Communities of Practice Toolkit – slightly updated

It has been a while since I updated my little communities of practice (CoP) toolkit, which is essentially everything I have cribbed from all the smart CoP out there. It is part conceptual (what IS a CoP), and part operational (how to start/support a CoP). At one point someone wanted worksheets, so there are worksheets, but frankly, I think that is overkill 99% of the time!

Screen capture of first slide of the CoP Toolkit deck with title and figurative dancers.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTMcO_CwuDhGxdBM4USf15LHTeFLlPo_vNV2ktmDrNHefdocYzlV03mpSOfZTN6SaM4JVyXVgPt44Ud/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

What is new are the references to Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner’s use of social learning and social learning spaces as a container for things like CoPs. (See slides 12-14)

Have a peek, offer feedback!

Come on and Ecocycle Yourself!

One of my very treasured Liberating Structures is Ecocycle Planning. (I write about it a lot!) For quite a long time it baffled me entirely. Now it is indispensable to me to help suss out what to do in complex contexts. Some may even accuse me of finding any excuse to use it! 🙂

Lee Gimple, of the DC LS Community, invited me to do a session for them in January 2023 and I decided to offer a hands on exploration of Ecocycle by inviting everyone to ecocycle some aspect of their own life – personal, business, whatever. If you are interested in a bit of a different way of exploring ecocycle, you can sign up here. January 11, 2023 6:00-7:30 PM ET/4:30 PST and really really late for Europe. Mighty fine for the Antipodes!

P.S. The DC group has an email list too.

Close up of a garter snake curled up with its red tongue poking out atop rocks on a beach.
I was hoping this beautiful garter snake would curl into the infinity sign, just for this post, but they did not. Be they are so beautiful, they still made the cut!

Psychological Safety?

https://twitter.com/tom_geraghty/status/1488459983729709057?t=ijxn8mfrP9wEVXOorJkv5A&s=09

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, as you can see from the time stamp on this Twitter screen grab. The issue of safety in group interactions comes up so often and I feel this little devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. I can’t claim to make a space fully safe. And we can ask ourselves to co-create “brave space.” But there is never certainty.

I would love a different take, a different language around how we convene without doing damage to each other. In these post-election days here in the US, and two days after a child was shot at a local high school here in Seattle, I wonder a lot with a bruised heart.

Beck Tench and Zen of Zooming

I was so, so, so sure I had blogged about this wonderful online practice shared in 2020 by the amazing Beck Tench. But when I went to find it to reshare, I could not find it in my archives. So today I am getting this on the blog!

On Zoom we have all these little windows into others’ faces (if their camera is on). It is oddly a great place to do portrait sketching as a way to see, to pay attention, to shift out of monkey-mind. Beck pulled this practice from her reading of Frederick Franck’s The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as meditation.

Go to Beck’s post and read how to do it. https://www.becktench.com/blog/2020/7/26/the-zen-of-zooming

Then if you get to try it with others, I’d love to hear your impressions.

I found it really helpful to get out of my “solve the problem now” habits. To really look at another which I’m not sure we do as well online as we might F2F. When we HAVE shared our sketches with each other in all their glorious imperfections (you sketch WITHOUT looking at the sketch) we laugh, we wonder, even blush. It is a very human moment for me.

I’ll put some of my sketches below.

Remembering Tim Jaasko-Fisher

I’ve been a part of the wide-ranging and many-noded Liberating Structures network for many years. It has connected me to many remarkable people. One of them was the amazing Tim Jaasko-Fisher. LS founder Keith McCandless introduced me to Tim (I can’t remember where) and later recommended me for some support Tim was looking for.

Tim (left) and Keith in a Liberating Structures immersion “Fish Bowl”

Right away I was taken by Tim. A lawyer by training and a dedicated advocate for child welfare by practice and passion, Tim showed me a whole new side of the legal profession. To watch him deftly weave networks, facilitate groups who were not necessarily all on the same side, nor interested in group process Tim was offering, was quite something. Tim embraced the wicked questions inside of all of us and inside himself. Sure of his way and open to other ways. Fierce advocate for kids and collaborator within a challenged child welfare system. Open to simple solutions like protein before family court hearings to keep everyone on an even keel, an approach he and his amazing wife, Dr. Kristin Allott. Even from a distance it was clear this was a remarkable partnership and Tim glowed when he introduced me to Kris.

I had the joy and pleasure to work a few times for and with Tim. They were always learning moments. To see how he viewed something and approached it opened new perspectives for my own practice. I am ever grateful.

I will miss Tim. We all will miss Tim. The world has a hole it in left by Tim.

Memorial Tribute to Tim Jaasko-Fisher