Good morning to you all!
Well, I DID IT!!!! My first OST, and with a very small group of 5 people.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me a couple of weeks
ago. I went there last night with confidence in your advice, my heart, the
group and the process. And it worked wonders!
There were only 5 participants. Three people chose not to come, one of
which was a surprise for the sponsor. So I started off by saying that the
people who were there were the ones who were truly passionate about the
theme, and they were the ones we needed.
I did the usual opening in about 10-12 minutes, skipping most of the
reassuring parts. They posted 11 subjects, combined three, so there were 8
discussions in 3 rounds of 45 minutes each.
I followed your suggestions and expressed clearly the two choices they had:
discuss everything as a group, which was very tempting of course, or follow
the method. Then I suggested they give it a try at least for the first
round of discussion, and one participant supported this suggestion. I added
that they might find that discussing as a group would make it very
difficult if not impossible to go through the 8 subjects in 2 hours and
maybe using the Law and playing bumble bees would allow them to discuss
everything and go deeper. Much like what happened to Diane, they gave it a
try and never looked back. Of course, it's less natural with a small group,
but it works really well anyway.
The next step will be action planning. They were all surprised at what they
had accomplished, felt revigorated and inspired and now have a clearer
picture of their situation and what they might want to do next.
As for me, it was a thrill. I felt OST was perfectly in sync with my self,
and was both excited and scared of doing my first event with such a small
group. I re-read Harrison's book during the weekend, read all of the advice
received from you yesterday morning, meditated a bit before going there,
centered my self and stayed focused to be fully present and invisible (this
week's discussion about presence was inspiring) and let go of any
expectations and fear to simply go with the flow of the moment.
I still feel the energy from the event this morning, and I know in my heart
I found a path on which I'll travel for a while and bring people to
discover. Thank you all for your support!
Esther
At 17:40 2006-09-19, you wrote:
Hello Esther,
I have had a couple with less than ten people. There's a few thoughts I
have about OS and a small group:
- it seems to be even more important than with a large group to have a
central question which is very powerful. After all, if you have 300
participants and some really want to do something else,
that's one thing. If you have a few people, it could feel different
(meaning I am not sure whether it would really be different, because I
haven't experienced that yet).
- I have also with the smaller groups done a full opening but with smaller
groups sometimes comes a smaller room. If the circle is very small, space
can get cramped. So I suggest to make
sure you have space enough
- I have worked with teams in an organisation which had held 10-15 open
space events. Each team member in the leadership team had actually been
trained in OST.
Several times OST was used in creating the agenda and process for a
team meeting, but without the whole opening. Worked well.
Greetings from (today) Holland,
Gerard Muller
Open Space Institute Denmark
Phone: (+45) 21269621 Skype: openspace1
Mail: g...@openspace.dk
On Sep 19, 2006, at 2:29 PM, Communications Esther Matte wrote:
Hello everyone!
First, let me say thank you for the wonderful learning I found in the
OSList. Im new to Open Space, and even though I have yet to make my
first big circle as Ted put it recently, I feel more confident thanks
to you all.
I may have two possible projects with very small groups (5-7 people)
which is what worries me. I have participated to one OST in my
experiential training with Diane Gibeault (fantastic!), and
co-facilitated one with 45 people. But I simply cannot visualize how it
works with as few as 5 people. How do you do this? Do you have several
rounds of discussions? In separate rooms? Do people actually work by
themselves and team up? Can you do it in approximately 3 hours ? (Maybe
20-30 minutes opening, 2 X 40-minutes rounds of discussion or 3 X
30-minutes, action planning and closing).
I'm sure some of you have done this. I'll be meeting with the first
possible group next week, and nothing is set in stone yet for the other.
Any comments, suggestions, ideas or warnings will be very much appreciated.
Thank you very much in advance for your time!
Esther Matte
Communications Esther Matte
1011, Marie-Victorin
Verchères (Québec) J0L 2R0
www.excellence.ca
"L'art de dire"
Tél. : (450) 583-5849
Téléc. : (450) 583-3513
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