Central Asia

uwe.weissflog Uwe.Weissflog at t-online.de
Mon Aug 27 13:08:17 PDT 2001


Dear William,
thanks for bringing Peter Bloch into this conversation, I, too, have learned
much from his work. In his book Stewardship (and also in an interview he had
with Michael Toms) he points to the differences of "leadership" and
"stewardship". My take on this subject is, that leadership (even in its most
refined form) is still about having control over people and stewardship is the
capability to give up the desire for control and instead focus on service (maybe
in the sense of Greenleaf, or more directly as Hermann Hesse describes it in
"The journey to the East").

Which brings me back to Kenoli's original email. When we invite into Open Space
we overcome the mindset of leadership and we become servants, in its truest
sense. We invite people to boldly step forward and take care for their own
lifes, which is new for many people. When, after the introduction in Open Space
someone steps into the circle to state a theme and then take responsibiliby for
convening a group, (s)he is also making a claim on her/his life.

But herein lies also the dilema. Many of our clients are established
organisations and corporations. It doesn't really matter whether for-profit or
non-profit, the underlying structures seem the same to me. These are
organisations with clearly defined (often hierachical) power and control
structures. These structures eventual will clash with the basic principle of
Open Space (we are all of equal importance) and possibly to a lesser degree with
the principles of FSC and Learning Organisations. This has been reported many
times (I find the "Dance of Change, P.Senge et al" worth reading in this
regard). This dilema will be with us as long as we continue to be part of the
conversation called "Who has power over whom".

So the question then is, what can we do? In my experience (I have facilitated
both Open Space and Future Search in technology and R&D environments, as well as
in community work) a dedication to "requesting and telling the truth" is the
only antidote (easy to say, difficult to do, I failed here more often than I
like). But it works. In cases where the boundaries and limitations were stated
clearly, at the beginning of the process, the resulting action plans had a
chance to be transformed into sustainable action. And people had a chance to
nurture their passion in a sustainable way. More easily in my experience in FSC,
but also successfully in Open Space. My learning from this is, that people can
live with constraints and limitations, but not with deception and lies. This is
were the courage and integrity of the facilitator will show - I found it a
challenging but most rewarding way of being a facilitator.

Thanks again to all who brought this topic into the conversation - it gave me
the time and space for some real mindfulness.

Uwe Weissflog
Pathway Guidance, Rinnengaerten 1, 34516 Voehl-Marienhagen, Germany
email: uwe.weissflog at pathwayguidance.com
email (personal): uwe.weissflog at t-online.de
phone: 49-5635-991197; fax: 49-5635-993934

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