Episode 19: Welcome Disturbance
with Anne Stadler and Peggy Holman
When we hear the words ‘welcome disturbance’ what typically happens to us is that we have resistance. This is deeply engrained in our lives thanks to a strong cultural tendency to fear change. It’s been educated into us. We think it’s who we truly are but it’s not; we are resilient and adaptive and we need to remember all this in order to activate our self-organizing capacities and future potentials. Buckminster Fuller reminds us in his famous quote which is so on point here, that “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” In the next 70 minutes we’re going to be pointing our navigation system toward that new model, new capacities to embody that new model and inspiration for how to share it wherever we go. It gets so simple. This next episode is special for several reasons, one is because it’s full of wisdom of how we can create capacities for being more resilient, dissolving that tendency toward an immunity to change. In order to create profound change in the world we have to be comfortable with change, we have to welcome the discomfort and stay curious and open. Another reason why this is so special is because this dialogue is with two masters of process who both have been mentors of mine going back to 2005. My life was profoundly impacted by them both. They are Anne Stadler and Peggy Holman. And the one deepest to my heart in this moment is because Anne left this planet only weeks ago. This deep and nurturing dialogue happened last August and now I’m releasing it only weeks after Anne journeyed on. Her bright radiant spirit is still with so many of us. She lived and gifted us with her brilliance for 92 years. She impacted so many people in so many ways as you will see. I hope you will also feel the deep resonance of her bright presence. Our conversation was recorded 15 months ago and is just now being released. Both Anne and Peggy are elders and masters in Open Space Technology (OST) and they have brought a deep wisdom to every gathering they convened and every space they opened. I was blessed to be at many of these and they had a huge impact on my training because I was essentially I was being trained by masters. I didn’t really know that at the time. Only with hindsight do I see the kind of perfection of the divine design of my life. As I listened to this conversation again, my heart beamed with gratitude that I had this interview available to share with the world - to reveal the combined genius of Anne and Peggy. Who are these amazing women? Here is a short bio of each (longer bios are on the show notes). Anne is a pioneering elder. Her 61 years of work have included co-creative community building; facilitating self-organizing leadership and organizational development; and award winning television production. She was the volunteer Founding Director of Friends of Third Place Commons.
Peggy is the Co-Author of The Change Handbook which profiles 61 practices that engage people in creating their desired future. She’s also the author of the award-winning Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity that offers a roadmap for tackling complex challenges through stories, principles, and practices. Co-founder of Journalism That Matters, a nonprofit that supports and equips the adventurers who transform relationships between communities and journalism for a strong, inclusive democracy. You can check out the longer bios on the website awakeningtogether.one or in the show notes on the various platforms! Do subscribe and share and share a review wherever you are inspired.
Thanks for joining us. We begin by diving right in to answering the question, how were you brought into this field. There are many layers to this - the field of this conversation, into the field of group facilitation and group change processes and then the field that we are always in and how we can we begin to pay deeper attention to it. There is always an in-forming happening if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. We go on to explore the capacities of listening and intuition and the inner guidance that brings us where we need to go. You will be blessed by the deep wisdom of an elder in our global community and a younger elder who has worked closely with her. The two of them tell stories that the world needs now. We need to uplift how we create spaces for us to dialogue, make meaning, do sense-making, imagine, dream, welcome disturbance and discover more of who we truly are, together. I’m so grateful you are here. Love to you and yours!
Bios
Anne Stadler
Anne Stadler is a peace builder, community organizer and pioneering elder and board member at Sourcing the Way. Her specialty is offering services that support self-organizing individual and collective leadership. She opens space for the emergence of spirited leadership and inspired forms for collective evolution. A founder and organizer of local, national, and international peace efforts, and an award-winning television producer at KING 5-TV in Seattle Washington, Anne has decades of experience in guiding the formation of emergent communities. She is a pioneer and fluent practitioner of Open Space Technology and Appreciative Inquiry.
Peggy Holman
Peggy Holman supports diverse groups to tackle complex issues by turning presentation into conversation and passivity into participation. Holman is a co-founder of Journalism That Matters (JTM), a nonprofit that believes journalism matters most when it is of, by, and for the people. JTM supports and equips the adventurers who transform relationships between communities and journalism for a strong, inclusive democracy. JTM has been hosting conversations among journalists and their allies since 2001. It was pivotal in the emergence of engaged journalism. For example, the Gather community grew out of the Engagement conference series co-hosted with the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon.
With a background in software development, Holman found herself more challenged and nourished by working with human systems. She was drawn to systemic, high-participation practices that engage diverse people in finding constructive paths through conflict and complexity. Her organizational work led to her writing about practices for systems change that shift how people organize from hierarchies to networks. In The Change Handbook, 2nd edition, Holman & her co-authors profile 61 practices that engage people in creating their desired future. Her award-winning Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity offers stories, principles, and practices that provide a roadmap for tackling complex challenges.
Her work with journalists began in 1999 when a shooting at a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles moved her to seek out journalists who wished to reimagine journalism to connect people to each other, their communities, and democracy. Working with three journalists steeped in civic journalism -- Cole Campbell, Chris Peck, and Stephen Silha -- she began her journey toward a vision of journalism that is inclusive, constructive, and engaged. Using the First Amendment as a framework, today, she offers a vision of what’s possible based on trends already underway.
https://peggyholman.medium.com/
SHOW THEMES/LINKS
Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity
Opening the Field - Open Space & Harrison Owen
Change Handbook and here
World Cafe and here
Holding Space (this is just one of many links that could be shared)