“One of the best things I have ever done” So there.

The ‘Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter’ – what kind of snappy name is that? – how about ‘The Arts of facilitating and having the most brilliant deep conversations with wonderful people about the most amazing things and then doing something about it’ ? – maybe we’ll stick with ‘The Art of Hosting’ for now.

What it is about is coming up with really good questions (the jargon talks about ‘powerful questions’) and then designing and facilitating processes which enable people to get inside the underlying issues and go deeper than they ever normally get the chance to go and then making sure the output from those conversations is ‘harvested’ in such a way as to be as useful as possible, both for people who were there and people who were unfortunate enough to miss out.

(Note to self – make these sentences shorter !)

This feels to be about the most important work I can do.  Helping people to talk about what matters – (what are the most important things that you never talk about ? – that’s an example of a powerful question) – helping people to listen to and value diverse perspectives – (who are the people who know something useful that we never listen to ? – that’s another good one) – helping people to pause, quieten the chatter of everyday life and go deeper – helping people to pause again and consider what their lives have uniquely prepared them to contribute to the situation they are in ?

I co-initiated and co-hosted Ireland’s first ‘Art of Hosting’ training in May 2008 at Glencree Centre for Peace & Reconciliation, working with Alan Hayes (National Youth Council of Ireland), Lesley Williams (Pioneers of Change, Africa Plus Plus etc), Toke Muller and Monica Nissen (Interchange – Denmark) and 35 amazing participants.  We had three days of the most incredible conversations about the most important things and the world will never quite be the same again.

The ‘Art of Hosting’ isn’t just about the techniques (World Cafe, Open Space, Circle Work, Appreciative Inquiry, Theory U etc).  It’s about the underlying practice.  Some people compare it to the relationship between an Operating System and software (i.e. I can give you a step by step guide to using Microsoft Word, but it won’t enable you to write poetry).

The underlying practice is about the facilitator and group becoming the servants of collective wisdom.

It’s an integration of arts, ecology, psychology and I’m sure many other things too.

How can we take this work further in Ireland ? How can we build the capacity of facilitators, organisations and systems to talk better, to learn together, to change the way we operate together ?

We’ve started these conversations.  They won’t stop.  We’d like more people to join in.

ps Paul the web developer says never give people reasons to leave your website.  Chris the facilitator says have a look at www.artofhosting.org if you do want more information, but then come back here and start a conversation !