By Matt Mayer, LeadWell Foundation
A rare and exciting Art of Hosting event recently took place in Calgary, AB where I was an attendee on behalf of the LeadWell Foundation.
Attended by social innovators spanning generations, industries and geographies, this event was titled “Leading Change through Dialogue, Learning and Action.” Entering this four day exploratory retreat was a group of social innovators keen to further their participatory group facilitation skills. What left was an equipped and energized clan of social change-agents.
As a background, the Art of Hosting is an emerging and living practice of conversational, participative leadership. The practice employs tools such as WorldCafe, OpenSpace, Chaordic Stepping Stones, 5 Breath’s Design, Circle Practice, Appreciative Inquiry and more (see Art of Hosting website for more details). The premise is that the scale and complexity of the challenges that society faces are too intractable to solve by a single individual and, as Albert Einstein would say, “using the same level of consciousness that created them.” The Art of Hosting breaks this mould by focusing on the collective wisdom that a group (organization, community or society) creates together, unleashing a deeper level of consciousness which informs our vision and actions for a better, more sustainable future.
In essence, it suggests that the answers to the world’s daunting challenges lie within us and are solvable only if we work together, listen together and look upon one another as unique experts. Otherwise, how can unified progress be made and what is the effect on our human relationships, our learning, our work and, ultimately, our sustainability in the process?
Enabling this space for co-creation is a powerful skill for a societal leader. Like most art forms, however, it takes only a few days to learn but a lifetime to master. For the societal leader, this process begins introspectively, involving a fundamental shift in mindset from the longing for a hero to change the world (a task which societal leaders often find themselves signed up for), to becoming a host for changing the world (see “Leadership in the Age of Complexity: Moving from Hero to Host” by Margaret Wheatley).
Changing our lens from the individual to the organization
There tends to be a longing for a charismatic CEO, or the rise of a transformational leader to wield the collective potential of the organization, such as Jack Welch with GE or Ray Anderson with InterfaceFLOR. Though a visionary CEO often sparks the organization to undertake change, momentum is sustained by changing the process of work itself. For example, Jack Welch introduced Six Sigma to GE’s work and Ray Anderson embedded a culture of innovation around sustainability at InterfaceFLOR.
In a working environment, the Art of Hosting ideals represent another reform in group process by moving towards participation and authentic well-being of oneself and the surrounding organization. Analytically speaking, the Art of Hosting suggests that organizations need to nourish three key areas in order to be effective: work, co-learning, and relationships (as represented in Figure 1). The confluence of these three circles, also called the “sweet spot”, is where our greatest organizational potential is found.
From a personal perspective, the key to moving the Art of Hosting into mainstream practice is enhancing the process by which we align the individual as a host and the organization as a host. Within its own work, the LeadWell Foundation is actively experimenting with a community of practice around the Art of Hosting discipline, and learning how to further develop these capacities in societal leaders for the greater good of society.
If the Foundation’s competency with the Art of Hosting may be valuable for you or your organization, or if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Matt Mayer or explore some of the public resources below.
Art of Hosting Websites
Chris Corrigan’s Blog – an Art of Hosting Facilitator with Berkana Institute
Tenneson Woolf’s Blog - an Art of Hosting Facilitator with Berkana Institute
Tools
Tools for Leadership and Learning by Bob Chartier
Matt Mayer is a programs officer with the LeadWell Foundation based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Contact Matt.
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