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STORIES
We are now
actively collecting and sharing stories through From the Four Directions
circles. Please feel free to share your experiences with us by contacting
mailto:tenneson@berkana.org.
- A Story of Life Affirming Leadership
- How
is From the Four Directions Helping Me as a
Leader?
- Building
Community, Growing Leaders
- Bridging
Generations in Senegal
- My Dream
of Creating a Learning Village
- Sustained Ways of Being Together that Celebrate All LifeLife Works
- Leadership
Story – LifeWorks
- From
the Four Directions and Blue Water
Sailing
- Leadership
Story – Shared Leadership, Organic Learning
A Story of
Life Affirming Leadership
Guillermo Arenas
Seleey
Bucaramanga, Columbia 
"I
consider my personal growth at a remarkable point as a result of
involvement with the leadership goals of From the Four Directions (F4D)
and Berkana Institute. My life and the meaning of leadership have been
changed substantially by F4D. After the F4D Practicum (2001) and my
subsequent learning through Berkana, I now know better how to serve my
community. Working with members of the The Sotomayor Rotary Club, the Real
State Association of Bucaramanga, the Chamber of Commerce, and The
Industrial University of Santander, I have been incorporating skills
learned from involvement in From the Four Directions to shape a Civic
Coexistence Project. Bucaramanga has been distinguished as the "Cordial
City" of Columbia.
However, due to its growth and some national circumstances, its people have lost social sense, solidarity, civic respect, care of the environment, and other aspects of coexistence that have deteriorated the quality of life in the city. To recover those qualities, we want to advance a cultural project centered in values that achieve a deep effect and are long lasting among the inhabitants of Bucaramanga. A project of change, of great social impact. A project that is not reduced to campaigns of publicity, interests of groups, fleeting interests, or opportunism of diverse types. People of different associations and institutions have been meeting and pondering the idea of improving the quality of life of the city in a culture of peace through the coexistence of cordiality and solidarity. This project is supported in the F4D initiative of Berkana and will rely on the power of linking into the network of others involved and dedicated to change through effective and life-affirming leadership. Proposals have been developed and the first circles are intended to convene in February 2003.
I have recently been very busy helping to solve a serious conflict at my university; an interesting experience to share with people of Berkana. I am working as a professor for the Industrial University of Santander, one of the most important public universities in the country with around 20,000 students. During the last months the university has suffered political agitation and violent protests of a small extremist group of students and infiltrated people of extremist orientation. One student was killed during a street conflict so they stopped classes.
After the Arizona Leadership Practicum I have been teaching Circles and Leadership to the students of Management courses following the guidelines of F4D and Meg Wheatley's papers, change theory and principles of Berkana and F4D. So we were working with a group of professors, suggesting to the students to organize the students community, weaving their network to build a democratic force. A few students began calling their partners, and so using the force of small groups conversing about their goals and their interest for the university, dialogue, intelligent reflection, objective thought and conversation in diversity through the Internet, using e-mail and group meetings they grew from a group of 50 students to thousands. During the decisive assembly, before dominated by extremist leaders and a reduced audience of 200 or 300 students, they got to gather thousands. The extremist groups intended to maintain the strike but the new leaders with intelligent reflection about the university as a center of knowledge got an election to reject the strike. As a result of the voting, 90% declared normality and to return to academic activity. The process of participation is changing and the university was reopened in peace.
I believe this is an interesting experience of gathering in circles, and is an emergent phenomenon of a more powerful force of change than the movements of anarchy and violence." Connect with Guillermo Arenas Seleey
How is From the Four Directions Helping
Me as a Leader?
from Lisa Connors
From
the Four Directions Circle Host
Ann Arbor, Michigan
United
States
In what ways are you different as a leader that you would attribute to your participation in a From the Four Directions Circle?
I have more clarity. I have more courage. I believe this has come directly from my experience of hosting a circle. What am I clear on? On embracing the contributions I can make. On how I lead. I don't compare myself to others as much as I used to. I used to worry much more about things like, who has the better intellectual grasp on what was happening in the world. Now I focus more on how I show up with other people.
At one of our circle gatherings, we focused on what we felt the core of our lives was about? We each shared our perspective. Out of that experience came the following clarity for me:
I see myself as a clear pool of a human being in progress that puddles up where there are things to be remembered.
I have been very aware of my comparative youth, of my inexperience. I've often felt embarrassed by this, that I have to cover it up. My circle experience has helped me to embrace my gifts. Time and time again, I've learned to just say out loud the most vulnerable thing that I'm feeling. When I do so, other people seem more able to do so also. That changes all of us. People express gratitude to me for this. My lessons that I am learning often seem to be the lessons that other people and organizations I am part of are learning. Maybe some of this is projection, but I feel lead to learn out loud. This seems to help others. My circle experience has shown me that learning out loud with others is a gift.
Here is another difference I notice as a leader. I used to feel more often that I must lead by design. This was the key to good leadership. Now I feel that I can best lead as a transparent learner. For example, at a recent conference sponsored by the Deming Institute and the Capital Quality Initiative, Life-Long Learning in the 21st Century, I hosted a session with a friend and colleague. We chose to not be the "experts" because we didn't think it was most helpful. Rather our intent was to share our learning with the larger group. Being passionate mattered. Having the beginner's mind mattered. We showed up differently. We didn't script a presentation. Instead we decided what we wanted to learn and asked people to join us.
Did this make a difference for people? We noticed that people approached us over the remainder of the conference. They wanted to have conversations with us. We gauged our success by the meaningful conversations we had. Every exchange seemed to be highly charged. Every conversation was a mutual, meaningful exchange.
From the Four Directions May 2002 Newsletter [read it]
Building
Community, Growing Leaders
Jonathan
Campbell
From the Four Directions Circle Participant
Seattle, Washington
United States
By Doug
Nathan
Fellow Circle Participant
Seattle, Washington
United
State
Conversation circles
deepened Jonathan Campbell's notion of leadership, and encouraged him to
apply it more intentionally. "Circle creates an atmosphere that allows
people to connect and express their leadership," explains Jonathan. "It
encourages you to more fully live your values because you recognize you
are on the same path with others seeking to live their values out in their
lives and workplaces. It's like geese drafting each other, giving each
person opportunities to both lead and follow."
Several weeks into his first From the Four Directions circle group, Jonathan began teaching a class called Leadership and Diversity at Fuller Theological Seminary. The 15-person class consisted of a diverse mix of age, gender, culture, vocation, and ethnic background. Usually, he would have taught from the front of the class. Instead, he gathered the students in circle.
"We focused on engaging one another with the values of openness, vulnerability, and honesty," he says. The class never used a talking stick, but developed an understanding that they would listen to each other and participate. Jonathan had planned to spend an hour during that first class teaching circle. However, three hours later, the students were still engaged in conversation. They chose to meet in a similar circle format for the rest of the semester.
Circle helped to release leadership within Jonathan's academic setting. The usual hierarchical, command and control classroom leadership model was replaced by a shared leadership style that fostered a richer learning experience. "We created personal bonds by hearing each other's stories," says Jonathan. "The students listened to each other from their perspectives, teaching each other from their lives and heritages, and engaged their whole persons."
"As community increases, lecture decreases," Jonathan notes. "We became a unified but diverse community. We focused on equipping and empowering each other to be leaders instead of followers-leaders that release leaders rather than create followers. We recognized that we were responsible for our own growth and took active roles in learning and in teaching others."
"Leadership is about
relationship," Jonathan says. "It's about building courage in people to
lead and to be led. The greater the community, the greater your ability to
act as a leader." By bringing circle into his classroom, Jonathan chose to
lead in a different way. He consciously nurtured a setting in which his
students cultivated community and investigated the diversity of leadership
as it emerged.
From the Four Directions June 2002 Newsletter [read it]
Bridging Generations in Senegal
Cire Kane
From the Four Directions Circle Host
Dakar,
Senegal
Thanks to Doug Nathan, Circle Participant in Seattle, Washington for collecting this story.
When Cire Kane, 30, joined the first From the Four Directions Practicum at Hazelwood House in South Devon, United Kingdom, in many ways he was following the tradition of his Senegal culture. He grew up in Fouta and Mbacke, where elders sit in circle beneath a Baobab tree, as they have for generations, to discuss the issues of the day. Yet, when his turn to speak at the practicum came, Cire passed and listened until everyone else in the circle had spoken. True to his cultural heritage, he waited for the elders to speak first.
When he finally did speak, Cire explained that in his country of 10 million people, half of whom are under the age of 20, the youth are not invited to join the elders in circle. A separation exists between the generations, between the clarity and wisdom of the elders and the creativity and courage of the youth. In circle at Hazelwood, Cire experienced the profound understanding that emerges when generations listen to each other.
After four days in circle, Cire returned home determined to bridge the generational divide and tap the creative strength of his culture. He gathered youths together in circle and invited one elder to join them. "He never believed that youth could have such willingness to create change, such bright ideas and courage to act," says Cire. The elder then convinced other elders to join the circle, and many more circles ensued that collectively explored the conditions in which youth can be supported to emerge as leaders in their communities. These conversations inspired Cire to form the Synapse Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to nurturing entrepreneurial leadership and life-affirming leadership in youths.
Cire found his skills and perspective were needed very soon. In February 2001, students and faculty at Cheikh Anta Diop University clashed in a serious protest. Students had requested government officials raise scholarships to match increases in the cost of living. However, some student leaders had illegally confined a professor in order to get both government officials and university staff to pay attention to their struggle. After vain negotiations between authorities and students to liberate the professor, police intervened. Tensions were very high. The protests resulted in the shooting death of a student.
Cire quickly spoke with a professor at the university whom he knew, and encouraged him to invite faculty members, staff and student protestors to gather in circle. When the circle convened, the participants listened to each other's perspectives and realized that their views of each other's positions were incorrect. Their conversation helped them build trust and understanding that led to an easing of tensions on campus.
As Cire's own work
as a leader has emerged, he has continued to gather in From the Four
Directions circles. During conversations, it became apparent that young
leaders from around the world who had started leadership centers to
address local community needs shared similar challenges. "We felt alone in
our communities," Cire says. So between circles, they started sharing
their experiences and contacts through e-mail and on a Web bulletin board.
These local/global leadership centers have become incubators for
life-affirming work. "The circle calls us to form," Cire says, "to create
space where ideas can incubate and actions can arise."
From the Four Directions July 2002 Newsletter [read it]
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Leadership Story – My Dream of Creating a Learning
Village |
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Kufunda
Village is a learning initiative in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, aimed at the
creation of locally rooted solutions to community self-reliance
challenges, through the use of people's own imagination,
collaboration and resources. At Kufunda, "we work towards
recovering, developing and living practices, initiatives and social
systems that work in accordance with Life, with all its constituent
freedoms, fullness, values and essence," says founder Marianne
Knuth. This is
not a comfortable season The
Kufunda community has travelled a long journey | |
| They have made
soap, and body lotion made compost and permaculture painted their rooms polished their floors welded hangers made tables cooked made fires written their stories brought water from the well sung, danced, played drums, and mbiras and marimbas |
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In the
first week they had written up a list of agreements It
contained all the right ingredients for a community to
work: Last
week they heard, from three of the elders of their traditional
culture They were fired with new visions This is
the last week of the first month In a
circle where three and a half weeks ago Where
they realistic? (I knew
I was in Africa when the most difficult one was
punctuality!) They
spoke about how hard it was to listen without judgement Next
term will be the time for growing Life shifts through different seasons. Zimbabwe presently hangs in suspension | |
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Sustained Ways of Being Together that
Celebrate All Life |
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During the ensuing summer, I introduced this life-affirming way of being to the student government at the community college where I worked. At that time, I was energized and cautiously hopeful about the trajectory of our world. Then September 11th happened. Along with the grief, I felt a great urgency that this work of the softening to our humanity must happen now. With the support of my friend, Barbara, we convened our first Leadership Circle on September 23. Since then we have convened two series of Leadership Circles, each for 6 biweekly meetings. We fully embraced the F4D value of diversity and seeded our circles with participants who were 20-60 years old, from Latino, Native American, African, Asian, and European descent, and varying levels of education. Topics we discussed were human goodness, leaders and leadership, change, and courage. One issue continually resurfaced: should we be DOing something? Do talking, giving encouragement, and increasing conscious practice count as doing? We repeatedly wrestled with this as a group, and left our circles to continue working that issue out individually. Then, this summer (2002), Barbara and I participated in a Circle Practicum convened by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea. Again, I experienced a context where life is nurtured and sustained. Out of this experience and our work together, Barbara and I recognized the primacy of "tending to our first hoops." This fall we are convening a Spiritual Board of Directors whose purpose will be to sustain and support each other in developing a strong spiritual self/foundation from which to bring forth our work in the world. Ways that I am different as a leader as a result of my participation in F4D?
I have grappled with the despair over the seemingly insignificant difference that my actions make in the grand scheme of things. Blessedly, in a moment of deep stillness and sustenance at the Circle Practicum this summer, She-who-gives-all-life revealed quite simply and commandingly that my part is essential. Since then, I remain steadfast in my commitment to contribute my part in the evolution of our human consciousness, and not be undone by lack of progress or faith. Today, I am neither hopeful nor despairing. I am committed (to add my part in the evolution of our human consciousness). | |
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Leadership Story – LifeWorks |
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When Una's sister, Zoe, returned from the first From the Four Directions practicum at Hazelwood in the UK, she shared her experience and her excitement about meeting so many inspiring leaders with Una. While Una says that she didn't really "get it," she responded to Zoe's gentle urging and soon took part in a circle event in Somerset. The experience "opened up a whole new world" to her, one that was markedly different from the teacher/student, leader/follower groups she had been a part of in the past. For the first time, she was part of a group of people who met as peers, practicing and rotating shared leadership. The notion of inclusion and openness, and the idea that a leader is anyone who wants to help in these times, was a source of inspiration and hope. For both Zoe and Una, From the Four Directions literally opened up a whole new world of possibility for work that better uses their skills and talents, and in ways that matter in the world. In January 2002, they jointly started an organization called LifeWorks, a not-for-profit committed to creating spaces in which people can connect with others and with their environment in ways that are life-affirming and life-supporting. LifeWorks has since started a number of projects, including Playworks, a weekly gathering in which play is the means for connecting participants with the creative nature of life, and Fostering Courage, a peer-led learning community that uses Open Space to create an environment for finding and giving support to the unfolding of members' lives (next meeting in Wales, UK November 14-17th). LifeWorks' intention is to open doors for connectedness and creativity, and to help people find and follow their life paths. In all of these endeavors, Una's background in drama and movement and dance come into play. For Una, the recent past has been a "massive shift." As she puts it, "The skills and sensitivity that I've been quietly developing over the years, the alchemy that I was doing in a private way, has now become available to me to be used on behalf of life-affirming leadership. I now have the confidence, affirmation and skills I need to do the work I'm called to do. My sense of myself, Una of Brighton, has shifted to seeing that I am a part of so many others all over the world who are doing the same work, each in our own unique ways. By sharing ideas, stories, and even our love, we can create so much more than any of us could on our own." It is no wonder that a friend recently noticed Una's "blossoming," and that Una's partner, Brian, says that she is "meeting her real self," and finding that she is "loved a lot by a lot more people." | |
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From the Four Directions and Blue Water
Sailing
 Judith McPhie From the Four Directions Circle Host Vancouver, B.C., Canada I think by travelling and appreciating the common yearnings of the human heart a larger and larger "family" is embraced. Our biological families gave us some parameters to bump up against and begin the questioning. And then I learn from my own grown children new questions. It's awesome, mysterious, wonderful. From time to time I've thought about how the From the Four
Directions experience translated in my other life as blue water
sailor and I've decided that it has made a difference to my way of
voyaging. I think it has to do with courage. I don't let go of my
passions for creating conditions that are empowering to those
involved, and for paying attention to loving the environment
wherever it might be. So I speak out and I question - other sailors,
people we meet in different countries. I try to hear what informs
their perspectives - and that enriches my whole travelling. And I
find the courage/stamina to articulate my own. That resolve has been fostered by our Four Directions circle here in Vancouver - and I gladly take it offshore. Read more about From the Four Directions Circles [read it] | |
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Leadership Story – Shared Leadership, Organic
Learning When Dianne Eppler Adams is not at work as a Market Research Analyst for a major government contractor in Alexandria, Virginia, she is a From the Four Directions circle host, a spiritual explorer, an activist for peace, and a grandmother. Dianne came to From the Four Directions as a participant in the March 2001 Circle Practicum, held at the COD Ranch, just outside Tucson, Arizona. When she returned home, she convened and served as host to two circles, which soon evolved into one circle of members who made a six-month commitment to gathering one Sunday afternoon per month. During those six months, Dianne's circle focused on "conversation starters" provided by Teresa Posakony, of Seattle, WA, a circle leader who also took part in the Tucson practicum. Those conversation starters included: Session
#1 - Theme: Gathering Leaders from the Four Directions Session
#2 - Theme: Life-affirming Leadership: Session
#3 - Theme: Diversity (we are diverse and seek to connect across
diversity) Session
#4 - Theme: Our Beliefs on Change Session
#5 - Theme: Human Goodness Session
#6 - Theme: Life Affirming Leadership in Us Session #7 Closing Session: After six months of meeting in Dianne's home, the circle decided to take what Dianne calls a more "organic" approach. From a mailing list of 25-30 interested individuals, 5-8 participants now show up for each monthly Sunday circle. Dianne reports that the inconsistency of participation has not turned out to be an issue of concern. In preparation, newcomers are asked to either arrive early for a bit of an orientation, or visit the From the Four Directions website to familiarize themselves with circle processes and guidelines. Dianne's circle process has also shifted toward greater shared leadership and an open, organic approach to conversation topics. At each gathering, for example, Dianne asks for volunteers to fill the roles of host and guardian. The actual topics or themes for the circle's conversations emerge from what participants most care about, as expressed during their check-ins. Recent topics have included the potential war in Iraq and "right livelihood." These conversations allow circle members to be fully present, to share who they are, and to listen deeply to one another. One circle meeting, held just days after the events of 9/11, provided a space for free expression of members' deepest feelings. Through this process, many members have formed strong personal connections, while others have become more able to show up powerfully and courageously in unsupportive, bureaucratic work environments. Dianne observes that all circle members have become more conscious and open to diverse points of view, a key value in From the Four Directions. This expansiveness is also supported by distribution to the whole circle of the regular From the Four Directions newsletter. The circle also experimented for several months with being in conversations around common topics with a circle convened by Christine M. Merkel in Germany. Each circle engaged with the topic, and then shared their notes. Even though the experiment was short-lived, due to the difficulty of language barriers and the fact that taking notes was cumbersome, it was an additional way of reaching out to others engaged in life-affirming leadership circles. In their own global explorations, Dianne and her husband recently returned from a pilgrimage to Macchu Picchu and other sacred sites in Peru, led by a guide who leads conversational salons. In addition to the amazing and splendid beauty of the scenery, the couple enjoyed the opportunity to meet many times in circle with their fellow travelers…additional evidence of what Dianne calls the "totally portable" nature of the circle process. | |
