[OSList] No silence in opening
Michael M Pannwitz via OSList
oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Tue Jun 16 15:02:16 PDT 2015
Dear Artur and you others,
I am one who says that silence is "one thing to do" and could therefore
be "one less thing to do".
In fact, silence is a powerful thing to do. It can be liberating or
intimidating and probably have endless variations of impact...
In one event I facilitated there was a situation of silence. Not very
long. The silence was interrupted by a participant turning to me with
the suggestion I do something to energize the group (I assume with the
assumption that there was low energy). As is my practice, I started to
count to myself. By the time I had reached 6, another participant
responded by saying: "We just created space for being non-energetic,
lets enjoy it."
A few seconds later the group continued with their business.
Feedback is a tricky art. When it is not given close to the moment it
refers to (such as in an email after the event) it can not be used to
impact on the situation it refers to, so its pretty useless and more of
an abstract idea that leads to all the assumptions, aggressions,
disappointments, etc. touched on in this string.
Its also curious how much weight this single "feedback" gets against the
backdrop of a satisfactory and productive over all result.
In the early days of my os-facilitation-work we would collect data on
such things as:
--- time passed until the first issue was posted after the call for issues
--- time passed between all the further issues
--- gender (just mark whether it was a gentleman or a lady offering an
issue)
One thing we found is that the time passed until the first isssue was
posted was perceived as very much longer by the facilitator than the
measured time.
Another thing we found (attention: cultural context... here Germany) was
that men posted issues more quickly than women and that the number of
issues posted by women increased proportionately over time.
Reflecting on this data, we developed a structural intervention: When
folks walked up to the bulletin board, we replaced the markers (usually
black) with red markers having announced beforehand that we would do
this so that further issues posted during the event would "stick" out as
"new" issues on the bulletin board. We found that the proportion of new
issues posted by women was larger than in the initial issue-posting
session, often there were more than those offered by men.
I myself had the impression that this structural change did create more
time and relaxation... there seemed more security in having enough time
to come up with ones issues.
Greetings from Berlin where I am looking forward to the WOSonOS in
Krakow in September to discuss more of this stuff face to face... here
is more detail
> http://www.wosonos.com/
mmp
16.06.2015 18:36, Artur Silva via OSList wrote:
> Interesting question and interesting suggestions....
>
> And no one can say that this is contrary to "one less thing to do", as
> silence is "not doing" ;-)
>
> Artur
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Chris Corrigan via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
> *To:* Michael Herman <michael at michaelherman.com>; World wide Open Space
> Technology email list <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 16, 2015 3:25 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [OSList] No silence in opening
>
> Yes to this…
>
> These days no matter what process I am doing, if I offer a minute of
> silence, instead of looking at a clock, I just count twelve slow
> breaths. That way you don;t make people anxious and you get a little
> meditation practice in. The longest I ever did this for was 15 minutes
> with a group of 180 theological educators. I counted 180 breaths. Many
> of them said they had never sat that long in silence with other human
> beings before. We did it to allow people to reflect on an important and
> energetic conflict in the gathering. It changed everything, and was
> indeed the simplest liberating structure I can think of.
>
> C
>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 15, 2015, at 10:37 AM, Michael Herman via OSList
>> <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
>> <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
>>
>> i think you can build it in, as much or as little as you feel is right
>> for each situation, harold, just in the pacing of your opening
>> briefing, if you like. you ring the bells, silence happens. you
>> decide when to bump that silence with walking into the circle. you
>> decide when to break it when you start talking. you put space between
>> sentences and the different parts of your briefing.
>>
>> i saw a video of myself in a circle of about 300, one big circle. my
>> pacing was, for me, excrutiatingly slow to watch. but i also had what
>> felt like a lot of ground to cover, to get around and engage with
>> folks all along that circle. when i finished, people literally ran to
>> the center of the circle. so i think it worked pretty well.
>>
>> lisa kimball suggested to me recently that a minute of silence is one
>> of the simplest possible liberating structure.
>> (liberatingstructures.com <http://liberatingstructures.com/>) she
>> describes taking a minute at the beginning of a meeting, not in a
>> woo-woo way, but in a very practical way: we're all busy people,
>> coming from different places, let's take EXACTLY on minute to let
>> brains finish where they've been and get ready for the work we're
>> about to do here... will be long for some and too short for others,
>> but promise it will be EXACTLY a minute... and then we'll dive into
>> [the work]. her liberating structures materials might be posted
>> somewhere at groupjazz.com <http://groupjazz.com/>
>>
>> m
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Michael Herman
>> Michael Herman Associates
>> http://MichaelHerman.com <http://michaelherman.com/>
>> http://OpenSpaceWorld.org <http://openspaceworld.org/>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Harold Shinsato via OSList
>> <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
>> <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
>>
>> The Open Space for the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
>> (http://civicrm.jrpc.org/rising-from-the-ashes) I facilitated this
>> Saturday went extremely well. We had a full day of sessions and
>> high levels of engagement, and the center's Executive Director
>> said it way exceeded her expectations.
>>
>> After sitting in the glow of so many thank you's, gratitude, and
>> "good job" the day of the event and afterwards - I was surprised
>> and quite annoyed by a bit of feed back second hand through email...
>>
>> "there should have been a 5-minute or so thinking time."
>>
>> "Some people needed more quiet time to gather there thoughts."
>>
>> As people become more familiar with Open Space, my personal
>> experience is that rather than a long awkward and anxiety filled
>> pause as facilitators worry if anyone will post a session -
>> instead, especially in public OST events, people launch and line
>> up to populate the agenda. This has bothered me, but this is the
>> first time I've heard the complaint of a *lack* of silence in the
>> opening.
>>
>> After my initial annoyance, and speaking with an Open Space
>> colleague, my wife, and another space holding professional, I
>> wondered if this weren't actually something that can help there be
>> authentic open space, and not just a cargo cult going through the
>> motions.
>>
>> I'm pondering a way to help there be space before people come to
>> the center to announce their sessions - but without doing some
>> heavy facilitated silence or meditation process.
>>
>> Any thoughts, suggestions?
>>
>> Thank you!
>> Harold
>>
>>
>> --
>> Harold Shinsato
>> harold at shinsato.com <mailto:harold at shinsato.com>
>> http://shinsato.com <http://shinsato.com/>
>> twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush>
>>
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--
Michael M Pannwitz
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