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2022 - Y.4 N.18: What will you start (and, how long will you stay there?)

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Hey there ,

…checkin’ in from Orlando, FL.

I’m visiting a fourth city in five days, and for the next three, I get to switch places and be a participant in the audience. I’m attending a conference through Wednesday, traveling back to Montgomery on Thursday, and then I’ll head out to Germany on Saturday. Over the past “little while” I’ve been thinkin’, and talkin’, and writin’ a lot. Oh, and reading. Reading a ton.

Reading like I used to read before I started the doctorate; reading like I’m running out of time.

There are a few things on my mind and heart; I’ll type them here – semi/mostly organized – and maybe we can MarcoPolo about them if you’d like. (The asynchronous of MP has me thinking that I could be a LOT closer with a LOT more people if I take a few moments each day to record even a short “hello.”)

Here they are, in no order, with some extra below:

It’s the questions, not the answers.

There’s a “there” there we’re avoiding seeing.

I hear a lot of “just” and “should” and “you,” and it worries me.

#1. We didn’t do what’s normal to do last Monday. Last Monday, I arrived at the venue (the United States Air Force Academy), and made a judgment call at 0737 that went like this:

“There are 43 people here for the next 5 days. We will not go around the room and ask each person to stand and introduce themselves.”

The look on their faces was priceless. What they didn’t know is that I had already thought this through. What did they do instead? They opened their “Leader Book” (what I now call their journal or steno pad) and wrote three introductions. I asked them to do it in silence, I invited them to write down more than they might ultimately share. I challenged them to give themselves the gift of their own attention. Wanna go for it as they did? Hit reply, and type as much as you’re willing to share with me:

A.    How would you normally introduce yourself? You know, your name, position, rank, where you’re from, family situation.

B.    What would you normally leave out of an initial intro, but is really, really important about the “you” we see? You know, what is something that happened that changed the way you see the world? (I did my first TEDx about that.) Share what makes you “you” but might stay in the background the first time we talk.

C.    What “lens” do you look through that creates the world you see that we don’t? That we can’t? What have you seen, done, been, experienced, learned, etc., that filters what you do (or don’t) see that I can’t (or can)?

Over the course of the next 2 days, I asked the group to “start” sharing their introductions with one another in groups of 3.

Here’s what I have found:

“People will ‘start’ anything I ask. Depending on how valuable it is – what I ask them to do – they will then either continue the activity or divert into/onto some other path. My experience over the first two days of the week-long event was that they stayed “in” the introductions a little longer than they thought they would. What was cool? I got to share my introduction and hear theirs…over and over and over again.

Those questions… do a lot for people who want to come together but don’t know how. I find that when I ask a bigger/deeper/better one, more convo happens as a result. Oh, and as an aside, I just started reading “The Book of Beautiful Questions” by Warren Berger, so look for some posts about and because of that!

#2. “What do we want?” Speaking of questions, it is fascinating how we avoid answering the most important, basic, fundamental question we can ask. And, yes, I include myself in this one… Had a friend of mine challenged me directly. She said, “Would you write down ‘what you want' and read it aloud to yourself?” That one question (see #1 above) send me on a multi-day journey, filling up page after page of my new reMarkable tablet. And it was powerful to see in my own handwriting. This all started a couple of weeks ago, and the power of that question isn’t lost on me…

There are people around us working on some important things, and I must ponder very specific questions:

• “How clear is the picture in their mind of what they want?”
• “Are they willing to ‘Red Flag’ in the human domain?”
• “How do I get them to tell me – clearly – what picture of ‘there’ they see?”

#3. Four times between Thursday and Friday, my facilitation partner and I  asked between 17 and 84 people to stand in a circle and face one another. Each time we did so – of course, we joined them – was at the end of a process whereby participants spent time writing in their “Passports” and then talking in small groups. To close each activity, we invited several people to share a ‘because of’ statement. The invite was to share what they took away NOT from what they wrote and talked “about,” but instead what they were standing and thinking because of the conversation with their partner(s). As each person shared, noticed that they used the words “you” a lot.

I encouraged (or is it challenged) them to share what THEY were thinking, not what they thought WE should be thinking. In a world where we are always attempting to be of service to one another, it is interesting to watch people think – deeply – about how they reflect and respond to their own thoughts. As we all head into the next week, might be cool to check and see when we use “you” and we really mean “I.”

Onward…

Dr. JW

PS: I also heard a lot of "should" and "just" when people shared. I often step in and ask them to be more conscious. If it goes on too long, I start fining them a dollar for each one!