Facilitation disasters or are they?
Barbara Bunker
bbunker at buffalo.edu
Tue Nov 24 11:01:17 PST 2009
Hi Peggy... thanks for sending your story. I like you love name!! B3
On Mon 11/23/09 7:21 PM , Peggy Holman peggy at opencirclecompany.com sent:
> Barbara and Tonnie,
> In response to your question of disasters or situations where we feel
> more could have happened, I'm re-sending a story I posted three years
> ago that completely changed my Open Space practice.
> Ironically, this is the story that launched the shift from defending
> space to being co-creative in how I hold it that I discussed in my
> last post.
> Peggy
> On Nov 16, 2009, at 5:56 AM, Barbara Bunker wrote:
>
> I think that this very interesting conversation is moving from
> disasters to
> situations where we feel that more could have happened....sometimes
> because we
> didn't do all that we might have done in the contracting or in the
> event itself
> or...?????? B3
>
> Barbara Bunker
>
> Begin forwarded message:
> FROM: Peggy Holman
> DATE: August 23, 2006 9:01:49 PM PDT
> TO:
> SUBJECT: [OSLIST] BREAKING OPEN (LONG)
> REPLY-TO: OSLIST
> During the last week of June, I hosted what turned out to be the
> most personally challenging work I’ve done in a very long time. In
> fact, I’d say it broke me open, in a difficult but valuable way.
> The primary gift was a move from a defensive stand around Open Space
> to a co-creative stand. I’ll say more about what this means and how
> I got there by sharing the story of what it was like to hold space for
> Philanthropy, Love, and Evolution (also known as the Philanthropy
> Salon). My intent is not so much to share the story of the
> conference, but rather, the story of facilitating the conference. To
> begin at the beginning
the signs that this would be different were
> there right from the start. You know that thing about every group
> saying, “we’re different?”, well, based on my experience,
> transformational philanthropy – philanthropy intended to make a
> substantive difference in how systems (e.g., health care, education,
> media, etc.) themselves work – really is different! But, that
> shall unfold
. The idea for the gathering was born in May, 2005,
> when Michael Dowd, Tom Atlee, and I hosted the first Evolutionary
> Salon. At the end of the gathering, one of our agreements was to
> host some “strategic conversations”, bringing an evolutionary world
> view (I’ll share some background on this in another posting) to
> different high leverage fields. We decided to start with
> philanthropists. In September, 2005, we each reached out to people
> we knew in the field to ask their counsel on how best to reach this
> audience. On a conference call, we were met with enthusiastic
> support. People jumped in, saying
”we should do x, let’s try
> y”
in other words rather than telling us what WE needed to do, our
> counselors enlisted themselves in the work! Seemed like an
> auspicious beginning, as they agreed to become our planning group.
> Over the next few weeks, we drafted an invitation and identified the
> well-respected, well-networked leaders in the field of
> transformational philanthropy. Our planning team thought it looked
> great
until they realized that the invitations would be coming from
> them. Suddenly, it wasn’t quite right. We went back to the drawing
> board, getting clearer about the purpose of the gathering. We wrote
> another invitation and were met with another stepping back.
> “Hmmm
.I wondered, is there a pattern here?” On our next call, I
> asked about this approach-avoid pattern. I was clear to come from a
> place of curiosity and non-attachment. After some self-reflection,
> people acknowledged this as a cultural characteristic (understandable
> when, as one said, everyone has an opinion on the best way you should
> spend your money). Still, it was something of a turning point. The
> next version of the invitation “took” and inviting began in
> earnest. It was slow at the beginning, but as it became the place
> to be, we ultimately reached the capacity of our facility with just
> the sort of mix of folks we had envisioned coming together. As the
> date grew closer, I had my second cultural surprise: more
> participants contacted me with opinions and requests about how the
> gathering should be designed than I’ve ever experienced before. In
> retrospect, I can describe some of the other cultural characteristics
> that I believe were at play. First, most of these folks spend their
> professional lives in facilitated conversations. They are VERY
> sophisticated about process. And since transformational philanthropy
> has something of a spiritual aspect to it, most of them have done deep
> personal work. Many were used to processes that took them into
> spaces of intimate, collective connection. Some of the participants
> I talked with before the gathering were familiar with Open Space, and
> didn’t think much of it (more on this in another posting). Secondly,
> though sophisticated, I found some odd blind spots. My hunch is that
> this is a group of people, who are among the “powerful” that many
> have trouble speaking truth to (as in speaking truth to power). I
> suspect they may be sheltered from the uncomfortable or the difficult
> even if that isn’t their preference. Finally, while the facilitator
> is ALWAYS in service to the group, most groups unconsciously cede
> their power to the facilitator. This is a group that fully
> understands that the facilitator serves at their pleasure. Again,
> this didn’t truly come clear to me until the meeting itself. From
> the half-dozen or so conversations I had with participants prior to
> the gathering, there were two issues that were most clearly
> expressed: the need to go “deep” and the need for agreements so
> that there was a sense of safety for marginalized voices. (Thanks to
> one of the planning group, we had a wonderful mix of people of color
> and youth present.) As is often the case when working with people
> who want to fill the space with planned processes, I was highly
> protective of the space. Tom described me as a mama bear. As I
> started to appreciate the demands of this group, I was glad to have
> some highly skilled partners for the hosting: Thomas Hurley, Juanita
> Brown and Tom Atlee. As we began discussing specifics, they made it
> clear that they would do their best to support me. Though it was not
> the design that they would have used given a clean slate, they were
> there to make it work. I made the choice that we would not begin in
> Open Space for several reasons:
> *Our experiences of the 2nd and 3rd salons made it clear that we
> needed to set some context with the evolutionary story.
> * There were enough participants that I knew were hostile to Open
> Space that I wanted to start with something more familiar to them
> (BTW, as I checked into it, several had experienced multiple day OS
> gatherings with OS practitioners that I respected, so it wasn’t a
> case of inexperienced support)
> *My hosting partners had gifts to contribute to the mix
> * I had sufficient clues to know I was dealing with a culture
> that I didn’t understand. Since I was working with people who were
> familiar with the culture, I knew I needed to trust their counsel.
> (The planning stretched us all as we made room for each other’s very
> different beliefs about facilitation.)
>
> We had the luxury of time - an evening, and 4.5 days. We agreed
> that before going into Open Space, we had two pre-requisites: go deep
> – creating a strong sense of intimacy and community, and ground
> people in the evolutionary story (a lesson from the second and third
> evolutionary salons) so that when we opened the space, we would go
> broad from depth. I was actually quite excited by this, suspecting
> that with the diverse mix of people present, that deep connection
> would increase the likelihood for breakthrough. On the issue of
> agreements, I argued that this would work itself out in the Open
> Space, so we didn’t take it on directly. The first evening, people
> introduced themselves by taking a “courageous love name”. (This
> was inspired by two sources: the etymology of philanthropy – loving
> humanity (or more loosely, loving service); and something we’d done
> at Spirited Work one season. We’d chosen warrior names. In the
> spirit of a broader understanding of philanthropy, rather than
> warrior names, people took a courageous love name. Mine, which I
> have used since taking it as my warrior name at Spirited Work, is
> Standing Still in the Fire. Little did I know that I would have
> quite the opportunity to live into my name! Following this step
> into intimacy, what was supposed to be a 60 minute presentation on
> evolution by a cosmologist, ran way over. While it contained
> beautiful animations of galaxies from the Hubble, there was enough
> technical information and it was late enough at night, that it turned
> out not to be the inspiring introduction to the story of evolution
> that we had expected. (Something that Juanita and Thomas had been
> VERY concerned about.) When it was over, I said to Thomas, that
> while I knew he would find no satisfaction in it, he had been right
> about not doing the presentation in the evening.) Following this
> mixed beginning, Juanita, Thomas, Tom, and I met and concluded that
> we should re-think our plans for the next day. The location of the
> gathering, Gold Lake, is very special land. Traditionally a
> gathering place for Native American tribes to put aside their weapons
> and meet in peace, this land and its native populations were ravaged
> by settlers when gold was found nearby. Its current stewards are
> working to honor and restore its special energy to support efforts
> that heal and transform the world. We began the first full day by
> offering some reflective questions to people and sent them out to
> connect with the land and each other, using the questions as they
> wished. When they returned, Juanita was to host a World Café
> intended to begin connecting philanthropy and evolution. As she
> introduced the question for the café, one of the young people, Evon,
> a man who had been chief of his Alaskan tribe, spoke. He was
> respectful and articulate and named his discomfort with evolution, a
> term which we’d incorporated into the question being used for the
> café. More than this discomfort, he was raising the question of
> safe space (remember that pre-conference warning that we needed to
> create agreements? I hadn’t counted on this being an issue before
> the space was opened!). Juanita handled the situation with grace,
> ultimately handing the leadership to Evon and a partner with whom he
> worked, angel to create safe space. We moved back into a council
> circle and they led a circle in which people could say whatever they
> felt they needed to say for the space to be open for their voices.
> While this was frustrating to those who wanted to get to the content
> (and they voiced this), it seemed to accomplish its purpose. When
> Juanita, Thomas, Tom and I met after this circle, we agreed it was
> time to open the space. One other factor now entered the situation
> for me. We were at 8,500 feet of elevation. I discovered that I
> couldn’t get more than 3 hours of sleep each night. And I’m an
> 8-hour-a-night kind of person. I was well aware of being far less
> centered than I usually am when opening space. Tuesday morning, I
> opened the space. Something occurred that has never happened to me
> in the 12 years of space holding. The group rebelled. They were
> quite adamant that they wanted to stay together until they had a
> common grounding in both the state of transformational philanthropy
> and an understanding of the evolutionary story. I said that all
> they needed to do was post the sessions and it would be clear by how
> people negotiated at the agenda wall and how they used their two feet
> if they all wanted to stay together. They rejected this; I stepped
> back and watched as a debate ensued over whether to do a fish bowl, a
> world café, or some other form to handle their desire to stay
> together. As I witnessed this, I was mostly marveling over the
> passion of this group as it clearly took charge of its needs. After
> about 45 minutes, the group fragmented into lots of small
> conversations. At that point, I made the one choice that in
> retrospect, I see as my attachment to things. It was an impulse
> based in my Spirited Work culture – I got up, asked for silence,
> said I’d ring a bell and when they came out of silence, they would
> know what to do. When the sound of the bell just ended, one of the
> participants, who was sitting directly across from me, looked
> straight at me and said they were doing just fine, thank you and that
> my ringing of the bell was completely out of order. I felt seared by
> his words. I was standing still in the fire and I got cooked.
> Shortly after that, another participant said that he thought they
> should do what I had suggested – post their sessions and see what
> people were interested in. And that’s what they did. Vindication
> of sorts. They did stay as a group for the afternoon, with two
> powerful sessions, one on how the field of transformational
> philanthropy had evolved, followed by a session that finally provided
> some insight into what the evolutionary world view had to offer to
> philanthropy. That evening, one of the participants hosted an
> extraordinary storytelling session that took people into very
> intimate connection with each other. The design was simple: Tell a
> story of personal transformation. People had 3-4 minutes for their
> stories. A bell was sounded at 3 minutes and again at 4 minutes.
> There was a talking object, so whoever wished to speak could do so
> when they were ready to tell their story. It took 2 days before most
> folks talked to me. I realized that in process work terms, I’d
> played an important role, making it completely clear who was in
> charge - them. I was basically fine with what had taken place,
> still, it was definitely took some deep breathing to be at peace with
> it all. I spent much of the time over the rest of the gathering
> making amends with the people who had called me before the gathering,
> letting them know that I realized that I needed to work with them in a
> co-creative way rather than simply defending the space. As an
> example of what I mean by this, on the last day of the OS, one of the
> participants approached me with a common request in multiple day Open
> Spaces – they wanted people to say more than a title for their
> sessions so that they had a better understanding of what the sessions
> were about. My traditional stance for this is to encourage them to
> talk to the convener to find out more. This time, when we began the
> morning postings, I named the request and the tension – the more time
> describing sessions, the less time to be in them. I said they were
> adults and could make their choices knowing this was the tradeoff. I
> felt this honored the request and the space. It seemed to work. This
> is how I am thinking about what it means to be co-creative: Identify
> what, if any, tensions exist between the request and keeping the
> space open and then work with the requester to create a response that
> respects both. By the end of the conference, a number of the
> participants talked about it as a landmark event. When Michael, Tom
> and I had discussed our desire for this gathering before it began,
> that had been our highest aspiration. No matter how personally
> challenging it was, the outcome was all that I could have wanted
and
> more. Unlike most Open Spaces, I actually wrote a
> report:http://www.co-intelligence.org/PhilanthropyES2006.html [4]
> Stay tuned for: · The perceptions of Open Space
> by some of the folks I met · The evolutionary
> world view (as offered in the context of its relationship to
> conversation) BTW, one other cultural characteristic of
> philanthropists – they live their lives as butterflies, holding
> many, many private sessions. ________________________________
> Peggy Holman
> The Open Circle Company
> 15347 SE 49th Place
> Bellevue, WA 98006
> (425) 746-6274www.opencirclecompany.com [5]
> For pre-orders with a 20% discount on the new edition of The Change
> Handbook, go to:
> www.bkconnection.com/ChangeHandbook [6]
>
> "An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not
> get burnt, is to become
> the fire".
> -- Drew Dellinger
>
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