being a midwife........

[Toke Paludan Møller]

Hi practitioner friends of all kinds

i just found this wisdom by John Heider and the Tao
  about Being a midwife again after many year hiding in my MacBook  
file somewhere since early 90ties

Being a Midwife

The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily.
The leader’s presence is felt, but often the group runs itself.

Lesser leaders do a lot, say a lot, have followers, and form cults.
Even worse ones use fear to energize the group and force to overcome  
resistance.

Only the most dreadful leaders have bad reputations.

Remember that you are facilitating anothers person’s process. It is  
not your process.
Do not intrude. Do not control. Do not force your own needs and  
insights into the foreground.

If you do not trust a person’s proces, that person will not trust you.

Imagine that you are a midwife; you are assisting at someone else’s  
birth.
Do good without show or fuss.
Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be  
happening.
If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet  
still free and in charge.

When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: ”We did it  
ourselves!”

- John Heider, The Tao of leadership

This and the question

What if hosting conversations that matter is the kind of leadership  
that allows everybody to learn ?

were for me both very helpful in becoming pregnant and part of
giving birth to the  art of hosting practice  in the end of the 90ties

in the spirit of gratitude for life, friends and learning
- and sharing this memory this bright spring morning in Columbus on  
our way to Denmark....

Toke

Words from the heart
http://web.me.com/tokemoller/Toke.wordsfromtheheart/Coming_alive.html





*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20090406/581b6dc9/attachment-0015.htm>