12 people brought their incompetence and courageous commitment, to a day of learning about effective communication. Land sharing was the context, and the motivation was knowing that so many awesome collaborations unravel because of human misunderstandings and failed communications.
Rather than being a passive learning environment, people quickly discovered that learning new communication skills requires experimenting, and the good thing about experimenting is that every outcome provides valuable insight, regardless of the result.
All the feelings were welcome and present. Along with expressions of fear, sadness, anger and joy, their was a bonding sense of connection.
We looked at the four elements needed for a collaboration to flourish:
Intention, Agreements, Processes and Skills.
As we chose and declared the values and principles we each cared about, there was an odd sense of surprise and obviousness. It was clear that these are the necessary foundation intention for our land share projects.
We read out the 12 roadblocks to expressing, and the 12 roadblocks to listening. It was embarrassing to notice how automatic these roadblocks are, and sobering to realise we have been communicating like this for our whole life. But once conscious of them we could practice new ways of expressing and listening, and offering and receiving completion loops. This deepened the feeling connection and mutual understanding.
I felt joy hearing from people in the closing circle, as they spoke about practical experiments they were committing to, having seen and felt the positive results of these different approaches to expressing and listening.
This one day training is one of the events Janet Redmond and I offer to support land share collaborations. Another is a two hour fireside chat, which have now been held in Greytown, Rotorua, Mangawhai and Motueka.
If you want to bring a Growing Radicles event to your region, contact me and I will reply to make a time for a call with you, so we can explore possibilities for when and how to make it happen.
Read about Growing Radicles: buymeacoffee.com/growingradicles
Read about Janet Redmond: janetredmond.com