The Unsaid

by

One of my favorite books in college was called the Mystical Languages of Unsaying. But this is not about unsaying. It is about a giant elephant in the room.

Conversation. Conversations can be about growing an idea or growing a connection. They can be about refining and becoming more rigorous. Whatever the subject and aim of the conversation, we focus on what is present there. My words responding to your words, and vice versa.

elephant

Keep in mind, this, yes, and also, what is absent from that. We are often pulling from the realm of what has not yet been said, obviously, as otherwise the conversation would stagnate in the same statements recirculating. No, we pull in from what has yet to be said.

That is not necessarily the elephant in the room though. The elephant in the room is what has not yet been stated AND isn’t being stated for political or emotional reasons. But that very things is what the conversation is navigating around. It is silently acknowledged by not given space to be reviewed or responded to. Bring it to light. Bring the unsaid into the open.

Ask, “What are we not saying here?” which has an infinity of answers in truth. However, what will come up is what is not being said because it is dangerous. Excellent! Be real. Face the danger. Unearth the unsaid.

What will this get for you? The safety of the space often deepens because the work has touched something sacred and dangerous…and it bonds the conversationalists together in the common space of the real (and not just the plastic soft niceties). What else will it get for you? Well, the unsaid is often something that has this taste of the sacred…and we must be able to touch and handle even sacred ideas and make choices about them. It allows you to go deeper into a situation, acknowledge what is really involved, and open more choices about where you want to go next.

So, try it, ask what is not being said.

Curiosity!

by

Listening seems really important. But to go beyond that and be actively listening there need to be a spark of curiosity.

To go beyond hearing what someone has to say and be engaged in discovering them and their ideas–that reveals several things about both parties. First, that you really care and honor them as a person, which frees people to share. Second, that you have connection to what they have to say–that you see value in knowing what they are offering. Third, that you see potential of learning from them and opportunity to co-create together. Forth, that you are interested in exploring with them.

Many dialogs really are monologues cross-spoken. If someone holds in their mind what they want to say, what they want to get across, what they want to argue, what they want to push as an agenda…then the conversation isn’t really a conversation. Be co-creative in your conversations and display a good dose of curiosity.

When I went through training as a coach, one of the first exercises we did was to give advice to our partner. The second exercise was to listen. I noticed two very important things. One, that the person I listened to seemed very capable of creating their own solutions. Second, the person I listened to was energized more by being listened to then by the advice. Since then, over and over, I have witnessed the power of being curious and listening actively and deeply as it activates the creative resourcefulness in people. More than that, they seem more likely to follow through on their own ideas and solutions than on any advice I would give.

It does take some stepping back…it requires the listener to give up the idea that they have the right answer. Be curious, the person you are talking to deserves the opportunity to create solutions for themselves. What is that? Listen for it. Be curious. And you might learn something wonderful and unexpected. I have.

But don’t just take my word for it, check out these benefits of active listening from an expert:

    • Sometimes a person just needs to be heard and acknowledged before the person is willing to consider an alternative or soften his /her position.
      It is often easier for a person to listen to and consider the other’s position when that person knows the other is listening and considering his/her position.
      It helps people to spot the flaws in their reasoning when they hear it played back without criticism.
      It also helps identify areas of agreement so the areas of disagreement are put in perspective and are diminished rather than magnified.
      Reflecting back what we hear each other say helps give each a chance to become aware of the different levels that are going on below the surface. This helps to bring things into the open where they can be more readily resolved.
      If we accurately understand the other person’s view, we can be more effective in helping the person see the flaws in his/her position.
      If we listen so we can accurately understand the other’s view, we can also be more effective in discovering the flaws in our own position.

    • KINS and Growing a Field

    by

    Looking over Capital Missions Companies, Key Initiator Network Strategy (KINS), I have many points of agreement about the principles behind the strategies. I believe

    • that we are all one
    • that there are key laws of nature including distributed intelligence and emergence which we can learn from
    • that there is strength in weak ties
    • that peer-to-peer relationship offer great power
    • that abundance, generosity, and trust figure strongly in our evolution

    And we do need resource efficient ways to make large social change. So this is my spin and twist on what I understand about KINS.

    Spreading behaviors path of 5

    1. Establish credibility. To make network change, change agents require credibility. Susan answers the credibility issue by asking for powerful high-status actors. I would say, sure those help. High-status is one way of being credible; it is not the only way.

    2. Encourage Inter-organizational Networks. Professionalization and inter-organizational networks act as sources for spreading the behavior through a network of common interest. There need to be paths in the network for connections to spread behaviors.

    3. Fosters powerful models. Modeling innovative behavior can lead to the spread of that behavior. Lead by example. This can be reflexive A<-=->B or mimentic A–>B

    4. Focus on commonality. Susan asserts that the spread happens through actors in similar structural positions. I prefer to broaden that: it spreads through actors who have something, anything that they know to be in common. The common trait between A and B need not be the common trait in B and C. There may be a propensity for dispersal of behaviors at a structural peer level, but it is not a requirement or limitation.

    5. Emerge effective collective action. Open space for mobilization and coordination of community of individuals and organization around a common cause.

    Agreed: “Homogeneous interests, a sense of shared identity, and dense social networks increase a group’s ability to mobilize its resources.”

    So that is how I am understanding and reframing what I understand of KINS.

    However, this does not speak to how to create homogenous interests, shared sense of identity, nor dense social networks. How do we do that?

    All over the place and focus

    by

    I suppose to some people my interests appear to be all over the place: philanthropy, currencies, technology, visualization, mapping, marketing, coaching, leadership, process arts, community development, art, creativity, and some other issues too like globalization, the bottom of the pyramid, social entrepreneurship, etc. And most of these areas I have enough understanding to listen and ask good questions…but not enough to debate academically on the finer points or the history. Coaching might be the exception. Maybe. I am not a specialist. And some say it is a world where we ought to be specialized. I don’t know about that. I think it is a world where we ought to connect and have engaging conversations.

    Sometimes, in our lives, we find the varied paths we lead all connecting down the road somewhere. All this leads together…

    How? Field building. I will post soon a longer explanation of field building, along with some tidbits of conversation and great links for those who are interested. For now, let me simply explain that field building is the conscious collective development of a network of purpose (both the nodes and the space between the nodes). And I see this as being critical for our evolution. We need to adapt to survive and for the planet to survive. We need to understand our world in more useful and appropriate ways. And all these interests of mine lead back to the many tools, processes, and systems that play a role in field building. An example–Social Network Analysis is an emerging field…It is defining itself, the practices, examining what distinctions are valuable and which are not. It changes how organizations work, and values human connection. It requires message management for maintaining a cohesive set of meaningful terms. It requires leadership to grow the edges and community to build the depths. It takes funding and marketing to keep thriving. It takes mapping and visualization to track and analyze itself. Other examples are Digital Media and Education, Currencies/Flows, and Thrivability (next evolution of sustainability). Sometimes fields are in transition too, like the work we are doing in Philanthropy to democratize giving, promote giving while living, encourage micro-philanthropy, etc.

    We need to change our world, to understand it in new ways, to work in new ways. I see my work as building fields that help with that process. And why? It comes back to my core purpose–to help people transform their lives and live with passionate purpose.

    Kimberly Olson and good copy for a writer’s website

    by

    My cousin Kim, always an inspiration and mentor to me, put up a website recently. Beautiful, clean, great copy (of course). I really like her naming of pages and how she positions things so clearly.

    I must find the time to read some of these articles…

    Kimberly Olson.

    I also love that she highlights that she is a 1% for the planet alliance member. Awesome Kim.

    Now I better get mine revised!

    Giving and Partnership

    by

    Always a source of wisdom, insight, and fantastic probing, GiftHub posts:

    Some of my favorite people, including Anne Ellinger and Tracy Gary, are written up in the Chronicle of Philanthropy for raising the question of how much wealthy families should keep for themselves and how much they should be giving back to society. This is the conversation of fundraising, philanthropy, and donor circles. What will facilitate the mega-giving is better partnerships with the advisors who in many cases control the wealth, as a practical matter, unless the donor bestirs herself to lead or partner. That is the gist of what I am trying to do here, and with Tracy at Inspired Legacies: build inspired donor/advisor partnerships for self, family, and society. In that way we can convert ideals plus wealth to positive social change.

    Yes, indeed, when faced with information like this:

    Americans have doubled their incomes in the past 40 years, but the share of giving has never climbed above 2.4 percent of the money they have left after paying for basics like housing and food, according to Giving USA, the annual yearbook of philanthropy produced by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

    We have to recognize our abundance and contribute at higher levels. My admirable friend Darlene Charneco and her partner Brent Timbol, also encourage giving, they suggest at the tithing level of 10% and joining the 10% Club.

    No matter what our income levels, we need to ask ourselves, can I give more? The world needs you now.

    Endings and Beginnings

    by

    With Omidyar.net soon to close the doors piled on top of my frustration at the lack of self-governance and community-nurturing practices, I am looking for new homes. Have been looking around for a few months.

    Never going to MySpace…no way, too cluttery, and too little community feel.
    Second Life…went there…but it seems my computer can’t crunch the info…waiting to get a new one…but I am not sensing that SL is good for project management. Created profile: Yes Bright.
    Tribe…seems interesting, but it just didn’t resonate with me. Created profile.
    Facebook…ummm, has some interesting tools, but I quickly got overrun by friends asking me to add applications, and I wondered if conversation was really at the heart of it or if it was something that happened on the side…too profile based. Created and maintain profile for the sake of advocacy.
    Ning…have a profile there, created a closed community for a philanthropy-related project, nice use of tools and such, but I hear it gets more frustrating the more you get into it…good for the surface work and not so good for building visibility. Created profile and group.
    Zaadz…well I went there moons ago, bounced around, found way too much fluff, although the site arrangement was fun and interesting….more focused on conversations…why don’t they have the super nifty conversation tracking tools of Onet?…Created and sorta maintain profile. Thinking of deleting everything I can now that they got bought out.
    Linked In…well I have been there a long time, but the only thing I do there is connect to people…and that seems pretty dull. I want conversation, innovation, and better world building! Created and maintain profile.
    Razoo seems interesting…does have more of the project management tools that I had wanted at onet and seems to bring people together and balance profile and action…I am still checking it out…will see what population emerges there and if they really mean action and have some good intellectual capacity. They do seem to have a more advanced reputation tool, which I am excited to see.Created profile, joined groups and causes, started cause.

    For the most part, I suspect I will be hanging out more here and at nurture.wagn.org or at the transition and beyond wagon for onet members at o.wagn.org.

    You can also find me at AboutUs.org or transitioner.org…and probably a dozen places I am forgetting today as the search has been long and involved!

    Community Management

    by

    I was over at Fast Wonder today, and Dawn has a great list of roles for a community manager to play. I find it interesting how languages of different groups play a part in how we describe things. I agree with her role descriptions as things we need in community, with my background, however, I describe them differently or focus on different concerns.

    She specifically mentions: ongoing facilitation, content creation, evangelism, and community evolution.

    I replied to her post:

    Wonderful role descriptions. I also find it critical that the manager model the behavior you want in the community. An effective community manager understands the boundaries of that specific community and will take fire to defend those boundaries.

    And a piece of evangelism and facilitation is letting people know where opportunities for connection are–which I think you are calling cat herding. Good “Network Weaving” is helpful to tighten the space between nodes/participants. It also helps so people don’t miss content that interests them (lower threshold to participation).

    You speak of content creation and evolution, and this to me is part of the flow of community. Creating flow to encourage participation, uplift visibility, and encourage activity whether through conversations, practices, or tools. What flows do you want to enable and what, as community manager, can you do to encourage them. (And conversely what flows do you want to discourage too.)

    What do you think the role of a community manager includes? And in what context?

    Network to Communities: the evolution of omidyar.net

    by

    If you are not already familiar, omidyar.net/home/ has been an active online community sine July 04. It was created and opened up by Omidyar Network LLC, tracing back to Pierre Omidyar of Ebay fame. The purpose of the network space was to help more and more people discover their power to make good things happen. This attracted a particular crowd interested in making the world a better place, some through entrepreneurship, some through tools, and other opportunities. And this network, with some 100-200 active engaged users and nearly 20,000 sign ons is being bumped off the platform. The hope or strategy perhaps is to foster communities of purpose to move beyond the limitations of the network and the platform to scale up and out more good things.

    There is much I can say about this network, having been a highly active member for several years. I can speak to the philanthropy on and from and to the network. But that belongs in another topic space. What I want to address here is the movement from network to community. What distinguishes a network from a community? What are the advantages of a network? What are the advantages of a community? What are the disadvantages of each?

    I have some answers of my own. And I would love to brainstorm this with others (you) as well.

    My sense is that a network is a grouping of people through loose or weak affiliation. And that affiliation may not be the same across all relationships. As has been noted in network theory there is a great strength in weak ties. I consider a community to be a more densely woven connection of people who are joined by purpose or interest. You may not realize the scope of your network(s), but you likely know the scope of your community. There is a greater sense of self-awareness of the group within community. In fact that awareness is part of the distinguishing characteristics, in my mind. To know itself. To know what it holds in common.

    I very much look forward to seeing how the network on omidyar.net/home/ moves to new spaces and creates communities (or not) in the coming months. And I am eager to understand how others see both the evolution and the community/network distinction.

    OYA at Burning Man

    by

    Donations for OYA can be made by paypal or online through IHCenter.