard or the answers are not coming, it is time to reconnect with the essential purpose that inspired the work.
• Do less. When things get complicated, it is time to step back, breathe, and find one more thing to let go of.
• Be prepared. This isn’t about memorizing a script, rather, it means being grounded in the practice and centered in yourself. The more centered you are, the more equipped you will be to face whatever happens, whether it is redesigning in the moment or going with the flow.
• Trust the processes. Learn to trust the processes you use and, even more important, to trust the larger process that you and they are part of, on behalf of the client and life. Life works through you.
• Spread the wealth of knowledge and experience. Let people in on what you know. This generosity of spirit benefits both the students and the overall system. The possibilities of success increase as more people within the system become consciously engaged in creating it in their collective image.
• Work with partners. It is a great way to learn. Given the complexity of the work, everyone is better served by multiple experiences and perspectives.
Internalizing these lessons prepares you to move beyond mixing and matching, into the creative flow of inventing process and something more fundamental.
The Next Horizon:Invention Mastery
The metaphors are many: jazz, improvisation, one constant dance, running the river. All of them are a reminder that all is change; nothing is predictable. Developing invention mastery—the capacity to sense into the situation, understand the principles that inform possible approaches, and be present for what’s needed in the moment—is a lifelong pursuit. And few of us attempt it alone.
Whole system change is a new field, characterized by cooperation. Partnering with other consultants is a major learning source. Many of the essential practices, Appreciative Inquiry, Dialogue, Future Search, Nonviolent Communication, Open Space, World Café, and others, have vibrant, growing communities of practice. This is no accident, as sharing stories, asking questions, and learning from each other is vital given the complexity of the work. These networks are wonderful and welcoming stops for people wanting to find answers and support. A feeling of abundance, that there is plenty of challenging work for all, is widely held. We are on the leading edge of a shift in how humans organize themselves to accomplish meaningful purpose. Learning together makes us all stronger, better equipped to serve that growing need.
THE ART OF HOSTING MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS
As seasoned practitioners from different practice traditions meet and learn from each other, they are innovating not just new methods but new ways of working that create containers for bringing process into the everyday forms that individuals and collectives use to organize themselves for reflection and action. An expression of this shift is the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations. Here is their collectively written story:
The Art of Hosting emerged within a Field of Practitioners—friends talking, sharing stories, learning and listening together, wanting to contribute, and asking meaningful questions. The result is a community of people who are called to be hosts, and are called to bring a suite of conversational technologies (Circle, Open Space, World Café, etc.) into play in powerful ways in organizations, communities, families, and all their relations. The work involves teams of practitioners taking collective responsibility for designing practices and creating fields that open the space for imagination, inspiration, love, creativity, learning, and so forth. This inquiry has begun surfacing deeper patterns living below methodologies. It has also given the gift of a fundamental architecture for collaborative and transformative human meetings. It is engaging in questions such as: Where is it that all methods meet, what is the wellspring of design, what are the nonnegotiables in an ever-changing world, and how might our designs support emergence?
The Art of Hosting consciousness engages multiple practices, bringing the insight that to host or teach a practice, you must embrace the deeper pattern of the practice yourself (know the methods), sense the learning edge or “crack” in any given situation to invite the shift wanting to happen (know the situation), and embrace the practice of being present in the moment so as to serve best (know yourself).
For people wanting an immersion into the dynamics of systemic change, the Art of Hosting has much to contribute.20 The potential of invention mastery, process as an art of living, is still nascent. Still, it offers an intriguing glimpse into possibilities to come. So, bring your questions and your stories. Jump in. You are now part of the river.
A special thanks to Amber M. Linn for capturing the themes of “knowing” in her interview reflections.
1. Definition by Mark Jones ([email protected]), Tom Atlee ([email protected]), Chris Corrigan ([email protected]), and Peggy Holman.
2. Seneca Vaught, interview with Lyn Carson, university lecturer, University of Sydney, 2005 (unpublished raw data).
4. Amanie Kariyawasam, interview with Susan Dupre, consultant, Global Visions, 2005. Unpublished raw data.
5. Sue Ellen McComas, interview with Chris Corrigan, consultant, 2005 (unpublished raw data).
6. Kenoli Oleari, personal communication, January 3, 2006.
10. Andrew Sauber, interview with Tom Atlee, founder, The Co-Intelligence Institute, 2005 (unpublished raw data).
11. McComas, interview with Corrigan.
12. Patti Coutin, interview with Rick Lent, consultant, Brownfield & Lent, 2005 (unpublished raw data).
13. Peggy Holman, “Good Work for 2,000 Colombian Street Kids,” 2004, http://opencirclecompany.com/GOOD%20WORK%20FOR%202000%20STREET%20KIDS%20STORY.htm.
14. Oleari, personal communication, January 3, 2006.
15. Ibid.
17. For a workshop description, see Ellen Raider, Susan Coleman, and Janet Gerson, “Teaching Conflict Resolution Skills in a Workshop,” in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, ed. Morton Deutsch and Peter T. Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2000).
18. Others vital to this intervention were Andrea Bartoli, Tanya Walters, and Zach Metz from ICRP, and my cofacilitators, James Williams and Ralph Copleman.
19. Thanks to Harrison Owen for this simple but elusive insight.
20. If you want to know more, please meet the stewards at www.artofhosting.org.