Pro Action Café in synergy with Chaordic Stepping Stones

From the emaillist, Dec'12:

Mates,

An experiment that some of us are working with for ProAction Cafe. Some of you may be in these too.

Here's a bit of story for how it is happening recently for me and s...

Greetings from Utah.

Tenneson

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Hello friends,

We wanted to share our innovation on the Pro-action Café. We’ve been experimenting in our last 2 art of hosting trainings on Bowen Island and the Faith Based Art of Hosting in Utah. We LOVE it! It bought additional focus and wisdom into the Pro-action. It grew from my/our experience of seeing the conversations wandering and more advice coming in at the tables rather than staying in the questions.

As Chaordic stepping stones is such a good diagnosis and planning framework it is a beautiful partnership.

We also had done work earlier in the week with Limiting Beliefs using the Byron Katie process of “The Work.” It had folks watching for those beliefs, and in general moving forward with more clarity and boldness.

Design (additions to what is already in Proaction Café write up):

Offer a brief teaching on the Chaordic Stepping stones as a tool for listening and planning. Share that as we are going through the Proaction Café you can turn to the descriptions and questions under each stone if you need more questions. People are also invited to harvest what they are hearing in these “buckets.”
Bring in the names of the projects/events as you usually do.
Round 1: What is the Quest? What is the longing at the center?
1. Draw circles for the applicable stones on the flip chart. Need, Purpose, Principles.
2. Invite people to listen and speak especially to the need and purpose.
3. Round 2: What else is needed.
  1. Draw circles for the applicable stones on the flip chart: People, Concept, Limiting Beliefs
  2. Invite people to listen to these stones after sharing what their quest is, as they know it now.
  3. Round 3 and the closing of the café happen as you usually do.

It was really fun listening and inquiring from the stones as part of the café. It felt so familiar as it is a great framework for inquiry.

Tenn wrote about this in his blog below too.

Warmly,

Caitlin and Teresa (co-hosts of Utah experiment with Proaction)

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Tenneson, I'm really loving this idea of working the chaordic stepping stones. Maybe we will play with that this week….

Kathy

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Yay! Gonna try this as soon as possible!

So true that it needs the luxury of a full afternoon!

:-)

helen

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Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Ria Baeck on January 7, 2013 at 6:21am

Reply, a few weeks later by Kathy:

We just used this in Minnesota and I'm not sure I would do it again. The overlay of chaordic stepping stones to Proaction might have brought in an additional level of confusion for participants - becoming more focused on what was meant by each of the stones rather than the simplicity of the other questions. Still percolating it though.