Welcome to the CPL blog where we bring leading-edge thinking and stories of purpose in action. You can count on learnings and brilliance gleaned from our work with Purposeful Leaders around the globe. As authors of The Art of Convening™, we explore how convening brings your purpose alive.
photo credit: Daniel Scotton
As we asked in last week's post, what is at the heart of the matter for you...
Credit to Richard Leider for this simple but potent formula. Purpose isn't grandiose, but is simply the you that is expressed every day, in little and possibly large ways.
Credit to poet Mary Oliver for crafting a powerful phrase and asking the pertinent question in, “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.
Photo Credit: Daniel Scotton
I am jazzed! I just got off Zoom with a new action team of 12. Different locations, different reasons for participating, a common mandate to be revealed. I had 1-1/2 hours to create a container where they could come together and find commonality, in an environment of mutual trust and respect.
This team was one of six formed at the end of an in-person 1-1/2 day retreat, which was amazing: we created resonance in the midst of dissonance. Moved from resignation to inspiration. When people are inspired, they will step up, no matter how busy they are.
The Convening Tool Kit Worked!
The secret sauce for any meeting: the agenda doesn’t go to outcome first; you design to quiet the mind and allow people to shift to the present moment to get connected.
More secret sauce: a process that focuses on the heart of the matter and gets the purpose and agreements clear, so that people can pay attention and participate fully.
(And, a lot more ideas and learnings to share in another post...)
Outcomes were achieved! Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. Common goals and committed action came easily and were the natural outcome of a designed essential conversation.
Whether you are leading a virtual collaboration or a weekly team meeting, an Art of Convening Training adds a powerful skill set to any facilitation or gathering. Learn the secret sauce of great meetings. We would love to work with you!
Craig Neal
PHoto Credit: Craig Neal
Credit to poet Mary Oliver for crafting a powerful phrase and asking the pertinent question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.
PHoto Credit: Daniel Scotton
Photo Credit: Craig Neal
Photo Credit: Craig Neal
We are thrilled to offer a recent essay by friend Peter Block. We deeply admire his thought leadership.
In implementing stewardship principles many well-meaning people in power make the false connection that if we want consistency and control in the quality of product or service we deliver to customers, we must have consistency and control in the way we govern the people creating the product or service. The business process and the human process are both important, but they operate on different principles. Forgetting this results in cosmetic change.
We need to understand that the methods of change we choose can undermine our intentions unless they produce a redistribution of power, purpose, and privilege.
A clear example of how popular strategies of improvement can reinforce patriarchy and feed rather than confront our belief in consistency and control is the organizational visioning process. We have bought the notion that vision must come from the top.
Since the mid-1980s, every top management team has created its vision statement and worked hard on communicating it. What this means in practical terms is that a consultant or staff person has spent a lot of time interviewing executives and writing vision paragraphs. A half- or full-day retreat is then convened so the top group can wordsmith the statement and plan for its distribution.
The intent is sincere and the content is always appealing. Each management team affirms its uniqueness by declaring that it
Sincere intentions. An appealing statement. What’s the problem?
First, it is boring, but put that aside. The significant problem is twofold: ownership and implementation. Ownership resides with those who craft and create a vision, and with them alone. A statement created for a team to endorse is not owned by the team. An even more fundamental defect is that, in most cases, the vision statement is created for the rest of the organization to live out.
Notice that the vision here is used to define a culture or a set of values to be lived. This is different from top management’s rightful task to define business mission and set business goals. A vision created for others to live out is patriarchy in action. There is no ownership in endorsement or enrollment, a fancy term for selling the vision.
The belief that crafting the vision is primarily a leadership-at-the-top function defeats, right at the beginning, the intent of driving ownership and responsibility toward those close to the work and the customer. Creating vision is in fact an ownership function, and if we want ownership widely dispersed, then each person needs to struggle with articulating their own, personal vision for their function or unit.
Ownership comes from an investment, and the investment required from each of us is to define purpose for ourselves. Each of us defining vision for our area of responsibility is how partnership is created. The desire for vision from the top is a subtle way of disclaiming ownership and responsibility. If this were our own business, it is unlikely that we would allow someone else to define values for us.
Adapted from Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler, 2013). In the last 25 years, Peter Block’s Designed Learning has trained over 1,000,000 staff professionals worldwide using his highly successful Flawless Consulting™ workshops.
Resources: Designed Learning, Abundant Community
Photo Credit: Craig Neal
We are thrilled to celebrate with CPL Associate Barbara Shipka on this amazing milestone. More on the story below and by clicking on the photo.
From Barbara: Today I invite you to celebrate with me. Recently I was honored with the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Boards of Directors of The Gestalt Center for Organization and Systems Development. To quote the Center’s President and CEO, John D. Carter, “Thank you for making a difference in the world through your presence as an applied behavioral science practitioner. You have found a way to gently touch the hearts of people by allowing them to learn from your work.”
Each of you has had a lot to do with my winning this award. ...
I started this project as a small way of offering a counterbalance to the dissonance of the world. Now I am discovering that, while I believe this project is meeting that vision, it is also evolving into a process that goes far beyond that. It is actually demonstrating how, via technology, we can connect at the heart level even when we cannot be in person. Thus, our reach and our individual and collective webs can be so much more than we ever imagined!
I’ve known many of you personally at some point in time covering many decades. We may not have been in each other’s physical company for years but, through this project, we have consciously reignited our connections with each other – both subtly and explicitly. Each time I send an email and you open it, we have gifted and blessed each other. Through that single act we are changing the world!
Together, we form a collective of hope and possibility. We are all such good people who are each doing our part to make the world a better place through our presence. As a collective, we are on six continents…from Iraq to Australia, Ethiopia to China, Argentina to Belgium, the US to India. You are my graduate school advisor, my fifth grade students in Beirut, Lebanon, my clients and colleagues at work in places like the US, Switzerland, and Somalia, my business partner, my spiritual teachers and healers, my son, my beloved friends everywhere. You are my chosen family. I have learned so much from you. I send you my deepest gratitude!
May we continue together on this journey of recognizing how our relationships last longer than our in-person encounters. And may we continue exploring and unfolding new ways that show us more fully how we are connected whether we are aware of it or not.
Photo Credit: Daniel Scotton
Serving the "Next Generation Human": I recently had the privilege of working with Roger Kenneth Marsh as he co-led the series Road to Renewal in Houston, Texas. Today we’re going to talk about how he leads people through "The Passion Test" as a path for discovering their purpose. But more than that, The Passion Test is a framework for what Roger sees as emerging: the "Next Generation" human. Roger has a rich background as a formally trained engineer, businessman, leadership and life coach (bio below). Join us for a fascinating leadership conversation.
Roger Kenneth Marsh is a formally trained engineer, businessman, leadership and life coach. He has a degree in engineering, an MBA, is a certified Leadership and Life Coach, a Certified HeartMath® Trainer, a Certified Passion Test® Facilitator, and is a Senior Teacher of Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) emanating from the Esalen Institute. Through his company Beyond Belief he offers Organizational Development Consulting that includes Leadership Development and Coaching, and The HeartMath Resilience Advantage workshop and training.
Website: NexGen Human
Author, NexGen Human: A Modern Age Path to Fulfillment
The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose, Janet Attwood and Chris Attwood
#PurposefulLeadership #Purpose #Leadership #Convening #ArtofConvening #AuthenticEngagement #RichardLeider
#PurposefulLeadership #Purpose #Leadership #Convening #ArtofConvening #AuthenticEngagement #RichardLeider
#PurposefulLeadership #Purpose #Leadership #Convening #ArtofConvening #Engagement
Photo Credit: Craig Neal
"Virtual collaboration is fast becoming the norm. Are you ready?" (Harvard Business Review, 04/24/18)
14 years ago, sick and tired of attending meetings where I left feeling, at best, depleted and others moaning about, yet another meeting, "that didn't go anywhere"; I invited 12 leaders to join me in the 1st Art of Convening Teletraining. It was an early virtual laboratory or "skunkworks" project to explore what the components of what makes for a transformational meeting, gathering or even conversation. Now, 14 years later, we've learned a thing or two.
Here are 5 bedrock steps to improve your "Webside Manner" in any virtual meeting or conversation...
These simple 5 steps can go a long way in improving clarity, buy-in, and alignment in any virtual meeting. Check out our next Convening Powerful Virtual Meetings Training!
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Finding your inner climate leadership
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Through the magic of Zoom rooms*, you can self-select to choose the focus that interests you for a "deeper dive" conversation.
"Virtual collaboration is fast becoming the norm. Are you ready?" (Harvard Business Review, 04/24/18).
Whether you are leading a virtual collaboration or a weekly team meeting, an Art of Convening Training adds a powerful skill set to any facilitation or gathering.
Explore the art, science and application of convening and purpose practices to transform the way people meet and gather.
CONVENING POWERFUL VIRTUAL MEETINGS
CORE ART OF CONVENING TRAINING
Jul 11, 25, Aug 8, 22, Sep 5 Sep 12, 28, Oct 10, 24, Nov 7, 21, Dec 5
8:00am-9:30am Central US 7:00pm-9:00pm Central US
$199 by 5/15/18 $595 early bird by 7/15/18
2 payments of $100 6 payments of $100
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
[repost from 2019] This is Thanksgiving holiday week In the US. November is also Native American Heritage Month. Family, friends and neighbors may be gathering. This week, we invite you to practice the art of deep listening, as a way to connect or reconnect in new ways. We offer 3 practices and 2 exercises. Let us know how it goes!
Finding your inner climate leadership
Edward Dugger III, president of Reinventure Capital and an early pioneer in impact investing, explores the intersection between the venture capital community and racial equity.
Through the magic of Zoom rooms*, you can self-select to choose the focus that interests you for a "deeper dive" conversation.
#PurposefulLeadership #Purpose #Leadership #Convening #ArtofConvening #Engagement
#PurposefulLeadership #Purpose #Leadership #Convening #ArtofConvening #Engagement
Today we joined for our 97th Essential Conversation. This past week’s Essential Conversation was heavy, tearful, difficult, and necessary. This conversation continues a powerful sensing into the horrors of war and the heart it takes to find ways to heal.
Today marked our 98th Essential Conversations. We invited back our conversation starters from last week Tatiana Riabokin, DC and Katherine Curran to share more reflections. We gathered for the Hearth to slow down and go deeper into our conversation on the Ukrainian Crisis. We hold the people of Ukraine and all the refugees in our hearts today.
Today we joined for our 97th Essential Conversation. This past week’s Essential Conversation was heavy, tearful, difficult, and necessary. This conversation continues a powerful sensing into the horrors of war and the heart it takes to find ways to heal.
Today we joined for our 95th Essential Conversation. Following last weeks conversation we welcome back our guest conversation starter from Rwanda; Jeremy Solomons. Today we took time to breathe, reflect, slow down and dive deeper into our conversations.
As we reach the end of the current month highlighting Black History and Futures, we are met with a time of uncertainty and fear surrounding the growing turmoil between Russian and Ukrainian borders. For this reason we began this 94th Essential Conversation with “This Joy” by The Resistance Revival Choir, a reminder that joy is an act of resistance against the pain, hatred, and inhumanity we find plaguing our world. Upon convening, we examined as a group, “How do you bring peace, joy, and love in the midst of ongoing disruption?” The responses included small acts of personal preservation such as going outside, meditation and prayer, or receiving a hug.
Designing “ultimate virtual dinner party”... What would be your recipe? People are hungering for “courageous conversations.” Imagine a great dinner party: What questions would you create and people would you invite?
What if the questions are uncomfortable? What questions would you ask a family member and/or best friend that may be different verses meeting someone for the first time?
Why a dinner party? What better way to plan a great conversation. Why today? What better day to talk about purpose than on Valentine’s Day, the day of love! Anthony Douglas Williams reminds us, “Our purpose is simple… to love; to love each other, to love all life, and to love our Earth.” But let’s not stop there.
In the discussion we heard from several graduates of the Mastering Convening course about how their journey with The Art of Convening has shaped their work, life, and mindset. Their insight was both personal and profound, opening the conversation for small group discussions with the question, “What have you heard that resonated with you as a leader? In your life and/ or work.” The responses remind us of the power of the convening wheel which allow us to look inwards, practice living out love, authenticity, and looking for the good. When we give permission to ourselves we are able to see the same in others.
This week we gathered for the Hearth which is another expression of Essential Conversations. We welcomed back our allies Kelly Chatman, Yvette Trotman and Harry Waters Jr., who will continue to deepen our conversation from last week about justice and dreams of justice.
![[Hearth] Voices from Ukraine: Part 2](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58a4e3be9de4bb98b066fd6f/1647955546471-VUGA4FCGFEUYJ29TEQVA/sunforest-mix-sunflower-types-1586794598.jpeg)
