Client Curveball No. 321 -- how would you do it?

[Birgitt Williams]

Hi Chris,
my inclination would be not to do this in Open Space Technology.  For me,
the ethical issues are huge, in capital letters, and simply advising people
clearly about the theme and advising of the law of two feet just doesn't do
it. In one sense, advising of theme and law of two feet is like getting
their permission for "whatever happens" if they show up, feeling that they
are informed. I do not believe that by doing this, true informed consent is
given.

In my experience in working with victims of violence for a long time in my
life, there are layers below layers below layers of pain. The human spirit
and psyche are very protective and go through the layers at their own pace.
I know many people in their 40's and 50's who are just now strong enough to
deal with something that happened in their youth.

OST is powerful. And we know it. And we have a huge ethical responsibility.
We also know that it is difficult to communicate ahead of time how powerful
the meeting is. One does not know the power until one is in it. Negative
fall out of creating a situation for people to face deeper layers before
they are naturally ready may not occur during the meeting. Nor even in the
closing circle. It might all look like a stunning success. In my work with
youth in our street youth program in the 80's there were a number of group
meetings trying to get at the deeper layers of what was up with the
youth --we saw the youth 3 months later and 6 months later due to drug
overdoses, slashed wrists and other suicide attempts. It wasn't pretty. The
common denominator was the meetings that one of the agencies was holding.
Well intended. They thought they were successful. We raised a public outcry
and got them shut down.It wasn't open space technology. Your question
stirred all of this up. How will you tell them in the invitation that they
might be blown wide open and that they might not get put back together?

I again state the perception that I have of safe space--we cannot guarantee
that the space we create with OST is safe space. What is safe for one is not
safe for another.


I wish you well, whatever your choices. If you go ahead with this OST, I
would encourage you to work carefully with your sponsor group prior to and
after the event. The meeting might be a success in the short term. To assist
success in the long term takes skillful means in honouring the precious
humans involved with all of the pain that they brought into the meeting and
all of the grief that the meeting might stir up.

Birgitt

Birgitt Williams
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At 12:21 PM 9/8/00 -0700, you wrote:

>Now they are in the process of planning for youth services, and they
>have contacted me to use OS.  The idea is to hold a couple of OS
>meetings in the province to bring youth (13-19 or thereabouts) together
>to get from them a sense of their needs in the victim services field.
>We still need to identify who will be invited and why and what they will
>be asked about, but a tricky question has come up, and I'm suffering
>from a bout of either/or paralysis.
>So?  Whaddya think?
>
>Chris

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