I’ve just about had it with the vitriol and saber-rattling lately. Our world cannot sustain much more bellowing from those on one end of a spectrum at those on the other, with no room for nuance, ambiguity or the unknown. Enough!
So much of our current day “discourse” is framed (at least in the mainstream media) by discussions of who is right/wrong, right/left, bad/good, holy/evil. As long as we are limited to these extremes, we will be doomed to the tyranny of righteousness and posturing. This will not, and cannot, sustain us.
Facilitative Leadership is foundational to everything that we do at the Interaction Institute for Social Change. We believe in collaboration, and we believe in tapping the power of participation. These powerful ideas have shaped the best of our society. These ideas are alive, and thus constantly evolving. We are living through a moment of rupture, experiencing the potential for an evolutionary leap – ours is a moment of choice. How far can we take the idea of participation? How will we collaborate to step into this moment? These guys are onto something.
The New York Times ushered in 2011 with a front page story (below the fold, at least) titled: Boomers Hit New Self Absorption Milestone: Age 65 in which the author notes that in the next 10 years 26% of the population will redefine what it means to be older. As a member of this graduating class of boomers born in 1946, I am always humbled to be swept up by the statistics and perceptions of the generation. My own experience reflects part of its story: heeding the call of JFK to service, I was one of the first VISTA volunteers, followed by years of activism and organizing and finding myself today transitioning from my role as a nonprofit executive director.
2011. A new year for us here at IISC to continue to move on the vision of ensuring that everyone engaged in social change work has some knowledge of and facility with Facilitative Leadership. Another year to restate and reframe the need for these critical skills to bring alive our goals of a more just and sustainable world. So why Facilitative Leadership? Here is my take . . . Read More
In order to make the point that the sky is the limit in terms of the way in which we bring people together to collaborate and ultimately realize social change, I’ve taken to showing the video clip above and the one below back-to-back in our Facilitative Leadership trainings. The point I am trying to make is not that any one approach is necessarily better than the other, but that there are a plethora of options available to leadership between herding and hosting “the people,” and that much of this comes down to context and what we are trying to achieve. If it is true, as Barry Oshry says, that the work of leadership is to create the conditions for systems (human and otherwise) to be able to cope with threats (survive) and prospect opportunities for development (thrive), then we will understand and embrace the vital leadership role of process designer and use it wisely.
With thanks to Kathy Sferra, our Mass Audubon “apprentice,” for the tip, here is a lighter look at leadership and movement building, Happy Friday and Bon Weekend!
I’ve been getting into Umair Haque lately, he is among those of us concerned with this emergent paradigm shift, and he comes at it from a business perspective. I was specially appreciative of one of his manifestos – yes, he has many.
This one he calls “The Builder’s Manifesto,” and he is pointing towards a new model of leadership – the leader as builder. Read More
Erich Jarvis is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at the Rockefeller University and a specialist in bird songs and calls. Called a “scienfic artist,” Jarvis 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 research has suggested that birds are more intelligent than most 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 difficulties.
There are those in the scientific community who had 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 number of 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.Read More
Over the next three days I will have the privilege of training the Interaction Institute’sFacilitative Leadership® workshop. Just yesterday I was talking to my colleague Curtis Ogden and asking him for his latest tips on offering this workshop. As often happens with us, our conversation evolved into a very interesting inquiry. Read More
|Photo by DonnaGrayson|http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnagrayson/195244498|
I have been struck by how much guidance an enlightened parenting concept I recently learned offers to the work of leadership and facilitation. The concept comes from a book that a neighbor lent to my wife and me as we were beginning to think more about how best to address some our 4 year old daughter’s testing of limits.
|Photo by laurenatclemson|http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmanning/2319032882/in/photostream|
A couple of weeks ago, during a training with early childhood advocates from around Connecticut, an interesting conversation ensued about vision. This was prompted by one participant’s comment that in this day and age, “There is no such thing as vision. There is no such thing as magic or miracles. People are cynical. People just don’t respond to vision anymore.” There was some immediate push back to this comment, and also some acknowledgment that vision may not be what it used to be, thinking of the old standards a la MLK and JFK.
Photo by: Dionyziz
2011. A new year for us here at IISC to continue to move on the vision of ensuring that everyone engaged in social change work has some knowledge of and facility with Facilitative Leadership. Another year to restate and reframe the need for these critical skills to bring alive our goals of a more just and sustainable world. So why Facilitative Leadership? Here is my take . . . 
