Between 6  and 8 of February we enjoyed a three day Art of Hosting training in a beautiful old castle in Belgium!

 

What is Art of Hosting?

“The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter teaches a body of methods and practices that can effectively support us in dealing with these questions in our everyday lives. It offers a practical approach for a different kind of leadership that is essentially participatory, where we talk with one another, and not about each other. It enables us to bring forth and base our decisions on the best collective wisdom that is present in any system.” (Art of Hosting Team Belgium).

What did we do?

Around 70 people participated coming from 10 different countries, with a variety of different mother tongues, as well as some people living in Belgium. We focused on diversity as it is an inescapable fact of life in nearly any society. The main question, which we worked in many different ways on, was:

“What would it be like to embody a society where everyone and everything can thrive? Where I can accept and celebrate your culture and values without having to devalue or sacrifice my own?”

At this training we experienced the power of collective intelligence as it is harnessed through carefully designed conversational processes, using methodologies such as Circle, World Café, Open Space Technology, Pro Action Café and others. Bildschirmfoto 2016-02-15 um 11.35.22

Even for us as experts this training was encouraging. We re-learned about the most important underpinning principles and world-views that support successful application of the participatory approach; the basics of how to design successful processes; how to move the fruits of the conversation out of the room and into the world. We were challenged, laughed a lot and connected with many great and interesting people!

Fondo

Some learnings:


- Community Makes it thrive!

- When there is a community, difficulties become learning opportunities

- Embrace diversity (personal, group, social, world: they are all connected!)

- Opening too many questions at once can generate discomfort and divergence in the group

- We need art to think and evolve!