Archives for October 2019

How to Gather

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Click here to read this on my blog and leave a comment!

My co-author Judy Zehr sent me a wonderful resource the other day.  It is a small e-book on how to bring people together to talk about difficult topics.  Of course, that’s right up my alley – and I hope yours!  I decided to make a simple summary out of an already somewhat simple resource.  I’ve included a link to the original resource that Judy sent me below (after my summary).
 
Hope you find this useful and applicable to some of your teams or groups that you are part of or lead.
 
Grounding Virtues
The guide starts with some “Grounding Virtues.”  These are values or principles upon which one’s group, team or community stands.  The key question to unearth the grounding virtues would be:

What do you most value? 

The discovery and articulation of the grounding virtues of a group can help to ground each individual in how each wants to be individually and collectively. 

In this guide, six virtues are listed.  Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Advantage, recommends 2 to 3 core values, principles or virtues to guide your group.  I prefer 2 or 3, as it’s easier to remember. 
 
So, out of the 6 in this guide, these are the 3 that jumped out at me as key to guiding any community gathering. Bring whatever meaning that comes to mind to each or use them as a springboard to have a dialogue with your own group about your collective virtues.  The 3 from the guide are:

  • Humility
  • Generous listening
  • Adventurous civility

 
Shaping the Space
The guide then talks about how to apply these grounding virtues to  “shaping” the space.  You can also think of it as the preparation required to create a generous community experience.

A core question for this task is:

How will you create a space where your core values can be enacted or lived out? 

If we are applying the 3 virtues we chose from the guide, how can you create a space where humility, generous listening and adventurous civility can take place?  Here are some more questions to help you with that:

• What guiding intention do you hold for the gathering?
• Who do you want to invite and cover the “bridge” folks, the elders, the diverse perspectives? 
• What preparation might you want folks to do before the meeting?
• What guiding reminders might you want to share – things like not having to “reach any resolution or conclusions.” 

That last one is an important principle the mediators I know bring into our work.  There’s no pressure to come to some definitive solution in a conversation, or pressure each other to agree.  It’s understanding that is being sought after, not conclusions. 

This is how the guide explains the space where the virtues can be enacted:

“It is about creating and renewing common life.  No one will be advocating to bring others to see things their way. No one will feel pressured to give up the ground they stand on. Stating this very clearly can be disarming, a relief for people. All of our favored cultural modes of engaging difference drive to resolution — winning the debate, getting on the same page, taking a vote. But there is value in learning to speak together honestly and relate to each other with dignity, without rushing to common ground that would leave all the hard questions hanging. We learn to speak differently together in order to live together differently.”

Gathering
The guide then moves on to talk about what to do when you gather. For the gathering, the guide suggests starting with sharing some of the virtues.  There could be a dialogue about the virtues themselves, what they may mean to people about how they want to act at the gathering. Or there could be a communal discovery of what the common virtues or values might be of that group gathered there.  It’s a type of highest intention statement.

After a grounding in the virtues, offering questions to the gathering can help illicit the wisdom.  Here are 3 classics the guide suggests:

  • Why are you here? What longing or curiosity made you say yes to this invitation?
  • Where do you trace the earliest roots of your passion for this conversation?
  • What hope and fear do you bring to this conversation?

It’s also suggested if things get tense, to practice the “pause” – three breaths, in and out — to settle and reset. This is a beautiful practice that could be done at the end of each round.

Then, remember to close well.  Here are 3 questions the guide suggests that could be used:

  • Something you’ve learned from someone else during the meeting.
  • Something you’re still thinking about.
  • Something you want to talk more about at the next gathering.

I hope this summation gives you some inspiration for your own gathering.  This is a link to the guide.
If you want to dive even deeper into the art of gathering, this is a wonderful book.

Climate Action – What’s Next?

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Over 10 years ago, a handful of us in my neighbourhood started a small initiative we called the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers or GTUF.
 
Over the decade, the initiative grew to over 125 households, linked together by relationships built over the years of meeting over plants, seeds, speakers, garden tours, food shared and concerns aired.  A local community garden also grew out of the original force as well as a seed bank, an annual plant and seed exchange, access to instant advice through a communal email address and so, so much more. 
 
And, now, some of the original crew are back together again, hunkered over shared community concerns once more.  This time, it’s not an agenda as concrete as growing food and creating sustainable food systems and food security – as big as that agenda has been and still is!

The agenda now is “What’s Next – Climate Crisis Group.” 
 
The idea for creating yet another group also grew out of food.  This time, we were at a pot luck dinner with some of the usual GTUF suspects.  We had gathered together to say goodbye to one of our members who was moving out of the neighbourhood. While gathered, we spontaneously got into a energetic conversation about climate change and its impacts on our lives.  We soon were all fired up about continuing the conversation. 

So, a few of us  emailed back and forth and picked another date to get together again.  We talked about electric cars, solar panels and carbon offsets.  Then we got together a third time.  I remember this meeting being the one where I cried for most of the 90 minutes of the meeting. A dear friend was sitting beside me, and as we all started to share how we were feeling regarding climate and ecosystem and species collapse, she was wailing, I was crying and we held on to each other as if for dear life.
 
That can be what happens when one starts to feel what is really going on.  Whether you believe climate change is “real” or not, there have been so many species going extinct and extreme weather patterns wreaking havoc with our usual delicate environments, that there is a lot to be grieving.
 
After that meeting, we got together another time at another neighbour’s home.  By now, I was starting to call this my “end-of-the-world” group.  However, at this meeting, people started talking about wanting to bring in more people, to reach those who may be experiencing the impact of climate news in isolation or in their own smaller networks. 
 
There was a growing impulse to create a space where neighbours can come together and process together.
 
So, the idea of having our first public meeting was hatched!  Emails were sent out to potentially interested parties, a poster created by the visual artist in our group, and a room rented in our local community hall.  Then, only days ago, our little planning group got together one more time to plot out what we would do at a bigger gathering.  We were moved to share food once again – we had a potluck dinner – with plenty of end-of-the-world gallows humour.  There was a joke about roasting marshmallows at the end of the world, for example. 
 
I found it all so healing, really.  Much like doctors and nurses with their own black humour in the face of morbidity, it was helpful and comforting somehow. We cobbled together an agenda, and our key gifted facilitator offered to carry the group through the agenda.
 
Today was that first public meeting.  I have to say, I had no real idea why we were having this meeting.  Others in my small band of compatriots thought it was a good idea, but for me, there was no concrete idea of the focus.  Unlike growing food, none of us have a clue what we’re really supposed to do in the face of the enormity of what is.  And, are we replicating something else that is already going on?
 
I was not even sure anyone else but us original handful of people would show up.  Turned out 14 other people showed up, all quite impacted by climate change and wanting to connect. 
 
We sat in a large circle. Here is the general jist of the agenda for the 2 hour meeting, in case you are curious or tempted to start your own:

  1. The facilitator welcomed everyone and the original group of us six people identified ourselves as the instigators and invited everyone else to introduce themselves with a name and the area or street they lived on.
  2. A second round was started for each person to share what brought them out to the meeting and their concerns about the dramatic climate and ecosystems changes we’re living with.
  3. We group of six shared briefly what attracted us to the topic and to holding this meeting
  4. After a 5 minute stretch and connect break, we had a third round for each person to share what actions they are presently engaged in regarding the climate or actions that inspire and give energy or areas of interest (we could have done that in a smaller group, but chose to keep the larger circle).
  5. We six then spoke about our thoughts for the future of the “What’s Next” group and prompted those gathered to sign up to our email list if they want to be informed of any future meetings. We also welcomed people to join our smaller group if they would like to.
  6. We finished with a fourth and final lightening round, to express any appreciations for the opportunity to meet.

I can’t say where this group is going, but I hope some of this might inspire you to start a conversation with your neighbours.  I’m curious to see how this initiative develops. And, I’d love to hear if you have any other community-oriented ideas for how you can show up more fully in the face of climate change and eco-systems collapse.

You Okay Buddy?

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A few years ago, a friend of mine asked if could dog-sit for her for three days. My friend was going out of town for a few weeks, and her usual dog sitter was not available for the first few days of the trip. It seemed an easy ask.  Her dog is a little toy poodle named Buddy.
 
Up until my friend left, Buddy and I got along fine.  He would always bark when I came in the house, but he was friendly and responsive.  Then my friend left. 
 
Day 1 Buddy spent in his cage.  He didn’t venture out, not to eat or drink or pee.  I tried to coax him, but he would simply growl if I approached him.
 
I remembered my friend saying: “Don’t worry. Buddy might stay in his cage at first, but if you leave it open and leave him access to food and water, he’ll come out on his own time.” So, I did that.  I made sure the cage was open, which it had been anyway, and I left for a few hours. 

When I returned,  it didn’t look to me like Buddy had eaten or drunk anything.
 
Day 2, I decided to brave it, put my hand in his cage and bring him outside to “do his business.”  He did growl, but as my friend had also told me, he didn’t bite me.  I held him under his belly and with my other hand on his backside, I carried him outside.
 
I put him down on the grass in my friend’s backyard, and I sat.  Buddy stood there on the grass. Then I noticed what he was doing.  He was frozen, immobile, and shaking.  He stood there shaking the whole 20 minutes I waited with him. 
 
Finally, I brought him back in and he ran back to his cage.
 
I tried this routine a few more times, but nothing happened. 
 
Day 3, I was now concerned Buddy might be dying a slow death, and was not sure how to stop it.  So I was relieved when the “real” dog sitter came by to fetch Buddy that morning. It was amazing to see him turn into another dog before my eyes.  At first, he too hid in his cage and growled at the new person. But after she held him in her arms for a few minutes, he settled down and off they went.  My friend told me later that Buddy was fine at the dog sitter’s home for the rest of the trip.
 
Although that happened quite a few years ago, the image of Buddy in the backyard has stayed with me.  He was so afraid of what could happen to him, that he didn’t even move.  He just stood there shaking.
 
Sometimes that image helps me normalize what happens for me and for others in conflict.  We share some fundamental traits with other animals, and feeling a fear of the unknown is one of them.
 
Knowing that we can all get as afraid as Buddy, helps me focus on creating emotional safety for myself and others in tense conversations  Over the years, I’ve come to see that there is nothing more important for the flow of conversation to work than to infuse as much safety as possible into the conversation. 

Here are some ideas for how to increase safety, with a focus on how to set up the conversation:

  • Where are you going to suggest to meet to have the conversation? What environment could be more relax-inducing?
  • What could you say to the other person that could reassure them that you are asking to have a productive conversation, and really want to hear what they have to say?
  • How can you frame what you want to talk about so that it’s invitational?
  • How are you going to start the conversation to set a collaborative tone and share your best intentions for the conversation (what is your best intention anyway!?

When the dog sitter picked up Buddy and held him in her arms, that is what soothed him. It was that sense of reassuring and non-anxious presence that helped him find his way back home to his own calm center. I didn’t know that when I sat in my chair in the back yard with Buddy, simply watching him shake and hoping he would stop. 

I wonder how our few days together might have been different if I’d picked him up in my arms as well, and whispered gently:
 
“You okay Buddy?”
 
That’s the feeling we all want with each other, especially in conflict.  To gently hold on to ourselves and to each other, to feel the reassurance of care, to hear:

“You okay Buddy?”