He is the kind of man I would like to have a drink or two with after hours and discuss the lightness and the occasional cruel beauty of being. Him playing his 1959 Fender Stratocaster, the ‘Hitmaker’, me o yeahing along and shaking and shuffling my feet to the beat.
I went to his Belgian concert during his seemingly never ending world tour. It was simply impossible not to move your limbs on the riffs he and his band produced. You could not get bored for a minute, people were dancing and letting themselves go and having the time of their lives.
The link with process facilitation, coaching and training is the art of creating an environment where people can not only be tempted but actually to join in.
Creating safety and an exciting learning atmosphere from the first minute. Bringing participants or coachees into a benevolent trance the moment they have heard each other’s voices in the room.
I do that for instance by trying to be a good host the moment I greet people and welcome them on a program. Or even better, introduce them to one another if they have never met before. Most people are grateful when you present them to eachother – remember some awkward wallflower moments at parties during first meetings. The leader as a host is a fairly recent and useful metaphor in the literature about leadership.
This is an example of a pre-session change question: you assume that some positive change has effectively taken place between the moment of arranging the meeting with a practitioner and the moment you actually meet him/her.
I have a small theory about interaction: the shorter you spend time with someone, the more important it is to focus on the other’s resources, strenghts, qualities. When you don’t get a second chance to collect positive memories with someone: put a light on what’s right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XA3OfeUdSE
