Going underground as facilitator

[Brendan McKeague]

Great question Marc and wonderfully rich responses...

Like some others on the List, I am part of an organisation (an 
association of coaches/conultants/facilitators) here in Western 
Australia who use OS as the guiding principles and practices for our 
'organisation'....when we started working together, about three years 
ago, we began with an OS event about the possibility of shaping and 
forming an association that would "create something which makes a 
real and positive difference in our local, corporate and professional 
community."....it soon became apparant that this would make a 
difference to ourselves also!

Since then, our numbers have expanded to about 14 and we have three, 
two-day open space meetings a year at which we review, revise, 
envision and chart the way ahead for the next few months - we have a 
series of 'leadership' open space meetings in between to which 
everyone is invited and whoever comes is the right people etc - and 
these keep us connected to what's emerging...

By now, we are all well used to the OS principles and process - so it 
just happens - with usually one of us being the main 'space-holder' 
and this can be shared around when appropriate (eg if that person 
needs to leave early/arrive late...) - there is a comfortable 
cohesion between the members of the group on this - we all know that 
a single, clearly identified person is intentionally holding the 
space for the group, and that same person may also move freely around 
the conversation topics....we're becoming even more comfortable with 
the notion of shared group-holding...or as Harrison's words, 'where 
the community holds its own space'....although we're probably not 
quite there yet!

Sounds like a great oppportunity for you to explore your own 
boundaries around this - and with the possiblity of working in 
harmony with other colleagues, a chance to continue the experiment in 
the great Open Space story...

Good luck
Brendan

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>From  Fri May 23 04:20:49 2008
Message-Id: <FRI.23.MAY.2008.042049.0600.>
Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 04:20:49 -0600
Reply-To: robyn at litglobal.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Robyn Stratton <robyn at litglobal.com>
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Robyn is traveling and unable to access her email until June 6th, 2008.

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