Dear Harold,
"One Less Thing" to do appears to me to be "more" of a "principle" than
the 4 or 5 "principles" many of us invoke (I call them "Facts of Life").
When the isssue of "whatever" I want to NOT do any more, I ask myself:
In which way does this support the force of selforganisation to unfold
more freely.
Asking that question myself, I might come to a conclusion that fits my
perception of how effective not doing a particular "whatever" might be.
Another facilitator (or participant or sponsor or....) might come to a
totally different conclusion. Also valid, is my guess.
My own experience in the role of "participant" has been that delegation
or sharing of tasks or having more than one facilitator (regardless of
it being a 4 hour os or a multiple day event) destracted me in that I
found myself trying to figure out why this was done. It did not shorten
the facilitation nor did it make the facilitators more "invisible", in
other words "my" time to deal with my issues was decreased.
I remember, however, that my own experience as a
"participant/sponsor/facilitator" (especially at the Practice of Peace
event in Berlin with Harrison) was very positive at the time with
Harrison doing the facilitation on Day 1 in English, Anna Gochtchinskaia
on Day 2 in Russian, and me on Day 3 without words and plenty of pantomine.
In the many years of my facilitation life thereafter, I never engaged in
replicating it, that is I did not add any of it.
In another setting, where I was "sponsor/participant/facilitator" but
being together with others in the same "role" and everyone with
experience in the various roles, we practiced sitting in silence in the
circle until someone got up and announced the first issue. It took about
5 to 7 minutes and we practiced this many times.
The facilitation that impressed me most was that of Larry Peterson at
the WOSonOS (at that time those events had the name "OSonOS") in Toronto
in 1997... one year after I had run into Harrison and Romy and OST in
the UK.
At first I felt that his facilitation was without charisma,
non-inspiring, non-impressive... later I felt it had been non-invasive,
without control, with no frills, humble, unattached, attentive,
disciplined... simply as close to invisible and still with utter
presence...
Greetings from Berlin... looking forward to the next WOSonOS this year
in Krakow/Poland in September
mmp
On 22.01.2015 15:01, Harold Shinsato via OSList wrote:
I've been to several multi-day OST events where the facilitation was
delegated. Peggy Holman's Journalism That Matters in Detroit had
different facilitators that opened the space each morning. The Florida
WOSonOS had different facilitators each morning as well. The 2014
Opening Space for Peace & High Performance had different facilitators,
and so did the one this year - including different people for the
evening news.
I, as facilitator for the opening and closing, had delegated the details
of how you post sessions to a colleague for my Montana OST in 2013. But
this year, Thomas "Tom" Brown, who opened the second day of the NYC
Opening Space at International House 2015, delegated the five principles
to the circle. I'd not seen that happen before, and it worked
brilliantly. Beautifully. Some walked a circle in the middle, like a
traditional OST facilitator. Some said something from their seats. Some
spoke just a few seconds, some took a minute or two. But it worked
really well. Kudos to Tom Brown.
Will folks share how we can do "one less thing", including the actual
facilitation, and how it has worked to let that go to other organizers
or to the actual circle itself?
Thanks!
Harold
--
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