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Looking forward to seeing you,
Margaret Regan and Andrea Cisco-The FutureWork Institute and iMCI
Leslie Traub and Howard Ross, Cook Ross
Mary-Frances Winters, The Winters Group
Inclusion Allies Coalition Founders
www.inclusioncoalition.info
The day after the 2016 Presidential election, I was scheduled to present a workshop for the ICF Cultural Competency in Coaching Community of Practice monthly meeting. The title of my webinar was …
“A Dynamic Communication Approach to Coaching in the Global Context”
As it turned out, the webinar was an opportunity to engage with people across the globe on a timely topic: how do you engage in meaningful conversations with others whose values and commitments differ from your own – be they situations your clients may be wrestling with or differences you may encounter with your clients.
I am sharing the webinar with you here and welcome your comments!
The ICF Global Communities of Practice (CPs) are virtual groups of coaches interested in a specific topic area. These communities are designed to provide a platform for sharing best practices, emerging trends, tools and tips among ICF Members to advance their professional development.
Ilene C. Wasserman
ICW Consulting Group
Think about this … how many times a week do you find yourself asking someone: Where are you from? This question seems innocuous. And it may be — in some contexts. In other contexts, it might land as a bit offensive — or as some might say, a micro-aggression.
Ilene C. Wasserman, Ph.D
You’re sitting in a meeting and it happens. You make a suggestion. But the conversation moves on only to have someone else present the very same idea a few moments later without any reference to yours and the response is one of great enthusiasm. You tell yourself – It’s not important who the idea came from. You tell yourself – I’m glad that the idea grabbed some wings. You tell yourself – maybe the group wasn’t ready for it when I said it.
As we began our day together, we asked our participants why they were there. When we heard the response “My heart told me to come,” we knew it would be a special day – and it was.
We coordinated in advance about what we wanted to accomplish, and had our PowerPoint deck at the ready. Our first commitment was to emergence – to see who showed up, what their interests were and how they wanted to engage, to attend to what we were making together, and how we were making it.
We shared our history about learning CMM with Barnett Pearce, and(?) described his influence on Fielding Graduate University, the communication field, and on our academic path.
Frank Barrett, Fielding Professor and Barnett’s colleague, joined us at lunch and shared his heartfelt memories of Barnett. He recalled the emotion he felt when he spoke with Barnett about how CMM woud live on at Fielding. Frank also spoke about his current research, applying some principles of CMM to look at the patterns that might lead some military members to suicide. Here too was an example of how CMM as a practical theory might be consequential to the analysis of restoring meaning and healing to veterans, in this case.
Looking at another real-world global example to illustrate the dynamics and complexity of social construction, Ilene introduced a colleague from her recent trip to Israel to the room via video. We sampled a TED talk by Dalia Fadila, which illustrated some of the complexity we had been modeling, as applied to the complex construction of social identities in the Middle East. (Dalia’s engaging talk can be viewed here.)
Near the end of the day, the energy in the room shifted once again, from conceps and models and “macro thinking” back to the personal level. Fielding faculty member and CMM scholar practitioner Placida Gallegos joined as we moved deeper into the heart of the work with a story from one of the participants. We used circular questioning as we explored his story. We listened as the story unfolded, and applied what we had been learning during the course of the day to deepen meaning and create new possibilities.
We ended with the shared feeling that emergence had happened, with each of us walking away with something we needed (but perhaps could not put into words). We acknowledged a day of dancing together – accommodating the questions, shifting energy shifts (restructure the phrasing here), and moments of confusion and attending to the unfolding.