I’ve been hosting Unhurried Conversations here in Cambridge for more than two years now. Here’s a post from a few months back describing the approach.
It continues to be a fascinating process. The format has remained more or less the same, and many of those attending are regulars. Yet each time the experience is surprising and satisfying.
In fact, I now host them fortnightly and in the weeks off I rather miss them. We’ve increased the maximum attending to 20, which means when everyone shows up, we have to split into parallel conversations. This way we’re able to meet what feels like growing demand.
The repeated experience feels like a great way of deepening my practice. It’s easy to get excited about new facilitation techniques, but for me the real excitement is in taking a simple technique and noticing more and more of the subtle ways in which people work with it. So for me, these conversations have contributed a lot to my professional work.
I find when I take on work now I am more willing to work organically, developing processes live in response to what I see happening in the room. I’m increasingly confident that people really want to connect, want to make things happen, and generally need less pushing, steering and guidance and fewer flip charts, post it notes, bells and whistles to get there. What the facilitator needs to bring, more than anything, is presence. Because much of the art is in self-restraint, leaving the most possible space for participants to operate in ways the work naturally for them – but still letting them realise that you are really engaged with them, even though you are not rushing about a lot.
Iin many organisations there is so much pressure to achieve and meet targets (so many meetings seem to be about “doing more with less”) that people are starved of reflective space. But it’s in that kind of space that I think there is most scope for discovery and creativity. It’s perhaps no coincidence that I am blogging less frequently than in the past. There’s really only so much one say about the value of showing up and being open to surprise; it looks simple enough, but I think it’s something that grows with commitment and practice.
UPDATE: Viv and I will be exploring the use of Unhurried Conversations in organisations on our residential workshop. 31 August to 2 September 2016 in Cambridge.
