Notes from a one day OST meeting

BJ Peters bjpeters at amug.org
Thu Jan 17 13:18:25 PST 2002


Chris-- What a sweet gift to present to us! Everyone who has ever opened
and held space has felt the same things as you did at one time or another.
It gives great comfort to me to know I'm in such good company with the
plethora of feelings that can happen. And it is so true that the process
works; it's I that sometimes can get in the way of my own trust. Thank you
so very much for sharing.

BJ

Chris Corrigan wrote:

> Colleagues.
>
> Yesterday I facilitated a one day OST meeting for about 35 managers of a
> health care authority.  They are going through incredible trauma right
> now with the health care system in this province being decimated as it
> is prepared for privatization.
>
> The OST was partly a learning experience for the managers, and partly a
> chance to talk about how they deal with change both as people and as an
> organization.
>
> I took some notes about how I was feeling throughout the day, and offer
> them to you as I wrote them.  There were a couple of subtle shifts in
> the energy during that day and as a facilitator, it's always hard to
> know how to respond.  Following is a bit of an internal dialogue I was
> having with myself.  I offer it especially to those facilitators who
> have not yet found themselves in this situation as a kind of guided tour
> through one person's psychic engagement with space holding.
>
> * The room was far from ideal this morning.  No really good wall to work
> with, tables in the room ready for lunch, no cordless mic.  We got the
> tables pushed up against the wall, but that is still where everyone went
> when they came in.  BIG grief issues, seeking comfort in the less
> unfamiliar of the two room set ups. During the day some folks used the
> tables, but most did not.
>
> * Topics slow to come out.  There is a lot of grief in the room and
> there is a palpable sense of watching the group go through a mini grief
> cycle with respect to the process.  It always hurts when they reach
> denial just when they have been invited to post a topic.  It took quite
> a while to get these 19 issues, and the group went through denial from
> being quiet and reserved to being uncomfortable with the silence, and so
> they started to laugh.  Then there was a really clear shift to a deeper
> reflective mode.  Out of that came the bulk of the issues.  People
> seemed to get more serious, although there was still a lightness to the
> underbuzz.
>
> * When I got to last call (“going once”) about 4 or 5 more issues came
> out.  One woman was sitting on the edge of her seat just bouncing.  She
> popped up just as it seemed as if the agenda setting session was about
> to end.
>
> * How to role model working with silence.  If you get uncomfortable
> walking the circle over and over in complete silence, you are finished.
> You have to love the silence, see the stillness as a brooding harbinger
> of passion and action unleashed, like prairie storm rising up above the
> horizon to hail, rain and thunder on the land.  There is a moment before
> that, when the wind dies out and the light changes to a gold or green
> colour and the black clouds come upon you.  Then the rain is unleashed
> and the thunder comes and the regeneration process begins to flow,
> transforming the land from brown to green again.  It is like the I Ching
> image of Wu Wang (Without Falsehood).  It is the image of thunder under
> heaven, and precedes the falling of rain and Great Nourishment.  The
> text of the gua says :
>
> Without Falsehood.
> Sublimely prosperous and smooth.
> Favourable to be steadfast and upright.
> If one's intention is not truthful,
> There is trouble.
> Unfavourable to have somewhere to go.
>
> If you do not love the silence like you can love that moment before a
> storm, the group will seize upon your inauthentic presence in the room
> and turn on you.  I have seen it happen.  It almost happened today.
> Everything I did to role model my love for silence (smiling, frowning,
> making eye contact, looking at the floor) seemed to make it worse.  Then
> I stopped trying and suddenly the flow was back. Truthfulness and
> authenticity emerge on their own.  They cannot be cultivated.
>
> * What is this?  Where does  this self-critic come from?  One negative
> comment and my mind is filled with questions like: “this doesn't work.
> Who am I kidding?  I don't know what I'm doing.  This whole thing is
> flippant.”  Even a batch load of positive comments don't seem to undo
> the damage I do to myself with the negative comments.
>
> * There is a lot of laughter and high spirit in the room despite this
> underlying toxicity in the environment.  The sponsor is worried that the
> energy level seems low.  I don't sense that. Oh no. Why not?  My sponsor
> seems to be saying that people feel so powerless that they sense that
> this is not a time when they can contribute anything.  They want to
> simply sit still and wait for things to happen to them.  I’ve heard
> those comments.  Nothing matters because we can't change anything
> anyway.  Hmm.  Maybe we have the wrong theme.  Maybe there is too much
> business to conduct and so people aren’t willing to step back a bit a
> learn.
>
> * The energy picked up again in the last session.  I think sometimes I
> am too highly tuned, like a blade of grass waving with each
> imperceptible breath of air.  We ended with a bit of discussion on how
> to use OST with the Purpose, Vision, Structure and Action parts of
> organization, a little bit on the grief cycle which was critical for
> these guys to know about given everything that is going on for them.
> Sponsor said she felt that the space was more open for her now.
>
> * Several people asked me how they could access this spirit in their
> organizations.  I responded with saying that in the absence of knowing
> anything specific about their organization, that it should be about
> invitation.  Are you doing things in your organization that create and
> respect invitation?  What can you do to create an inviting workplace?
> Invitation makes so much sense because it allows people to respond
> within their personal givens, in a totally full way.  It asks them to
> give only what they can, and give it all fully.
>
> Chris
>
> --
> NEW EMAIL: chris at chriscorrigan.com
>
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Consultation - Facilitation
> Open Space Technology
>
> http://www.chriscorrigan.com
> chris at chriscorrigan.com
>
> RR 1 E-3
> 1172 Miller Road
> Bowen Island, BC
> Canada, V0N 1G0
>
> phone (604) 947-9236
>
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