Tag: Practice

10 ways to thwart, not support

 

I’m coming out of a weekend of meetings with a facilitator who should not have called himself a facilitator. He tried to do all the work – and this is the first sign of poor practice in hosting others.

Warning signs of when you may be thwarting the people you are with:

  1. You do nothing to make people feel welcome. You keep your distance from start to finish. You do not help people get to know each other and warm up to the hard work ahead. When we feel connected, we work light years better. 
  2. You make all the decisions. Discern when a decision is yours to make. If you are making all or most of the decisions, that is a sign that you are driving the agenda, leaving little room for others to engage. Are you sensitive to a balance where there is just enough structure and not too much?
  3. You stick to the agenda no matter what. Are you open to the needs of the group? Flexible to adjust your plan to support them on their journey? Notice how attached you are to the process you envisioned at the outset. Can you live with aiming for outcomes and respect that how to get there might be different? (And who knows, maybe the outcomes could change on you. Can you trust that the group knows if they are doing the right thing?)
  4. You keep notes for yourself. The flip charts you use are a visual resource for everyone. They are not your notes for later, that only you have to be able to read or discern. Don’t hide them. They are a crucial tool to confirm
  5. You do the organizing. Inevitably, when a group gathers to plan and organize, there are oodles of ideas to keep track of. Do you keep track of them in your head, or find visual ways for them to see and organize what they have? If you have visuals, do you do all the work, or let them?
  6. You work rigidly in your mode of learning. Some people need to see what is going on. Others need to hear it. Some need to work in small groups, others in large. How you make sense of things is not necessarily how others make sense of things. You are serving them, so adjust to there mode.
  7. You reject offers to help. When people step up to help you help them, it is an indication that they feel ownership of what is underway and they choose to engage. Your rejection not only closes you off from learning in the moment, but it puts a big chasm between you and the group.
  8. You ridicule those who help. This is an easy way to distance yourself from the people you work with. That paper on the wall? Useless. The illustration that broke the log-jam? Inconsequential. That document put on the screen to make sure we all understood and agreed to key wording? A distraction.
  9. You lose track of who’s turn it is to speak and what they’re talking about. If you are going to go to the trouble of telling someone they are next, make sure they are next. If someone is three speakers away, let them know. And remember – it is confusing to talk about more than one thing at once. Use a speaker’s list on topic.
  10. You do the same thing, all day long. The same process, all day is soul sucking. Mix it up. Serve others

How it turned out…

Before this guy, we had the benefit of strong process that allows us to establish foundational relationships. In the end, we made the meeting work and we had a lot of success. I so deeply appreciate the dedication and determination of our group to working well together and work forward. We overcame our nuisance facilitator.

To support and serve the people you are with – be open to learning along the way, grow antenna to enable you to see what needs to happen, and respond in the moment. 

 

Patience to care

 

The promise of light in February is to begin

spring sooner than later

for new beginnings

for noticing early signs of brightness

for moving

for inspiration

for seeking

to care

 

yet to care is also patience

for  profound capacity

to become apparent

a profound capacity to care, aware

that I choose to accept

that I choose to receive

that I choose

to wait

 

care means conflict and impatience too

assuming all will be well because it will

with joy and pain and time

I patiently offer my care

knowing

patience is not a blind eye

if it is a choice to declare what I need

when I ask I can receive

when I ask I can receive

when open to surprise the patience to care comes

it touches, it beacons, it enjoys, it lights

the whole

sky

 

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This poem was caught last week during a gathering of my local community of practice.

 

 

A formidable arising

 

A formidable arising

 

Aligning mother

excitement fulfilled

in tension relaxing

into curiosity

still

aware

of fire

of earth

and that’s all

in the air

in the water

 

there’s strength

in surrender

forming

a formidable

arising

 

 

*A poem caught with my fellow Integral City travellers, Marilyn Hamilton, Cherie Beck, Alia Aurami and Ellen van Dongen.

 

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Choose the city you want

 

As citizens we spend a lot of time talking about what we don’t want, what we don’t like about our cities. Our government isn’t good enough. There is too much poverty. We are causing great environmental damage. Our economic systems are collapsing. We pay too many taxes. The potholes are not fixed.

When we pay attention to what’s wrong, we get more of what’s wrong. When it comes to our cities, it is time to pay attention to what we want. It’s time to choose the city we want.

There’s a municipal election coming in Alberta on October 21, 2013 – are you telling candidates what’s wrong, or what you love about your city and want more of?

What makes you feel alive in your city?

What city do you choose?

Choose it. Name it. Once you do, we’re on our way to having it.  

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Notice what surprises you

 

A real, live magic-wand-toting fairy godmother came up the escalator at the Edmonton International Airport on Thursday, her slightly chubby body in a sparkly, puffy, baby-blue bustier dress. I was startled when I saw her face under the  large bouffant blond wig – I expected her to be 28, not 68.

My surprise took me by surprise. Why on earth would I imagine a fairy godmother as 28?  I tried to think of the images I have in mind, from childhood, and all I could come up with were mostly frumpy looking, heavy old women. I searched images on the internet and realized that…

My fairy godmother was wearing Cinderella’s dress!

179 - Cinderella and FGM
Source: disney.com

As I explore my response to this, I see that her age isn’t what bothers me, for most fairy godmothers are older, but that she was wearing Cinderella’s costume. It was as though Cinderella was 40 years older, adamantly reliving that wonderful night with blond hair that screamed bad wig and squeezing into the magic dress. After many good deeds, she has been granted a wand of her own to pay her godmotherliness forward. She is out in the world following her passion, doing good work.

Does it really matter what she looks like?

That bias is my own. I can choose to feel betrayed by a much older woman who has taken Cinderella’s part, or I can choose to be amazed by her persistence to live the Cinderella dream. I alone let what other look like change what I think of them, and I have to keep an eye on that, notice my bias and how it colours how I see others around me.

What I learned: Notice what surprises you and learn a lot about yourself. You reveal your bias.  

What surprised you today, and what made it surprising?

 

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Understand the underground

 

A few words of Ben Okri’s Mental Fight stand out as I explore what it means to be best citizen I can be:

It is all in the air - poem, Okri

Cities are about connecting people and the ways we think, make and do together. This is how cities are formed, how they energize us, by giving us opportunities to follow our passions. In turn we energize the cities.

The quality of how we relate to self,  each other and our cities themselves in this city-making endeavour is essential. Everywhere, at all times, we need to listen to – notice – all the things forming, in the air and underground. This is a citizenship practice, of stopping to notice what and how we each show up to dance, and our relationship with the dancers and the changing dance floor itself.

The underground is the implicit, internal inner workings of the city that are hard to discern. Not the traditional, physical “underground” we think of as the network of pipes that serve the city, but the connections and conduits within, among and between us citizens in our social habitat.

If we want our cities to be different for us, then we must be different. For our cities to be different, we need to explore the underground within us, within citizens. Our underpinnings need to be tended to. We have to connect our souls before our work together, the very work that creates cities, will be different and result in different cities.

This is, ultimately both a personal and collective ‘mental fight’ to see, and understand, the underground.

What do you do to understand the underground in your self and your city?

 

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Enduring Civic Practice. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Sleep is necessary

 

It is important to be awake to the world around us, and, perhaps counter-intuitively, it is equally important to sleep. This is the conclusion I reached in a very quick conversation last week with my community of practice about how essential it is to stop what causes harm and build on the things that are helping people (and other beings) survive and thrive.

At the time, it occurred to me that it is equally important to sleep and at this very moment of being awake, I am writing to figure out what this means for me. (One of my practices to figure out what I am thinking and feeling and seeing is to write. Its one of the ways that I endeavour to be ‘awake’ while I am awake.)

Two big thoughts stand out for me:

***

Sleep is necessary.

AND

We do not all need to be awake.

***

To start, some definitions. First ‘awake’, from Merriam Webster:

  1. to cease sleeping
  2. to become aroused or active again
  3. to become conscious or aware of something

Definitions of ‘asleep’ from Merriam Webster:

  1. being in a state of sleep
  2. dead
  3. lacking sensation: numb
  4. inactive, dormant
  5. not alert: indifferent

There are levels of awake/sleep in these definitions. Our bodies first need sleep to biologically function. A second level of awake is around being activated to stimuli, and a third is around consciousness and awareness. If “awakeness” takes place at all three levels, its opposite, sleep, is mirrored in all three levels. Biologically, I can be asleep or awake. When biologically awake, I can be actively engaging with my surroundings, or I can be inactive. When actively awake I can be deeply aware and conscious, or not.

The second and third levels of awakeness depend on the first, the third on the first and second. Being biologically awake means I need sleep, and being actively awake depends on being biologically awake. Being consciously awake depends on being actively awake. So where does sleep come in?

The discussion that got me started on this thread was about how all of humanity needs to be awake (second and third levels of awake) to the challenges the world faces and the denial – ie the sleep – we seem to enjoy.

If sleep serves a biological function, what is its metaphorical function to being an active and aware citizen? Do we all need to be awake all of the time? No.

A negative view of sleep is that I am missing out, or simply unaware of what is happening around me, and unable to take necessary action, all of which can take place with all three levels of sleep. An appreciative view of sleep is that it allows me to more fully see when I am awake, and to more fully take in the world and more wisely take action as well. Further, what if I trust that I will see what I am meant to see, when I am ready to see it? Further again, what if I trust that others will see what they are meant to see when they are ready to see it?

The desire to always be awake, or to compel all of humanity to always be awake is unreasonable and unhealthy. The real danger is oversleeping, to the point where we miss way too much, feel lethargic, confused and misjudge.

Here’s what we need to trust, while allowing ourselves to sleep: the work to be done isn’t for each of us to do, but for each of us to take a part. If I trust that as I pursue my passions, there are others pursuing theirs and cumulatively we are changing the world . We are not compelled to all stay awake and all take the same actions.

In our diversification of passions, we give ourselves the opportunity to sleep, digest, adjust, process and learn. Stay awake for what calls you and trust that others are looking after the other things. As they should trust in you.

Take time to sleep – it will serve you, and all of us, well.

Who’s awake and working hard on things so you can sleep?

 

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Enduring Civic Practice. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Awake

 

Questions are at the heart of an enduring civic practice. Especially the question on when the conditions are right to sleep or be awake. Here’s what I caught in this week’s discussion with my community of practice:

Awake - poem

 

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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Enduring Civic Practice. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

______ ______ ______

A spring of paradox

 

As part of how I relate to my city, I participate in a community of practice with fellow citizens. We explore what it means – and what it takes – to be a citizen offering our full potential to the world. Each  of us, in our way, is helping shape our city with our work in every moment every day.

Here is my harvest from our gathering last night. We were exploring Parker Palmer’s work on seasons.

A spring of paradox - poem

 

sprouts
Sprouts in Edmonton, April 17, 2013

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This post is part of Chapter 8 – The City Making Exchange. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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Chaotically reorganize with longing

 

Desire and longing are creatively destructive forces. I wrap up exploring Chapter 7: (Un)known Possibilities, with David Whyte:

… without the creatively destructive dynamics of desire and longing, our protected sense of self cannot be destabilized or subverted from our old way of being; we cannot be chaotically reorganized to accommodate ourselves to anything fresh.  A certain state of blinding ecstasy seems necessary for navigating the first crucial thresholds…

In other words, for each step into possibilities both known and unknown, I need to be willing to take risks. We are designed to be smitten with an idea as much as we are designed to be smitten with a person; we become ‘blinded’ in order to take the risk, so its not so risky after all. Whether in a relationship, trying out a new job, or a renewed commitment to self, work, family, city, etc, a leap of faith is what gets us across a threshold.

When courageously smitten, a sense of direction and purpose emerges as we make our way through the personal journey of life. Thresholds emerge to challenge us and our  longing pulls us through to new possibilities.  We emerge to new destinations. This happens when we allow ourselves to chaotically reorganize for what we desire.

The dynamic of focus, and emerge  creates the conditions for emerging possibility. Anywhere, in our neighbourhoods and on the soccer field, we create possibilities, especially if we prepare for possibility and create the conditions to see possibility. We can chaotically reorganize to see familiar and new possibilities that align with our longing, and being smitten with what we are aiming for helps us through each threshold.

Douglas Hofstadter:

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a façade of order – and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.

The key is finding ways to reveal the unknown possibilities, the lurking chaos. Our work, then, is to chaotically reorganize ourselves to be smitten with longing.

In what ways do you/we chaotically reorganize to reach what you long for?

 

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Sources / Further Reading

David Whyte, The Three Marriages, p. 48

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This post is part of Chapter 7 – (Un)known Possibilities, here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:

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