Center for Purposeful Leadership

The Compromise Trap: 1/19 VisionHolder Interview

The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul with Elizabeth Doty, of WorkLore.

This evening's call with Elizabeth Doty was another in a wonderful series with evolutionary leaders of speaking to living a life of wholeness and integrity. Like all of our VisionHolders, Elizabeth holds a vision for a world that works not just for the individual, but for everyone. The topic of unhealthy compromise at work is VERY important to the transformation of our organizations and the people who care about them.

The Compromise Trap helps you tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy compromise, and how to stay true to yourself and be a positive force in your organization. Some key components of the book:

1/19/10 Heartland Network Call: 2020 Vision: Reflections on Copenhagen

>NEXT CALL: 2/16  Register here


1/19/10 Heartland Network Call
2020 Vision: Reflections on Copenhagen

Many thanks to those of you on the call. As Paul said, thank you for your kind attention and willingness to take action for a healthy climate.

Many thanks to our Conversation leaders:
Paul Thompson, One Cool Planet
Katherine Ball and Alec Neal, SeaChange Gallery

I. Learnings from Copenhagen
II. What we each can do
III. How to influence policy makers
IV. additional URLs/information

Introducing The Art of Convening book

We're thrilled to introduce The Art of Convening book. It will be released by our publisher Berrett-Koehler Publishers early 2011. Throughout the rest of the year, we'll post excerpts on this blog for your early viewing.

Craig & Patricia

The ART OF CONVENING
9 Ways to Transform Your Meetings, Gatherings and Conversations

Introduction
The role of the Convener is to gather and hold the people

"I would love to see leadership be the art of convening and hosting, and
that leadership training would teach how to bring people together and initiate
conversations that have power rather than predictability.
-Peter Block, author of "Community: The Structure of Belonging" in 2007 Wall Street Journal interview

Convening has become synonymous with facilitating gatherings and meetings. Heartland has been differentiating convening from facilitation and meeting leadership since our founding in 1995. By definition, facilitation is, “the process of making something easy or easier,”* whereas convening is the art of gathering and “holding” people. We consciously invite people into an engagement and are thereby accountable for the energetic and physical field in which we meet.

This book, The Art of Convening, is about the art and practice of convening people for the sake of creating wholeness in our engagements. It addresses the essential principles and practices for those “called” to convene and lead meetings and gatherings that produce transformational outcomes for the people in them and their organizations, communities and the world. Nothing less. It is for those of us seriously engaged and committed to making a life-changing difference in our own lives, and the lives of those we gather.

The Genesis of the Art of Convening
In 1998 we (Craig & Patricia Neal) began hosting and convening a series of member-based conversations, the Thought Leader Gatherings (TLGs), for a diverse group of leaders in our hometown of Minneapolis and then the California Bay Area. We had been holding these gatherings for seven years when Patricia noticed we needed to offer people the “recipe” for what we were doing at these meetings, rather than merely deliver the experience for them over and over.

We crafted a convening format description and published it on our website for our members and attendees to use in their practices and meetings. It was our hope that people would experience a transformational conversation with us at the TLG, then with that experience in hand and supporting printed materials, would replicate the experience in their lives, organizations and communities.