By Tenneson Woolf
Originally Published at www.tennesonwoolf.com

Many of us live in a world that is increasingly being stripped of its context. Headlines captivate more attention than the article or report. Even the article or report captures more attention than the story of what actually happened and it’s many meanings. Facebook is loaded with oodles of good shares, but they too tend to be snippets, ultimately skewed to the delights-only aspects of people’s lives, scrubbed clean of real-life challenges inherent in the every day. Twitter has us not only sharing, but thinking in 140 character messages. The every-day requires a bit more space.

Make no mistake, I value clarity and brevity immensely. It is a skill of maturity, I think, to be able to find the essence of a story, or the principle of a paragraph. It is mad skill to be able to identify talking points rooted in principles or key questions that center a complex situation.

The problem isn’t the skill of summarizing. The problem is when the summary is so often taken out of context and without enough connection to the stories from which they originated. We human beings are starved of context in most of our environments as we continue to spiral ourselves further into a love affair with speed and efficiency that trumps pace and depth.

Let’s just interrupt that, shall we. Let’s just reclaim more of the expectation for context.

One of the things that I love about The Circle Way, is that it gives us a container to reclaim the need and hunger for context. It’s one of the ways that I’ve been introducing Circle lately, and then inviting people to tell a story. The Circle Way can be expressed and invited in many time frames. It won’t always be an hour or two together (this is what people often fear with circle, isn’t it) — sometimes the spirit of circle is practiced and enacted with two people in two minutes. Circle, however, regardless of time choice, gives us a way to paint more than just the edges of our lives and of our learning with one another.

Here’s a recent example, from Circle, Song, and Ceremony, an event with 26 people that I co-convened with Barbara McAfee and Quanita Roberson (pictured on the right above, along with Katie Boone, a wonderfully skilled practitioner based in Minnesota). Our opening evening, in which I’ve come to feel that the real job is to say hello to each other, to make the transition from “out there” to “in here” and being available to each other, had several exercises. Beautiful song. Some recommended agreements and commitments. Some questions that each of us brought to the weekend gathering. An exercise to express six words to describe the state that we were arriving in. The six words were spoken out loud. It’s a good exercise. It was a good exercise that night. These words, and the spirit in which they were spoken, helped to introduce us to each other. “Tired. Curious. Happy. Nervous. Ready. Lonely.” Great teasers for depth, right.

The next day, we invited more context to be spoken in the container of the 26 of us. Not six words, but maybe six paragraphs. In circle. “Who are you? Why did you choose to come to this gathering? Give us a bit of your story.” This circle got big quickly. In time. In content. It got full. And honest. We’d planned on it going for 60-75 minutes, and it did. Deliciously. Because, we had the weekend together, this was not time getting away from us. This was essential weaving together.

There were four things that I learned (relearned) in that circle.

• One, people are hungry to share context and to be heard in their context.
• Two, we learn who we are by sharing our story — as well as learning more of who we are by hearing other people share their stories.
• Three, the desire for story is in our DNA — it has been cultural practice for generations gone by, and even without direct experience, we recognize the need for context and story in the deeper places of our psyche and memory.
• Four, as Quanita referenced, one of the reasons that circles get big when invited to share story is that people are so starved of the opportunity. It’s rare. In that scarcity, many of us feel that we must say everything (more than even the six paragraphs permits) because this is our only chance. Argh!

I love Circle. As a form of meeting. As a way of being. As a container to re-insert context and honesty into these many encounters we humans have with one another, while trying to do good with the things and people that we care about.

Context matters. Essentially. The Circle Way gives us format to welcome it.

Learn more of The Circle Way and other participative formats that reclaim purpose and meaning in working with groups. Register now for The Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations and Participatory Leadership, November 12-15, 2017 with Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, Teresa Posakony, Amanda Fenton, and Tenneson Woolf.

Below is an article that Tenneson wrote with a colleague. You'll see from the content that there are several ways to improve the kinds of questions we ask with each other and how that connects to the outcomes we desire and the communities we yearn to create. Bowen Island Art of Hosting is a place where this feels particularly keen, and with really skilled hosts that know this work deeply. 

The Power of a Good Question:
Organizations are Shaped By the Questions They Ask
Tenneson Woolf (tenneson@tennesonwoolf.com) and Kathleen Masters (kmasters@umcmission.org)
Adapted from UMC Participatory Leadership Journal, Published on Tenneson's Website

It is often said, “There is nothing so powerful as a good question.” A question is to participative leadership what a match is to fire. It is the start. The spark. The thing that gets it all going.

In participative and conversational leadership, your question can have significant impact on whether a conversation takes off or not. Whether it ignites a group into energetic sharing or just smolders and dampens the group’s learning.

There are really dozens of ways to improve questions. A few of those are below to stir your thinking.

Is the question meaningful?

Of course, right. Meaningful to the particular people that are participating. Meaningful to the project that you are supporting. Does it help feed energy into the primary purpose of your work? Does it help invoke additional needed clarity? Notice that you do not need to provide the meaning. It is more about asking a question that helps people discover what is meaningful. For example, “Why is this project important to you?” “Why does it matter?” “What difference do you think it will make?”

Does the question invite curiosity and reflective thinking?

To be curious with one another is to contribute to an overall commitment to learning together. Sometimes we need to engage one another with the simplicity of yes or no answers. But not all the time. Maybe even, infrequently. More likely, we need nuance. We need to see through the kaleidoscope that is multiple perspectives from multiple people. For example, “What is really going on here?” “What are the most fruitful ways that we could think about this issue?” and “If we were to suspend certainty for a moment, what else would we see here?”

Does the question challenge assumptions?

Have you ever been in one of those conversations where one assumption seems to block everything? For example, “We don’t have budget so there is nothing that we can do.” Sometimes the best questions we can ask of each other are ones that cut through an assumption, even temporarily. “What if budget were not the issue?” “If resourceful creativity is what we need, even without budget, what other resources can we utilize?” Questions that challenge assumptions invite us to nibble, or even feast, on the very roots of our thinking.

Does the question lead to other questions?

This can be frustrating for some. After all, what is the good of creating a messy pile of questions that paralyze action? It is important, of course, to move to action. Yet, many of us live in an “answer culture.” We are taught to be certain (or fake it) because good leaders are certain, right. 

Part of the broader shift that we can create in participative leadership is for communities to practice inquiry together. To become defined by the questions we are asking each other, and by the very fact that we are able to ask questions with each other. For most of us, questions enliven. They invite people to think out loud about the truths that they are exploring. For example, “What is different about the opportunities and challenges we face now?” “What is the same?” “What does this have to do with our larger mission?”

Is the question simple?

The best questions, the ones that people really jump into, are often the most simple questions. These questions are short and get to the heart of it. “Why does this matter to you?” tends to be a better question than a longer run-on question that has the same essence. “In the broader context of a church that is reinventing itself, with a desire for increased participation, as a commitment to God and community that is underserved, what matters most to us now?” The former is a question that people can hold. It is one that can anchor many thoughts and many other questions. The latter is a good question with good context. Yet that question is just more difficult for people to get their brains around. 

It is fine to nuance your questions. All of the context that goes into a good simple question matters. You can say these things out loud to your group. But the one that you write on the flip chart paper or on the white board ought to be the simple version.

Does the question lead to possibility?

Amidst all of the attention that we give to problems, it is a needed skill and discipline to shift attention to what is possible. Questions that point to possibility are questions that tend to invoke creativity and imagination. They help all of us wake up to what has energy.
For example, “What could this also be?” The “also be” part of this is important. It doesn’t deny that there already is effort and attention. Yet, the question challenges most of us into thinking at a next level of relevance, a next layer in the evolution of our work and projects.

Does the question welcome a quality of caring together?

As corollary to the opening statement of this article, that “There is nothing as useful as a good question.” there are several questions that point to the kind of caring that most of us want with and from one another. For example, “Who is this for, really?” Or, “If we were to act from compassion, what would we now feel was essential?” There are ways to focus on love. “What is it that you love about this congregation?” Or, “What do you love about what you are learning now?” If the need is for participants’ contribution, ask, “What are the next levels of possibility here for you to contribute to?” Or, “What contribution would satisfy your deep longings of the heart?”

Does the question look for more than yes or no as a response?

Yes or no questions can be fun as games, but if your point is to create a deeper kind of interaction, ask for more than one word responses. For example, instead of, “Do you like the way things are going?” ask, “What is important to you in how things are going?” Or, stepping back even further, “What do you see happening here?” There are times when data and knowledge are needed. These times tend to point more to questions that ask for responses of “right” or “wrong.” More often, you can serve the group better by using questions that invite experience. For example, “When have you experienced good listening?”

Is the question appropriately sequenced?

If you are in a situation when you will ask several questions in different parts, sequence them thoughtfully. Don’t start with a question that asks for conclusions. Save that for the end. Begin with something that brings people into a shared response together. If the quality that you want more of is, for example, hospitality, a great first round questions is, “When have you experienced hospitality?” It doesn’t matter if the people respond with church stories or not. 

​A second round of questions can link the conversation back to your specific circumstances. For example, “What hospitality do you hope for here?” This brings people’s attention back to working on their particular needs. A third question invites application. “What hospitality are your inspired to experiment with here?” The question is an invitation.

Tips:

* Remember that asking questions is not only the ability to put words into meaningful syntax. Asking good questions is a disposition and attitude. It is about living a life defined by genuine curiosity and the possibility that the group can help surface together what can’t be surfaced alone.
* Resist the need to neatly tuck everything in too quickly. Some questions are not meant to be answered in twenty minutes or in an hour. Some are meant to last longer. It’s okay to take on a question for a limited period of time, but be transparent with how you are doing that. It’s far better than having people feel that you’ve collectively pretended to solve something in a ridiculously short time.
* Notice that there is an important choice of wording in questions -- whether asked as “we” or as “you” questions. Often, at the start, asking for the group “we” can be paralyzing. Start by asking “you” questions to first draw out personal experience. For example, “What is it that you see is possible here?” This is different than asking people what “we” see is possible. By having all people speak personally, a sense of the whole emerges and becomes discernible, and then ripe for “we” questions.
* On the one hand, the question that you ask is of great importance. Prepare your questions with full attention. On the other hand, know that most important questions are interrelated. Even if you don’t ask the perfect question, know that the question will likely create an entry point into other important questions.

Posted by Caitlin Frost

This summer I had the privilege of co-hosting a 3 day intensive training with 95 leaders and change-makers from more than 17 European countries. We took a morning to dive into the crucial area of hosting ourselves in the form of working with our own stuck places, fears and patterns.

In order to be able to fully step into the challenges we are facing - both the large scale, deeply complex issues like transforming our financial system, or poverty, or racism...and the seemingly smaller but sometimes also challenging areas of how we collaborate and work through our differences in our teams, families and communities - we need rigorous and compassionate personal practice to allow us not just to move through the places we get triggered or stuck, but to actually fully engage the learning that is available at that threshold.

It is always a powerful experience to sit in a circle of our colleagues and make visible the often hidden territory of our own shadowed thinking, and to hear the patterns and shared places we get stuck. It is a first, valuable step in bringing these patterns to light where we can work with them - individually and collectively. 

Noticing the patterns of belief about our own value or our own capacity to show up and do the work (“I don’t have enough experience”); our judgements and assumptions about other people or groups of people (“They don’t get it” “They can’t be trusted”); our fears of what will happen (“it will fail” “I will lose my job” “people will get hurt”), and also the big fears that can immobilize us (“it is too late” “the problems are too big”.)

While it is valuable (and often a relief) to see and hear the beliefs and patterns that are holding us back individually and collectively, we also need to engage deeply and skillfully with them so that we can learn what we need to learn for our own evolution, and to allow for the evolution of our work in the world to come from new ways of thinking.

Join us at the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations and Participatory Leadership on Bowen Island from November 8th to 11th where we will explore practices for hosting yourself alongside practices for hosting others, to strengthen your ability to work with complexity, uncertainty & change. Or join our mailing list to hear about upcoming events (enter your contact info at the bottom of this page).

Posted by Chris Corrigan

When you make your living in the world as a facilitator, you can’t help but notice the quality of conversation that surrounds you.  People come up to me all the time asking advice about how to have this or that chat with colleagues or loved ones.  Folks download on me their grief that our civic conversations have been polluted by rudeness and the inability to listen.  We feel an overall malaise that somehow our organizations or communities could be doing better.

I have recently been published in a new book on Dialogic Organizational Development, a way of looking at OD that will be familiar to anyone who is curious about the Art of Hosting and participatory leadership.  In Dialogic OD we see the world as a set of conversations.  Organizations exist in the conversations we have with each other.  Culture is born of narrative.  On the personal level, our identities are constructed by the stories we tell ourselves, especially the ones we believe.  

Changing the conversation changes the world.  It's an old truism but it is a key part of our work.  And not just changing the conversation, but changing HOW we have the conversation.  We shift from telling to inquiry.  Shift from certainty to curiosity, shift from domination to mutuality.  More is possible when we realize that we are all in this together, and alone, we don't know what to do. 

It boggles my mind that management training doesn’t often include a dedicated and rigourous exploration of hosting and participating in conversations.  We consider good managers to have strategic, leadership, financial and technical skills.  But we rarely hire people because of what they DON’T know.  How many people have been in a job interview where the best answer to a question was “I don’t know what I would do.  What would you do?”  

And yet, that vulnerability, that presence of mind, that openness to the counsel and wisdom of others is exactly the kind of leadership that helps organizations and communities lean into uncertainty and complexity and come out with opportunities and clarity.  

The Art of Hosting is a practice.  It is about learning how to do that.  Our greatest hope for anyone coming to our workshops is that you will leave be willing to try new ways of hosting story, inquiry and conversation.  We don't expect you to be perfect - goodness knows none of us are!  But we do try to equip you with the courage and practice to get out there and begin to shift the way conversations shape our world.  

Will you join us on Bowen Island this November?

Originally Posted June 9, 2015 by Tenneson Woolf
(http://tennesonwoolf.com/art-of-hosting-values-a-statement-of-important-things/)

At Art of Hosting, Bowen Island, we learn good things. Always. It's the team -- Chris, Caitlin, Teresa, Amanda, myself -- we each come with stories and inquiries. We're honest about that. It's also the experience of seeing application at many levels. We apply what we know to the level of improving how meetings happen and tasks are accomplished. We also apply at the level of culture making, the deeper changes of evolving who we are and how we are together. That "we" is all of us. In our jobs, our communities, our networks, our organizations, our families.

Join us. As a first-timer. Or as a repeat participant. Come as a team -- even better to hold the learning together. There is much for us to stay in together, at this most unique of locations. Perhaps some of these statements below attract your interest, whether to apply to meetings or to the deep shifts. If so, you will be in good company.

Tenneson


Recently Jerry Nagel, friend and colleague, offered a statement of values and principles embedded in an Art of Hosting worldview. These were what he discovered through many interviews with practitioners. Jerry was writing his PhD dissertation, for which I got to be a reader and reflective partner.

One of the things I love about Jerry is that he is committed to seeing a meta level. That takes discipline. Worldview has always been at the root of it for me. It’s always felt a bit silly to me to get too serious about the surface of behaviors absent awareness of world view. Jerry is one who gets that.

As posted, Jerry name values as “statements of importance.” His principles connoted a “kind of action.” I’ve included just the values below because, well, I want to hold them spaciously. They are statements (in red) that deserve more than a speed date. With each, I’ve included a few of my reflections.

Values:

• Being curious is essential and being curious means being willing to step into a place of not knowing. Yup, there it is. Being curious. “Be present, be curious” has been a kind of mantra for me over the last ten years. It doesn’t always mean not knowing, but it does mean a kind of relationship with not knowing. A relationship to be familiar with.
• Diverse perspectives open up new possibilities. All the voices from all local forms of life are welcome and invited into the conversation without fear. This one is worth unpacking too. I wonder sometimes if many of us just fear diversity. Or fear the letting go that is required to explore another person’s certainty. Or resist inclusion because it is inconvenient. I do, sometimes. Or I know that feeling in me. There is a rather high cost to these barriers, isn’t there. Absence of sustainability is high on that list.
• We create and hold space for a multiple of local realities to be in dialogue with each other in different but equal relationship. It’s not every day that we get to do this. Nor perhaps need too. But there are some days when this is an absolute must. I’ve heard Jerry say it a number of times, that “the practice is the work.” Creating and holding this kind of space is a practice for a lifetime!
• As practitioners we work toward the common good. We are committed to making the world as a whole a better place. It’s an inspiring value, isn’t it. The world as better place. I would add that this common good occurs simultaneously to the world inside of us, and, to the world outside of us. Movement and attention within each feeds the other.
• We believe in human goodness. We work to support personal aspirations. I relate to this one from my early work with The Berkana Institute in the 1990s. We stated it slightly different — we “rely” on human goodness. Count on it. There are people everywhere in the world that want good and want to offer good. This reality sometimes is obscured by tragedy, pain, injustice.
• We work in the place of emergence without preconceived notions of what must happen, instead allowing what wants to come forth to emerge. We trust in the not knowing. We trust in the generative field of co-creation. Yup. I count on three anchors this way. Emergence. Self-organization. Life, and organizations, as living systems.
• Participation by all is central to the work. It may not be by all. But the movement to more inclusion and an interruption of the mindset that is isolation feels very needed. Very central.
• We take time to be aware of our own prejudices and habits and take time to reflect on our (re)actions as part of our ongoing learning as hosts. This takes courage, doesn’t it. And friendship. I’m reminded of yesterday’s post, inspired by Tuesday Ryan Hart, Relationship is the Resolution. Her and another colleague made their learning public.
• We practice generosity. We share what we know and invite others into the field of co-learning. I’m grateful to know some people who really embody this. Chris Corrigan comes to mind. Many in the Art of Hosting practitioners group. I continue to learn about what this means.

Indeed, a few important things. Thanks Jerry.

By Amanda Fenton, and cross-published at amandafenton.com.

As part of my preparation for the Art of Hosting on Bowen Island in February I have been reflecting on what’s alive in my work these days. An Art of Hosting learning experience is not delivered from a standard curriculum that we dust off and teach. Rather, it is informed by what inquiries participants bring into the room, as well as the edges of our practice as a hosting team. And then we activate the art: choosing what maps, models, frameworks, tools, processes and practices will resonate and stretch all of us beyond our current ways of seeing and doing.

So what are some of the threads I bring into the room? Here are a few….


What are radically better ways we can be in organizations?

This thread is informed by looking at organizations as living systems – natural and evolving, which is different than seeing organizations and groups and machines. My curiosity has focused on key organizational practices such as purpose (the unique purpose the organization wants to manifest in the world), colleague principles (values and behaviours for safe-enough space, what is encouraged), meeting practices (practices that ensure everyone’s voice is heard, to invite everyone’s contribution – space for creativity and better conversations), decision-making (increasing self-management) and conflict resolution (as the practice through which peers hold each other to account for their mutual commitments). The Art of Hosting, and one of my core practices, The Circle Way, offers us some helpful approaches in bringing to life this next stage of consciousness in our organizations.

What is the value and impact of building capacity to participate in conversations?

Some of my work lately has been supporting conversations in a number of communities about the things they care most about, so that transformative changes might happen. We have focused on bringing people together to talk and listen, to reflect and act across boundaries, hierarchies and cultures – whether they work in the same or very different team, organization, profession, or sector. This is not an easy deliverable for funders to feel comfortable with! After one two-hour community conversation we will not have well formulated ideas with the mandate, strategic interventions and capacity to begin prototyping. What we do have is a group of people who are learning how to participate in conversations in a new way, and harvest those conversations themselves so they can seed and feed what might come next. We are learning to articulate a number of impacts from these initial sessions such as changing psychology (we can do this together, no one will come and tell us what to do for the future, shift from problem finding to possibility/solutions), creating new connections and illuminating perspectives across ages and sectors, discovering the resources already available in the community – people, skills, talents, leadership, physical resources etc, and noting the hot topics/passionate ideas and who else cares about those topics in the community.

My curiosity here has focused on creating some simple developmental evaluation questions that help articulate both the learning curve and value of building capacity for being participants and harvesters in collaborative conversation. The next phase is looking at what of support is needed for the grassroots initiatives and to help prepare those who are ready to shift to hosting their own community conversations.

What is possible if we move beyond vision and purpose to shared work?

You might notice some friction in these threads. Above we have ‘purpose as key practice for radically better organizations’. And now here I am wondering about releasing the desire for shared vision and purpose and instead focusing on shared work. When we have multiple service providers, agencies, and organizations and citizens trying to work together, creating a shared vision can pour molasses on any potential momentum. There are inherent tensions between what their boards and executives are measured by and their internal priorities. What if a challenge or opportunity is enough to start – maybe discovered collectively through a question like “What is an important issue to work on together that none of us can address alone?”. Then from there we discover what will make participation valuable and what shared work we might undertake together to make a difference. What if we hold shared vision and purpose loosely – let’s not laminate it – but get enough of a glimpse to move forward and DO things together?

By Chris Corrigan, and republished at www.chriscorrigan.com

This Art of Hosting on Bowen Island is my home based offering, which I have been doing for nearly ten years with friends Tenneson Woolf, Teresa Posakony and Caitlin Frost, and lately with our new colleague Amanda Fenton.  All of these folks are incredible facilitators and teachers and great humans.

We host this event at Rivendell which is an incredible retreat space here on our little island, perched on top of a small mountain looking out over the end of Howe Sound, an inlet framed by mile high mountains containing a deep tongue of ocean that extends north from the Strait of Georgia, in the Canadian half of the Salish Sea.  This event has traditionally been a time where the five of us bring our insights and learning from the past year and teach with stories and new material, adding to the rich set of ideas and practices that have evolved inside the global container of “The Art of Hosting.”

For me, the pursuit of mastery in the practice of hosting conversations is the way I respond to the complexity that we are facing in the world.  When faced with uncertainty and emergent problems, it is imperative that we engage in collective intelligence and create the conditions for good sense making and decision making.  Working with complexity is a high art, and is in rare supply these days.  Over the past year I have been in many situations where the fear of an uncertain future has caused people to reduce their work to the simplest and easiest problems to solve. Money gets spent, resources get deployed and another year passes, and at best we shift the needle on something in a way that we can never understand and at worst, we erode the collective capacity we have to act resourcefully in complex environments.  And that, I am certain, will be what is written on the gravestone of humanity, should it come to that.  I have no doubt that the statement will be accompanied by a pie chart analysing the downfall.

That is my biggest frame of understanding why these practices are important: complexity matters and we need more complexity workers.

Now there are many different skills required to work in complex environments.  Some of these skills are covered in an Art of Hosting.  These skills include personal capacities such as being aware of your own limiting beliefs, biases and shadows.  They include leadership practices such as hosting and participating in truly creative and emergent conversational and social processes.  It includes understanding the nature of complex systems and complex environments and to design effective interventions and make good decisionsin those environments.

So that is what is under the hood. We use the word “art” very deliberately.  What we are teaching is a practice that cannot be mastered in a three day event.  As a team we have a strong commitment to launch people as practitioners.  Practitioners of what?  That depends on who you are and what your learning edge is.

Over the years we have had people come to Art of Hosting events for a number of reasons: to develop their facilitation practice, to understand how to be a better participant in dialogue, to work with their limiting beliefs, to figure out how to lead their organizations differently, to design better engagement processes, to work more deeply with complexity, to understand theory, to learn new methods.  Some folks even come because what we are offering is in line with their own personal growth.  When we say that we are trying to launch people as practitioners, what we means is that we want people to see their lives and work differently and to begin a practice of shifting, learning and mastering their skills.  I like to say to to people that the real results of their time at an Art of Hosting will show up 9-12 months later.  You will become aware of a shift in your practice, or new ways of working with people and of new ways of seeing the world.  It can sometimes be very transformative, it is often challenging and always engaging.

The Art of Hosting as a learning event is highly experiential.  You will have an opportunity to get your hands on methods and to host parts of the workshop yourself, with supportive coaching from the core team.  You will also be deeply engaged in conversations with 35 other people who are as curious, interested and challenged as you are.  And you will get a chance to bring real life work and problems into our practices to further develop your initiatives.  There is no role playing.  Everything we do is real.

So if you’d like to come, we’d love to have you.  The more diverse the group, the better.  We have had folks come from every walk of life, from almost every economic sector imaginable, from many many different kinds of community and history.  All of us who train have worked in literally hundreds of unique environments and I can almost guarantee that one of the five of us will be able to translate what you are learning to your context.

Add to that a sublime location, some great meals, a free juggling lesson, music and amazing conversations, and you have the makings for a retreat-style learning event designed to accelerate your practice as a complexity worker in the world.

Join us.

This week's blog post is from Tenneson Woolf, hosting team member for the upcoming Art of Hosting Bowen Island. 

Over the last ten years I’ve been asked many times to define the purpose of The Art of Hosting. Each time I’ve responded, I’ve been aware there are many layers to the question and any response I might offer.



Below are four of those layers, all of which I suspect will be present and poignant when we gather in February for the Art of Hosting, Bowen Island. Our hosting team of Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, Teresa Posakony, Amanda Fenton and myself all bring significant experience and genuine inquiry to contribute to these layers.

1. Better Skills, Better Meetings — This is what many people want. It is as basic to organizational health as regular exercise is to personal health. The Art of Hosting, and the general framing of participative leadership, offers a set of tools, methodologies, perspectives, and practices to help improve meetings. Committee meetings. Staff meetings. Or repeated meetings that are engagement strategies for long term community involvement. Our intent at The Art of Hosting is to help all participants leave as improved practitioners able to host better and more meaningful meetings.
2. Leaning in to Longings — Most of us have hopes and dreams about what our organizations can be. About what we want to be in them. Most of us are not satisfied in simply “getting by” or “enduring.” Most of us want to actively lean in to our longings, individual and collectively, on behalf of a deliberate and desirable future together. I believe because we are daring, and caring, enough to do so. And because we know that real longings, spoken genuinely, and heard with curiosity, reset and recenter the clarity of our endeavors.
3. Create a Narrative Arc to Hold Us Into the Future — For change to happen, or be sustained, most of us need a story. An overarching narrative that reminds us of a purpose. Sometimes it is the story of us as individuals. Sometimes it is the story of our teams. Sometimes it is the national or global story of a world that requires us to evolve with it. It was Christina Baldwin in her book Storycatcher that spoke, “Life hangs on a narrative thread. This thread is a braid of stories that inform us about who we are, and where we come from, and where we might go. The thread is slender but strong: we trust it to hold us and allow us to swing over the edge of the known into the future….”
4. Practice Presence as Core Competency — “Core competency” is language most commonly used in a business setting. Yet its meaning is widely known. An ability that is essential, a skill that is at the crux, a muscular memory central to accomplishing purpose. Like flour is to bread. Like kneading is to preparing it. Core competencies are very utilitarian. They help us get things done. They are things, or steps, that we wouldn’t, or couldn’t, live without. A premise I hold for the Art of Hosting is that presence is “the” core competency that is called for in these times. In professional life. In communal life. In the often fast paced, hyper-connected, ever-changing world, presence, perhaps more now that ever, is most needed.

The Art of Hosting, Bowen Island is one of the events I most look forward to during the year. The location is outstanding, nestled in forest. I trust our team, all of us, as friends and colleagues, who understand much about layers. I trust us to get to the needed layers that make lasting and significant difference for those who come.

Welcome.