Peter Pula's Agility Narrative on the power of being present to another in community

We are really pleased to welcome Peter Pula to the Agility Narratives to talk about his personal journey as an advocate of generative dialogue and journalism that supports the art of collective conversations as a transformation tool.

Peter leads by  holding space for and challenging changemakers, organizations and individuals with generative dialogue and connection found in relational presencing in the hosting of mini or community conversations.

Practicing dialogue with a generative approach, using appreciative inquiry, asset based community development and the power of asking launches the possibility of an experience of aliveness,  delight and creativity and  being welcomed and received in community.    

Peter's story started with a start-up venture in generative journalism, the Grassroots Review, based in Peterborough, Ontario, with the belief that everything one needs is already present in our communities: all that is needed to be done is ask the right questions and tell the stories that result.  

This belief in the power of community presence led to 18 months of Peterborough Dialogues, the launch of diverse Community Conversations globally, both teaching and hosting, including Cultivating Community Conversation that has reached its two year anniversary.

We found the talk illuminating, sparking levels of curiosity about the power of listening v.s. the power of distractions, being in the present moment, origins of inquiry one has, definition of community, my role as host in holding podcast space, and the benefits on changemakers and organizations that are navigating complexity with agility. This makes for an hour of awe. Enjoy!

0:00  Welcome to The Agility Narratives Podcast
1:06 Early part of your journey towards the work that you do - Desktop Publishing Revolution
2:14 The journey from publishing to dialogue
4:43 How do you harvest from a large group dialogue? Peter's exploring new approaches like Found poems
7:08 Are found poems meaningful for people who weren't at the meeting that day?
8:26 What shifted for you that rose from your curiosity in these practices?
9:47 The flow of meaning - Peter's passion and curiosity about the root of dialogue
14:10 Tenets of my agility narrative - Peter aims starts with the realization of every person's potentiality and act of mutuality - in relation
15:59 Exploring the practice of relational presencing
18:43 The community member is the protagonist
19:55 Emergence in community dialogue and the idea of being open to surprise
23:45 The power of being present
27:39 notion of living wholeness, a journey or generative wholeness? (the theme)
29:08 notion of living wholeness, a journey or generative wholeness?
30:34 Applying these techniques to organizations - To discover and explore a next step in social evolution or the way we are organized
36:40 Villains - abstraction, dissociation, co-dependency, consumption, homogeneity, deference to experts and maybe consensus, collectivism,
38:58 Moving beyond these villains
40:28 The theme behind your villians - how do we see separation and alienation in conversations
42:27 What's at stake here? Living Life
44:41 Advice to stakeholders that feel stuck - What's Peter's call to action?
47:49 Defining the meaning of democracy as a way of life - conditions for each person's potentiality
50:52 I ask 4 questions. If if you, Martin, want to step in and move, create, initiate something
52:28 Threats - Despair, hollowness... powerlessness, loneliness...
54:58 Opportunities - A live life - An encounter with life in all its forms is the possibility
56:07 What other languages would you like to introduce?
56:50 Thank you Peter for flow of meaning you have engaged us in- lots to get to know
Janet is Founder of Taproot.jem.Systems is an integral coach  
Martin is Founder of Neutral Advocate.

Transcript

Martin:

Welcome to the Agility Narratives Podcast series. We hold this space so as a community we can listen to leading change makers and enterprise agile leaders talk about their agility narratives. Each narrative we hypothesize gives us an insight into part of the whole. Peter Pula is the founder and CEO of Axiom News. The originator of generative journalism is a practitioner of creating connection in relational presence and is known to host artful dialogue. Host, NEWSROOM Director, Team Leader, Mentor, Trainer, Consultant and Podcast Host. We're really pleased to welcome Peter to the agility narrative to talk about his personal journey as an advocate of generative dialogue and journalism that supports the art of collective conversations as a transformation tool. To know more about Peter, Janet and myself, please see the show notes. Hi, Peter. Welcome.

 Peter: [00:00:54]
 Hi. Welcome, welcome. I'm used to being on the other side of the mic. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

 Martin:[00:01:03] 
I'm looking forward to this conversation and. I'm intrigued to learn your the early part of your journey towards the work that you do.

 Peter: [00:01:14]
 I would say it began in earnest in 1994 when I established what was then the desktop publishing revolution. If you can remember that when Power of the press belonged to whoever owned one. Suddenly we could all own one. And I started a newspaper called the Grass Roots Review in Peterborough, Ontario, with the thought that everything we need is already present in our communities. All we have to do is ask the right questions and tell the stories that result. And my notion then was that collaborative activity would arise from doing that kind of open inquiry in a narrative form and sharing those stories. That was really where it began, and the journey has simply been an unfolding and unfolding of complexity and clarity as we as I have gone since then.

Martin: [00:02:14]
 How have you gone from publishing to to dialogue? What's that journey been like?

Peter: [00:02:21]
 Having spent 15 years at least working with journalists to explore the kinds of questions we are asking. We as a group start to really hone the, I guess, generative approaches. We learn through asset based community development. We learn through appreciative inquiry, the power of asking, being very careful about the questions we asked, and that actually put us in touch as we learned how to be in inquiry that put us into relationship with people who are hosting dialogues because those were the folks who are really working on it and those are the folks whose stories were out there to be found and to be told. So through that sort of rubbing shoulders, we started to see that there are two practices here that work from the same principles, the narrative for the media making and the hosting and the convening. So those two practices of of hosting and sometimes say harvesting or convening and narrating or dialogue and media making, we saw that those went together and we thought, hmm, what would happen if we were actually able to practice those two skills with persistence and in place? And it wasn't long into hosting dialogue in place again in Peterborough, Ontario, that it dawned on me that when we host an interview with someone like we are now and we ask generative questions and then we write a story that's kind of like hosting a mini conversation with generative questions and then producing a harvest. So it wasn't too much of a stretch to start to understand how those very same cycles and skills could be brought to bear in a community setting where instead of our receiving an answer from a person, we are actually inviting communities of people to speak with each other around those questions. And so that was the beginning of the shift into dialogue hosting. So for groups. So sometimes I might say we'll host a dialogue for one to hundreds, but many of the principles are very much the same.

Martin:[00:04:45] 
And there's such a large group. How do you do the harvesting?

Peter: [00:04:49] 
There are a bunch of ways to do that and it's best done if there is a group of people cooperating and collaborating to do it. We did start to learn that when it comes to journalism, it's not so useful to have a journalist in the room to report on the event because it's very hard for one person to speak for the whole. So what we began to do is encourage our journalists to participate fully and then connect with folks who are at an event or a gathering afterwards to tell their unfolding story as a result of the connections they made in that gathering. Another way to do it is we're starting to learn more about how to. Do community harvest, even writing as communities. So there is a neat process that we call found poems where a person might listen in on a gathering. And when when someone speaks something that strikes them or stands out by way of a phrase or a sentence to simply write that say on a cue card and keep listening. And every time something strikes them to just continue to open up a new cue card. And in the end, you have a collection of phrases and even sentences that have been collected from around the room that if you read them in the order that they were discovered, what you end up with is a found poem, which is nonfiction, in which every person who spoke actually finds and hears their voice again. And for the most part, members of the group, the participants recognize in that poem the story of what just happened here. It carries and it carries enough ambiguity and enough difference between the lines that the meaning is made, between the lines and as and by way of the collection. So there's very little in the way of imposing any kind of narrative on top of it. We simply let the voices of participants stand on their own. So that's the sort of weaving that we're learning to do to reflect the group.

Martin: [00:07:08] 
And is that meaningful for people who weren't at the meeting?

Peter: [00:07:14] 
It can be. Yeah, it can be. And I think that's where there's and it can also not be it can seem very strange if you weren't part of that experience. So reflecting it for the group and to make their experience real and to capture it and to illuminate it is one thing to represent that experience to someone who wasn't there as different. So that's where a more traditional journalistic approach might. Now, I say traditional. By that I mean reportage, I suppose, but held in generative inquiry and in single sourced stories. So again, we're reflecting on an event by bringing someone's story to the fore and aiding them in that, if they would like that assistance with the view of honoring
 their part of the story of the whole. And so the way to report on it is one source, one interview at a time without trying to blend them or mix them or impose any kind of external meaning on them. And those stories often make more sense to someone who wasn't there than some of the immediate harvest would.

Janet: [00:08:27]
 So honoring voices and harvesting what has come up in the whole how has this curiosity to dive into that shifted the ground for you?

Peter:[00:08:42]
It might have actually happened the other way. Like it might be that somebody somebody brought it into the space. And when we had the experience or when I had the experience, I was like, Wow, that was something. So I might have been drawn to the experience. And then. Being so moved by it sought to understand. And then I think what I saw was patterns, that there are patterns of that kind of approach that can be applied to different forms. So maybe that's a that's a beautiful question. So maybe I would say that the ground has shifted for me in the sense of noticing and perhaps naming how practices could unfold from from some of those principles, which I think makes it makes the practice available to more of us. So you've got pathways to participate that way and in ways that suit us.

Janet: [00:09:48]
 You have a passion of curiosity about the root of the word dialogue, which stems from the roots of desire and logos, which together represent through meaning. Can you talk a little bit more about that in terms of how that has sprouted up for you and which pieces are continuing to kind of burst in the springtime?

Peter: [00:10:15]
 Yeah. So I've seen dialogue as the flow of meaning. And we would talk sometimes about as a hosting circle about descending into conversation. So we wanted to stay in dialog goes the flow of meaning and didn't necessarily feel that conversation was the the most powerful way to have that experience. So I started to to realize very much how. For the flow of meaning to occur between people. You must be very good at. Being present to the other. And when I say descending into conversation, being present to the other is to be fully present and to not seek immediate interchange and not to trade off notions or. Bounce off what someone said or to riff off what someone has said or to interpret something that someone has shared but simply to. Hold fast to being present to what they are sharing so that what they have to say or what is coming through them can find its way. And by bearing witness to another and holding space for another. We we actually do a service and offer a gift to seeing them and hearing them. And that gift can enable. Someone's voice to be found. So that we're we may hear a thing and so may the speaker hear it from themselves for the first time.

Peter: [00:12:01] 
And that's a deep embodied meaning that rises up from. Some. Well, I won't say I don't know where rise up from the depths let's say. And that encounter then if I can simply be receptive to that and to have the experience of that presence thing. Okay. And take a deep breath. Or two or three. And welcome that encounter. And then. Signed what wishes to be spoken through me from my experience. Then. The diversity in that the strength and beauty in that contrast perhaps of character in that it's like a tuning fork won't chime if there's only one time where if there are two that stand firm, then we can have resonance. And that is there is a flow of meaning that happens there that isn't simply. Of words. There's an embodied experience. Of the other in that. That can create meaning that can arrive as an intuition. It can arrive as a feeling. It can arrive as I am moved somehow. And it can arrive by way of spoken wisdom. Or an insight. That arises out of that space in between.

Janet: [00:13:39]
 I am moved to say on the podcast to just hold this space for a few moments? Voice to be found. Usually we say voice to be heard. And so that is sparking curiosity.

Martin: [00:14:10] 
I feel like you've been answering this question. Can you set the context for your agility narrative? What are the key foundational Tenets. Behind it?

Peter: [00:14:24] 
The key tenants. What I go to is that the aim? At least my aim begins with the realization of every person's potentiality. And then I also have this belief that that can only occur through mutuality. Every act of creation. Every act of bringing to life that which we most want to bring to life. Must occur in relationship. Even a solitary artist is going to be in relationship with their environment and with their tools and their materials. So. Virtuality is the next step. And then. How we work together. In associative activity. And how we relate to one another in that space. Is the ground, I suppose, or the pathway. To the realization of every person's potential. And that's why practices like relational presenting are so important. And then it just unfolds from there, I think.

Janet: [00:16:02] 
So I'm curious about relational presences. And.The ways that your practice if one of our listeners wanted to say, Oh, I have to follow this. What kind of words, what kind of conversations might you be inviting them into?

Peter: [00:16:27] 
The first thing that comes to mind is Look up Thomas Hubl. That's where I came to learn of these practices and then wade it into them. Thomas teaches those as those practices, as best as I've ever experienced them being taught. Other than inexperience, of course, the markers of it, though, would be. Of course, we host our hour calls and every call, every gathering that we host begins that way. So the markers of it would be. That you find yourself in an experience of being invited to listen or be listened to by another or to at once. Uninterrupted while contemplating a question that you've mutually agreed to contemplate. Another marker would be that the space is being held would be guided by practices like ML. Parker Palmer speaks of no fixing, no advising, no setting each other straight. You might be counseled to be careful of reacting. So if I'm present to another and something they say. Causes a reaction in me. The Council would be to see if you can suspend that long enough to remain present to what the person is sharing. Because if I'm reacting, I may have removed myself from this experience and now be in some other experience from some other time or some other idea that may or may not actually be real here. In any case, it's probably distracting me from being present to what the person who is sharing, sharing, relating can be the same if I find myself. Remembering a time when I had a similar experience. I'm now back in my story, not necessarily being present to the other story. So those are the kinds of counsel. That's the sort of sensibility you'd experience if you're in a space that was inviting relational presence.

Janet: [00:18:44] 
So given this context, who in your agility narrative is the protagonist, that main character or characteristic? Who is the future of the narrative and hopefully is the one that wins.

Peter: [00:18:58] 
Out in the end. And that's where I found that. The questions that you shared earlier, like before the call to be quite compelling, I had to spend some time with them and it was clarifying for me. So I think where I've landed is that I would say the protagonists in the stories are community members, the community member. And I've come to like that phrase because. You need both a community and members in order for there to be a community or members. You can't pull it apart. It's it speaks of the mutuality of the importance of each person and their individuality in it, and the fact that the path of that experience is in community. So I'm going to say that the protagonist is the community member.

Janet: [00:19:56] 
You've given route to the seed of an I'll use the term emergence within the hosting space for community conversations. You might compare it to willful as they as in the contrasting way. But I'm curious about the importance of emergence and how it differs from other intentional type of conversations being held by change makers.

Peter: [00:20:23] 
So what comes up right away is the idea of being open to surprise. And I think that's especially relevant today. Because I feel like especially I can only speak to Western culture. That's the one I grew up in. It's the one I'm familiar with. But I think we have so many layers on top of us that we're acting out so many roles that aren't ours to play. We're living up to so many externally driven expectations, social mores, conventions that when we step into relational presence, sing. I've seen it many times where the first time someone's in a triad, which is how we like. I like to host opening stages of any dialogue. That after they've been listened to and present to you for 3 minutes by two other people. And then each person has had that. They're round in that in that cycle. The people will sit back and and say, what was that? You feel seen and heard. Sometimes for the first time in their lives. They have an encounter with another that's more powerful than they've ever experienced before. So as we start to each find our voice in community. We find our intention. We discover what we wish for. This is enough to motivate.

Peter: [00:22:07] 
An act of will to create. And because of the way we work in conventional terms. All of that never shows up. So when it does, the potential for surprise is stunning. The the potential for new life is. Well, I'll say it again. Stunning. So you can't know what to expect. And when each person shows up that way. I've said before that it's like two. It's like universes collide. Each person is a universe and these universes collide. And as they become clear, as each of us becomes clearer, as each of us becomes more so in relationship possibilities, we never could have imagined even the things we most wish for. We might not be overtly, explicitly aware of. And then we find ourselves speaking them in the presence of two other people who are quite possibly strangers, who then do the same. So this process of relational presence, of being a community member in that sort of community. Is going to be unpredictable and yet it's going to be beautiful if you're prepared to notice and be willing to be surprised. So emergence is almost a description of the condition of what happens. When we actually meet each other this way and are met this way.

Martin: [00:23:48] 
It's intriguing to me that you're describing relational presence and relational. Most people think of it as interrelationships and into conversation and into understanding and interconnection. But you're describing a process that is actually just listening and hearing and not actually speaking and not actually interacting. And can you sort of help us understand that a little bit?

Peter: [00:24:20]
 I think that's that's very interesting. I would say that we are interacting in these spaces. Quite possibly in a much deeper and a more whole level. Because as I as I attend to another. And there. Inner voice starts to. Make itself known. The encounter I have with them is that much more powerful. And if I'm being present to it, I will actually find myself. And if I can say, Oh, there's my I'm relating now and I'm going to put this over here, I'm just going to hold it in suspension while I return to being present. This is showing me the differences between me and the other as well. If I have a reaction and I just put that aside and return to being present to the other. I can actually find myself being changed by the encounter. So I am being changed by the relationship, by the relational line being changed, and not by any intention of the speaker. But by the encounter with the speaker. So I'll often talk also about the inter subjective space to use that prefix. It's kind of like what I was sharing with those phrase poems. You have each voice spoken. You don't try to cohere them. They simply do on their own.

And. The difference in language tone. Things spoken held together as a collection. Those things are in relationship and what happens in between in the inter is where the meaning is made. So in a small group of three where we're, we're taking 3 minutes each to speak and converse it to be present to the speaker, we are actually cultivating an inter subjective space. So we're inviting the subjectivity to flourish as much as possible while holding a container that invites that where we can. Be surprised by the differences and that group can actually create a body unto itself. It creates a voice of its own. So there's my voice. Your voice. Janet's voice. And then there's the voice that the group creates. And it's amazing how what is spoken into the hole that way can land for each of us differently and teach us something. Despite the fact it was never the intention of any participant to teach anyone anything. The wisdom that comes from it is inter subjective. And I would say that that would create the field of resonance from which the collective wisdom starts to speak. There's a third voice that can arrive in the inter subjective space.

Martin: [00:27:37]
 Thank you for sharing those insights. In the next question, you sort of go into the theme of of your agility narrative. One of the topics that we haven't sort of talked about is community. Different types of community. And I know we're focused here a little bit more on the organizational community than the public community. Can you talk a little bit about your theme, maybe cover that topic as well and. So what your agility narrative theme to be.

Peter: [00:28:10] 
Well, the phrase I landed on around the theme that I would the name I would give this theme I was I was returning to this notion of living wholeness. And I even wrestled with the idea of the journey to wholeness, because I don't think it's quite I don't feel it's quite right to say that we get there and we're done. I think we live wholeness in every moment and as we're changed. We'll probably wish to keep growing. So I to say the theme is around living wholeness and the work that we did in Peterborough. Which was community focused. So that was 18 months of community dialogues in place with persistence and with a great deal of consistency was actually per prefigured by work we did in organizations. In in the organization that I founded in particular. We were a democratic organization. And again, the aim was. For me the realization of every person's potentiality. And I knew that that wasn't going to happen if everyone just did what I told them. There had to be space. For each person to find the thing that they wish to bring to the organization and our work. Which was held together by our mandate and by what we chose to do as a group. And those who chose to join us had similar interests. And felt that there was a space that they want to work in aligned with their skills and. With their wishes and dreams for community and for work. So I believe that these practices are entirely relevant to organizational settings. And I believe that an organization is a community. It's a community that's come together with a particular purpose. And so we can design our organizations and the relationship processes inside organizations for living wholeness. And why wouldn't we transplant? 8 hours a day. At work, which is a good chunk of your life. Why wouldn't we design where we work to be places that aim at the realization of every person's potentiality?

Martin: [00:30:34] 
So those two questions in my mind to the moment they're fighting for. Priority.

Peter: [00:30:40] 
All right. It's good fun.

Martin: [00:30:42]
 So the first question really comes down to the type of conversations that you can have in an organization. And there's a sort of a need for slowness and a need for speed at the same time. And decisions need to be made and we need to move forward. But can you talk a little bit about how these type of techniques and dialogue fit into the organizational setting?

Peter: [00:31:11] 
I believe it is the case that if you begin with these kinds of techniques, shall we say, or practices. That habit, the root, the gift each person wishes to bring and to hold space for that and relationship that if you take time to do that. And to prioritize that, to put it first. You are actually more likely to see life giving change in the organization happen far more quickly. And I don't like to use these words. I'm going to anyway also more efficiently. Because you'll discover what each person actually wants to bring. I can go to work and barely be there. If I don't care. I'm not a particularly productive employee, but if I am moving from my own inner motivation. In relationship with others who are encourage me in that and I'm encouraging them in their work and what they believe is important to bring to the to the cause that actually reduces the amount of oversight necessary management reward. Tracking, monitoring, structure, bureaucracy if people are alive in their work. Things will move more quickly and innovation will be unfolding at breakneck pace and people will manage their relationships with one another. So I believe that these practices, if put first and then work through processes like summits where people actually design together what the next steps are, that you can actually move an organization much more quickly. I also believe that retention will go up. Interest in the work will go up. These practices first, I think move the show.

Martin: [00:33:14] 
So let's go back to your agility narrative thing and talk about generative wholeness. You wrote in the web page of Axiom News, there is much life in the spaces in between and in between siloed organizations, reinforced between community members, between community members and institutions. Can you put that part of the puzzle together for us?

Peter: [00:33:42] 
Well, it's interesting because I think earlier I said living wholeness and you said generative wholeness, and I think that might even be better. So that's true for and better by the sense of more more interesting, maybe even more more precise, because my sense is that we are creative beings. And when we're in the in the creative work, in creative work, we are more whole. So generative wholeness is well in the spaces in between. It's to me, we're talking whole longs, a group of three that who are relational and relational presence aware of the strength and beauty and differences that each person carries with them. When that inter subjective space is cultivated, then magic happens. Things come to life. I think the same is true for organizations, and I think what's happened in our culture is that organizations get good at what they do. They have their mandates and that defines what they notice. And so they're in the cycle of producing predictable results around the things that they know. And so it's very difficult to. Move an organization to a sense of enlightened self interest, say or collaboration. So I think there is much life to be discovered and explored. I think a next step in social evolution or the way we are organized.

I think we've concentrated long enough on how to make organizations work. I think we know how. I really do. And if if we're finding ourselves stalled on that. And not growing in that anymore. We're getting diminishing returns on our efforts to understand how to do organization in the hierarchical mode. It's because we've gone as far as we can. I think the next step is networks. Networks inside organizations between the people that are working in it and networks between organizations. And that means organizing differently. Those it's a shift from. Hierarchies to networks from top down to distributed, from command and control to collaborative, from deliberate strategies to emergent strategies, from task orientation to relationship orientation. I've stolen that from the Internet because it was really nice. I should credit it. It came from a group called Converge. But that's the shift. If you shift to networks. And we can learn the dynamic in personal relations. The dynamics there carry the same principles and energies as what we would experience in networking organizations. And I think that space in between organizations is where our next great leaps will be found as a species.

Janet: [00:36:42] 
So given the invitation that I've heard you just said about looking in that space in between. In the context of the system that we have in your agility narrative, who are what are the villains?

Peter: [00:36:58] 
Another great question and I ended up with lots of answers. So have I've written some of them down so I can try to remember some. The first one that comes to mind for me is abstraction. Even our science is removed from nature. It's laboratory science. I think a lot of our intellectual pursuits are abstractions. They're not connected to lived experience, so abstraction is one of them. Dissociation is another codependency which was once described to me as living lives, living our life outside of ourselves. There's another villain. I would also find myself. Speaking contrary to a wish for consensus. So consensus might be a villain, collectivism might be a villain because that has a tendency to homogenize rather than to differentiate. I think consumption we consume rather than create. So I think those are some of them. I think the sort of homogeneity I don't know if I said that that's another one. Deference to experts. As opposed to experience. Those are the villains. I think we've been we've slowly allowed ourselves to no longer trust our selves. Or to experience ourselves or to experience one another or to experience our immediate environment, to experience the materials at hand. We continue to take ourselves out of reality. And we find ourselves impotent in an unreal place. But I think we'd find ourselves powerful in a real place. So some of those things I would say are the villains.

Janet: [00:38:58] 
As we receive those words, what might you offer to us that would help us remember? And possibly tips for presenting as we move beyond these possible villains that are left.

Peter: [00:39:18] 
One thing that comes to mind for me is the importance of community and again, relationship. I think we've also done a lot of work on ourselves. But I believe we can awaken through community. I think that's a pathway that I don't know. I think community is something we go to serve. I don't know if we necessarily grapple with. How our inner teacher can be cultivated in community and how the inner teacher of others can be cultivated in community. So I think that's very important to bear witness to one another. And that, I think, is to almost welcome difference. I try really hard not to disagree. To coach. To help or advise if someone's speaking. Invite more with with a statement like tell me more. Tell me more. And just see what happens with the listening.

Martin: [00:40:28]
 I'm intrigued by your list. Abstraction, disassociation, co-dependency, consensus. I would ask what the theme behind the villains are.

Peter: [00:40:45]
 Separation and alienation. I think that's where we go.

Martin: [00:40:51]
 How do we see that in conversations? How do we how does that impact us?

Peter: [00:40:59] 
How do we see it in conversations? I think I'd go back to some of the things we spoke about earlier, including reacting. If I'm reacting or riffing. There's a chance that I'm reinforcing my narrative at the cost of listening to someone else.

Martin: [00:41:21] 
So they all impact our ability to listen and hear and connect and. Impressive.

Peter: [00:41:29] 
Yeah. And I think I want to say that it's something that I want to say something like, well, don't listen to other people to do a good thing. Or to help them. We listen to other people for your own sake, for the sake of the beauty, of the encounter of another. Do it to enrich your own life. I'm having an interesting conversation with a friend and colleague around duty because I have an uneasy relationship with duty for me, because I've mistaken my duty to be things that were not mine. I was attempting to give gifts that weren't mine to give. So I was becoming exhausted. That's a separation. So I don't know. I don't know. Martin. That might be a conversation for a whole other space, is how does it how does the separation show up? It's a great question again and me thinking about that so I can be clearer about it.

Martin: [00:42:28] 
With that context, can you define what's at stake here for change makers, communities, leaders or organizations?

Peter: [00:42:37]
 I would say what's at stake is life itself. Life itself. I think we've learned to live unlived lives. And we replace. We try to fill the gap. With a torrent of ideas, distractions, consumption, and that consumption is creating hubris, competition, consuming the planet and its resources. It's causing us to extract. Wealth and power from other people's labor. So I think it's life itself. If I can be called into my giftedness and to enjoy the encounter of others also living into their giftedness, my life will be more whole. I'll be less drawn to those things that separate and alienate me from myself, from my relationships, and from the world around me. I think. The opposite of the stakes would be the possibilities. I think we could work in places that are full of freedom and the accountability that comes with it. I know from my own experience that when people are accountable to themselves, they're much. More fierce. The experience is more fierce than when I'm accountable to someone else. So I think we could we could live and work in places that encourage our aliveness, welcome our aliveness. Offer an experience of living wholeness. And I think that could stop the train wreck. It'd be more present to the people here and the materials at hand. In our present to actual lived experience when we're living. That could that could stop this runaway train. Our culture seems to be on. I think that's what's at stake.

Janet: [00:44:41]
 To close this conversation. You're talking to a group of key stakeholders who feel the weight of constant change that we have collectively lived over the past two years and are continuing to live and they're wanting to move forward. And honestly, they feel stuck. They may actually be on a train that's not going anywhere, one that's getting off the track. So you empathize. What's going on? What are you most curious about in such a situation? And what would be your call to action?

Peter: [00:45:17] 
I don't know, I might say. Let's consider the possibility we're all distracted and we're not paying attention. And then the call to action would be to sit together. Be present to one another. And through that seek what it is we each wish. Encourage one another. In the act of creativity and creation. To the call to action. Be the cure. The courage to create. In community. So seek. The encounter with. Another welcome the differences and be open to the surprises.

Martin: [00:46:20]
 So I've got a picture of this boardroom with the leader sitting there in this organization and you've joined them. You're asking everybody to to be silent and just listen to themselves. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that room and what what would happen and how it would be?

Peter: [00:46:45]
 The first thing I would do is remove the table. Right. The table is actually a barrier between us. The second thing I would do is I invite them into small groups of three. Need. No more than nine inches apart. Then I'd ask them, Why did you choose to join this gathering? Take 3 minutes each to listen to each other. That's what I would do. I'd also counsel that if you didn't want to participate in this, if this isn't for you, your nose as well as your. Yes. So you should prefer not to participate in this. No pressure. This is an invitation. Feel free to take a walk if you'd like. And you're welcome back anytime. So I'd get rid of the table, invite them to small groups having an invitation, which means removing the power dynamic of imposition. And you might say we are presenting or confronting each of them with their freedom.

Martin: [00:47:52] 
This is one more question that I wanted to ask before we sort of talk a little bit about the threats and opportunities. I think you mentioned the word democracy fairly, fairly early on in this conversation, and we haven't returned to it. And. So can you tell us about what democracy? I think we all have a picture or a picture of democracy in our own heads when you use the word democracy and organization in the same sort of connected sentence. What are you talking about?

Peter: [00:48:29] 
Think I think that's important to. It's a cover up. So when I say when I speak of democracy, I'm not speaking of mechanical. Democracy as in ballot box democracy or representative democracy? I'm speaking of a phrase I really like is deep democracy. Another way to put it is a democracy is a way of life. And democracy is a way of life to me. Is. Does begin again at that that aim that that intention to cultivate the conditions for the realization that each person's potentiality and I don't mean that that that they get really good at the job that's in the box that we put them in. I mean that we. Design our spaces in our interactions in such a way that each person is encouraged to step into the gift that they wish to bring to this particular collaborative effort called the organization. So I'd say democracy begins at. Each person's giftedness and potentiality. And plays its way out as a way of life in mutuality and mutual support and encouragement. Friends upbringing of those gifts. That's what I mean. And that can mean encouraging people in pursuing the things they believe. Must be done, even if you don't agree with them. Is the only way we're going to know. Is if we actually do something. We can't abstract our way into knowing. So the key to it is encouraging people and supporting them and even cooperating with them as they pursue their own commitments. Whether or not we agree with.

Martin: [00:50:32]
Would you see like a good discussion, like an interactive, maybe argument about it and then sort of going through the point where you support each other to do the thing that they want it to do.

Peter: [00:50:51] 
So we like to I like to ask four questions. If if you. Martin want to step in and move something to create something, to initiate something, I would suggest a space where those who wish to hear more about what it is that you'd like to do join you. And then you share with them what it is that you would like to move into the steps you'd like to take and then ask them for questions. Ask them what they really love and appreciate about your idea. And just hear them. Don't debate, just take it in and encourage them not to discuss it between themselves either, just to share it in the same way that those phrase poems come together. The second question is. What would it take for my initiative to be as wonderfully successful as possible? My third question is. What questions do you still have? And the last one is what, if anything, are you willing to commit to the success of my endeavor? And with that, you gather up your goodies and you proceed. And all those questions are about encouragement. And cultivating strengths. They're not about. A dialectic.

Martin: [00:52:12]
 But I would find that challenge personally. Professionally.

Peter: [00:52:21] 
It may be worth a try because what have you got to lose?

Janet: [00:52:30] 
So now you're based in the hills of Gatineau. Although you spent many years in Peterborough. You've held space for the last two years and you've reached your second year. Anniversary is cultivating communities. So how do you see the threats and opportunities we are facing today? Better future.

Peter: [00:52:57] 
So avoid the threats question that this is a moment for me. I could choose not to answer it, but I don't want to choose that. I don't want to answer it. I think the threat is despair. Hollowness, emptiness and despair. A sense of. We are not we are we are not powerful. We don't we are powerless. So a sense of hollowness, despair, powerlessness. Possibly even. Loneliness. And I think those are I think that is very pervasive. Very pervasive. And the danger of the danger is the threat is that we fill the void. We have this longing to belong. So will we accept? Collectivism to belong will be self abnegation as a condition of getting along. We accept powerlessness. I think there's apathy and despair. And the threat then becomes the. They follow the leader that we remain as children. I don't mean in the good sense. I mean, as in we do what our parents tell us, we do what the experts tell us we do, what the powerful tell us because they provide us answers and belonging. They give us direction and something to belong to. I think that's the threat. And the cost is our lives and the cost is life itself. Cost is a life lived and experience. That's the threat. I think the possibility is the experience of aliveness. And the delight and creativity. And the being welcomed and received in community. As we are authentically. And therefore in deeper relationships, because we're in those relationships with people who are also standing up to be met. I think the encounter with life in all its forms is the possibility. So perhaps we could also speak of a new way of life, a new a more democratic way of life. Democracy as a way of life in the ways I've spoken about. Being together, creating together, creating in each other's midst. Being met in strength and beauty and meeting others in theirs. The encounter.

Janet: [00:56:00]
 With life. During this podcast today. You. Offered listening and its various languages of listening. Are there any other languages that you might want to introduce that would support the possibility just mentioned?

Janet: [00:56:28] 
Generative question, Janet. I'm contemplating something I haven't contemplated before. And what comes to mind. Music, art and poetry. About which I know very little.

Martin: [00:56:52] 
And then you started the conversation around potentiality, talked about dialogue and the flow of meaning in a good level of detail around relational presence and the practice of it and the power of it. Does that relate to a lack of contentedness or something that was stopping us being able to connect in ineffective ways? And we've ended up talking about learning to live more democratically together in a connected set of relationships. Really. Thank you for your insights and your messages, the hope that you bring to us all. When we think about the future, where our future begins and where we can start with it. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Peter: [00:57:45] 
And thank you for your beautiful questions, your presence.