Spirituality, Leadership & Management Conference

[Michael Holdstock]

website at:

http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/commerce/market/conferences/slammain.htm

Brief Introduction:

>Charles Sturt University - Mitchell,
>Orange Agricultural College -The University of Sydney
> and
>University of Western Sydney - Hawkesbury
>
>invite you to take part in the inaugural Australian
>
>SPIRITUALITY, LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE
>
>At the University of Western Sydney
>Hawkesbury Campus
>Richmond, Sydney
>26-28 September 1998
>
>
>³If something is worth saying, it is worth listening to.² Harrison Owen
>
>The Conference
>
>The inaugural Spirituality, Leadership and Management Conference is an
opportunity for those searching for better ways to live, work and learn to
come together and share their wisdom. It provides a unique opportunity for
people from throughout the world to come together in this land of the Holy
Spirit (Australia was once known as Terra de la Espiritu Santo), the land
of the Dreamtime, to listen, to discern and to commit to a better future
for the world we share.
>
>It is becoming increasingly clear that the economic rationalist model of
the work place is not sustainable in the long term. Writers such as Jack
Hawley in Rediscovering the Spirit at Work, Mathew Fox in Re-invention of
Work, Lee Bolman and Terry Deal in Leading with Soul, and countless others
have developed the theme of re-establishing the links between spirituality
and the leadership of work  (and other) organisations. Meanwhile, Gregory
Bateson, in his theory of learning, has identified a developmental process
in learning levels which can be seen to parallel the development of
management and leadership theory and the path of spiritual development.
>
>Against this background, the conference will provide an opportunity to
develop these themes intellectually (academic papers) as well as
experientially (workshops). There will be ample opportunity for
participants to observe, reflect, develop ideas and experiment with their
insights and build networks.
>
>For Up-Dates, Visit Our Web Site:
>
>http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/commerce/market/conferences/slammain.htmMike
Holdstock
personal and organisational growth support
training, facilitation, counseling and coaching
personal vision - to be working at my own creative
edge by supporting others in their work on theirs
email: mike.holdstock at swipnet.se
tel +46 (0) 707 444 525
fax +46 (0) 707 110 679

>From  Sun Aug 23 15:52:42 1998
Message-Id: <SUN.23.AUG.1998.155242.0100.>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 15:52:42 +0100
Reply-To: kloth at tmn.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.IDBSU.EDU>
From: Chris Kloth <kloth at tmn.com>
Organization: ChangeWorks
Subject: Re: Fw: Carol's Question
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";
 x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Carol,

I have been unable to respond until today and hope it's not too late to
be useful.  I have worked with a number of communities of faith,
including churches, synagogues and faith based service delivery
agencies.  The short version is that open space works in these settings
in the same way it does in other settings if the prework of determining
that there is a real "business" issue which people feel passion about
and are willing to accept responsibility for doing something about.  In
my own synagogue we had a number of good ideas and a number of new and
long inactive people emerge to take responsibility for restoring the
spirit to a congregation which was in crisis and losing members fast.

I will say that there is one factor I find important to be alert to and
useful to address during what some of us occasionally refer to as the
invocation of open space with communities of faith.  There is one key
"stakeholder" (omni)present but not physically present in the room.  A
number of people seem to want to assert that they have the true
understanding of her/his/it's perspective on the matter and play this as
a trump card to influence the conversation.  It need not be a show
stopper.

Chris

>From  Sun Aug 23 17:33:25 1998
Message-Id: <SUN.23.AUG.1998.173325.0400.>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 17:33:25 -0400
Reply-To: dgp at cyberus.ca
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.IDBSU.EDU>
From: Parkinson & Gibeault <dgp at cyberus.ca>
Subject: Re: Concluding Open Space
X-To: mherman at mcs.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hello Michael and everyone,

In June you responded to my report on a different way of converging in OS.
You were then "catching up with e-things after being gone". Well, I am doing
the same thing now that the post holiday folly is winding down.

First, thank you for your comments. I like your suggested question and
intend to use it in my next OS in September. It will be the first time I use
the tree metaphore for convergence with a large group (250 people). I will
be co-facilitating with Jacqueline Pelletier a long time facilitator who
also trained with Harrison Owen. We will report on how it went.  If other
people have used this approach particularly with large groups, I would
welcome their comments and suggestions from their experience.

2.Dot vote: Because the time investment question gets dealt with in action
plan discussion groups to which people participate, I use the dot voting to
give the organization another piece of information: independantly of where
people chose to invest time, what do they think the overall priorities for
the organizations are. The reason being is that people may feel more
comfortable and competent to contribute to an issue but may want to
communicate what they think (priorities) about the big picture.
Participants  have in fact asked to make that distinction.

Look forward to more discussion on all this,

Diane Gibeault

Diane Gibeault & Associé.e.s/Associates
191 Juliette Ave. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1K 2T5
(613) 744-2638    Fax  (613) 744- 3347

Michael Herman wrote:

> hello everyone,
>
> just catching up with e-things after being gone...
>
> special thanks to diane for taking action on our conversations re:
> converging and for reporting it...i'd add a couple of little details by
> way of question, suggestion, concern....
>
> 1.  the notion of priority setting and the question you used to open the
> last day seems to have the potential to allow an escape into planning
> mode and out of passion+responsibility mode...what do think of the more
> blunt question..."what are you going to do now?" or "what can you do
> now?"...still intending that these individual actions would be lead to
> the emergence of priorities?
>
> 2.  recently was present for a dots-voting session...i questioned the
> strength of the passion+responsibility link in this particular session i
> was in and thought the link could be tightened by asking folks to take
> dots in proportion to the amount of time they expected to invest in
> doing the actions being voted on....for example, at my meeting (about 30
> volunteer leaders at my church) i would have suggested taking one voting
> dot for every hour per week a person expected to work on these projects
> over the next six months.
>
> as you can see, my concern is to get the most honest view on day three
> of what can really happen going forward, what people are really ready to
> do and not just what would be nice...that said, i also really like the
> idea of going through the opening process again, to demonstrate that the
> opening/questioning process is an everyday working thing, not just an
> annual planning thing.
>
> thanks again,
>
> michael herman

>From  Sun Aug 23 17:33:37 1998
Message-Id: <SUN.23.AUG.1998.173337.0400.>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 17:33:37 -0400
Reply-To: dgp at cyberus.ca
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.IDBSU.EDU>
From: Parkinson & Gibeault <dgp at cyberus.ca>
Subject: Re: Concluding Open Space
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello Esther,

It has been a while that we have not talked. I was happy to hear from you
through this chat list last June. Holidays and folly at work before and after
delayed me in saying thanks for your comments.

I found your partner's idea of 3 different coloured dots quite interesting. I
am curious as to how people defined "where the head was". Was it where they
personnally thought the organization should go (priority) or where they
thought it actually was? Could the organization also interpret  the heart dots
as priorities? How would you sort out what priority to choose at the end. If I
understand well,  there was a whole group discussion to sort that out but such
a discussion may be difficult to hold with large numbers..

How did people who put a dot of "where you were prepared to spend your time"
actually identify themselves to then form action planningg groups? Were the
action planning groups organized based on where most people had put their time
dot?

It's great to explore more creative ways to share information in the group and
to connect people. Thanks for opening this new avenue.

Diane Gibeault

Esther Ewing wrote:

> Michael::
>
> My partner recently did a session with three different coloured dots: a
> blue dot for the strategy where your head was, a red dot for where your
> heart was and a yellow dot for where you were prepared to spend your time.
>
> Then there was a great conversation about why you voted one way with your
> heart and another way with your head - ie. did that mean that your passion
> was in one place but the organization didn't have the wherewithall to get
> there? etc.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> By the way, a consultant friend of mine, Diane Abbey Livingston calls the
> use of dots for voting, "dotmocracy".
>
> Regards,
> Esther