Hosting Conversations about Questions that Matter

Why do World Cafe conversations alway create succesful results ?

The secrets of World Cafe.pdf I am always surprised to witness that World Cafe converstions alway generate energized interactions among participants. I have been wondering why? Now I think I gradually getting to understand the reason why.

Attached is an illustration I draw to explain why World Cafe conversations always works well. On the right side are some of the factors which applys to any situations. Factors on the left side of the chart is factors which are denpendent on each specific situations. This picture tells us that we should be very carefull in setting context and creating questions that matter, and also we shoul bear in mind the basic phylosofhy of the World Cafe and

behave accordingly. Your comments and advise will be most welcomed.

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Comment by Viktor on August 29, 2010 at 2:17am: Because The SYSTEM (Us) is always wiser than the leader alone (me or you) or the leadership team that leads it.

It seams that this is a natural law, a fact.

One person that certainly help in understanding and knows about this is James Surowiecki who in his book “The wisdom of crowds” says:

“Our collective intelligence is often excellent”
He continues:
“If you put together a big enough and diverse enough group of people and ask them to make decisions affecting matters of general interest, that group’s decision will over time be intellectually superior to the individual, no matter how smart or well informed he is”.

This is in my opinion the backbone of the 21st century leadership style that I like to call organic systemic leadership.

Key attitude in understanding and implementing systemic leadership is that the system is governed by the wisdom of the system itself (collective intelligence) and the leaders of the new era will be the one that will possess the quality of wisdom to recognize that the “system is no doubt wiser than him/her”. The new leaders will be in service of the system. They will feed the systemic wisdom back in the system itself and guide it. They will be transparent in these processes and inform the people in the system that what he/she is doing is simply responding to what they (people in the system) need and are motivated by.

In such a case, we do not have “a Leader” but rather a shared ownership and responsibility or a “systemic shared leadership”. This is how we’ll govern our organization, nation or the humanity.

In this way an effortless empowerment is happening. The leader is being lead, by the wisdom of the people that he leads. Kind of perpetuum-mobile of effortless trust, support, nourishment and full spectrum functioning of the leader and the system.
Shared leadership or the “systemic leadership“ in my opinion is the most powerful leadership there is and is perhaps something we all need to include and put out there in global awareness (which world cafe is doing any way). This is not only wise but is empowering as well, both for the leader and the lead.

It empowers the people who empower the leader that serves them by guiding them.

This is how a leadership sustainability will be accomplished in my opinion and perhaps general global sustainability on all levels.
I see no alternative for the humanity and its leadership than the process of the systemic leadership and leaders who are open enough to realize that what they are doing are serving the system itself who by default wants to evolve towards its full potential (authenticity, full spectrum, enlightenment…).

Comment by Franis Engel on June 6, 2010 at 8:42pm: A big factor for me is freedom to express myself and hearing others feeling free to express themselves. Practicing the skill of articulating my unformed impressions is valuable to me personally. In this situation, I am stimulated by good questions and smart, observant, intelligent and creative people. Most of all, I love being able to hear and encourage other people to express meaning and significance that is important to them. Hearing the life stories of where other people's core experiences came from gives me templates about how to approach my own new experiences.