The how-to of effective meetings
Jennifer DeCoste is an AoH (Art of Hosting) practitioner and the co-founder of Life.School.House, a non-traditional learning community that celebrates local wisdom, builds connections in community, and reinforces the social value of barter and exchange. Using the platform of peer-led adult “folkschool” classes LifeSchoolHouse has built a network of hosts across the region who lead their communities in sharing its assets.
The hosts of Life.School.House completed Tim and Tuesday’s LEADING EFFECTIVE MEETINGS online course as part of an ongoing learning series. The hosts were inspired by the material to co-create a facilitated discussion guide for groups to use for peer-coaching sessions.
A great idea is best when it’s shared. For Jennifer DeCoste, a big part of the joy of Life.School.House is seeing it spring up in new places and with new people — broadening the impact of this growing model for Asset Based Community Development. Part of becoming a host with the Life.School.House means joining this learning organization in a series of peer-coaching sessions. The on-boarding process for new hosts involves learning experiences designed to complement good instincts with spirited practice.
“All the LSH hosts have said, ‘I’m really fascinated by the impact we’re having, and what I’m learning about my community,’” she says. “All of our hosts are volunteering their time for this project and they are heart-centered leaders who, in most cases, have little formal training in community development. They’re really keen to learn more about how to have an even greater impact with their work and all they want for their efforts is training to get even better at supporting their communities.”
DeCoste and the Life.School.House hosting team had gone through TO’s Leading Effective Meetings course as a group and the content very much inspired this network.
“The idea of grounding people in a divergent space; of never wasting a question; of starting all our meetings with circle practice... so many of Tim and Tuesday’s suggestions felt instinctual to me and the design of hosting with LifeSchoolHouse. So many other suggestions were quite revelatory as well,” she says. “It led to some really important conversations about the potential when being considerate of the importance of human interaction in our work.”
As the movement of folkschooling grows across Canada in 2020, there’s no better time than now, says DeCoste, to explore a grounding in a shared practice. What helps a room gel in the spirit of community? How can we best-support the translation of enthusiasm into value? And how can we organize our efforts to draw more ideas, more skills, and more people into the circle?
How Life.School.House leads effective meetings
As a young cooperative, the Life.School.House grew almost in spite of itself for the first two years. The LEM course came about just as the team were contemplating how to be intentional — always purpose-led, always effective — to get the work done in the interest of emergent growth. Here’s what they learned and riffed-on:
1. Make space for both order and chaos.
In running a business, there can only be so much order. Especially when there are multiple owners of the dream as there are in a cooperative. Organizing the work towards effectiveness is a constant seeking of balance between order and chaos. “We are in the process of trying to design a replicable model with structure and still allowing space for divergence and emergence,” DeCoste says. “Having an understanding of how best to face that complexity has been very important for our team.”
2. If there’s one thing you vow to get better and better at, vow to get better at the quality of your questions.
“Our impact starts right from how we check in with each other and our approach to the work has inspired others to start their own circles of learning because they have seen a different way of approaching community development,” she says. “The more powerful our questions to each other, the more braveness and willingness to be vulnerable. This is how we truly get to know each other and how our efforts wind up having more depth.”
3. To get through ‘the groan zone’ — that period of challenge when divergent or complex realities make consensus or progress feel a long way off — the practice staying in-relationship.
“A good meeting creates many positive ripples in the pond but some days when it is hard to see the potential for a positive outcome, it is difficult to stay the course,” says DeCoste. “Even in the middle of nebulous times — and growth is always nebulous — we can always have greater impact if we stay together through the stickiness in the middle.” As you navigate the ebb and flow of complexity to progress and back to complexity, staying committed to our relationships with each other and the shared work will get you through.
Over the last year, the emergence of Life.School.House has been, as DeCoste describes, all about ‘how to gently implement big dreams.’ The folk school is an ever-growing constellation of natural leaders with shared learning as the gravitational pull that holds it all together.
“Everything we do to support our hosts with training is part of helping them each have greater impact in their communities and that work is beautiful,” she says. “But we need to fan the spark, to constantly bring it more oxygen — especially since we are working with volunteers. That’s what shared learning did for us and this session in particular helped to unify all of us with shared skill in leading highly effective meetings and gatherings in community.”
“The online offering of this course allowed all of our hosts to follow the course on their own time in their own space which is critical for us as well. The complement of practical methods brought solo, self-led learning to shared entrepreneurialism.”
To get started on your own self-guided Leading Effective Meetings course, register below.