Kathy

Welcome to the 10th issue of Conversation Matters, a twice-monthly newsletter by me, Kathy Drewien, with a focus on community leadership, collective wisdom, and whole hearts.

Atlanta, September 6, Day 177

To my favorite pandemic denizen, you!

Think about a time where you felt a strong sense of belonging. Perhaps you can point to a direct situation or experience, or perhaps what you remember is a cloud-like feeling that doesn’t appear to be linked to anything in particular. Often, “belonging” and “connection” is not something we can verbalize as it happens, because it happens in the present, before we’ve processed the meaning of it. In other words, to be present is to be in the space prior to analyzing and meaning-making.

I’m a big believer that community is a series of quality interactions between people who are part of a distinct group. In this perspective, a qualitative interaction conducive to connection is simply a moment in time, something that happens here and now.

I believe the most important role we have as facilitators, curators, designers, artists, and community builders is to create moment to moment connections between the people that we hold space for. Conversations and shared experiences can bring us to the space before meaning-making where we’re simply being, simply being transformed in the same way that art and nature can move us. 

It seems like what people are craving in this period of social isolation and stress is a more intimate and absolute version of connection, an exploration of togetherness in the now.

Belonging is a feeling.

To produce these feelings, a community must provide an experience in which people know they are accepted, welcomed, valued, cared for, appreciated, or in possession of insider understanding.

Here’s a worthy challenge: How do you create moment to moment connection in your events, communities and conversations? What is the degree of intimacy you can create 1:1, 1:many and 1:self?

Interesting Extras

• Physicist Carlo Rovelli explains that humans don’t understand the world as made by things, but made by happenings: events limited in space and time. In the same way, human relationships and systems they form, are also measured in happenings, in moments of connection.
• Full stop: a group of customers is not a community.
• Casper ter Kuile: “How Can We Be in Real Community If I Can Fire You?” With a strong perspective on the spirituality of belonging, Casper highlights how the changes that we’re seeing in the workplace right now.

Clickables Stumbled Upon

• • “What if someone says something bad about us?” is the worry of every exec everywhere.
    
    This is a good Instagram account to counter that fear with. For the past year, illustrator Amber Shares has been collecting 1-star reviews of US national parks and creating vintage-style graphics—like Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park (below).
    
    Amber just completed the series, Subpar Parks, and she says she’ll be back in September with 1-star reviews of international sites. Just awesome.
    
    

• Wanna be a great home chef? Master these essential recipes, such as soft scrambled eggs, buffalo wings, macaroni & cheese, and braised short ribs. Crank up the stove, and get to work!
   
• The Legend of CA Man: A Tale of Tay
  A wandering traveler stops to rest for the night when an unforgettable man appears. Follow their fictional misadventure through the desert and onward.

Clubhouse Conversations

You are invited to join me in the café Wednesday mornings at 9:00 (Eastern). Bring your mug of choice. We’ll fill it with peace, inspiration, and compassion.

Conversation communities around me are exploring these questions:

• If we call a part of society “heroes” does it make everyone else feel anxious about being “useful enough”?
• What silver lining are you finding in the COVID-19 situation?
• Solitude vs loneliness – how do we define the difference?

I hope you are safe, cared for, robust in your faith, carrying on with gladness, holding hope high, believing the best, and finding creative ways to flourish.

Be wise. Be generous. Be kind.
Stay connected.

Welcome to the 9th issue of Conversation Matters, a twice-monthly newsletter by me, Kathy Drewien, with a focus on leadership, collective wisdom, and whole hearts.

Hi there, lustrous wonderer!

The microcosm I’ve been living in broadened during a trip to the beach with my family earlier this month. There was a little more life, a little more exploration and a little more…spontaneity.

I find nothing more invigorating than the joy that comes from randomly running into friends and creating impromptu gatherings. It’s the reason I miss big dinners, events and busy restaurants so much. It’s also the reason why so many of us like to bring people together – creating pockets of randomness is energizing, fun and fulfilling. I recently told my friend, “If I see the opportunity, I need to connect people.”

In The Serendipity Mindset Dr Christian Busch says something similar: “Nothing makes me happier than to see the spark when two ideas or characters unexpectedly click.”  Busch explains that serendipity isn’t about luck in the sense of simple randomness. It’s about seeing links that others don’t, combining these observations in unexpected and strategic ways, and learning how to detect the moments when apparently random or unconnected ideas merge to form new opportunities.

Attendees, organizers, and sponsors of in-person events are mourning the loss of serendipitous conversations and encounters which once took place in the hallways of conferences. As one organizing team reflected: “Some of the most important conversations and future ripple effects happened, as always happens, around the edges, between kindred strangers and new friends”. 

Clubhouse Conversations evolved from my need to connect people and my personal sense of loss. These online experiences offer a unique kind of space and spontaneity through inviting participants to broach conversations around the edges, between kindred strangers and new friends. Each conversation embraces Open Space gathering principles, a viewpoint I have long embraced:

• Whoever attends are the right people.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
• When it starts is the right time.
• When it’s over, it’s over.
• Wherever it happens is the right place.

Join me.

Clickables Stumbled Upon

• 8 Tips for Feeding Your Writing Genius. This infographic from the fantastic Henneke Duistermaat gives you 8 tips for clearing out the cobwebs in your brain so you can do your best work. I especially like her focus on the creative soul, not just the mechanics of Getting Stuff Done.
  
  
• Judy Gelman creates + crowdsources a bunch of spice blends that riff on a slew of book and Netflix/TV titles. She just released a bunch of new puns and spice blends, including Lord of the Fries. See the new titles/spices here.
  
  

✅ Support a small, woman-owned business…

✅ that blends food and books…

✅ with puns!

What’s not to love?

Clubhouse Conversations

As August rolls into the fall (163 days into this pandemic), most of us are still working from home, and homing from work. Conversation communities around me are exploring these questions:

• In companies, what drives scarcity culture vs abundance culture?
• What would the tech world look like if there were VPs of Community?
• What is the difference between pity and sympathy?
• How can you design for serendipity remotely?
• What business from the year is still unfinished? And what can you do this week to get closer to finishing it?

You are invited to join me in the café to broach conversations around the edges that are important to you.

I hope you are safe, cared for, robust in your faith, carrying on with gladness, holding hope high, believing the best, and finding creative ways to flourish.

Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for your kindness and generosity.

Be wise. Be generous. Be kind.
Stay spontaneous.

Welcome to the 8th issue of Conversation Matters, a twice-monthly newsletter by me, Kathy Drewien, with a focus on leadership, collective wisdom, and whole hearts.

Hi there, glistening raindrop.

Leadership conveys everything from heroism to unmatched bravery to endless charisma. Because of this broad scope, it can be difficult to see the hundreds of tiny opportunities for leadership each day. But boy howdy! We can sure pinpoint the lack of leadership. Am I right?

Community leadership is about inspiring, bonding, connecting, caring, trusting, and stewarding. All of that can be done just as easily online as offline. Leadership is a dynamic, rewarding, sorely-needed skillset in most organizations. And many avoid stepping into it.

Now is the time for our kind of leadership. Community leadership.

Here’s the thing: you are a leader, even if you don’t have or want a formal title. People come to be seen as leaders because they make a concerted commitment and effort in a particular direction that matters. If you build online communities, you do that every day you show up, as long as you do so with intention and purpose.

So whether your title is “Community Manager” or “Developer Advocate” or something unique, if you help run a community, you are a de facto leader too.

Interesting Extras

• You can’t be all things to all people. Nor can you be the leader that everyone needs. Instead, it is important to understand and evaluate how you want to lead and who else you can work with to get the job done. This ecosystem map from Deepa Iyer helps leaders evaluate their place in the ecosystem. Iyer created it for social movements but it works for those leading online communities as well.
  
  
• Leaders build trust by knowing their strengths and weaknesses. Harvard professor Francis Frei, co-author of the book Begin with Trust, created the leadership trust triangle as a framework for identifying those strengths and weaknesses. Trust requires authenticity, empathy, and logic. If you are weak in one area, it is your “wobble” and needs correcting. But with a few minor adjustments, you will see astounding results.

Clickables Stumbled Upon

• Why Truly Sociable People Hate Parties A short, animated film, that talks about how a real connection between two people is built up from making ourselves vulnerable to another person. An interesting look at a core insight of community building.
  
  
• How to Kill Passive-Aggressive Popups and Other Acts of Marketing Self-Sabotage. Just don’t: “I’m a mealy brained moron and want to pass up this deal because I don’t know what’s good for me.”
  
  
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• How to Read More Books. Pro tip: Read whatever the hell you want to read in the beginning because the real thing that you’re focused on is building the habit of reading, not necessarily the knowledge.

Clubhouse Conversations

• Community health is rarely “how many members do we have in the community?” Community health is more closely tied to:
  – Are members connected to one another?
  – Is your community tied to a purpose they can believe in?
  – Do members feel valued to be there?
• Which is more important, belonging or inclusion? Is belonging a burden?
• Rather than a time of crisis, what if we looked at this moment as an opportunity to have our “finest hour”? Imagine if a year or two from now we looked back on this situation and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our companies, our community, as a nation, and as members of this planet.
• Being candid about the ways in which you are feeling vulnerable can be humanizing for the whole team. In that moment of saying aloud, “I don’t think I can endure another thing!” others feel seen and understood.

You are invited to join me in the café to explore these conversations, ideas that give you pause, or soak up the goodness of humanity.

I hope you are safe, cared for, robust in your faith, carrying on with gladness, holding hope high, believing the best, and finding creative ways to flourish.

Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for your kindness and generosity.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Wear a mask.