Practice – Page 4 – Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)

May 27, 2006August 22, 2006

Not the Four Practices

Chris Corrigan and I have been refining our thinking and language for open space leadership. We have it down to four inter-informing and inter-supporting practices: Appreciating, Inviting, Supporting and Making Good.

While the practices themselves are each quite whole and robust, tolerant of description but not of disecting, that’s not actually how it is when we try to practice them as bodies. Incarnation is more discrete. On and off, in or out, dead or alive, male or female. More or less. Appreciating, Inviting, Supporting and Making Good.

So it occurs to me that naming their opposites, daring to notice their dual nature, one might say… could be helpful. Here are my proposals:

Analyzing, the opposite of Appreciating;
Protecting, the opposite of Inviting;
Fixing, the opposite of Supporting; and
Wasting, the opposite of Making Good.

These four meet two criteria for me. First, they are sort of obvious literal opposites of our four practices. More importantly, I have some felt sense of what each actually feels like. I can feel when I am doing them. This matters, because it means that I can feel when I’m not doing them. It’s great to notice when I am practicing well, but perhaps more important to be able to notice when I’m losing my way.

I can hear them, too, in the language of colleagues and clients. I know Appreciation gets things moving and I can hear others talk about the “paralysis of analysis.” I know that when people resist using Open Space Technology, they often explain their resistance in terms of protecting others. Or they attempt “modified open space” and speak explicity about fixing and improving the experience of their colleagues. And I hear people decrying business as usual as a waste of time, waste of money, and wasted chances to do good. So these are things I find in the territory, not theories I’m making up out of nothing.

I should add that it’s not that we should stop doing these opposite things altogether, but rather be more conscious of our habits, assumptions, and balance about these things. These opposites have their place and value. And they are all very well supported in western, industrial cultures. The new practices are not. So it’s the balance we need to reconsider, each of us personally, consciously, actively.

These four words aren’t magic, any more than the last four were magic — and I haven’t worked out the all the details. But somehow the marriage of these opposites, the rebalancing, or mutuality of them, allows us to handle in local, personal ways the enormity of what Dave Pollard and author Derrick Jensen are talking about?

Thoughts?

May 26, 2006June 1, 2006

Mutuality in Markets and Meetings

Bloomberg’s Caroline Baum sums it up the recent market movements pretty well yesterday:

Copper up, stocks down, bonds down. No, wait, it’s copper down, stocks down, bonds up. Can someone please help me get a handle on these inter-market relationships?

As I think about movements and relationships, in markets and in open space meetings …and organizations …and communities… I notice that I can indeed understand, or at least explain to myself, why things are happening. I can know, too, what is is happening now, and even what is happening next. The challenge is knowing what to do — because these two kinds of knowing, what is happening and why it’s happening — seem to happen in two different sides of brain or, perhaps more accurately still, in brain and in heart. Brain can’t really calculate what comes next. And heart can’t explain it.

What Julie Henderson calls “mutuality” is a practice in letting other(s) be as real to us as we are to ourselves. Chris Corrigan and I have been teaching Open Space and Inviting Leadership as the practice of being mutually aware of self and group, or self and organization, letting body be source of information about how I am as well as how “we” are. Today I’m remembering that this same sort of mutual awareness scales down, to where I can know what is really happening and why it is happening, simultaneously. When I can do this, I make better decisions, wise and kind, in markets and meetings.

What’s that you say, “Kind decisions? In the currency markets?” Ah yes, even in something as apparently solid, objective, measurable as trading, there is room for kindness. So easy to second guess oneself, destroy confidence, grow fear, lose focus and money and more. And, of course, it’s always dangerous to argue with a market.

May 25, 2006May 25, 2006

The Open Space that I Am

Alison Murdoch sent word yesterday of the upcoming Essential Education conference in California, October 2006. The announcement came with an invitation to volunteers for website maintenance. Later in the day, Julie Henderson asked about adding some photos to the Zapchen Somatics site. I said yes, both times, and then got back to work on updating the Imagine Chicago site for Bliss Browne. All of this after I talked with Rebecca Blazer and Marissa Strassel, walking them through the new weblog we are starting for the Chicago Conservation Corps. Late last night, I posted a note from Roq Gareau into the writing notebook, not yet public, where Chris Corrigan and I are developing our book on Inviting Leadership.

Depending on how you count them, I am working on eight to ten different websites, many but not all of them weblogs. Today, I can see them clearly as working conversations and overlapping groups of colleagues. It’s easy to imagine the lot of them as so many flipcharts and breakout groups scattered around a big meeting room. Some of them are sites of active documentation. Some of them don’t get much writing but do mark and hold a space for our meeting. A few of them have side conversations going on, a listserve or or sub-site, nearby. In all cases, I care about about the issues: education, philanthropy, community, environment, food, well-being — and the opportunities to connect these conversations with each other. It strengthens me to see that I am indeed walking my talk… noticing, inviting, documenting, and doing. Open Space Practice and Open Space World.

Between clicks on all of these websites yesterday, I got an urgent email from a friend and coaching client. “On my way to an open space client meeting. Need to talk, if you can.” It turns out that he’s been doing quite a lot of work in Open Space, and he mentions something about using it in more and more different places, and discovering that “it” can work in all of them. The way he said “it” really caught me and I see: “it” is “me”. Open Space isn’t an abstract or academic process. It’s personal. It’s me appreciating, inviting, supporting, and making good on the issues and opportunities that matter to me. We say that Open Space can work in so many different situations, and now I see that the real limit or caveat, the qualification that could be added is this: Open Space can work anywhere, on any issue, and with any people that I/you/we can genuinely appreciate. In other words, IF you can find some good in the situation, there is always some way to invite, support and make more of it.

May 23, 2006May 22, 2006

Transformative Mediation

The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation’s 2nd International Conference is coming up in September, in St. Paul, MN. The theme is Purpose Drives Practice: An International Conference on Transformative Mediation.

I’ll be presenting a workshop on Open Space Technology on the first day and will be a featured panelist in the closing plenary. I’m looking forward to a fascinating couple of days of connecting the Tranformative Framework and Open Space.

The transformative framework was first articulated by Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger in The Promise of Mediation in 1994. Since then, transformative theory and practice has grown and is used in mediation, facilitation, and conflict management training all over the world.In the transformative view, conflict is primarily about human interaction rather than “violations of rights” or “conflicts of interest”. Conflict is part of the basic dynamic of human interaction in which people struggle to balance concern for self with connections to others. When this balance is upset, human interaction becomes alienated and destructive, simply put there is a crisis in human interaction.
Specifically, the occurrence of conflict tends to destabilize the parties’ experience of both self and other, so that each party feels both more vulnerable and more self-absorbed than they did before the conflict. Further, these negative attitudes often feed into each other on all sides as parties interact, in a vicious circle that intensifies each party’s sense of weakness and self-absorption. As a result, the interaction between the parties quickly degenerates and assumes a mutually destructive, alienating, and dehumanizing character.
For most people, according to the transformative theory, being caught in this kind of destructive interaction is the most significant negative impact of conflict. However, the transformative framework posits that, despite conflict’s natural destabilizing impacts on interaction, people have the capacity to regain their footing and shift back to a restored sense of strength or confidence in self (the empowerment shift) and openness or responsiveness to the other (the recognition shift). Moreover, these positive moves also feed into each other on all sides, and the interaction can therefore regenerate and assume a constructive, connecting, and humanizing character. The model assumes that this transformation of the interaction itself is what matters most to parties in conflict — even more than resolution on favorable terms.

Pre-Conference Workshops and Trainings will be held Sept. 15-16, 2006, and Main Conference Sept. 17-18. I’ll be presenting a workshop on the 17th and will be a featured panelist on the 18th. Conference Brochure or Online Registration

May 21, 2006

Clarity as Flow

My recent learning and practice is mostly about clearing and balancing myself more easily in the flow of things, allowing myself to be carried along my the waves that are already moving, while minimizing the amount of personal and direct efforting. Chris would say I’m practicing as coho salmon, which uses pressure of local water flows to move it around, rather than swimming by pulling against the water.

I’ve been paying extra attention to the pressure differentials between the flows of global and local connectings, individual experience and budding coupledom (wedding countdown, five weeks), the art of a book emerging in the midst of business administrivia, online technology and face-to-face connection, dollar and non-dollar investments, friends and colleagues, long-term planning and moment-to-moment ease and practice as a body.

All a practice in mutuality, holding, balancing, and supporting two or more states or scopes or ways of knowing, letting each be distinct and valuable, informed and informing, by each or all of the others. Clarity, it seems, is as much about not scraping my feet through the silty bottom as it is about any sort of efforting to make the water clearer. Letting the flow be as real as the ground.

May 20, 2006May 19, 2006

Practice Receiving, Too

My friend Karen Sella, reflecting on the other side of inviting after our recent leadership practice retreat on Bowen Island…

My approach to open space—and life in general (sometimes this distinction seems irrelevant)—is about receiving as much as inviting—receiving what is offered; what wants to be received. Whenever I open space, I invite people to consider that each person in the space is a gift just waiting to be received. All we have to do is open our bodies, hearts and minds to receiving each other. If we do nothing else, that will have been profound—indeed, sometimes, that’s the most profound thing that we can do, a prerequisite for everything else.

She’s also just spiffed up her Luminalogue weblog. It’s one of those gifts just waiting to be received!

May 16, 2006May 16, 2006

Making Good

From Toke Moller’s paper “What Gifts Could Learning and Courage Bring Our Societies?”, via Christy:

Here are some of my assumptions about creating learning space and starting conversations that matter…
In this time, the ways in which we are together have become very speedy, uninspired and often unconscious of what is really meaningful to us – this gives us little space to be present in the Now – to be present to ourselves and each other.
When we open space and time to each other around our own meaning, inspiration and consciousness is already there to greet us.
We need to be fully present, connected to ourselves and each other, to have the inspiration and courage to know and decide what to create and do at this time, that will benefit all and not just me…..
I cannot give if I do not have the surplus of love, challenge and freedom in human community with others.
Life wants to give its best to what is alive and let die what is no more needed.
When I let myself become the dialogue, the process and the learning I am in, that experience gives birth to conscious action ……..that will make a difference.

Making a difference. Making appearances, deliveries, investments, and contributions. Making peace. Making it real, making it count. All making good, on promise and promises. Making a new title for this blog, you may have noticed, reflecting and inviting all of the above.

Making a small celebration here, as Friday is this (whatever it’s called) blog’s 3rd birthday. Certainly it’s made a difference for me, and I hope, perhaps a little bit for you and some others. Thanks for your company here.

April 28, 2006August 22, 2006

Inviting Leadership

Back in Chicago now, after staying on Bowen Island a few extra days after the Practice Retreat to walk in the forest, eat some good soups at the Snug, and work with Chris Corrigan on the story of Inviting Leadership, the latter of which we’ve now distilled to…

Appreciating… the Positive Core in people, organizations and communities
Inviting… attention to options, needs and choices for the (shared) future
Supporting… structures that allow people and information to move and connect
Making… good on promise and promises, claiming responsibility for making decisions, changes, and personal contributions

The writing and teaching we’re doing around these are the latest retelling of what began back in 1998 as Inviting Organization and has shown up more recently as the Four Practices of Open Space.

Wondering now about retitling this blog Inviting Leadership, as that is clearly what I’ve been up to with much of my posting here over the last three years. Hmmm… maybe that’s a good way to mark the upcoming 3rd anniversary here, later this month.

April 14, 2006August 22, 2006

Four Practices of Open Space – Update

I’m getting ready for the leadership practice retreat I’ll lead with Chris Corrigan, on Bowen Island, April 18-20th. I’m thinking some more about the four practices of Open Space. Here is the updated view:

Opening Heart
Inviting Connection
Supporting Collaboration
Making a Difference

On a personal level, these practices begin with passion, perhaps even some sense of conflict. The key questions are about core issues, the heart of the matter, the center of the problem or situation, which is always me. What do I care about? What do I love? What do I want, for myself and others?

As heart opens, I can invite connection with others. I dare to attract attention. And I have attention of my own to give. What’s happening now? Who is here? What do they have? What do they want? What might we be together?

As invitations and connections are made, the next thing to do is support them. How do we stay connected? How do we learn, move, live, and work together? What rules, tools and structures will get in our way? What rules, tools and structures will support our collaborating?

Then, what is my responsibility here? Given some clarity about what I want, being connected with others, having some space and support, NOW, what will I do? How will I ground this energy I have? How will I use it to make a difference for myself and others? What actions can I now take? What changes can I now make?

I think I bring a fairly typical sort of “results” orientation to life. I work from a list of things I’ve promised (to myself, if not others) that I will DO. I want to see measurable progress and change and improvement in the world(s) that I live in. My mind and body are busy busy busy like everyone else. These practices seem to help orient me in all of that.

I come back over and over again, and notice… What am I doing now? Opening Heart? Inviting Connection? Supporting Collaboration? Grounding my energy in ways that make a difference? What have I been working too hard? What have I been ignoring? Can I focus on just one of these, for just this moment? Can I get back in the flow? Okay, now what? Do it. And come back again…

In our retreat next week, we’ll consider how we apply these practices as facilitators, particpants and leaders, in meetings, conferences, organizations and communities.

April 12, 2006April 12, 2006

Fast

Today is my tenth day of taking nothing but water, tea, and spicy maple lemonade, a spring cleaning ritual.

I missed it last year in London, while I was working as a cook in a meditation center, so this year has been a welcome return, timed perfectly with the arrival of spring in Chicago. When I started, it was 40 degrees. Yesterday and today, it’s 70 degrees.

This time has been totally different from any of the past five. Busier and quieter, if that makes any sense. Harder to keep going in some spots and the first year that I really feel like I’m just getting started after these first 10 days. I’m just starting to really “get it.” And slow down. Fast.

April 4, 2006April 4, 2006

Performance Art

a small lightbulb went off today on the phone with andy mitran, professional musician and founder of the men’s art forum.

i’ve been reflecting on the importance of that forum lately, as i consider what of my own creativity i can and can’t bring to my work, sometimes tempered by how much my clients are willing/able to bring or not bring, or what they’re willing to invite/allow others to bring… noticing how much i am enjoying my half of wedding planning, too, working with the flow of gathering, drumming, storytelling, and the rest of the ritual process in the mansion space we’ve booked… remembering, too, the easy enjoyment of the work i was doing in london, in the maintenance of the meditation center.

i’ve been wondering about how to describe and invite this more actively in my current working. then today, andy got me thinking about my art again, whatever that is. i guess my medium, interest, and aptitude (or at least genuine fascination) is with space and flow, how things move or flow, happen or get done, with ease, and in time. but what kind of “art” is that? maybe some sort of performance art? yes, what i do is artful. and yes, there is a bottom line. flow and cash. creativity, design, measures, frames, etc. yes, this fits.

it follows then, that what we so often do in business is focus in on the measures. if we did that in music, there’d be nothing but lines, no notes. and no images inside of frames. no surprise and no joke. so i want to find ways to bring this conversation into more of my working situations. this makes space for meetings that are more than method. makes space for the messiness of actors to actually get in and do real performance, beyond a tidy little script. business and community, connecting and collaborating, as performace and art. bravo!

i wonder, does this view change how i practice? …and what else does performance art mean or do or change?

March 7, 2006March 7, 2006

Open Space Technology: Practice Retreat
April 18-20, 2006

I’ve been sharing the story of the essential practices of Open Space Technology with a variety of people in recent months, from facilitators and managers, to physicsts and software technologists. I’m pleased to say that the response has been surprisingly positive.

In April, Chris Corrigan and I will be leading a Practice Retreat to share our learning about the essence of Open Space leadership. The program is experience-based and serves all levels of Open Space, facilitation and leadership experience equally well. The practices are taught in the context of Open Space Technology, but will be immediately applied to all kinds of other work in organizations and communities.

Chris and i have been offering practice workshops together since 2002, but this is the first time we have offered a full three-day retreat together. It will take place on Bowen Island, near Vancouver BC. See the invitation and registration for complete details.

We would love any of you to join us, and of course, please feel free to share the invitation with folks in your network who might be interested.

February 28, 2006March 2, 2006

Real Practice

How do we know if our practice is a real practice? Only by one thing: more and more, we just see the wonder. What is the wonder? I don’t know. We can’t know such things through thinking. But we always know it when it’s there.

–Charlotte Joko Beck

February 16, 2006August 22, 2006

Heart Practice

I’ve written previously about the four essential practices of Open Space Technology:

Opening Heart
Inviting Attention
Supporting Connection
Grounding the Energy

When I first applied this view to my work, after 10 years of opening space, I found they made everything easier. I could do opening heart, during set-up. Then I could invite attention to start the meeting, and so on. One step, one task, one practice at a time.

In my latest facilitations, however, my learning progresses. I am finding that all I really need to do is the first practice, opening heart, and the rest happens almost automatically. This feels more like a river current carrying me and the rest of the event along.

I can see the other practices go by. I know that I’m doing them. And not doing them. At my best, they are becoming more like things that go by in a river, rather than goals or tasks I swim toward, accomplish, or do.

As I rest, relax, and open the space that we might normally refer to as heart, I find that the mental and physical state that arises leads naturally into the next thing, inviting attention. That attention allows supporting connections. Energy flows in and from the connecting and conversing, and automatically seeks ground in some tangible (real) action or product. And those actions and products, however large or small, become the foundation for deeper rest, relaxation and opening.

I find it easiest to start with heart and opening, but I suppose we can start anywhere, as long as we’re willing to be carried through all four seasons or dimensions of practice. If I can’t relax my heart, I can go back to past results, or back further, noticing whatever supporting connections I might have available. But more and more, it is the physical sensations of heart that tell me most clearly where I am, when is right, and what to do.

I’ll be gone on retreat for the next couple of weeks, resting in practice. Find me again here in March, or join us in April!

February 13, 2006February 14, 2006

Socratic Practice

James Rehm’s review of Michael Strong’s book on Socratic practice makes me want to be a teacher.

“Socratic questioning,” writes Strong, “is an endlessly sophisticated art. It is the engine that drives Western thought forward. Socratic questioning is not a technique, it is an approach to conceptual understanding which contains within it an intrinsic craving for conceptual refinement at every level of understanding.” (p. 149).
…A good argument can be made, he says, that introductory science courses would teach more if they offered students an immersion in scientific method and thinking rather than flooding them with a sea of information. In the same way, Strong – who likes math and is good at it – believes that Socratic practice should be a prerequisite for all math education. Why? Socratic practice, whether it traffics in discussions of trust, love and betrayal or other ideas equally remote from square roots and tangents, improves students’ facility with abstract concepts, and abstract concepts are the basis of mathematics, which is at root a way of thinking rather than a body of knowledge.

In reading the whole of this review, I notice that I have some deep inner valuing of teaching and learning. They are self-inviting, self-satisfying, self-sustaining. The more I teach or learn, the more I want to teach and learn. And in Socratic practice these two seem to run together, as the flow of Awareness. Why stop with the humanities, math, and science? Why not paint all of our work with this care?

Strong’s book, The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice is available at New View Publications.

February 5, 2006

Gathering of Friends

can you join us on bainbridge island, off seattle, on thursday, february 9th? the theme of the day is practice. so far, we are expecting about 15 people for a full day of learning and connecting.

i’ve been thinking lately about open space practice in terms of opening heart, inviting attention, supporting connection, and grounding the energy. i offer that as some slim subtext. anything that falls into one or all of those buckets is fair game and the rest of the plan is all open space.

email if you’d like to join us. we’re doing a simple, potluck and pizzas sort of lunch.

January 12, 2006January 12, 2006

Power and The People

I’ve been wrestling with issues of control vs. stewardship, especially in the management of the weblog, at OpenSpaceWorld.ORG, seeking to balance the power and need to technically control the site and a strong desire to share and open the site as much as I can. I’m fascinated by Harvey Mansfield in the Weekly Standard, a little bit of Constitutional history, and the mutuality of executive power (discretion) and community interest (law)…

In combining law and discretion, the Framers of the Constitution made a deliberate departure from the sorry history of previous republics that alternated between anarchy and tyranny. The Federalist Papers, the most authoritative source for understanding the thinking of the Framers, make it clear that republicans had gone astray because they had overconfidently ignored the necessities that all governments face and had tried to wish away the advantages of size, power, flexibility, foresight, and prudence that monarchies may offer. In rejecting monarchy because it was unsafe, republicans had forgotten that it might also be effective. The Framers made a strong executive in order to have both power and security, and they took note of emergency occasions when more power gives more security.

via a comment at Dave Pollard on Leadership and Americans

January 10, 2006August 1, 2016

Four into One

wendy farmer-oneil mentioned InvitingOrganization and the Four Practices, yesterday on the phone, and wondered if we shouldn’t name a fifth practice and dimension, a center space that is some sort of stillness.

my answer… yes. and, but, not like that.

i’ve suggested four seasons, quadrants, practices. and yes, there is stillness, reflection, settling in the first one, opening heart. that requires that heart rest in something, like pelvis and legs, the support and ground achieved in the third and fourth practices. but this stillness is not the thing she was really asking about, i think. it’s not a peer to the other four, not a separate center.

it is bigger. i think it is their union. their all all-at-once-ness without loss of distinction. in terms of strategic questions, it recalls the highest level question is “how light is your organization?” at that level everything runs together, and light is love, clear, fast and power.

so yes there is a center, and a perimeter, and it is also the ground that the whole map is drawn on, the page or the screen. and finally, remember that each of the quadrants can be cut into those same four quadrants, a fractal slide into a space that refuses to be theorized, where we can only just do it. in this fractal view, four quadrants inside of each of the quadrants, we see the all-at-onceness is fully present in each of the four.

there is no fifth season, no new peer to the four, and there is always a center, an edge, a ground and a space that is always present, in each of them in time, and all of them taken together, which is impossible to name. it’s not a fifth or separate practice, but the gift of all practice, then thing that emerges in experience when we do the other four.

and this is the easy, all-at-onceness, all-together, everything works out quality, sometimes called ‘community’ or ‘high learning’ or ‘flow’ or ‘fun’ or ‘spirit’ that emerges when we practice these things in the form of open space technology.

January 4, 2006August 22, 2006

Open Space Practices Refined

I woke up New Year’s Day with new language for what I’ve posted previously as “Open Space Practices”. That is, what is it that I think I’m really doing when I’m facilitating Open Space — or working or just living in it?

opening heart – might be a physical embrace or simply a time of quiet reflection, eventually some theme or purpose might arise. in open space, it is the themes and purposes that arise in the hearts of leaders that we turn into invitations. by opening heart, we discover or rediscover the thing(s) we love. to open heart we almost always need to rest.
inviting attention – might mean getting up on a soap box to speak our truth, or sitting down and really listening to somebody. in open space, the invitation comes from listening and then goes out to invite more conversation. by inviting attention we open new views and sharpen focus. to invite attention we almost always need to ask questions and tell stories, about what was, what is now, and what is next.
supporting connection – could be as simple as a business card, a handshake or walking hand in hand, but might be as complex as social and analytical software tools. in open space we use circle, bulletin board, the law of two feet in a marketplace of ideas and conversations. by supporting connection we make conversation, decision-making, and commitment possible. to support connection, we almost always need to open and hold spaces for people, work, and information to move.
grounding the energy – might be as simple as a souvenir, a journal entry, a summary document or action plan. in open space it’s usually a proceedings document and the actions that it guides, but it could be anything that marks or documents what’s new and different and helps to make it more real and lasting. to grounding the energy we almost always have to take responsibility, for recognizing, creating and/or securing value.

What I like about this version is that the four of them finally seem to match each other, each one now languaged as part of the same whole. They seem simple enough to think about actually doing and complex enough to truly practice. I think they work on many levels, from working professionally with organizations to living intimately with a partner or family. Finally, and most importantly, they seem an accurate account of what I’m attempting in my own life, not just things I’m explaining and suggesting that others should try.

UPDATE: I was facilitating Open Space today (140 CFPs in Austin, TX) and as I’m setting up, I’m restless as usual before the start. What should I be doing? “..oh, yes, just open my heart…” I think, and relax into that. In a few moments, it’s time to start, what to do now? “…oh, yes, ring the bells, invite attention…” and then as soon as everyone gathers, I support connection, with eyes, and briefing marketplace and bulletin board and proceedings typing. This was a short one, so I ring bells at the end of sessions, as reminders, grounding. And invite comment at the end of the day, evening news, evening grounding. We try it again tomorrow. Practice.