Constant Capacity Building

Debrief sessions and mentoring

We mentioned before (beginning of part 4) that we take great care that people not only join the dialogue sessions, but that the ones who want to know more about how it is done, can learn along the way. This constant capacity building, this constant learning stance is important in any kind of Community of Practice. (look this up; there is a whole body of work around this!)

Hence, the half hour debrief session after the actual dialogue session where we invite all kinds of questions and comments about the practice – and the community of practice – itself. For us, as the core practitioners, we notice who is interested in the deeper workings and the details of the practice. We hear how their level of understanding and embodiment is growing through the different sessions. For the practitioners responding to the questions and comments it is also good practice to be able to articulate the essence and the nuances of it. Mostly, there will be a couple of responses, from different perspectives, which makes it all super interesting and more whole.

Then, for some the time has come; they want to help in the hosting of open sessions. It’s kind of a normal trajectory to start with hosting the smaller breakout rooms, which is less daunting than speaking for a group of over 20. We also (strongly) advise upcoming hosts to have regular conversations with a mentor whom they seek out themselves from the group of senior practitioners, in our Community of Practice named as core practitioners. From then on, as everyone can notice that they take care of the whole of the practice and the forms it takes, they become core practitioners themselves.

Taking agency

What makes a living, self-organising network work is that everybody who is part of it has a sense of agency. It seems easy to state, but I have noticed over the years that our hierarchical conditioning runs really, really deep. Waiting for the boss, the leaders, the initiator, the stewards to do what I would like to see happening is often held unconsciously. With this waiting many times turning into frustration and even anger towards these leaders. When all people in the team have agency, it means that when someone sees something that needs to be done to run the group’s work flow, they either step forward and pick the task up, or bring it to the attention of others so somebody else can pick it up.

Below is another part of Amanda’s diary, mentioning some of the unconscious internal dynamics that might hold us back, and at the end pointing clearly to this lack of agency in many of us.

What is ruffling your feathers?, by Amanda Zamparo

I feel full of energy after a session we did yesterday, where the check in question was something like: “What is it that you don’t like about this community or this practice?”

[“Being as honest and vulnerable and confessional as you can, what in the Collective Presencing field is ruffling your feathers the most right now, where are your rough edges?”]

Everything started with the question: how can we name the things we don’t like about each other? Someone said: “I don’t know what to do with it.”

I was feeling so much fear in my body that it was the only thing I could speak about. Fear of what? Of being rejected, because if I do speak up about the things I don’t like, will I still be part of the group? What if I am not able to articulate my anger in a calm and honest way? Will that be enough?

I tend to think I am usually good at understanding my unmet needs before bringing them to other people, but what I see is: there is so much unconscious material, looking for a parent in every person, looking for approval, that we might end up in subtle and innocent manipulation schemes, without knowing it.

I ended up saying: “One thing that annoys me is when people say that Collective Presencing is not practical and we need to act. In my mind I am like: go do something!”

That’s what we like to install as a deep part of our dialogue and practice culture: if life doesn’t offer us what we hope for, we take agency and run an experiment. We can learn. We all know that there is hardly any learning without the so-called failing. Whatever we want to try, see it as an experiment, and pick up one lesson learned and move on to the next thing.

I haven’t mentioned it here in this book, but the whole field of dialogue and we-space practices is one big experiment, on a global scale, implemented by many, many people who don’t even know each other. Nobody knows what exactly will become possible when we embody more the interconnectedness that our Western world has forgotten and denied.

Your soul’s calling

Related with this notion of taking agency, is another one that we name as your soul’s calling. A deeper purpose of learning to speak from the middle is that you learn to speak what is truly yours to say, what is that authentic contribution that you have to bring into the mandala in the middle? Eventually, it will lead you to understand more of the whispers that come from your unique soul’s blueprint. Something that is so obvious to you that you can’t imagine others don’t have that capacity or that lens through which you see the world; something that seems like you cannot not do if you are true to your heart.

We can only encourage you to seek out for yourself what it is that your soul’s blueprint is nudging you to do in the world. Do not judge it through the eyes of the current culture, as that will not bring us to the world we know is possible. Engaging in this practice where you learn to listen to the deeper sparks in yourself – first in the dialogue space, and later expanding to more of your whole life – will help you discern what is truly yours to bring; what is your authentic way of serving the world. It can be action in the world, it can be artistic, it can be a business – it can be really anything regarding how the sacred wants to express itself through your presence. In following these sparks you step deeper into the relationship that exists between you and the world. Whatever feedback you get when trying out, you can use it to fine-tune your next steps in that direction. Another concept of Bonnitta Roy’s is useful here: quick start. You don’t need all the capacities upfront, but you will develop the capacities needed as you start doing what you are called to do.

Calling a specific inquiry

What we see right now in our network of dialogue practitioners is that different people step up by organising, calling and stewarding inquiries around specific topics and questions that are dear to them. They reach out to each other to form little hosting teams… remember: asking others to help is a core capacity here. And further, it is in these little teams where our co-creative muscles are trained. It is safe enough to try something new, and the parts in ourselves that need some extra light to come out of the shadows can be revealed in this small container.