By Will Van Inwagen and Mila Aliana for Enlivening Edge Magazine
Editor’s Note: This article is of historical interest only. These conversations have further evolved into the Deepening Our Resonance conversations available to members of Enlivening Edge Community Hub.
Enlivening Edge’s community conversations have been an amazing accomplishment and success for the participants and the hosts of these calls. We’ve had over 1000 attendees from over 20 countries since starting in November, 2016. The ideas, the connections, and the sense of community that have grown from these conversations and from the participants have been truly inspiring.
Something new and exciting is emerging from the conversations. A new hosting team has emerged and has been listening and sensing into what is emerging from these gatherings. The participants are becoming more empowered and are taking on a sense of exploration and ownership of the conversations. All participants have experimented and learned from emergence of ideas and views. This is truly wonderful to watch and be a part of.
“How do we continue to cultivate emergence in the conversation space?” This is the question that we will be asking ourselves as we journey into the exploration of this possibility and emerging into the next stages of its evolution.
Here is what will be unfolding in our future community conversations:
- First Thursday of each month at 10 AM US Pacific Time – Existing format
We continue the usual conversation format that we have been using which is based upon Peter Block’s ‘A small group process.’ - Third Thursday of each month at 10 AM PT – New format
This exciting and new series of adventures will start on August 17, 2017. What will be different will be the format, called ‘Collective Emergence©’.
The intent of these new conversations is to co-create and experience collective emergence. You are invited to be a co-creator of this process. The architecture of the new conversation series will have a very loose format. Most of it will be co-created in the moment to best tap into the needs of whomever shows up on that call in that moment. Are you willing to be a part of prototyping this?
These conversations will be holding the space for questions around next stage organization or going Teal, that are alive within you and are asking to be explored. Then you will be given an opportunity to explore the collective’s questions as it emerges in the moment, not pre-designed beforehand.
Taking from Meg Wheatley’s methodology of acting locally, connecting regionally, and then learning globally, there will be small groups of three participants.
Acting locally
The small group of three will then develop their own powerful question that is most alive in the moment, and then answer that question. Observe and note what ideas, insights, and perspectives emerge in the group eco-system. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts in awareness and perspectives of worldviews as it transcends from the individual space to the group field.
Connecting regionally
The small groups will then be merged with the other groups to do similar activities that went on in the initial group of three. This step allows for cross-group connections and cross-fertilization of ideas; this typically sparks creative tension through the holding of multi-perspective views and insights, bringing awareness and wisdom of different dimensions.
Learning globally
After these smaller group conversations, we will all gather together in the videoconferencing main room where there will be collective sharing of insights, experiences, and learnings that came from the small groups.
Here is where we can reflect upon our small group conversations and possibly ask ourselves some of these questions or other questions we notice at that time. “What am I learning about myself? What were the tensions within me, with others, what are the questions that came up for me? Can we start to see any of the patterns that are emerging. How can we hold opposing views and come up with something that holds the whole larger inclusive truth?”
From these questions, many strands and ripples might arise in various forms: deepening of self-awareness, widening of one’s perspectives, opening creative thinking and innovations, instigation for collaborative projects of value for the world, and most importantly, wisdom—consciously and subconsciously.
The hosting team has seen that what arises from these kinds of conversations is the need to share the patterns that emerge; the collective wisdom that has come out of the group wants to be shared globally. A forum, a medium, that the participants feel meets the needs of the group and also meets the needs of those who miss a conversation, will be co-evolved.
The participants will be supported to go where their energies and passions take them, whether that is further conversations, forming a community of practice, or following what emerged from the collective wisdom of the group. Needless to say, these conversations will be a wonder to behold.
If you have any questions please contact [email protected].
Help grow the Enlivening Edge community conversations
So, you are invited to this amazing experimental journey to seed and learn how to co-create collective emergence. Also, please invite others who are also on this journey of moving towards Teal consciousness and next-stage organizations. You can give them Will’s email address [email protected], and suggest they write him about joining the conversations. Better yet, have them go here and sign up to receive semi-monthly notifications for the Enlivening Edge Community Conversations. They will be notified in advance about each call, its topic/question and access information.
There is one signup form and one monthly mailing covering both the original and continuing EE Community Conversations on First Thursdays, and this new Engaging Collective Emergence series on Third Thursdays.
With deep love and joy from the Collective Emergence© hosting team.
Mila Aliana, Tina Gattermann , Ryan Schoenbeck and Will Van Inwagen
