THE ART OF HOSTING AND HARVESTING
CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER
DRONGEN, 4-6 JUNE 2019

Do you recognise this: your organisation has a clear and meaningful purpose and the people working alongside of you are really working hard but it doesn’t seem to bring the organisation closer to its goal?

How can we liberate individual creative energy in service of organisational purpose?

An image to help us find some answers to this question is the image of a seed. In a seed all the potential is already present. The seed knows what it will become; either a birch, an oak, a cauliflower or a rose. There is no doubt about it. It’s similar for us, humans. Once we are conceived, our full potential is already in us! And the same is true for our organisations and companies! The environment, the context, the culture we live and work in – our home, our schools, our companies – will enable us to develop these potentials. Or not.

That leaves us with some questions around new ways of working:

• What is exactly needed in organisational culture and structure for employees to bring their full potential to work?
• How can your company create the right environment and be a fertile soil for people to liberate their creative energy?
• How to align personal purpose with organisational purpose?

The change in mindset that these questions are pointing to is enormous and requires new leadership and personal skills and new ways to organise ourselves.

Many practitioners and scientist working in this new field understand that convening and designing conversations that matter are a core leadership skill for our uncertain times and complex world.

How can these conversations be energizing, effective and efficient?
New conversations lead eventually to new actions and to new worlds. Contradictory as it may seem, we need to slow down, we need to take time to reflect together, otherwise we are not able to cut through our conditioned working habits (both personal and collective). What if we take actions from our newly shared insights in a more natural rhythm? We think that’s how we can re-invent our organisations, one step at a time!

Does this speak to you?
You are very welcome to join us in these practices and our shared inquiry!

TEAM for this training
Practical information and registration

Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter 
This training contains a good mix of relevant models and practical methods. The models help us to better understand the leadership theme. We then apply the methodologies to explore the collective wisdom about this theme. You get the opportunity to actively practice some methods, through coaching, with other participants. On the other hand, we will experience methodologies for working in a participatory way, such as World Café, Open Space, Collective Story Harvesting, etc. We will not only pay attention to the various processes, but also to the preconditions for them to succeed. In this way you get concrete tools to get started in your own project or organization.

Possible effects of Art of Hosting in your organization:
– Efficient decision making and supported decisions
– Flexibility to deal with complexity
– Employees take their responsibility
– Employees are committed and take initiative
– Diversity becomes an opportunity rather than a problem
– …

For whom:
For everyone who attaches importance to commitment, sustainability, resilience … regardless of your position or the organization for which you work.
✓ business leaders and managers
✓ social entrepreneurs
✓ educators, parents, volunteers, students, school directors
✓ staff members and policy makers of local and provincial authorities
✓ managers and policy makers of NGOs and civil society organizations
✓ consultants and coaches
✓ social leaders and organizers of cross-sectoral dialogues

What you will learn while doing: 
– conduct meaningful conversations and harvest new insights and innovative actions based on collective wisdom
– design processes for large and small groups that lead to co-creation and collective wisdom
– apply participatory leadership in your own context
– select practical methods and techniques for your projects and their associated challenges
– better understand complexity and group processes and know how to navigate them
This is a very interactive training that throws you immediately into the bath of participatory leadership. We make the theory concrete from the start and get started with the questions, ideas and projects of the participants.

Language:
The working language in this training will be both Dutch and English, because we have a few international trainers in the team. Together we will ensure that there is translation for those who need it. (collective intelligence in action!)

TEAM for this training
Practical information and registration