Day 10: How to Usefully Say "No"

One of my faithful workshop colleagues described a state of being in which he found himself having said "yes" to far more things than he had wished.  He asked Roger to speak about how to usefully say "No."

Roger began by saying that usefully saying "no" is largely about managing your attention.  The state described occurs when one's attention is fragmented so that they say "yes" when the thing is in conflict with some other commitment that one has.

The three things to consider when saying "No" are:

Day 9: Tracing the Cause of Cyclic Chaos and other teaming traps

Okay, I admit that I am intentionally titling by alliteration...

During the check in, Roger noted again some of us complaining of the experience of personal and professional chaos.  He suggested a method of working with this experience. First, if the suffering has a cyclic or predictable quality to it, consider yourself the evil genius of your own life, having mastered the ability to cyclically produce your experience of suffering.  (This was said in jest, since the actual condition is that we are strategically unconscious to our production of this condition).

A way in which you can work with tracing the cause (but perhaps "cause" is too strong of a word), is by working at three levels: the personal dynamics, the transpersonal dynamics (system) and the perceptual reality.

Day 8: Conflating One's Metaphorical Survival with Actual Survival

Our Feb 25 class collectively addressed a question about online classes.
 
What is the reason it seems so difficult to implement online classes at Cal Poly? Is the change that is needed structural or does it just need the right mix of people to make it happen?
 
Roger quickly lets us know that to answer the question, we have to identify the background conversations going on around the issue.
 
First, we note that this idea comes up again and again and it always seems that although a fair number of people say, yes, this needs to happen, it never quite does.
 
Why is it a cyclic event?

Per our discussion last Friday

Hi to anyone reading this. There is a related post on my blog http://ifelthat.blogspot.com

The point with Nina Paley is not the movie, which I like, but rather her model about the movie as IP. If you watch the movie, watch the credits and notice the acknowledgments. Also look at the remix projects on her wiki.

Then, should you feel inspired take a look at this:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Ddbh5l0b2-0o&v=dbh5l0b2-0o&gl=US

I would recommend the following process. First, watch the video. Don't read any of the comments or get any other information about it first. It is 45 minutes long. Watch yourself as you watch the video. You might even take actual or mental notes on your own process.

Then Google the author. Chiren or Athene should get you there. As you come into contact with the information about the author, again, please watch yourself and your own process. Record or remember what you notice.

Consider all of this in light of our conversation last Friday and collaboration in general. What is the relationship between transparency and collaboration?

I am recommending this all in the context of our conversation about the OER and the 'after class' conversation about how I understand the activity in which I am engaged, based on Trevor's comments about interruption.'

I will be interested to hear from anyone who does this. I did this process myself and found it interesting.

Also, a piece of homework has been missed in the notes.
Please do a two column exercise on a time when you wanted to say "no" and did not, should you be so moved.

If it seems right to us, perhaps we can hear from Dianne and Kurt about what they have been reading or perhaps any follow up on X-teams or an intro to "Bio-teams." I would like to find time to hear from people who have been doing the homework assignments as well, if this ever seems to make sense to us to do.

See you Friday,
roger

Day 7: Human Nature and Expectations

As always, these summaries represent only my limited viewpoint. This week, I was extremely limited as you will see.

The session began with Roger asking if anyone was interested in running the class for the day. Sean volunteered. He shared that he has been thinking about human nature and how it affects teaming and collaboration.  He invited people to offer their thoughts in response to his question.

So the question was, "What is human nature and how does it affect teaming?"

Day 6: Interrupting Patterns of Behavior

I find myself attempting to make a cohesive whole out of our time together when it may not have been that.  So, if you don't recognize this account of our February 11 meeting, it may simply be the way in which I am re-presenting it.

We spent our time in a conversation about interrupting patterns presumably because in a team collaboration, patterns of behavior can serve to interfere with the functionality of the team.  By "behavior," we are considering the full spectrum of actions: thought as well as more externally apparent actions.

I would like to indulge in a bit of a self-pitying interlude: I had artfully re-counted our entire class on my computer while waiting in a doctor's office yesterday. This morning my hard drive failed. No, I didn't have a backup. So, needless to say, my first rendering of these notes--beyond brilliant...are lost forever.  The muse has now left me, so we will all suffer (the two of us readers) with this dull version. 

Roger asserted that there is a common dynamic to deal with dysfunctional collaboratives:

Day 5: Finding the Nexus of Suffering

During the check-in, it was clear that many people were experiencing a rather deep suffering.  Roger noticed this, named it explicitly and asserted that he didn't think our planned conversation on bioteams would address it.  We instead spent our time together working with the suffering in the room, believing that having the skillful means of effectively working with suffering is directly relevant to teaming and collaboration.

Roger asked, "What is the source of suffering? What is our model of suffering?"

To illustrate the idea of models of suffering, he spoke of two types of developmental traditions--the mystic traditions and the yogic traditions.  In mystic traditions, one's belief is that the source of suffering is outside oneself.  In the yogic traditions, one believes that the source of suffering is inside oneself.

If we believe that source of suffering originates outside ourselves, we can find ourselves attempting to manipulate those around us in an effort to alleviate our suffering.