A growing group of practitioners is adding to the inspiration and evolution
A fellowship is more than a community. It is a web of practitioners connected across space and time in a high purpose of serving life, people and the needs of our communities in the world now. We practice together and in our own lives to co-create and do good work in the wider world, wherever we are called by real need and from the heart. We are inspired by what happens when people meet with the purpose of learning and developing their own competencies together with others.
We have discovered that the principles of self-organization, participation, ownership and non-linear solutions are the key to both individual and collective discovery. This is different and complimentary to more traditional ways of working, that are often based on rational planning and full control of the process, in order to ensure that planned results are achieved.
You can find an up-to-date list of Art of Hosting Stewards on the Art of Hosting website (www.artofhosting.org). Stewards are people who serve the deep values and principles of this work – its DNA - through their lives and their example. Nobody is elected and Art of Hosting is not an organisation. If you feel called to step forward, you are a steward too.
Communication within this web of practitioners goes mainly through the Art of Hosting email list. You can join it through the website. More in depth conversation and knowledge sharing will happen online, on Evolutionary Nexus, where the Art of Hosting has its own community space. (www.evolutionarynexus.org)
How we define the Art of Hosting will depend on what context and audience we are defining it for. Please feel free to add your definitions - when you do, please specify the context and audience you had in mind when articulating it.
The following definition was articulated for the culture of the European Commission in Brussels.
The AoH is...
A raft of methodologies for facilitating conversation in groups of all sizes, supported by principles that help maximise collective intelligence, integrate and utilise diversity and minimise/transform conflict. Processes facilitated in this way tend to result in collective clarity and wise action - sustainable, workable solutions to the most complex problems. The approach ensures that stakeholders buy into the process (because they participate in the design and the process is by definition transparent) and make ongoing feedback, learning and course correction a natural and efficient part of life.
And Art of Hosting is much more than this.
It is a Practice, like mediation, Tai Chi or mindfulness is a practice. We see it as a Four-fold practice.
It is an Invitation to live and work in the space between chaos and order, the Chaordic Path.
It is a Fellowship, which is more than a community. It is a web of practitioners and not an organisation.
It builds on and lives by the principles of Living Systems.
The Four Fold Way of Hosting
We have learned that quality conversations leading to close team work and wise action arise when there are four conditions present.
1. Be Present
2. Participate and practice conversations
3. Host
4. Co-create
We call these four conditions the Four Fold Way of Hosting, because you can practice these any time. They form the basis for all good hosting.
Be Present
host yourself first - be willing to sit in the chaos - keep the space open - sit in the fire of the present
Being present means showing up, undistracted, prepared, clear about the need and what your personal contribution can be. It allows you to check in with yourself and develop the personal practice of curiosity about the outcomes of any gathering. Presence means making space to devote a dedicated time to working with others. If you are distracted, called out or otherwise located in many different places, you cannot be present in one. For meetings to have deep results, every person in the room should be fully present.
Collectively, it is good practice to become present together as a meeting begins This might be as simple as taking a moment of silence to rest into the present. If an Elder is present, a prayer does this very nicely. Invite a collective slowing down so that all participants in a meeting can be present together.
Questions to
help you become present
What am I
curious about?
Where am I
feeling anxiety coming into this meeting and how can I let that go?
What clarity do
I need? What clarity do I have?
Participate and practice conversation
be willing to listen fully, respectfully, without judgement and thinking you already know all the answer – practice conversation mindfully
Conversation is an art, it is not just talk. It demands that we listen carefully to one another and that we offer what we can in the service of the whole. Curiosity and judgement cannot live together in the same space. If we are judging what we are hearing, we cannot be curious about the outcome, and if we have called a meeting because we are uncertain of the way forward, being open is a key skill and capacity. Only by practising skilful conversation can we find our best practice together.
If we practice conversation mindfully we might slow down meetings so that wisdom and clarity can work quickly. When we talk mindlessly, we don't allow space for the clarity to arise. The art of conversation is the art of slowing down to speed up.
Practicing conversation
Listen and help others to listen
Use silence
Contribute to the harvest
Put good questions in the centre
Connect ideas
Host conversations
be courageous, inviting and willing to initiate conversations that matter - find and host powerful questions with the stakeholders – and then make sure you harvest the answers, the patterns, insights learnings and wise actions
Hosting conversations is both more and less than facilitating. It means taking responsibility for creating and holding the container in which a group of people can do their best work together. You can create this container using the seven helpers as starting points, and although you can also do this in the moment, the more preparation you have the better.
The bare minimum to do is to discern the need, prepare a question and know what you will do with the harvest. If there is no need to meet, don't meet. If there is a need get clear on the need and prepare a process that will meet that need by asking a powerful question. And always know how you will harvest and what will be done with that harvest, to ensure that results are sustainable and the effort was worth it.
Hosting conversations takes courage and it takes a bit of certainty and faith in your people. We sometimes give short shrift to conversational spaces because of the fear we experience in stepping up to host. It is, however, a gift to host a group and it is a gift to be hosted well. Work in meetings becomes that much better.
Hosting basics
Determine the need and the purpose
Create a powerful question
Host an appropriate process
Encourage contributions
Harvest
Co-create
be willing to co create and co-host with others, blending your knowing, experience and practices with theirs, working partnership.
The fourth practice is about showing up in a conversation without being a spectator, and contributing to the collective effort to sustain results. The best conversations arise when we listen for what is in the middle, what is arising out of the centre of our collaboration. It is not about the balancing of individual agendas, it is about finding out what is new. And when that is discovered work unfolds beautifully when everyone is clear about what they can contribute to the work. This is how results become sustainable over time – they fall into the network of relationships that arise from a good conversation, from friends working together.
So contribute what you know to the mix so that patterns may become clear and the collaborative field can produce unexpected and surprising results.
Co-creation
Speak truth
Speak for what is in the middle
Offer what you can
Ask for what you need
Commit to what you can
Let go
How are we going to behave in pursuit of our purpose?
Principles, when defined with clarity, conviction and by common understanding guide our pursuit of purpose. Developing them requires engaging the whole person, not just intellect. Each principle can help illuminate others to be seen as a whole. Principles bind a community together and serve as a touchstone to remind us of how we agree to act and decide together around our purpose. Principles are ours to create and choose.
Creating a Container
Principles of cooperation tell us how we want to act and work together in pursuit of our purpose. They are agreements that we make between us so that we can travel together - and sometimes hold conflicting views - without ending in Chamos (destructive chaos).
Pursuing Our Purpose
Principles can also define the "end product" even though we may not quite know what it looks like. These principles have to do with form or direction and can define some attributes or qualities, without making things overly concrete. They allow us to stay in the convergent phase but create boundaries that are wide enough to allow for newness and possibility.
• Be Present - host yourself first - be willing to sit in the chaos - keep the space open - sit in the fire of the present
• Participate - be willing to listen fully, respectfully, without judgment and thinking you already know all the answers
• Be courageous, inviting and willing to initiate conversations that matter - find and host powerful questions with the stakeholders – and then make sure you harvest the answers, the patterns, insights, learnings and wise actions
• Be willing to co-create and co-host with others, blending your knowing, experience and practices with theirs, working partnership.
There is a path to take between Chaos and Order that leads us to the new, collective learning, real time innovation. Instead of relying on controlling every detail in our organizations or communities from the top down, many leaders today see the need to access the collective intelligence and collective wisdom of everyone.
We are beginning to understand and treat organizations and communities more like living systems than static machines. After all, the chaordic path is the story of our natural world – form arises out of nonlinear, complex, diverse systems. New levels of order become possible out of chaos.
This “chaordic confidence” – the capacity we need to stay in the dance of order and chaos – supports a generative emergence that allows the new, collective intelligence and wise action to occur. In this space of emergence, we leave our collective encounters with that which not one of us individually brought into the room. This requires us to stay in a transformative shift, though we may want to veer toward either chaos or order.
And in fact, we will move between chaos and order – this is the generative dance, an oscillation often seen in the natural world. A balance between two seeming polarities, which are instead compliments of each other.
As we move between chaos and order, individually and collectively, we move through confusion and conflict toward clarity. We are all called to walk this path without judgment – some will feel more comfortable with chaos, others with order. Both are needed as, together, we walk the edge that is between these two toward something wholly new.
On the far side of chaos is chamos – despair. On the far side of order is control. When we move toward either of these extremes, the result is apathy. The very opposite of chaordic confidence, where the new cannot be born.
So, the question becomes – How much order do we need? How much chaos would be helpful here?
There is a path toward common ground, co-creation, and wise and strategic action. There is a “sweet spot” of emergence with tangible results.
We call it the Chaordic journey....a path less traveled.