The vastness of the steppes of Kazachstan is overwhelming. The silence, the whispering of the winds, a remote white yurt, a woman or a man on a horse being one with nature. White-capped mountain ranges in the distance. The only thing we want is to get out of the car and be in that emptiness forever.
We are a day after the end of our three-day workshop on potential and leading principles. One hundred and eighty participants from Russian speaking countries like Kazachstan, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and more. Business people, consultants and therapists together. Which dynamics would we meet?
How do we prepare ourselves to create a membrane for this group? A membrane being like an invisible, flexible, permeable and even intelligent skin around a group, team or any other social system.
We hear from Gulnara Sultan, the organizer of this event, that in the WhatsApp group where all the 180 participants took part, there was a lot of hostility the days before the workshop.
And now, after the workshop, in that same WhatsApp group there are only sounds of gratitude and amazing cooperation between people from adverse groups. As if boundaries and borders had vanished in thin air.
Dees and I are even more amazed about the atmosphere of co-creation after the first day. It still feels like a miracle this was possible. We both think and feel the quality of the membrane is the secret. But how one can create such a membrane feels like an even bigger secret.
So let’s explore a bit what we did. And maybe you can add.
On the practical level:
- It took Dees and me four hours to re-arrange the chairs in the room in five concentric circles. And we are part of the circle. No podium, no special chairs, no special space between us and the participants.
- We rented two extra rooms in order to have enough space for smaller groups to work.
- It took us two days to prepare Powerpoints, carefully translated into Russian. These Powerpoints were projected on three screens around the circles, so nobody had to twist her or his neck in order to see.
- Hands-free microphones so we can talk with our hands and the quality of the sound being good.
- All handouts and explorations handed out at the beginning of the workshop. No secrets about our ingredients.
The aim of this all is to enable participants to take full ownership of their participation and learnings.
On the sharing level:
- We think in ‘sharing’, not ‘teaching’.
- We are prepared to become vulnerable, for example by offering the opportunity ‘What do you want to know about us.’
- We welcome each participant exactly as how they are, even if this means that some of them only can partly be here, because they have other concerns on their mind.
- We offer explorations (instead of exercises). And in a group of two, for example, one is the explorer and the other the companion. And after a first round they switch.
- We openly connect beyond boundaries. For example: I undertake a man-to-man systemic intervention with a Russian owner of a large construction company. ‘From the Netherlands, to Russia’, were his last words’, which caused many people to cry.
On the being level:
- Dees and I ask ourselves, as preparation: ‘What do we want to be for this group?’ Dees’ answer came promptly and clear: ‘Enabler’. Jan Jacob: ‘Guide’.
- One fate. ‘At the end we humans are all in the same boat’. Your fate also touches on mine. How can we connect with ánd at the same time distinguish between each other?
For Dees and me, this membrane is maybe the most relevant ingredient of our work. It’s part of the preparation and part of the workshop itself. The membrane should be not so tight that we create a closed system, which might be experienced as ‘dogmatic’ or even a sect.
The membrane should be not so permeable that unresolved dynamics and conflicts from the outside world dominate or even take over the workshop, without excluding these tensions.
Above, we gave a few ingredients for this membrane. Most likely there are more. It still feels a bit as a secret to be unraveled. We feel there is still a lot of potential in membranes. Not only for workshops, but also for relationships, families, teams, organizations and society.
How do yóu create membranes?
What can you add to this topic?
~ Jan Jacob