Inviting onlookers

Last week, in a room full of people milling around, I was in conversation with a handful of leaders.  A couple had leadership by virtue of position/status – senior people in an organization.   A couple of others (including myself) also by position/status in that we were the “experts” brought in to teach.  A couple of others were leaders by virtue of their ability to step up and do/say what needs to be done/said.   Just outside our circle was Onlooker.  Listening in.  Hanging on every word.  Clearly interested, but removed from the conversation.  Clearly keen to be a part of what was happening, but clearly separate.

At first, I wondered why Onlooker didn’t just take the initiative to jump in and join.  None of us in conversation would mind.  Clearly, we weren’t speaking of anything top secret to be having such a conversation within earshot of others.  I felt frustrated that this onlooker didn’t just step in – it seemed even sinister that Onlooker would just listen in like that.

So I made an invitation.  “Onlooker, why don’t you step into the circle?  You are welcome to join us.”  “Thank you – I was waiting for the invitation.”

Onlooker was waiting for the invitation. I was floored.

I have been sitting with this question for a few days: whose job is it to make someone feel welcome?  As I reflect, my first reaction was to question why Onlooker didn’t just take the initiative to step in.  I see now that there is a vital relationship between the circle and onlookers:

  • The circle could have something important for the onlooker
  • The onlooker could have something important for the circle
  • One must take initiative to make the connection
  • The other must reciprocate to make the connection
  • If the connection is not made, the possibility is lost or destroyed
  • If the onlooker wants to play, s/he must risk jumping in
  • If the circle wishes to grow and learn, it needs to seek out and invite onlookers

At the heart of this are the possibilities that come with risk.  An onlooker risks indifference or rejection in seeking to play. The circle risks having to shape and adjust to make room for someone new.  The bottom line, though, is that we all know what it feels like to be an outsider.  It is a lonely place to be – even powerless.  Not everyone is always brave and courageous in this place against the power and camaraderie of the circle, so it is necessary for the outer edge of the circle to be permeable and welcoming.

A permeable, expansive circle will:

  • Recognize the power/status of being in/out of the circle
  • Freely invite onlookers
  • Trust the onlooker brings value
  • Expect and welcome the onlooker’s turbulence
  • Adapt and adjust to turbulence
  • Notice what is understood differently

As you read this, onlooker, I invite you to my circle.

Bob Principles

I have a few friends who go by the name of Bob. They are wise, leaving me with short, simple and meaningful principles to live and experiement with. I have just come across the principles Bob Stilger works with that are worth sharing:

  • Every community is filled with leaders
  • Whatever the problem, community itself has the answers
  • We don’t have to wait for anyone. We have many resources with which to make things better now
  • We need a clear sense of direction AND we need to know the elegant, minimum next step
  • We proceed one step at a time, making the path by walking it
  • Local work evolves to create transformative social change when connected to similar work around the world

These principles are powerful in their simplicity. There is great possibility in our lives and work when we believe and recognize (in both the plural and singular) that:

  • We are leaders
  • We have the needed knowledge
  • We can act now
  • We choose direction
  • We make the path by walking it
  • We learn by connecting our local with the global

The choice:  believe in ourselves or sabotage ourselves.

Here’s a link to more information about Bob and his work: http://resilientcommunities.org/?page_id=48

Stirring Titles

I am cleaning my office and noticing the magazines sitting here before I put them away.  The titles, from Plan Canada and AACIP Planning Journals in the last several months, cause a stir in me…

  • Planners’ perspectives on art and culture
  • Rethinking infrastructure: going green
  • Planning for the homeless
  • Aging in place
  • Planning for changing demographics
  • Okotoks: staying within its limits
  • Welcoming communities: planning for diverse populations
  • Making it work: making it last; making it home
  • Food security: a growing concern
  • Planning without a net: the international experience
  • Looking to our past to plan our future

The stir?

Planners’ work covers a range of questions and matters that are deliberated widely in our communities – art, infrastructure, homeless, aging, sustainability, cultural diversity, food – and all of this on the home and international fronts.  And then there is the conversation about how to accomplish what we are aiming for.

But who is the “we”?  The perspectives offered are about how planners contribute to these questions, and these perspectives are offered to planners.  It is tempting to drift toward an assumption that it is the planners who are going to make the difference and that others get in the way.  What, however, if the “we” is planners along with the various stakeholders in our communities.  What if our technical expertise is not where our power of influence lies?

This spring I had an opportunity to run APPI’s Professional Practitioners Course with Gary Buchanan, an alternative written examination format for prospective professional planners where candidates demonstrate their mastery through conversation and writing.  The surprise at this particular gathering was the responses of planners in response to a question about the scope of planning today.  The candidates did not reveal technical aspects, but rather interpersonal.  To be able to do our jobs well these days, we need to be good communicators, negotiators, conflict resolvers, facilitators, coaches, and synthesizers.  All this with a bold courage to take leadership roles in unconventional ways.

Reflecting then on the titles above, I recognize the value of planners.  We offer technical skills to make contributions to our communities’ dreams.  Our value is no longer just  conventional technical skills.  Our value is in cultivating the conditions for all the players and stakeholders involved in these complex issues to clearly articulate where they are going, why and how they will get there.

From time to time we’ll employ our technical know-how, but these are not front-seat skills by default any longer.  Not if we want to make a difference.

Being Host(ed)

We explored how conversational leadership takes place, and how through conversational leadership, the doors open to co-create wise action and change in our organizations and communities.

Last week I relished the opportunity to show up and be hosted, rather than be host at the latest Art of Hosting gathering in the Edmonton area.  While I worked hard to get the word out to people I know who are searching continually for ways to be well with others, it was wonderful to arrive without having to organize anything. Rather than attending to the details of the venue, process design considerations etc., I was able to arrive in a different way: most fully and selfishly expecting to learn at every turn.  As host, I expect to learn at every turn, but there is a slight but meaningful distinction when being hosted – a bit more freedom to explore and invest in self.  It is a marginal distinction with significant implications.

The implication – and gift – for me is remembering how difficult it can be for me to be hosted.  Hence, I have been pondering the difference between being host and being hosted.

Host - Hosted

The smililarities between being host and being hosted are striking: both require welcoming the stretch of learning together, offering self fully and deeply to each other, and engaging together around a passionate call.

The distinction between host and hosted lies in the invitation, intention and the design.  Being host means noticing and responding to a burning question, the passionate call to gather.  Being hosted means responding to the resonance of that call. Being host means holding space (the physical and metaphysical) for the invitation and the gathering itself.  Being host also means designing process to create the conditions to release holding the space to allow those hosted to co-create space.  Hosting means intentionally letting go.  Being hosted means following resonance and choosing where to place attention.

In the setting of an art of hosting gathering, the hosted have an opportunity to become hosts.  The hosts also welcome being hosted.  In this relationship, both the host and hosted are actively engaged in co-learning.  Around the right question, this learning relationship takes place in connection to meaningful work.

Beyond the setting of an art of hosting offering, living the conundrum of being host and being hosted remains alive.  To host well, I must be willing to be hosted.  Willing to be hosted, I am open to surprise, willingly receiving what is offered.

Last week I recognized that I have been “holding” the art of hosting in Alberta for quite a long time with a couple of others – Marg and Hugh.  It is hard to hold space – even with mates.  It isn’t something that can even be held.  It can only be.

The art of hosting is about co-creating space, and opening space.  It isn’t something to hold long.

For wonderful details of the gathering, please see Tenneson Woolf’s harvest of the harvest of the harvest (photos, work/co-learning/relationship social movement piece on YouTube, blogs) here:  http://web.me.com/tennesonwoolf/Tenneson_Woolf/Blog/Entries/2010/6/13_Harvest_-_Edmonton_Art_of_Hosting.html


Elect a President

There is an election for my professional association, the Alberta Association of the Canadian Institute of Planners.  I have put my name forward as candidate for the position of president-elect. The successful candidate will serve one year as president elect, 2 years as president, and 2 years as past president serving as AACIP’s representative to the Canadian Institute of Planners.  This is a significant commitment to the profession, one that asks me to consider completely why I would wish to take this role on for the profession.

As I look back at what really interests me about the planning profession, it is about how we as a collective are in a position to support our communities as they strive to thrive.  We are in service to something far larger than our individual jobs, or even the planning profession.  Collectively, we work in service to the fullness of community.  To best do that, we need to continue the evolution of our professional association while holding two distinct priorities: the development of our profession as technicians and effective practitioners, and the development of the health of our communities.  This involves a new era of professional practice where we acknowledge that we offer so much more than technical services to communities, or technical learning opportunities for ourselves.

The October 2010 AACIP conference is focusing on 2 questions:  What if we are not planning to survive? And who is planning our future anyway?  These questions can relate to both our professional membership, as well as our communities.  As a profession, we need to explore these questions – among ourselves and with our communities – in order to fully respond to what we are called to do.  It is time for us to notice what we, ourselves, are planning for and what we need to do to get there.

As I reflect about why I put myself forward in this way, the answer I keep coming back to is about my passion for the development of our professional practice that is in tune with what our communities need from us.  I see I have a role to play in this.  So, for your consideration:

The skills I offer for my colleagues’ consideration:

  • Executive leadership – senior leader in municipal/regional government, University Board of Governors, numerous community boards
  • Effective resource management – $17 M operating and $250M capital budgets
  • Strategic leadership focus amidst competing demands
  • Strategic alliances and relationships with government, stakeholders, and other professions
  • Appropriate balance between confrontation, cooperation, and collaboration
  • Meaningful processes for conversation – between ourselves, our professional colleagues and our communities

The platform I offer for my colleagues’ consideration:

A leader these days needs to be a host – one who convenes diversity; who convenes all viewpoints in creative processes where our mutual intelligence can come forth. ~ Margaret Wheatley

Without collective intelligence and wise, effective action, the future of our organizations, our communities, and our planet remain imperiled. ~ Thomas J. Hurley and Juanita Brown

After 50 years, AACIP is transitioning into something new: the Alberta Professional Planners Institute (APPI). Along with the name, the planning landscape has changed as well: now over 800 members, a diverse collective practice, and communities facing complex economic, social, ecological and governance challenges. Under the legislation creating APPI, the profession now has an explicit relationship with the public interest.

For the next 50 years, the world will continue to change.  To be effectively in service to our communities, it is time to engage with each other and the larger community to ponder the following questions:

  1. What is the public interest?  What is APPI’s relationship with the public?  What could it be?
  2. How can the collective voice of APPI serve the public interest?
  3. What skills do APPI members need to support the communities we serve?
  4. How can APPI collaborate with other organizations to serve both its members and the public?
  5. What values are at the core of our work?
  6. What is our unique service to the public?
  7. What are the emerging qualities of a new standard of professional practice?

Please cast your ballot.

Focus, Flow and Fun

 

I have been pondering the significance of last week’s soccer scrimmage. I found myself on the field in default mode: going full tilt, fast, shoulder to the wheel, focused effort for results, more effort and more focus for even better results, put in the time and the effort and what I want to come to pass usually does.

But there was a voice over my shoulder, my coach Michael, who could see something I couldn’t see about how to play the game better.Behind me, his words to me were: “slow it down”.On another occasion: “just take the ball, hang on to it for a few seconds, then decide what to do with it.”I couldn’t believe the results.

Now I must note that I need to get feedback from Michael about what he saw – I am relying on what my subjective self sees and feels.I don’t know if he saw anything different, but I felt very different: my body was just doing what it needed to do, without really focusing on it.Putting things together that I hadn’t put together before.It was like those times when I look straight at something and I can’t quite see it no matter how hard I look, but when I look just to the side, I can see it better.My body was doing the things we have been learning all winter – ball control, passing, position, shooting – but without me actually focusing on these.From time to time, I felt a sense of flow.Things unfolded as they needed to in response to the circumstances of the moment.

I fell out of this feel of flow frequently, and then I could still hear Michael’s voice, though it was now me reminding myself. Other times, it was Michael pointing out technical things to do, like: “let the ball hit you straight on.If you turn to the side you have no idea where it will go.”Michael suggested I focus on something specific, but of course that is not the only thing I was expected to focus on.I had to file this information, these things to focus on, into the mix.In the end, I found myself falling in and out of precision, and in and out of intuition.A friendly and usefull tug-of-war between focus and flow.

The game, and life, is about the tug-of-war.It isn’t all or nothing, but rather noticing that both are in play and welcoming them.I notice that in my head and my body, I have a strong tendancy to work hard to get the job done, but not necessarily skillfully.The effort and focus I put into things often makes it look like I am better at something than I truly am.My skills improve when I take the risk of a split second to pause (or take Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink) and check out what the circumstances really require of me.This is not logical – but I can trust that I will know the right thing thing to do, and do it skillfully if I let myself.And if I try to do both – ie focus on flow – I won’t get either.Pulling both ends of the same rope gets you tight rope.

My coach has lessons for me on and off the field and I appreciate the time he has voluntarily spent with us, every week, over the last two years.We are learning technical skills – how to handle a ball, the rules of the game.We are learning about how we do not have the same skills or abilities or aptitudes.This is not only welcomed, but we are learning how to use this diversity to build an effective team.We are supported in our individual learning as well as our collective learning as a team.When we are ready, he shows us something new, always making sure the stretch is one that challenges without overwhelming us.
We are recognizing how we are doing something well and how we are not doing something well so we can see and feel how to improve.Most importantly we are having fun.

I see now that this week’s scrimmage, for me, was about focus and flow – and that welcoming both comes with fun, lightly holding the conundrum.

When I have the ball, I can’t see anything else!

 

This was my big summer learning.  During a soccer practice, we were hearing from our coach that we needed to pass the ball more, and this is what Veronica dared to declare:“When I have the ball, I can’t see anything else!”

All but one of us learned how to play soccer this summer.  We had a year of drills and practice and then it was time to really do it – we had to learn what to do while the game is underway.  A different beast entirely.   And our discussion as a team reveals a lot about how communities work too.  Here is what we noticed:

  1. I often panic when I have the ball.
  2. By making an effort to move the ball, I risk losing it.  But risk of losing the ball is higher if I just kick it in panic.
  3. I play best when I risk losing the ball.
  4. I need others to tell me what they see, in the moment.  They will see things I can not see.
  5. For the team to see what is happening on the field, I have to trust my team.
  6. I don’t have to be comfortable with the ball, or the situation, to see what else is going on.
  7. I have to notice what my strengths and weaknesses are, as well as my teammates, to move the ball effectively.
  8. The game works best when every player is a part of the game – whether they have the ball or not.

As I reflect on my leadership, planning and coaching practice, these questions are unavoidable:

  1. What is my community ‘ball’?
  2. Am I brave enough to make Veronica declarations?
  3. Do I even know if I have the ball?
  4. Am I the right person to have the ball?  Should someone else have it?
  5. Does the team see the field?
  6. Are we still having fun?

I am thrilled to have such a great, bold and honest group of people to learn with.  Game OneGame One


Worldly Wealth Cafe

I am attending the Authentic Leadership in Action conference in Halifax this week.  A thread throughout are the notions of wealth and currency.  Below is a poem created while listening to this morning’s debrief after a world cafe discussion…

How the hell did it happen

That money is more important than people

How do we stay so confused

Every day

Trust is the heart of

Exchange

A core

Of investment in future

Sustaining savings

devalue

Poverty for all

Do we perceive ourselves as being poor?

Complexity measures community

Wealthy when intention and reality are one

What drives our actions

Isn’t real

2 of us came to the table

without talking about money at all

Can you make money of money

Culture, class, gender

Are at the heart of the matter

In social transformation

A shifty mood

Where I put my attention

What if I just put trust out there

In the university

In giving my needs will be provided

Wikipedia, linnux, what’s next

When wealth is genuinely exchanged?

Without fear of scarcity

In touch with humanity

Engaging

Together in

Homes and communities

My back hurts

What am I willing to pay?

ACE Volunteer Experts in New Sarepta

On June 16, 2009, volunteers from New Sarepta, Sherwood Park, Leduc and Leduc County gathered to explore volunteering. Their goal – to sustainably recruit and retain volunteers.  Again, in my work with ACE Communities (www.acecommunities.ca) I facilitated the creation of their goal and identification of strategies to reach the goal.  Their main finding: we  know what needs to be done, we just needed to take the time amongst ourselves (as individuals and together) to find it.  We just have to do what we forget we have to do.

Here is their work and what their conclusions:

 

I was burned and sick and tired

Reminded why I will continue

A boost to run a festival!

Appreciating people where they are

I reemphasize the importance to reinvest

Taking time to consider

What we are doing right

I will mentor others and transfer the best I can

I found categories of why we volunteer

Making it easier to work with my agencies

I take away this process

In organizations

We will know what we are about

And what is expected

Keeping board members with more effort

I will mentor

An interesting thought

Why do I volunteer?

Oh, ok.Now I get it.

I bring connections to my volunteers

I don’t just say be intentional

I can be intentional

I actually know

That I am an expert

ACE Volunteer Experts in Thorsby/Warburg

In my work with ACE Communities (www.acecommunities.ca) I had the pleasure last night of facilitating a workshop with volunteer experts – the people who showed up to learn about how to recruit and retain volunteers.
With ACE leaders at Leduc County, we designed an experience that brought out the experts in Thorsby and Warburg. Here is their work and what they concluded at the end of the gathering:

The value of the conversation and commitment:

Sharing it all, networking
We know more than we thought

We renew positive
Practice
Remembering why
With inspiration
To appreciate

Encouraging community
Still cares
We don’t let the nay-sayers get me down
We keep trudging along
Walking with more support
With people like me
Not alone

What wonderful work we do
As volunteers
We do all those things!
It’s nice to hear once and a while!

We will appreciate volunteers more
I will appreciate myself more

Good to hear what others are doing
Hearing from other volunteers
I have taken in a lot
I can’t say just one thing

We are out of the box
With 39/20 networking
When we need it
We are out there

We are impressed
So many with similar ideas
We know what works
We’re on to something

We will find more people
That don’t know the word no
Always the same faces
But there are lots of kinds
Of volunteers
Worker bees and people like us
Start saying no to no!

We have lots to take home
Actions to remind myself
Once and a while
Fanning connections
What everyone said is what I was thinking

Try harder
The Terry Fox run will be running
Playing off one another
Making the connections between us