Dear Artur and you others,
I am one who says that silence is "one thing to do" and could therefore
be "one less thing to do".
In fact, silence is a powerful thing to do. It can be liberating or
intimidating and probably have endless variations of impact...
In one event I facilitated there was a situation of silence. Not very
long. The silence was interrupted by a participant turning to me with
the suggestion I do something to energize the group (I assume with the
assumption that there was low energy). As is my practice, I started to
count to myself. By the time I had reached 6, another participant
responded by saying: "We just created space for being non-energetic,
lets enjoy it."
A few seconds later the group continued with their business.
Feedback is a tricky art. When it is not given close to the moment it
refers to (such as in an email after the event) it can not be used to
impact on the situation it refers to, so its pretty useless and more of
an abstract idea that leads to all the assumptions, aggressions,
disappointments, etc. touched on in this string.
Its also curious how much weight this single "feedback" gets against the
backdrop of a satisfactory and productive over all result.
In the early days of my os-facilitation-work we would collect data on
such things as:
--- time passed until the first issue was posted after the call for issues
--- time passed between all the further issues
--- gender (just mark whether it was a gentleman or a lady offering an
issue)
One thing we found is that the time passed until the first isssue was
posted was perceived as very much longer by the facilitator than the
measured time.
Another thing we found (attention: cultural context... here Germany) was
that men posted issues more quickly than women and that the number of
issues posted by women increased proportionately over time.
Reflecting on this data, we developed a structural intervention: When
folks walked up to the bulletin board, we replaced the markers (usually
black) with red markers having announced beforehand that we would do
this so that further issues posted during the event would "stick" out as
"new" issues on the bulletin board. We found that the proportion of new
issues posted by women was larger than in the initial issue-posting
session, often there were more than those offered by men.
I myself had the impression that this structural change did create more
time and relaxation... there seemed more security in having enough time
to come up with ones issues.
Greetings from Berlin where I am looking forward to the WOSonOS in
Krakow in September to discuss more of this stuff face to face... here
is more detail
http://www.wosonos.com/
mmp
16.06.2015 18:36, Artur Silva via OSList wrote:
Interesting question and interesting suggestions....
And no one can say that this is contrary to "one less thing to do", as
silence is "not doing" ;-)
Artur
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Chris Corrigan via OSList <[email protected]>
*To:* Michael Herman <[email protected]>; World wide Open Space
Technology email list <[email protected]>
*Sent:* Tuesday, June 16, 2015 3:25 AM
*Subject:* Re: [OSList] No silence in opening
Yes to this…
These days no matter what process I am doing, if I offer a minute of
silence, instead of looking at a clock, I just count twelve slow
breaths. That way you don;t make people anxious and you get a little
meditation practice in. The longest I ever did this for was 15 minutes
with a group of 180 theological educators. I counted 180 breaths. Many
of them said they had never sat that long in silence with other human
beings before. We did it to allow people to reflect on an important and
energetic conflict in the gathering. It changed everything, and was
indeed the simplest liberating structure I can think of.
C
On Jun 15, 2015, at 10:37 AM, Michael Herman via OSList
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
i think you can build it in, as much or as little as you feel is right
for each situation, harold, just in the pacing of your opening
briefing, if you like. you ring the bells, silence happens. you
decide when to bump that silence with walking into the circle. you
decide when to break it when you start talking. you put space between
sentences and the different parts of your briefing.
i saw a video of myself in a circle of about 300, one big circle. my
pacing was, for me, excrutiatingly slow to watch. but i also had what
felt like a lot of ground to cover, to get around and engage with
folks all along that circle. when i finished, people literally ran to
the center of the circle. so i think it worked pretty well.
lisa kimball suggested to me recently that a minute of silence is one
of the simplest possible liberating structure.
(liberatingstructures.com <http://liberatingstructures.com/>) she
describes taking a minute at the beginning of a meeting, not in a
woo-woo way, but in a very practical way: we're all busy people,
coming from different places, let's take EXACTLY on minute to let
brains finish where they've been and get ready for the work we're
about to do here... will be long for some and too short for others,
but promise it will be EXACTLY a minute... and then we'll dive into
[the work]. her liberating structures materials might be posted
somewhere at groupjazz.com <http://groupjazz.com/>
m
--
Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
http://MichaelHerman.com <http://michaelherman.com/>
http://OpenSpaceWorld.org <http://openspaceworld.org/>
On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Harold Shinsato via OSList
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
The Open Space for the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
(http://civicrm.jrpc.org/rising-from-the-ashes) I facilitated this
Saturday went extremely well. We had a full day of sessions and
high levels of engagement, and the center's Executive Director
said it way exceeded her expectations.
After sitting in the glow of so many thank you's, gratitude, and
"good job" the day of the event and afterwards - I was surprised
and quite annoyed by a bit of feed back second hand through email...
"there should have been a 5-minute or so thinking time."
"Some people needed more quiet time to gather there thoughts."
As people become more familiar with Open Space, my personal
experience is that rather than a long awkward and anxiety filled
pause as facilitators worry if anyone will post a session -
instead, especially in public OST events, people launch and line
up to populate the agenda. This has bothered me, but this is the
first time I've heard the complaint of a *lack* of silence in the
opening.
After my initial annoyance, and speaking with an Open Space
colleague, my wife, and another space holding professional, I
wondered if this weren't actually something that can help there be
authentic open space, and not just a cargo cult going through the
motions.
I'm pondering a way to help there be space before people come to
the center to announce their sessions - but without doing some
heavy facilitated silence or meditation process.
Any thoughts, suggestions?
Thank you!
Harold
--
Harold Shinsato
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://shinsato.com <http://shinsato.com/>
twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush>
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++49 - 30-772 8000
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