Sussing Out Our Sense of Superiority

Our judging brains are powerful things. Within nanoseconds of seeing or meeting someone, we decide whether or not we like them. We are attracted or repulsed. My meditation practice, in addition to my intention to treat others respectfully, helps me notice the train of judgments that seems to spontaneously arise when I meet someone new or when I encounter someone whom I already know. Thankfully, I can now more easily notice the judgments and step … Read more…

Shifting from Pieces and Parts to Wholes

When tackling a problem, it’s easier to analyze its pieces and parts and try to solve them one by one than it is to try and understand the whole situation or system. However, this approach rarely works because analyzing the parts does not help us understand how the system in which the problem is embedded works nor how it keeps the problem you want to solve in place. Systems thinking, on the other hand, seeks … Read more…

Four Essential Questions: #2 Who is leading?

This is the second entry in a four-part series that explores four questions: (1) What are we doing here? (2) Who is leading? (3) Who owns this place? (4) Who belongs? Aftab Omer , President of Meridian University, shared these “archetypal” questions while we were planning the annual gathering of the Global Learning and Exchange Network (GLEN) with the founders of the GLEN, David Sibbet and Gisela Wendling, and fellow GLEN members Karen Buckley and FireHawk … Read more…

6.5 Lessons From Basketball

Once they squeaked by the Houston Rockets, it was predictable that the Golden State Warriors would squash the Cleveland Cavaliers in the National Basketball League Finals. For those of you who are not basketball fans bear with me for a moment. Let me show you how lessons from basketball can make your meetings more effective. I begin with a personal note. I was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts where basketball was invented by Dr. … Read more…

Being Open To Outcomes

Roger James and I rose before dawn to drive 30 minutes to a favorite hiking trail before it became too hot to hike. It was a cool and colorful dawn with pink contrails criss-crossing the sky. (We are taking a break from the cold rains of Northern California in the deserts of the south.) As we approached the trailhead we noticed that the palm trees were leaning over in wind that had been predicted to … Read more…

Winning Often Means Losing

In an interview on June 30 on NPR’s KHSU* about my forthcoming book, Talk Matters! (stay tuned), a dear colleague phoned in with a delicious question: “If you could wave a magic wand, how would you change how we approach public hearings?” My answer included ideas and examples of how to make such gatherings engaging and participatory. Here I add an afterthought: the importance of opening up the solution space by creating win/win interactions. When you … Read more…