Good for you Kathryn! No one who opens space comes out unchanged. To facilitate any community's transformation is to facilitate our own. What actually opens space is our heart, so it needs to be just that spacious. Anything "more" simply limits it, and its capacity to allow transformation.
Jack ~~~~~~~~~~ jack ricchiuto two.one.six/three.seven.three/seven.four.seven.five www.designinglife.com / www.appreciativeleadership.org ------------Original Message------------ From: Proteus Communications <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: Mon, May-9-2005 4:56 PM Subject: Re: multiple facilitator roles Hello Wendy and to everyone on the Open Space list. My name is Kathryn Thomson, and I too had a "conversion" experience with Chris Corrigan while supporting him at an Open Space event in January. I have been offering training and facilitation to organizations for years and years, and Open Space is what I've been waiting for all my life. I am in danger of becoming altogether evangelical about its transformational potential. I believe with all my heart that this experience of OST is what is needed at this time, on this planet, with all its dear inhabitants. One thing about using OST is how deeply it exposes me to myself. My need to "facilitate" to "do" something, to "be helpful"--all very fine qualities in some circumstances, but so absolutely wrong in open space. Chris had me go to the wall and just observe my own responses to what unfolded there. It was so hard not to offer assistance, and I saw how much of my own ego is invested in the idea of me being a "helpful" person. I also saw how important it was to let go of my attachment to this ego-idea. Since then I have introduced OST in various organizations and witnessed the "chaordic" magic of OST unfold before my eyes. Once I described the process to a colleague who had never seen it, but so clearly needed to use it. I tried describing it, and ended up using my young daughters stuffed animals and kind of acted it out, so she could get the idea of what it looked like. She used OST the next day--her client group had been struggling for over a year with some difficult decisions and changes that needed to be made--and they experienced major breakthroughs in all areas. My colleague and her client are now converts too. I am hoping to bring OST to the Island that I (and Chris) live on. There are some urgent issues facing our residents and OST will be our way through. I think the time, the people and the need is ripe. (How about it Chris?) I thank each of you on this list for your generosity in sharing yourselves and your OST experience so openly and helpfully. I am learning so much from each of you. I really appreciated the conversations you had about sexism and that poem. I saw right down into the core of what it means to honour each other in all of our humanity, in all of our brilliance, our blind spots, our judgements, our deepest beliefs and deepest hopes. I saw you struggle with what it means to hold very different world views and to hold on to your respect for each other as human beings. It was a delicious, enlivening, and heartening dialogue and I thank you for it. Thank you too, to Harrison Owen for bringing OST to this planet, to all of us, at this time, in this place of such great need. Sincerely, Kathryn Thomson on Bowen Island (a hitherto invisible, appreciative and grateful "lurker") PS--Is there anyone practicing OST in New York that would be willing to meet me (for a wee cup of tea and a chat about OST) sometime the second week in June?? From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Wendy Farmer-O'Neil Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 11:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: multiple facilitator roles Hi all, Having just come from playing a support role in an OST event, the question of co-facilitation was also in my mind. I took on the support role with the intention of service. Service to the facilitator (Chris), to support him in holding space, and service to the participants to support them in their journey in Open Space. With that experience behind me, as I contemplate facilitating my first OST event (which is on the horizon), I find that I am wanting to create a support team who understand Open Space and who will help to maintain the continuum or field of experience for the participants. I understand that it is not necessary for successful OST facilitation, but I am wondering if it is worth experimenting to see if there is a qualitative difference for the participants and/or the facilitator--a deepening, I suppose. I guess I am seeing a tandem approach to facilitation, where one facilitator takes on the "face time" as Harrison put it, while the other provides support--at the wall, at the computer stations--wherever presence can arise to open more space. Thoughts? Cheers, Wendy Wendy Farmer-O'Neil Prospera Communications & Consulting Services 1.250.713.2351/1.800.713.2351 weblog: www.wordgravity.blogspot.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
