Photo by conscience: taxes for peace not war

A couple of weeks ago I worked with a special group of special education facilitators who will be helping to coordinate key players in their school district to provide services to students with different learning needs.  This work will put these people in some difficult circumstances when it comes to occasionally not being able to provide exactly what parents want for their children.  For this reason, we spent a fair amount of time talking about how one can be of service when faced with irreconcilable differences.  Much of this came down to staying grounded in one’s values, continuing to regard the humanity of those of others, and standing firm for what the district could reasonably provide.

What I also also saw on display for those three days was the incredible power of artful and compassionate inquiry.  Many scenarios that we worked through (via role playing and coaching), including those that seemed beyond the pale of any kind of helpful intervention, were altered when the intervenor asked the right question, at the right time, in the right way.  One example was when two participants experienced a breakthrough as one coached the other by asking the question, “What is your perception of this situation?” not once, not twice, but three times.  She did not ask, “What is the problem?” sensing there was something in the way the situation was being viewed that might provide some opportunity for resolution.  Sure enough, the third time the question was asked, the person being questioned got it.  “There’s something I can do to alter the situation by recognizing I’ve been choosing to a see it a certain way that may or may not have anything to do with reality.”

This session coincidentally timed with my re-reading of Fran Peavey’s work on strategic questioning.  She writes,

“Questioning reveals the profound uncertainty that is imbedded in all reality beyond the facades of confidence and sureness.  It takes this uncertainty towards growth and new possibilities.”

Peavey’s seven key features to shaping strategic questions are most helpful in this regard:

• A strategic question creates motion. It asks, “How can we move from where we are now?”
• A strategic question creates options.
• A strategic question avoids “Why?” which can create resistance.
• A strategic question avoids “Yes or No” answers, which limit depth and possibility.
• A strategic question is empowering, it creates confidence.  Rather than ask “What is wrong with us?” ask “What will it take for us to be different?”
• A strategic question asks the unaskable questions – think The Emperor’s New Clothes.
• A strategic question is a simple sentence; it is elegant in its simplicity.

Would love to hear your stories about how inquiry has opened up possibility for you and others.

Six weeks from now, on October 10, 2010, 350.org is sponsoring a global work party to spread and deepen awareness about and inspire further action around our growing climate challenge.  This grassroots movement is spreading at a time when most governments and businesses seem inexplicably stymied about how to make fundamental commitments toward shifting unsustainable behaviors.  And it feels like we are on the edge of a tipping point, perhaps spurred by this summer’s record breaking heat wave and dramatic weather events in places like Pakistan and Russia.  So consider signing up for or hosting a local event if you have not, and take a moment to read this call to action by co-founder Bill McKibben following the failed climate bill in Congress – “Get mad and then get busy.”

Photo by brew ha ha

“The Uses of Not”

Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.

So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn’t.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

It was the afternoon of the second day of the three day training and I noticed that the coffee cake still looked pretty much as it had on the morning of day one.

“Sure does look good,” said one of the participants, now standing beside me.

“Not good enough to eat, apparently. ” I responded.

“Oh, I think everyone likes having it here,” she said with a grin.

“To look at?” I asked.

“To resist!” she replied, with a distinct tone of satisfaction.

I thought about that comment for the rest of the day and workshop, noting the continued untouched nature of the pastry, and was reminded of another incident I’d experienced a few weeks before.

I was facilitating a group of high level educational administrators in a conversation about state-wide teacher effectiveness.  The group had signed up to be part of a series of process design sessions to figure out how best to pull together key stakeholders to generate a list of policy recommendations.  I had arranged people in small groups to flesh out various tracks of activity aligned with key deliverables.  At the end of the session, one of the participants approached me, extending his hand and said, “Great job!  I really enjoyed that.  Thanks for not getting in the way.”  He was serious and I appreciated the comment.  He was not saying that the group did not need a facilitator, but that they required, and were thankful to receive, a light touch.  “You don’t get that very often,” he added.

There is power in having something in our midst to turn to when we need or want it, but ultimately being able to say we could do without it.  Whether we are talking about consuming, gardening, facilitation, or leadership, less can be so much more.  Or in the spirit of the words of Lao Tzu above, sometimes the value of who we are or what we do resides in who we aren’t or what we don’t do.  This is often hard to remember against constant pressures to do and be more, but part of what makes effort and utility beneficial and sustainable are when and where they aren’t.

What are your examples of the most beneficial uses of n0t?

Photo by The Value Web

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
there, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.

- Wendell Berry

Photo from Jarvis Lab

Erich Jarvis is a neurobiologist at Duke University and a specialist in bird songs and calls.  He was raised in New York City, attended the School for the Performing Arts (where he was an accomplished dancer), and went on to study birds while a student at Hunter College and Rockefeller University.  His ongoing research suggests that birds are more intelligent than we give them credit for, and Jarvis hopes that his focus on the complexity behind bird songs will lead to therapies for human beings with speech problems.

There are those in the scientific community who have objected to Jarvis’ and others’ assertions about avian intelligence, in part because the terminology used to describe a bird’s brain had long emphasized its primitiveness. This is precisely what Jarvis set out to change a few years ago.  He took it upon himself to pull together colleagues from around the country and across disciplines to collaboratively rename parts of the avian brain.

This was no small project.  The convening he put together was fraught with disciplinary friction and clashing egos.  Undeterred and well-served by his choreographic skills, Jarvis held the center, by turns stepped back, listened, gave input, mediated, and in the end facilitated a complex process that resulted in shared agreement and a jointly published paper on new names for the avian brain. This work not only contributed to the emerging understanding of bird intelligence and heightened esteem for our fine feathered friends; it has paved the way for more research that may help us to better understand ourselves.   All of this from Jarvis’ bold and risky move (risky to his career, many have said) to step outside of the often solitary and competitive practices of scientific research, to help people create something no one could accomplish alone.

Jarvis claims that this collaborative approach came naturally to him, even if it doesn’t for most scientists. That said, he offers, “In science breakthroughs often happen when different fields are combined. The discovery of DNA happened because physicists brought their technology and ideas to biology. They brought an old question to a new field.”  Jarvis goes on to say, “The same thing happens culturally. You have people from different backgrounds coming together, and they bring their thinking in ways that haven’t been combined before.”

On this last point, he speaks from personal experience as a someone who has crossed many boundaries in his lifetime and who has put together a multicultural, multi-gendered, international lab at Duke. Erich Jarvis is the paramount example of what we at the IISC refer to as a facilitative leader, and what we believe and hope is the face of leadership going forward.

Photo by exfordy

Had you visited the IISC Cambridge offices a couple of weeks ago, prior to our staff putting all of our belongings in boxes and pink (yes pink) crates in preparation for our move, you would have seen a piece of paper on my computer stand with the following word in bold letters:

FOCUS

This has been my mantra for the past year, and there is is increased urgency around it these days, not simply because that paper is now sealed in some box on its way to Boston’s Seaport.  With so much in flux (including our move), with so many possibilities and so much to be done out there, with so much information flowing through the various channels into which I am tuned, I can easily find myself getting distracted – “Oh Look, A Squirrel!”.  And I know I am not alone.

A conversation with a colleague last week was very revealing with respect to this shared challenge and the extent to which we can both be sidetracked by interesting stimuli that take us off course from what matters most to us, from our core purpose.  I have witnessed this time and again in individuals, organizations and collaborative efforts that attempt to, amidst shiny and alluring possibilities, focus their efforts through planning and direction setting and are ultimately hard pressed to slim down the possibilities to a few high leverage, on point and on purpose options to actually implement.

So what are some steps to take to ensure focus on what matters most?

Manage stimuli – On a personal level, I have found that having a discipline around when I check email (and how often) and how I manage the flow of social media and other sources of information can make a big difference in my ability to stay focused.  I have decided to turn off the continuous flow of Twitter and Yammer feeds to my laptop so that I can choose when I would like to see what new things have come across my screen.  And I am making an ongoing effort to de-clutter the various spaces I occupy.

Get support/connect with community – Connecting with peers through co-coaching, communities of practice, convening a clearness committee and the like can help us to access what matters most and keep our eyes and energy on that prize.

Remind ourselves each day what is most important - I find not simply having a vision statement or mission statement but reading it on a regular basis helps me stay grounded in my ultimate aims.

Cultivate mindfulness – There is real power in taking intention and bringing it into alignment with our autonomic responses.  While I am not a disciplined meditator, I am working with some practices suggested by Dan Siegel and his mindsight approach.  As those much wiser than I have long known, by engaging in mindful breathing it is possible to create separation from knee jerk reactions, achieve greater perspective on ourselves and situations, and exercise more intention in our actions.

Learn to say no – This is the hardest of all of these for yours truly.  Life at IISC is often like being a kid in a candy shop, with so many worthy efforts to support, interesting people to connect with, and endless amounts to learn.  AND there is only so much time in a day, week, year, and lifetime.  So thanks, but no thanks.  I need to stay on purpose, and may the force be with you!