Tag Archive: Center for Whole Communities

July 1, 2010

Leadership for Sustainability

For the better part of the last year and a half, my colleagues Ashley Welch and John McGah and I have been moving forward an IA/IISC cross-sectoral practice to bring Interaction methods + to the support of sustainability endeavors. Our early meetings around this budding practice included conversations about how best to frame leadership development for sustainability. We arrived at the graphic above, which combines what we see as the core elements needed for leadership to embrace and enroll others in sustainable pursuits.

With a foundation (watermark, if you will) of content knowledge about what sustainability is, the three elements are as follows:

• Systems Thinking (Seeing) – This is all about helping individual leaders and collective leadership see the whole, to understand that nothing stands in isolation, and that we must have a deeply felt sense of the interconnectedness of phenomena in order to make truly informed decisions. We take both our inspiration and instruction in this realm from the likes of the Sustainability Institute, the Center for Whole Communities, and The Elumenati.

• Self-Awareness (Being) – What we do is informed by who and how we are in the world. Awareness of our own beliefs, mental maps, and inherent tendencies is a powerful lever for making the sustainability shift, for aligning thought behind action. Self-awareness might also be cast as mindfulness, or the ability to be present to what is. Here we build upon our existing work around the inner side of leadership with the contributions of the Pachamama Alliance and John Milton.

• Collaborative Capacity (Doing) – With the whole in mind and awareness of our inner state, leadership will have a greater understanding of the need to work collectively toward more sustainable lifestyles and ways of doing business. Collaborative skill is key, including knowing how to frame sustainability efforts, create the right conditions for innovation, build agreement, structure decision-making, and design life-affirming experiences for diverse stakeholders. This is the heart and soul of the Interaction Method, and it is supplemented by the work of Keith Sawyer, CRED, and the many pioneers of large group methods and network-building.

Another key element and overlay for all of these is leadership’s ability to understand and navigate power dynamics as they play out in systems, in ourselves, and in our chosen methods for working together.

Eager to hear your reactions, tweaks, and additions.

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June 9, 2010

The Learner’s Plea

freedom

|Photo by Scarleth White|http://www.flickr.com/photos/iloveblue/3302032125|

Thanks to Ginny McGinn of the Center for Whole Communities for introducing me to this poem by the Chilean biologist/philosopher Humberto Maturana.  We used it to launch this week’s The Masterful Trainer workshop, and it generated some wonderful reflections on the role of teaching, training, facilitation, and leadership in this day and age.  Enjoy . . .

The Student’s Prayer

Don’t impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
and be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
your wisdom my negation.
Don’t instruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my riches begin where yours end.
Show me so that I can stand
on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
something different.
You believe that every human being
can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
when I ask you to live according to your wisdom.
You will not know who I am
by listening to yourself.
Don’t instruct me; let me be.

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June 9, 2010

The Learner's Plea

freedom

|Photo by Scarleth White|http://www.flickr.com/photos/iloveblue/3302032125|

Thanks to Ginny McGinn of the Center for Whole Communities for introducing me to this poem by the Chilean biologist/philosopher Humberto Maturana.  We used it to launch this week’s The Masterful Trainer workshop, and it generated some wonderful reflections on the role of teaching, training, facilitation, and leadership in this day and age.  Enjoy . . .

The Student’s Prayer

Don’t impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
and be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
your wisdom my negation.
Don’t instruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my riches begin where yours end.
Show me so that I can stand
on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
something different.
You believe that every human being
can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
when I ask you to live according to your wisdom.
You will not know who I am
by listening to yourself.
Don’t instruct me; let me be.

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September 3, 2009

Wholeness and Reciprocal Transformation

knoll-farm

Source

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit with staff of a few unique organizations in central Vermont, including a conversation with Peter Forbes at the Center for Whole Communities in Fayston.  What Peter, his wife Helen Whybrow, and their colleagues have created at Knoll Farm, a working organic farm, is truly inspiring, not just for the beauty of the land it occupies and the amazing views that are afforded of the surrounding mountains of Mad River Valley, but also because of the thoughtful attention that has been given to every detail of the Center and the programs that it offers.

The Center for Whole Communities is focused on reconnecting people to land, to one another, and to community as a way of healing the divisions that exist between those who are working for social justice and environmental conservation.  To this end they have created a setting and experiences that carefully tend to this mission of reconnection, from immersing people in the landscape, to engaging them in dialogue and storytelling, to grounding them in creative expression and contemplative practice. Read More

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