🎙️ FS 80 From Facilitation to Hosting: Creating Transformative Spaces with Peter Pula

Todays episode explores the evolving relationship between facilitation and hosting, highlighting how both practices can create transformative spaces for individuals and communities. Peter Pula shares insights from years of cultivating community through participatory dialogue and generative journalism. The conversation delves into the distinctions between facilitation often structured and outcome driven and hosting, which embraces emergence, deep listening, and co-creation. They talk about:

• The difference between facilitation and hosting
• The use of time triads and deep listenting in group practice
• Learning from mistakes and adapting when things dont go as planned
• Moving from command-and-control to particpatory approaches

Quote highlights

"I feel like I am participating in the unfolding of human evolution and the evolution of community, and I don't know how that can do anything but make you smile."

"And by naming the failure it becomes something else and it becomes… Something powerful… "

"Before it was a passion. Now it feels like an essential work."

Links

Todays Guest

The Subsidiarist https://peterjpula.substack.com/ Citizen Studios https://citizenstudios.mn.co/about Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpula/ Website: www.peterpula.com Cultivating Community Gatherings (free): https://www.tickettailor.com/events/peterpula/1786857

Todays host:

Sam Moon: Faciliator www.linkedin.com/in/theboymoon123

Edited by: Cassie Austin Leaderful Action

To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF England & Wales Chapter:

🎧 https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/
📧 podcast@iaf-englandwales.org
🌐 https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales

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Transcript:

Sam Moon & Peter Pula

Sam: Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the Community podcast of the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Sam Moon, and my guest today is Peter Pula. Peter is the founder of Axiom News, generative journalism, the Peter Borough Dialogues, and a proud member of the Generative Journalism Alliance.

These days, he's mostly concerned with, in his own words, my beloved cultivating community going on six years now, and where I first met Peter during the first few weeks of COVID when I joined an online global gathering of folk exploring how we could be together apart during what was to become very uncertain times with long periods of lockdown.

Peter crafted a space from which people shared experiences and stories where deep relationships began to form and has continued to do so amongst the community that first got together and others who have joined since. So honoring that my own facilitation journey has been shaped very much through Peter's commitment to life given approaches of facilitation, it is an absolute pleasure to welcome you here today, Peter, and on that note, and before we get into some juicy questions, please introduce yourself, who you are and what you get up to in your world of facilitation.

Peter: Who am I? I think I will say today that I am a person who deeply cares about the wellbeing of humanity. I'm a person who's. Gravely concerned with the prevailing trends at the moment, and I believe that hosting and facilitating people in dialogue that brings to the surface. Their deepest gifts, talents, intentions, and passions in a way that encourages us to be differently together, might at one time have been a nice to have and now it's a need to have. So I'm fully committed to the practices of facilitation and hosting. With the view to, well, for me it's a calling and a critically important one. And that's why I'm glad to be here talking with you, Sam. 'cause we've travelled for a number of years. We've got a lot of, water under the bridge, a lot of experience under our belt. And, we've traveled through some of those crises together in community held in a certain way. And so I think we could say that's also what I'm up to.

Sam: Thank you, Peter. You put that, in a really lovely way. And we've got some questions that we're gonna explore together, but if I can just invite you to expand a little bit more on, your experience of facilitation and hosting and how you have made a distinction between the two and how you hold those.

Peter: When you look to the definition of facilitation and facilitator, there's not much there that I wouldn't say also applies to hosting. I think in a lot of practices though, there are some differences, and it might be sort of a spectrum where my idea of the practice of facilitation is that when facilitating, we are inviting people into a fairly, predetermined process and trying to bring them along to more of a predetermined outcome than you might be if you're hosting, it might be a learning outcome, for example, we want, by the end of this process for everyone to be able to say, speak French or to understand a business process or to have come to some understanding about how to better manage their relationships with their peers. And then way on the other side of the spectrum on hosting, I think there we are then trying to surface what's most alive for each person in the room. With a view to exploring and discovering almost endless possibilities.

But, then ensuring that each one of the possibilities that actually wants to manifest is nurtured in a way, by the way, we dialogue and connect and decide so that they actually can come to fruition. I think there might be a little bit more wildness and willingness in hosting than there is in facilitation, I think they're arts that are closely related, they're in the same family. And I know as hosts sometimes there are moments where I absolutely must facilitate almost with an iron fist. Knowing how and when to make that call is part of the hosting art. Sometimes a super clear process is necessary. Sometimes a process set is co-created by the participants who have some skill in how to be present to one another is also necessary. So I don't think it's a, it's not an either or, it's a spectrum and there is a relationship between the two ideas. But I feel like in practice they are slightly different ideas.

Sam: I really like how you describe, the wildness and willingness, that can take you into the labyrinth of hosting and discovering what's alive. Whilst also what you are saying is recognizing that facilitation process where it needs to be tighter is also about recognizing when it's important to do that around certain things, rather than being wedded to a certain way of doing something, it's about understanding when one needs to come forth, and in terms of where your, start from and where you want to go.

Peter: If I could, Sam, there might be one other distinction, and it would be interesting to test this with your listeners and their experience because, I don't move in circles where we describe what we do as facilitation. So I could be completely wrong about this, but there has been some discussion in the hosting arts world around one of the suggestions that, in hosting, it's considered a very important principle that as a member of a hosting team, you also participate in dialogue, and in many facilitative sessions, it seems important that the facilitators stay observant and outside of the dialogue. So I'm just wondering if that's a distinction that holds true, or if it's not actually the case.

Sam: I think it's a really good question, Peter, and I think there are different views within that, depending on the ideology that it's coming from. And I know there is that conversation that takes place around, is a facilitator neutral or not. And there's clear opinions on both sides of that, but I think in terms of the experience that we've had together and in those spaces, I would agree that the host becomes more part of that conversation and is involved in the dialogue.

But it's about not influencing it. And I think for me, I probably stand on the side of that, lean more into using questions to draw things out rather than put myself forward.

Peter: Right.

Sam: I also find that when I put myself forward, it can deaden the air a little bit as well. Take the life out because, unless invite invited to teach, don't teach.

Peter: Yes. Beautifully said.

Sam: So what I wanted to kind of touch on, what is it in your world of hosting and facilitation that's making you smile at the moment?

Peter: Well, you know, Sam, you mentioned in your introduction, this space we've been holding together for the last five and a half years. It's come to be known as cultivating community and for whatever reason we've been, that's every fortnightly on Fridays. For five and a half years, we've seen probably 600 different people join that space.

There's a core group of, maybe 12 or 15 that come very, very regularly, and another extended group of maybe 45 or 50 that drop in, come and go, who, you know, take comfort in just knowing that the space is there. It's the group of us has started to talk about how, not only have we become a community spread across several continents that are quite committed to the community and to each other, it's, also, been spoken that it's also a practice field for how we be in community differently.

From that, I've had the delight to hear from a number of members of that community. Their lives have been changed by being part of that, to such a degree that they're also bringing these practices, into their own communities and morphing and changing them to suit their own skills and ways of doing things like improv, for example, these are adjacent practices that, work to the same principles and grow together. And that group has been in so much practice for so long. It's a blessing for me, one, to be part of the community, but two, to see the effects it's having on people's lives and in the world. And three, because we're in practice so much, I can also as a host, fully participate in it. And it is for me, a healing place to be. I feel like I am participating in the unfolding of human evolution and the evolution of community, and I don't know how that can do anything but make you smile.

Sam: It's certainly, yeah, absolutely It does, it is a place that gives life and gives energy. And with that, your view, were talking about the effect that it is had on people. Tell me a bit more about that and what it was around the way in which you have been facilitating, hosting that space that you think may have enabled that or created the conditions for it to have that effect on people.

Peter: Yeah, and we haven't really come up with a really smart, clever way to talk about it, but we've used the idea of time triads, and for your listeners, we can maybe just describe that quickly, like we bring people into small groups of three, every person has three minutes to respond to the question of the moment, which, you know, we've got a few ones that are pretty solid, pretty tight, but we also sense into what the question is for each small group.

So these are 90 minute sessions. We usually get three to four rounds of small group time triads. In which each person has three minutes to respond to the question for that particular small group without being interrupted by the two listeners. We can go pretty deep into the practice of relational presencing and what it actually means to be present to a person who's speaking without being distracted by the need to maybe cut them off so someone else can have their turn, or because you're curious about something or because something they've said triggered you. We could go for hours talking about the method if you like. So that round of these small groups and then people come outta these small groups and they're reflected as a whole, but what's alive for them now? Not a report, but a reflection of what struck them about that, time together. It's a process by which people come into contact with their inner teacher, and find their own voice, speak it in all their strength and beauty, and then take turns witnessing another, and then another. Do the same. So the complexity of the field is like tremendous.

I think over time it's become something of an island of coherence. I guess another really important piece about the methodology is that it is something that happens at a consistent and regular time and has done so for a very long time. So it becomes a structural, stable point in people's lives, which makes it something they can count on, something that helps 'em co-regulate, makes it easy for them to invite others, gives them some sense of, stability and constancy. So, you know, those are some of the architectural pieces of that. And then there's the idea good questions or provocative questions. Like every small group, every time triad, presences a question that we have come to define as being these three things sufficiently ambiguous, deeply personal and anxiety producing.

And you can ask a question like, at what crossroads do you now find yourself? To the same group a hundred times. Every time their answer will be different and it will be somewhat evolved from where they were before. And if a community continues to visit those kinds of questions together, people experience tremendous personal shifts.

And find themselves in relationship enough with other people to take their next courageous steps into whatever it is they want to bring alive in the world, wherever they are. And that's the sort of effect we're seeing, like people are bringing this kind of work into their churches, into their workplaces. They're shifting the way they interact with their colleagues at work. They're even changing narrative practices. They're becoming less and less comfortable with the command and control paradigms in which most workplaces work, which denigrate and disregard a lot of what people have to bring. So when you develop that kind of like experience, coherence, relationship, assuredness, because you finally got to the root of what's important to you. You move in the world differently and that changes the world. You become a, a resonance center of your own

Sam: Yes. And from sharing that space with you and being part of that space, that's something that I've witnessed and experienced myself. And often people will come out of a conversation, and will be feeling I didn't realize I was going to say that

Peter: Yes,

Sam: I didn't realize I was going to feel this and that, has a kinda real, sort of magical experience, which then people return to. And so the things you are talking about there in terms of the conditions that you are creating is that it's kinda regular, it's consistent using the sort of a method and approach of time triads, people come back and report on what they experienced. And it's on regular time and using the questions that have a structure are the things that create a container for that space, create an energy for those things to emerge and link into what has shaped the hosting practice in many ways.

What was it that helped you get into that work? Tell me a little bit about your journey into that. How did you discover this way of working?

Peter: I was thinking about that and there's a couple ways into the story and it seems like I always tell it differently, but, I started in news and in a strength-based environment and that led me to the point where I was leading an organization that had, between 12 and 17 people working for it at any given time. I started to realize being the leader of an organization was not something I was that interested in doing. In the old way of command and control, set the intention and take the hill, that didn't suit me at all. So I started to, given that we were doing strength-based journalism, we started to see the kinds of life-affirming patterns that you can actually start to sequence out through powerful questions. And the journalism was lifting up what people wanted to create in the world, telling a story about it, and then people would come to their assistance and then something would change, and that would be our next story. So I started to come into contact through that work folks like the asset-based community development movement and the appreciative inquiry movement and practice, and appreciative inquiry, of course, is an organizational strength-based organizational development model, which is fundamentally democratic. So I started to take some of what I was learning there, and then of course, appreciative inquiry, things like open space started to show up in the art of hosting community. And it struck me that this is a completely different way, this is a life affirming way you can lead an organization. Like you either trust the people you work for or you don't. And if you don't trust them, you're probably gonna command and control. If you do trust them, you can create different structures, you can facilitate different kinds of interactions that actually bring to the surface all the best that every person in the building has to bring to the purpose under which you're gathered. And that's what got me into it.

So we turned what was then Axiom News into what became World Blue Democratic Workplace for seven years. Eventually we decided not to continue with that certification because we didn't feel their standards were high enough. You can run an organization in a deeply democratic way that cuts out the need for so much bureaucracy and so much control that because the people in the room who are committed to the cause, finding ways to work together in their own ways actually cuts through a lot of the nonsense that gets in the way. Like even the great Peter F. Drucker made the case that 90% of what we consider management is actually interference. Facilitating dialogue and connection and collaboration in the kinds of ways we can, and the ways that we are, can fundamentally change the way organizations work and the way people experience where they work. And that's what got me into it.

So I tried these things out in organizational settings, a number of nonprofits as well that I was connected with and involved in. And then, um, COVID hit and uh,

Sam: And here we are.

Peter: And here we are.

Sam: Yeah, and what you are, what I'm experiencing in terms of as you're sharing that and describing that and articulating that is how deeply powerful it is, it's not this one directional or one dimensional way of working. There's a real existential kind of aspect to that and a power to that. And the words that sort that I picked up was, trust. In terms of learn your journey of that and trust in people. And going back to where you were talking about where the hosting side of things can be wild and wooly. I can imagine and from the experiences I've had myself when I've delivered in a hosting way, trust plays a key factor in that as well. In terms of any facilitation.

Peter: You gotta trust yourself. You gotta trust the room. You gotta trust the people in the room as a group, and you gotta trust the process. And the moment you don't, the thing collapses and you've gotta command and control it. It's almost like a spiritual practice, trust and trusting the people and trusting the room and trusting the process. It can take some intestinal fortitude, but once you see it work, you can have faith in it.

Sam: Absolutely. So that's really interesting. What I was gonna ask there is what's the courage that someone needed to move into that space of trust rather than, I remember when I first started out in facilitation donkeys ago in particular youth work, I would have a session plan and I would work on that session plan and it would be dah, dah, even if it wasn't working, it's like, no, this is the session plan.

Peter: Right.

Sam: Tell me a little bit about your experience of that trust and kind of the courage that's needed around that.

Peter: The name Blair Singer's coming up for some reason, but I ended up being in a thing that he was facilitating years and years and years ago, and he had this concept of as ising. And so when things started to go really wonky for me in a room, I figured I'd give it a try. And it's just like, I would just say, okay, wait, we can all sense that something's not right here.

Sam: So is that is in, did you say?

Peter: As is.

Sam: As is.

Peter: I don't even know if that makes sense, but that's what he called it. Just to see things as they are. I was hosting or facilitating and it just felt like something was wonky, something was not working. So I simply said, okay, does anyone else feel like this isn't working? All the hands go up, right?

Sam: Wow.

Peter: I say, okay, let's go into small groups of three and find the two people in the room, you know, the least. And let's just, without judging or critiquing what anybody in your small group says, just say what you're experiencing right now. And so they did that. And then people said, well this is my experience. Another person said, that's my experience. And what was interesting you hear four or five people, you realize they're all having a very different experience.

So there's not one problem. So it becomes very complexified

Sam: And what happens from there?

Peter: This is something else that I think has been key for me is that I would stand in front of the room and say, well, and sometimes you have their hosting team, so you sit with the hosting team, maybe while the community's in their small groups, the hosting team sits aside and says, what's a good question for us? What's the question that wants to be asked now? Or you can also go back to the room when they come back and say, all right, what's a question that we'd like to sit with now? And then people start popcorning them up and then you whittle it down and then you find out what question the room wants to be asked,

Sam: Right, Ok.

Peter: and then you're back on track. So I mean, in that there is some structure, right?

Sam: Such a beautiful way of shaping something as a, what do I do when things don't go to plan, when all my anxieties are kicking in? How can we reconnect with the group that we are with?

Peter: There's a lot of letting go of your ego in that. Like you can go, oh, I had this brilliant plan. I was up all night thinking about it, maybe even many nights. And you, gotta let it all go and say, okay, well. 'Cause people do want the thing to work. And they do want to get something out of it. So there's a lot to work with there. And it could be that the thing's gone wonky 'cause you got in the way. So get, get out of the way.

Sam: And there's a freedom there, isn't there? a freedom that you're creating. You're creating an agency.

Peter: and then everyone thinks you're some kind of jedi san. But the fact of the matter is you just buggered it up and got outta the way.

Sam: Yeah, and there's so much reflection afterwards from that as well, in terms of the learning.

Peter: There is, it's very powerful, because each person has their voice. A friend, a colleague of mine by the name of Peggy Holman, who's a brilliant facilitator and fantastic thinker on these things, she says people resent feeling processed.

Sam: Right.

Peter: So if you stay with your process and it's like they feel like you're putting 'em through a spiritual meat grinder, it's right and proper that they would rebel against that. I think it's right and properly they rebel against that. So hold space for the other thing to happen that trusts that they also want this to go well, they also want to get something out of this. And your job is to, okay, if, if that path is blocked, then sit in a circle and think about what the next path is.

Sam: Yeah. And there's a courage and a presence to notice that. have to

Peter: But I think you have to have the kahunas to give it a try once.

Sam: Yeah. And be ok.

Peter: And even if it doesn't work, I mean, have a debrief because you're gonna learn something from it.

Sam: Yeah. And I guess, what you are, you are touching on there is that being okay to fail in the process

Peter: Yes

Sam: And by naming the failure it becomes something else and it becomes

Peter: Something powerful.

Sam: Something more powerful, 'cause then people experience that together and in collaboration.

Yeah. That is really beautiful, I mean.  I guess in terms of like, one of the other questions and you know, in a way you've, you've answered it was what fluff ups have you learned from, in the practice, because this art of hosting creates more space for that I guess.

Peter: I talk about the wild and the woolly of the hosting, and I think you can get, I mean, I have gotten so excited about just the process and the connection that, there have been times when I have not brought enough context at the beginning.

So, I remember one event, we were like on the third morning, a guy who was actually staying at my house as a guest, said to me, I think, Peter, you need to just get in front of the room and tell us what the hell we're doing here.

Sam: That's interesting.

Peter: There's a bit of context and , you know, there's another, you know, just recently, like after all these years, Sam, you know how it's important to start on time. Start together is the thing, like whatever time that is, we start together and we started this thing and it was one of these digital things and people started to trickle in. So we'd started an opening circle where the dialogue guidelines had been given and then four people were in it. Then there were seven people, then there were nine people, and it just turned into a rodeo. So in order for the wild and woolly to happen, you have to remember to set the frame, and that's context and very important to begin together. So even after all these years and all the mastery available, it's still easy to miss some key points that just go wonky.

Sam: I love that in terms of the reflection on that and the root to it and reflecting back on, do people know why they're here?

Peter: They don't.

Sam: And sometimes people don't know why they're here, but if you started in that togetherness, everybody's starting from that point, almost whether they know why they are there or not, they get to learn that together because that's where you started from.

And we are coming towards sort of the end of, this lovely conversation. Peter, and I'm going to ask, from the last, podcast that went out, Olivia asked her guest, Julia Slay for a question to bring into this conversation. And her question was, how has your practice as a facilitator evolved and changed?

Peter: You did send this ahead of time and I've been thinking about it and I don't know if my answer is, but this is what's come up in my contemplation of that question.

I used to believe that hosting, facilitating was a better way to conduct joint human endeavor and joint activity, and I think that was fairly light. I'm feeling now that it's a necessity. So there's a valorizing in what it is to be a host facilitator. You know, in the industrial age, management and accounting we're the thing. I think in the age we're heading into, it's hosting facilitation, and narrative arts. Hosting, arts and narrative arts that are essential to human wellbeing and thriving. So I'd say that I'm taking it far more seriously. Before it was a passion. Now it feels like an essential work. So, that's what came up for me in contemplation of Olivia's question.

Sam: Peter, thank you for that really thoughtful, beautiful response.

Peter: I think maybe in, part of the like, span of history we explored, and the nature of your questions. And I think also Sam, 'cause we've known each other for so long now, we have a lot of shared experience. A great deal of, uh, coherence was made for me. So I'm having a sense of coherence and wholeness, which I think is actually the point of this hosting, facilitating. The idea is to create the conditions so that people can feel this sense of wholeness so they can be assured of themselves in a world that's gone crazy. Yeah, meaning coherence, wholeness. That was my experience. Anyway. How about you? Do we have time for you to say

Sam: I have enjoyed this interview. It is my first podcast, as part of the new crew, and I think coming in with, you know, the anxieties of doing something kind of new for the first time and recording for the first time. I think what I'm taking away and what meaning it's having for me is in terms of, is the fun of the conversation.

Peter: You got a knack for that.

Sam: And I, it's almost like studying more what I have. Being involved in, I guess this is a unique conversation because we know one another and we've, shared a practice as to someone that I would be interviewing that I wouldn't be familiar with. So I think this is quite a unique experience and involved in the conversation and the shared experience of it. So it's given a new kind of a deeper understanding and a different way to explore what it is, that happens in that space as well.

So I think taking away your kind of, you know, a deeper perspective of what's been experienced.

Peter: Very nice. Thank you.

Sam: So that brings us on to, my final question, and that is to invite a question from you for our next guest who we don't know who it will be.

Peter: So let's just go with the old classic Sam, and invite your next guest to respond to, at what crossroads do you find yourself with regards to your work in the world?

Sam: Beautiful. That'll, uh, give whoever it is, something to chew and ponder over.

Peter: Possibly even a good place to start.

Sam: Many of our conversations is exactly where it starts.

So, Peter, with that, it is been a, absolute pleasure, kind of speaking with you today.

Peter: Likewise Sam, always.

Sam: Thank you for joining the IAF podcast. And, uh, thank you and be well.

Peter: You're welcome. Thank you, sir.

Sam: So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of Facilitation Stories, the community podcast of IAF England and Wales. If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved, all of the links are on our website, facilitationstories.com, and to make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use?

We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas, so if there is a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about, send us an email at podcast@iaf-ew.co.uk

We hope you join us for some more facilitation stories again soon. Until then, thank you for listening.