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Emotions: the bane or the boon of our meetings

Perhaps you are reading this just after returning to your desk from a “bad” meeting. You feel frustrated, or even angry, because you think your ideas were ignored and/or nothing was accomplished. Emotions are a powerful force in our interactions. They wield more influence over the quality of our meetings than any other variable. They can turn a conversation among colleagues or neighbors either into a snarling, polarizing, and enervating event or into a joyful, … Read more…

The Tug of War in our Heads

These past weeks you have had the opportunity to experience how the media exacerbates the already existing tug of war in our heads. Politicians campaign for office with threatening messages about Mexicans and Muslims while Pope Francis invokes the Golden Rule entreating us to “treat others with the same…compassion with which we want to be treated.” On the one hand, some politicians evoke fear and anger, which triggers the more primitive parts of the brain … Read more…

Awareness Enables us to Make Conscious Choices

After a day and a half of intense, “learning-full” conversations, 28 people struggle to determine what they want to do after the meeting to continue to carry out their mission. They are running late and several people have to leave to catch plane flights. As the facilitator, I feel anxious they will not be able to agree and the meeting will end in frustration. I make a process suggestion that they misunderstand and which seems … Read more…

How We Get “Threatened” in Meetings

What tends to make you anxious or irritable when you interact with others in meetings at work or in your community? My sense of safety or equilibrium can get undermined when I don’t know what the purpose of a meeting is or when I get interrupted. A sense of safety is important because without it we lose our ability to think clearly and connect with others. When we do not feel safe the more primitive … Read more…

Choose Your Contribution to the Future

I recently read this on a poster in the contemplative Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael, California where I spent six days on an Embodied Life™ retreat with Russell Delman. While there, I continued my decades long reflection and investigation into how we contribute to the circumstances out of which our future does take shape each time we interact with others at home, at work, and in our communities. Everyday we discover more about the human … Read more…

Introduction to How We Talk Matters

To our peril, in the face of a mountain of serious issues, we are yelling at one another. Why? We’re scared. Life is uncertain and impermanent. And, we live in the shadow of multiple and inter-connected challenges locally, nationally, and globally: food insecurity and malnutrition, climate change and environmental degradation, decrepit infrastructures, inequality and inequity, and wars with their horrifying “collateral damage” including the soul-crushing abuse of women and millions of refugees desperately seeking safer … Read more…