World Cafe Community

Comments from 2013 Hosting Fundamentals Courses

Here's what graduates of the 2013 course are saying about the World Cafe Hosting Fundamentals course at Fielding:

"I am a French facilitator based in Paris.  As I was about to start my own little company, I took Amy and Bo's class between February and April of 2013.  At the end of April, a facilitator that had trained me before called me up and asked "Is your World Café training over yet?"  She had a major client who was ready for a series of World Cafés with 100+ people each, the dates were changed and it turned out that she wouldn't be available.  Because I had been trained by Amy and Bo, I was the person my trainer chose to call, which provided me with my very first paid assignment as a freelance facilitator!  I teamed up with a consultant and with a fantastic graphic facilitator and I hosted several sessions for that client.  Our sponsor couldn't believe the level of energy that was in the room!  At the end of the first World Café, a participant came to me and said "I can see it now: I'm not alone"!

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"I'm loving this programme, and find it really helpful in getting me to think more about what I'm doing. I can't remember anything I've done in years that has been so practical and 'right on'. Thank you!"

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It was such a powerful session, just like the whole course. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be part of this class and I think it helped me keep centered and positive in a very challenging time in my work life.

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Conversational-Centered Leadership

This from our good friends at the Daily Good, a wonderful daily pep-talk post sent out by what was Charity Focus, and is now ServiceSpace:

Talking It Out: The New Conversation-centered Leadership
by Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz

Every year, hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the business world, eager to climb the corporate ladder. Their progress on the early rungs of that journey will often be determined by qualities like hard work, determination, knowledge and technical proficiency. But business consultants Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz argue that those same qualities prove less helpful at higher rungs on the ladder, and may even be one's downfall if they are not balanced by a very different set of leadership qualities. They sum up the thesis of their new book, Leadership Conversations: Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, like this: "As you move into upper leadership levels, your technical skills -- what you know -- become less important. What counts is whom you know and, perhaps more important, who knows and trusts you."

The importance of building strong working relationships within an organization may seem self-evident. But Berson and Stieglitz go well beyond a call to establish and maintain open lines of communication. The kind of conversations they are advocating for are not simply talk for talk's sake. Rather, they are the heart and soul of any thriving organization's culture: a strategic tool incorporating very specific techniques toward very specific ends.

Read more!