Notes from a one day OST meeting
Chris Corrigan
chris at chriscorrigan.com
Thu Jan 17 11:40:18 PST 2002
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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>From Thu Jan 17 12:00:20 2002
Message-Id: <THU.17.JAN.2002.120020.0800.>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 12:00:20 -0800
Reply-To: bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Bill Harris <bill_harris at facilitatedsystems.com>
Organization: Facilitated Systems
Subject: Re: Notes from a one day OST meeting
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Chris Corrigan wrote:
> 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
Thank you, Chris. That is an important gift.
Bill
--
Bill Harris 3217 102nd Place SE
Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA
http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541
*
*
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