The art of leading together

One of the great joys of my work is the opportunity to peek behind the scenes in organisations and teams to help them find their courageous stories and host them to life.

I spent all last week in Malmö, Sweden alongside a team hosting a team into being through what we called "The Art of Leading Together." Our calling question was "What does 'Leadership By All' look like in practice and how do we find the courage to begin?"

For our work, the intention was specifically to grow participatory capacity and to invite this international and multi-focused group into a community of practice with the skills and mindset to host a fundamental change in the way they do business. That's exactly what the #ArtofHosting was designed to do.

We worked with the underlying practice pattern of Art of Hosting --- the Fourfold Practice -- and layered methods like World Café, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, the Pro-Action Café and intelligent games. We also experimented with the power of storytelling using trios and Collective Story Harvest.

It is a joy to hear and work with people's stories for collective sensemaking, to coach them into hosting the group in real time, to create a strategic harvest together and to watch them making the connections that will weave the organisation together in new ways.

And what a gift to me personally -- my first in-person AoH training in three years! We had held onto the dream for this training since we met in 2019 and finally brought it into being despite COVID and the long disruption of gathering together. I'm so glad we persevered!

What a privilege it was to spend time with Mathias Widstrand, Anders Linse, Jazmin Barreto-Hamneby from INGKA and my fellow Art of Hosting colleagues Sabine Gressel-Soeder and James Ede. A bow to you all!