Dialogic Leadership

The next Skype Conference Calls

Please note the dates for the next Skype Conference Calls to keep in touch: June 16th and June 26th, 19.00 – 20.00 o'clock CEST each. We are going to update each other on how the planning is proceeding.

Let me know in time if you can make it to be on one of these calls (or both), and make sure I know your skype name so that I can skype you in. My skype name is usoeder. You can send me an e-mail at [email protected]

Cheers, Ulrich

The Dresden Planning Meeting, May 29 – June 01 2009

Dear all,

we had a very rich and inspiring meeting this weekend in Dresden. Thank you for your being here, or contributing in a Skype Conference Call or by sending in thought papers.

The title of the meeting will be something like this (there might be some fine-tuning until we get to the invitation ...): »Dialogue and Leadership – The New Face of Community«
Depending on the space we are going to find, we hope to be around 40 to 50 people including the hosting team. We came to call this group a circle of friends. The meeting should take place in October somewhere in Europe. Please be patient for the details.

We outlined the intention of the European meeting, we discussed desired results and how to create them, we explored the budget to make it happen, we described leadership roles before, during and after the meeting, we developed a scaffolding of how the structure of the meeting should look like, we discussed next steps in the planning process and how to include a larger group of people – in short we have been highly creative and productive. I am going to prepare a summary report of our meeting so that you can understand where we got and how we got there.

With a circle of friends, we want to explore the new face of community. What does it take to create a community? What is the role of shared meaning for a community? And, before all, why should we care for community? What will be the roles of dialogue and leadership in this process?

We do not want to answer these questions for a community, or create shared meaning for a community. What we want is to explore and learn how we can co-create with groups a »cradle for culture«, an environment where a group of people can explore what makes them a community and how this culture can become alive. One of the deeper questions that emerged for us in our conversation is: »How can we steward life?«

We still are searching for who »we« is? Who is inviting to this European meeting? Is it a group of individuals? Is it a group of individuals and a partner organisation (the WCCF)? We have discussed how we best can invite the World Café Community Foundation to join in the »we«, but due to the legacy of World Café Europe, this question is a sensitive one, and the discussion is still ongoing and the invitation to be crafted.

While we still are working on this question of collective identity: Might this question be another important, and far from trivial aspect for any community – clarifying for everyone: Who is included in the »we«? Who is part of »our« living system / social organism / organisation / society / humanity / ... ?

One aspect of dialogic leadership (this word has no shared meaning yet, but it sounds good), as I see it, is transparency. That is why we created this blog. That is why I am contributing to this blog and to the effort to make this meeting happen. I hope that we are creating a huge resonance, and contribute to (re-) vitalising a true community of World Café and dialogue practitioners in Europe.

Namaste,

Ulrich

Large Boards - Saturday

And here's how our large boards looked by the end of the day on Saturday.
Click an image for a larger view.

John's Visual Recording - Sat

Welcome to our newest visual recorder! Yay John! Click on the image to see it larger.

Sabine's Visual Recording - Sat

Click on an image to see it larger

Chris' Visual Recording

Click on the images to see them at full size.

Group Skype Chat Notes

There were a few notations on the common Skype Chat:

Ilona Christl
How do we make meaning? How do we bring meaning into life?
How do we connect with each other? together we can grow

John A. Herge
Graphic recording reinforces community like powerpoint re-enforces assocations and corporations...

Ilona Christl
Being quiet together, meditating together connects us as well, there are so many ways how we can get connected. Singing and chanting reinforces community too and it's used in corporations too

Sabine Soeder
yes!

John A. Herge
I envision a series of posters coming from this dialogue

Ilona Christl
Being quiet together, meditating together connects us as well, there are so many ways how we can get connected

Being there for one another

Agape

Wonderful and amazing

Ilona Christl
Children Full of Life (1 of 5)
"In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates."

Children Full of Life (2 of 5)
"Good teachers connect theory with life..."

Children Full of Life (3 of 5)
"Project: Raft ... teamwork, self-realizations, class victories...life.  You come to school to be happy. If one person is unhappy, everyone will be unhappy."

Children Full of Life (4 of 5)
"Academics and Life Learning....Death and empathy."

Children Full of Life (5 of 5)

Dr. Charles Savage
Thanks for sharing these!

Saturday Morning Skype Call

On Saturday morning the group (minus Petra) was joined by Ilona Christl and Charles Savage on Skype.

Here are Amy's notes from that call (Chris' to follow):

Charles: What’s the guiding question behind this event?

Chris: How can we help the community re-connect. Cast the largest net and ask what we all have in common.

Ilona: This is an opportunity to get the community back in relationship, although there is a question of whether there IS a community – I don’t think there is.

Chris: To your question, Ilona, the three points that have been driving our dialogue have been community, leadership and dialogue. You can see some of this thinking in our graphic capture.

Who do we want to come and what do they need?

If you think about those people who are dear to you, both personally and professionally, that you would like to invite to this gathering - who are they and what do you think they’d need?

Views of our day - taken by Ulrich Soeder

There was suddenly a double rainbow outside, and as Amy went to photograph it, Ulrich photographed her!