Koos -- nothing to add tol what you have said, just a Hello! Nice to see you
here!!
Harrison
PS -- And I really like the "gentle reminder" of what everybody already knew.
----- Original Message -----
From: Koos de Heer
To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: point of non-intervention
Hi Raffi,
Here's another belated congratulations... And an answer to your question. One
of many I am sure.
To me, the essence of Open Space is all about reminding. Reminding people of
something they already know and can do. We all have this basic knowledge and
these basic skills. For some folks, the reminding just takes a little more than
for others. And people sometimes tend to forget bits again along the way.
This reminding thing can be handled in many different ways. A reminder like:
"Hey you dumbo! Didn't I tell you to...!" obviously is not what we want in Open
Space. And often people need very little to be reminded. I have people coming
up to me asking whether they can do something (like changing the time of their
session, or merging two sessions, things like that) and all I do is wait a few
seconds and do nothing. In most cases, after a few seconds, they know the
answer, tell me what they ar going to do and leave happily.
Quite often, it takes even less: just my being there, centered, conscious of
my love for this special group of people, trusting them with whatever it is
they need to do, is enough for a reminder. And at the same time, it is much
more than not being present at all.
Sometimes it takes a little more. But even if I do repeat an instruction or
offer some advice, I always keep in mind that I am not instructing people or
telling them what to do, it is just this gentle reminding process that comes
from a place of love and trust.
Just my 2 cents.
Koos de Heer
At 15:34 18-7-2004, you wrote:
Thanks to the folks who congratulated me for my "first time." Yes,
Harrison, it indeed is going from bad to worse. And I only have myself to blame!
Oh well. Here I am with another question:
When I attended the OS facilitator training with Birgitt, we were asked to
frame for ourselves what we understood the essence of OS to be. The answer I
came up with then immediately (which is no longer adequate for me) is "profound
non-intervention." I don't think here I need to expand on why I thought that
was OST's essence.
What I realize, though, is that it's not entirely clear to me at what point
that "non-intervention" (I'm not sure I would call it that at this point;
holding space and time might be closer to what the facilitator does; even that
isn't quite exact in my book) begins. Is there consensus on that?
Another way of framing the question is "at what point can one consider that
the facilitator has "opened" the space? I put this word in quotes because I
realize more and more that there are times when indeed there is no need for a
facilitator to even "open" space. There is no need for a "facilitator". That
self-facilitated open space already exists (and has existed) for millenia.
-Does the "opening" end at the explanation of how we will work? Thus, the
facilitator can just leave the room then (before the topics are announced and
put up)?
-Does the "opening" end when the facilitator sees that all topics have been
put up and then he/she can leave the room?
A secondary (but maybe not that secondary) question is does the facilitator
have any role in the Marketplace? If someone forgets to put a post-it on a
topic, can the facilitator remind the participant about this? Do you follow the
process of putting up topics?
Or it just varies?
I have come to understand that once I have given the explanation, that's
it. I have no place to interfere in any way. If someone forgets a post-it, it's
not my place to do anything. Or if all the sessions have been taken with topics
and there is a desire to announce more sessions, it is not my place to create,
for example, a third concurrent session. Since this is OS, I imagine it is up
to the group to imagine and come up with the possibility of a third session.
Raffi
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Utrecht, the Netherlands
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