Raffi said:
Would be curious to hear what others have done in similar circumstances.
I've had something like this happen twice. The first time was with people
from four of the Native American tribes in the Northwest and with NOAA
(National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration). I opened the
space, inviting people to post their inquiries. A woman from one of the
tribes, who was also an attorney, asked what I would be doing. I said I'd
be holding the space on their behalf and explained what I meant. That
started a few others asking questions. I don't recall them all but when it
became clear to me that they weren't budging until their questions were
answered, I sat down to be in conversation with them. The moment I sat,
they sprung into action. My story about it all was that as soon as they
felt I wasn't trying to control them, that we all shared the power in the
room, they moved on.
The second time, at the Philanthropy Salon, was far more challenging and
changed me. I work a lot with other process people. Some don't get the
power of Open Space. This particular experience caused me to move from a
very defensive stand about ensuring the space is as open as possible to a
more co-creative stand, where I am actually still working to keep the space
as open as possible, but with far more internal openness in me and creative
partnership with others. This makes it much more fun and far less
frustrating! Anyway, the whole story was posted on August 23, 2006 and is
called "Breaking Open (long)".
Here's the excerpt on opening the space:
Tuesday morning, I opened the space. Something occurred that has never
happened to me in the 12 years of space holding. The group rebelled. They
were quite adamant that they wanted to stay together until they had a common
grounding in both the state of transformational philanthropy and an
understanding of the evolutionary story. I said that all they needed to do
was post the sessions and it would be clear by how people negotiated at the
agenda wall and how they used their two feet if they all wanted to stay
together. They rejected this; I stepped back and watched as a debate ensued
over whether to do a fish bowl, a world café, or some other form to handle
their desire to stay together. As I witnessed this, I was mostly marveling
over the passion of this group as it clearly took charge of its needs.
After about 45 minutes, the group fragmented into lots of small
conversations. At that point, I made the one choice that in retrospect, I
see as my attachment to things. It was an impulse based in my Spirited Work
culture - I got up, asked for silence, said I'd ring a bell and when they
came out of silence, they would know what to do. When the sound of the bell
just ended, one of the participants, who was sitting directly across from
me, looked straight at me and said they were doing just fine, thank you and
that my ringing of the bell was completely out of order. I felt seared by
his words. I was standing still in the fire and I got cooked. Shortly
after that, another participant said that he thought they should do what I
had suggested - post their sessions and see what people were interested in.
And that's what they did. Vindication of sorts. They did stay as a group
for the afternoon, with two powerful sessions, one on how the field of
transformational philanthropy had evolved, followed by a session that
finally provided some insight into what the evolutionary world view had to
offer to philanthropy.
yours in open space (on a train from Portland to Seattle),
Peggy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Raffi Aftandelian" <ra...@bk.ru>
To: <osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 7:24 PM
Subject: [OSLIST] Stopped in your tracks (was OS in Research)
Dear Allison,
Thank you for the wheat story.
And especially impressed about how you were able to move ahead with the OST
meeting after being "stopped in your tracks."
I'm curious, what specifically worked in your instance to get the space open
quickly after the scientist raised the objection?
Would be curious to hear what others have done in similar circumstances.
warmly,
raffi
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