Hosting Conversations about Questions that Matter
Originally posted by Toke Moller Apr 6, 2009 in the Old Community Space:
Hi practitioner friends of all kinds
i just found this wisdom by John Heider and the Tao about Being a midwife again after many year hiding in my MacBook file somewhere since early 90ties:
Being a Midwife
The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily.
The leader’s presence is felt, but often the group runs itself.
Lesser leaders do a lot, say a lot, have followers, and form cults.
Even worse ones use fear to energize the group and force to overcome resistance.
Only the most dreadful leaders have bad reputations.
Remember that you are facilitating another person’s process. It is not your process.
Do not intrude. Do not control. Do not force your own needs and insights into the foreground.
If you do not trust a person’s process, that person will not trust you.
Imagine that you are a midwife; you are assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss.
Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening.
If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge.
When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: ”We did it ourselves!”
- John Heider, The Tao of leadership
This and the question
What if hosting conversations that matter is the kind of leadership that allows everybody to learn ?
were for me both very helpful in becoming pregnant and part of giving birth to the art of hosting practice in the end of the 90ties.
in the spirit of gratitude for life, friends and learning - and sharing this memory this bright spring morning in Columbus on our way to Denmark ... Toke
Hi practitioner friends of all kinds
i just found this wisdom by John Heider and the Tao about Being a midwife again after many year hiding in my MacBook file somewhere since early 90ties:
Being a Midwife
The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily.
The leader’s presence is felt, but often the group runs itself.
Lesser leaders do a lot, say a lot, have followers, and form cults.
Even worse ones use fear to energize the group and force to overcome resistance.
Only the most dreadful leaders have bad reputations.
Remember that you are facilitating another person’s process. It is not your process.
Do not intrude. Do not control. Do not force your own needs and insights into the foreground.
If you do not trust a person’s process, that person will not trust you.
Imagine that you are a midwife; you are assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss.
Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening.
If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge.
When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: ”We did it ourselves!”
- John Heider, The Tao of leadership
This and the question
What if hosting conversations that matter is the kind of leadership that allows everybody to learn ?
were for me both very helpful in becoming pregnant and part of giving birth to the art of hosting practice in the end of the 90ties.
in the spirit of gratitude for life, friends and learning - and sharing this memory this bright spring morning in Columbus on our way to Denmark ... Toke
Replies to This Conversation
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Permalink Reply by Beth Alexander on -
Originally posted by Tenneson Woolf - Apr 6, 2009 in the old community space:
Thank you Toke. Hello all.
I just returned from hosting in Indianapolis where there were these wicked questions present and nibbling at the edges: What is the most meaningful harvest we can imagine from a large scale café? What core purpose does it serve?
I loved what one of the participants named and received it as a gift – “we are not looking for an answer. We are looking for a journey.”
This speaks to me another form of your question below about everybody learning. What if learning is what we do – sometimes applied to particular projects etc. But the core is supporting the capacity and ongoing process to learn. What if this learning is just the flow of life, in us, through us, around us that enables imagining and manifesting the next level of system that serves?
Thank you for the stirrings.
Tennyson
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