Going underground as facilitator - Follow-up

Marc Steinlin (I-P-K) marc.steinlin at i-p-k.ch
Tue Jul 15 12:35:12 PDT 2008


Thanks Chris for this answer, which is very insightful for me! Very  
appreciated!

In particular your first answer made me realising one thing:

KM4Dev is a great (and big: more than 600 members on the mailing  
list!) community, functioning for about 8 years. In the meeting a  
month ago, about 1/3 of the participants were newcomers, and 1/3 had  
only participated in 1 or max 2 meetings. Only a handful of people  
knew each other for several years. And in general we only meet once a  
year, with some (sometimes more, sometimes less) interaction over the  
mailing list. So how could there be a "deep underlying and pre- 
existing architecture of relationships and collaboration" as you put  
it - as a precondition for letting go entirely?

I tend to believe that I find the answer in the second part of your  
paragraph:

> In other words, at large levels of scale within organizations or  
> communities, the act of holding space is actually all about  
> attending to the relationships of the group of people that are  
> holding the deepest intention for the work.  In an organizational  
> development context this means that the core team spends a great  
> deal of time working on its own relationships and in so doing, they  
> are able to hold space for the bigger field of learning.

In KM4Dev, we have a small core group of very passionate and committed  
people, maybe 10-15, who interact closely on a regular basis. We,  
well, we don't exactly know what we do and in particular we don't know  
how we do it. We somehow try to probably hold space for the community  
at large, we discuss certain steering issues, we decide where to hold  
our next meeting and we find people to organise it. We tried to figure  
out how we actually make decisions and found that we have some weird  
procedure of someone making a proposition, and if nobody opposes, then  
that's decided - very organic and self-organised, I guess.

It occurs to me that that very core group makes everything possible by  
fostering and strengthening its own relationships on the small scale,  
thus allowing the community at large to be one with a "deep underlying  
and pre-existing architecture of relationships and collaboration".  
That makes absolutely sense to me and it feels like it hits the nail  
on the head. Thanks for that insight!

I will share it with the core group... ;-)

-marc




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Marc Steinlin
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On 15 Jul 2008, at 20:59 , Chris Corrigan wrote:

> Great questions Marc!
>
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 11:13 AM, Marc Steinlin (I-P-K) <marc.steinlin at i-p-k.ch 
> > wrote:
>
> What means "holding space"? What is the function, if demonstrably  
> one can do without?
>
> The $100,000 question!  Several of us over the years have written  
> things on it (I wrote a whole book trying to understand it) but it  
> is an elusive process.  And I think it changes with the scale and  
> size of the group AND most importantly with the pre-existing depth  
> of their own relationship.
>
> If I was to generalize I would say that holding space means helping  
> the group find its highest potential realized.  For some groups, in  
> some contexts this might be a very controlling kind of thing and for  
> other groups not so much.  In my expereince where there is a deep  
> underlying and pre-existing architecture of relationships and  
> collaboration, there is very little an individual can do to control  
> the outcome, so getting out of the way seems the best option.   
> Lately I'm learning a lot about working with fields of learners or  
> people engaged in large scale and longer term change.  What I'm  
> learning is that it takes a field to hold a field, as my late friend  
> Finn Voldtofte once said.  In other words, at large levels of scale  
> within organizations or communities, the act of holding space is  
> actually all about attending to the relationships of the group of  
> people that are holding the deepest intention for the work.  In an  
> organizational development context this means that the core team  
> spends a great deal of time working on its own relationships and in  
> so doing, they are able to hold space for the bigger field of  
> learning.
>
> And then having said all of that, I think there is an art  to  
> intuitively knowing how much or how little to "hold."
>
>
> Or is it really that the group as a whole can hold space (which  
> seemed to be the case)? Any group?
>
> Yes a group can hold its own space, but not any group.  My hunch is  
> that we can let go into groups like this when there is at least a  
> minimal form of relationship in place.  How much or how little is  
> immeasureable, but you can sense whether a group has that capacity  
> or potential if you let go of your expectations for the role of  
> facilitator.
>
> Why do we really need any facilitator throughout the event?
>
> I am working a lot these days with the chaordic path, the idea that  
> there is a way forward if we dance between chaos and order.  In that  
> respect I think the facilitator can play a valuable role in brining  
> minimal elegant structure to chaos so that the conditions for self- 
> organization might be met.  At it's most basic level, this structure  
> looks like or is an invitation, a calling question that taps  
> passions and responsibility  Once passion and responsibility are  
> tapped, the group can look after itself.
>
> And consequently under which conditions can we dispense with it?
>
> Most of our lives are spent without facilitators helping us be  
> around other people.  We can learn a lot from those situations.  If  
> you engage in a little appreciative inquiry project on your own  
> life, you might remember stories about times in your life when you  
> experienced great strides without a facilitator.and then harvest the  
> key conditions from those stories.
>
> What is the risk? Can this go totally wrong?
>
> The risk is always that it won't work, that a group won't discover  
> its highest potential.  And although whatever happens is the only  
> thing that could have (and that means you need to pay attention to  
> the space to hold at the outset), if there is much at stake and the  
> group finds itself unable to work without some form and leadership,  
> the stake will be lost, as will the opportunity.  But in complex  
> living systems, there is no such thing as totally wrong anyway -  
> everything that happens is food for everything else.  If however you  
> have an expectation that there is a right and a wrong result, there  
> is always the risk that a group might acheive the wrong result.
>
> In my experience, it pays to create the conditions in which the host  
> team and the group itself understands this approach to complex  
> systems and self organization. so that you are operating with a  
> learning environment rather than a right/wrong dichotomy.
>
> Thanks for the questions Marc.  Anyone coming to OSonOS that wants  
> to convene a session with me on this, to explore these conditions a  
> bit further?
>
> Chris
> -- 
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Facilitation - Training - Process Design
> Open Space Technology
>
> Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
> Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
>
> Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd.
> http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com
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