The Circle Way

Zusatztext 57518831 Informationen zum Autor Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea Klappentext All modern group processes that are open to collaboration or to flattening the hierarchy are based in some way on circle practices. As organizations of all kinds move increasingly toward shared and rotating leadership, they are calling on the circle model to form sustainable teams and adopt circle driven group processes such as World Café, Open Space and Art of Hosting . Meetings in the round have become the preferred tool for moving individual commitment into group action. This book lays out the structure of circle conversation, based on the original work of the co-authors who have studied and standardized the essential elements that constitute circle practice. It takes readers through a circle visual (the Components of Circle) and presents both structure and story so that readers understand how these elements come into play and how they interrelate and interact. It also embeds circle process experience in stories and examples drawing on the authors' 15 years of experience as global thought leaders and originators of this form, and it presents detailed instructions and suggestions for getting started, setting goals, and solving conflicts.Where Circle Comes From and Where It Can Take Us The room sizzles with tension. Emotions are high, opinions are formed, polarities harden, and alliances and divisions are drawn. Twelve women and men dressed in the current armor of business are about to engage one another on the battlefield of a contentious meeting. In the next two hours, they will decide things that shape their organization's future. The agenda is overfull, and there will be insufficient time for discussion or consideration of consequences. Perhaps this doesn't matter, as the decisions have essentially been made through background e-mails, late and early cell phone calls, text messages, and side conversations in the catacomb of cubicles and corner offices. The players wander in: the CEO, the guy from accounting, department managers, and supervisors. The boss's assistant sets up coffee, flip charts, and related papers and gets ready to take notes. These are good people. These are the people who keep business runningin the United States, Canada, Europe, India, China, Australia and the Pacific nations, Latin and South America, and Africa. Wherever there is enough stability in society to hold together commerce and community, some variation of these people gather, around the clock, around the world. They have spouses and partners and children they love whom they send off to school in the mornings and cheer at soccer games. They walk the dog, pet the cat, read the paper, watch television, and enjoy a good meal and perhaps a glass of wine or a cup of tea to draw a line through the end of the day. They put the kids to bed and often head back to their laptops or hand-helds to tend to correspondence they have no time for in the rush of their workday. Two to three hundred e-mails a day, they tell us, and we're required to have our BlackBerrys on 24/7. Another one says, I get up every night at two A.M. to see if the early meetings have been changedsometimes we have to be here by six A.M., and I have an hour commute. Then I have to wake my husband and negotiate how we're doing the kids if I'm gone by fivesurprising how many other road warriors are on the freeway that time of day. A man laughs sardonically: I sometimes think of myself as a six-figure lemming rushing toward the cliff. I was going to transition out, but my financial parachute burned up back in 2009. Now I'm just grateful to have made it through the layoffs. Underneath their resignation is tremendous frustration at what it takes to run the world this wayand to be run by the world. And the place that much of this underlying discontent shows up is in how we run our meetingshow we greet and ...

ldquo;A perfect travel guide for all who are committed to making the world a better place. The circle deserves to become an independent field of study, and this book gets that going. Read it.’
—Peter Block, author of Stewardship, Flawless Consulting, and Community

“This superb book, put into practice, can transform the way you work and live.”
—Parker J. Palmer, founder, Center for Courage & Renewal, and author of A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach

“Practical and poetic, The Circle Way guides us to the heart of hosting conversations that make a difference. It is a terrific contribution to increasing conversational literacy for addressing today’s complex and challenging issues.”
—Peggy Holman, coeditor and coauthor of *The Change Handbook

• 
  “In this beautifully written book, Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea share the simple elegance of their PeerSpirit circle process and how it can be used in organizational and community settings with powerful impact. We have learned a great deal from the way of the circle as a call to remember our collective capacities to design and host catalytic conversations around the questions that most matter to our common future.”
  —Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, cofounders, The World Café
  
  “The Circle Way offers over twenty years of experience by the authors, who share how sitting in a circle allows for optimum self-governance, facilitates quality conversations that make a difference both personally and professionally, and encourages leaders to become more effective within their organizations and communities. Relevant, accessible, practical, and invaluable for all generations.”
  —Angeles Arrien, PhD, cultural anthropologist and author of *The Second Half of Life
• 
  “Christina and Ann take us through the anatomy of the circle process with poetic clarity and simplicity, demystifying elements of the circle process while, at the same time, showing us the indescribable mystery of what can happen in circle. The Circle Way is one of those rare books that can truly be called a transmission.”
  —Jack Zimmerman, coauthor of The Way of Council, Flesh and Spirit, and
  Elder, Ojai Foundation
  
  “We learn circle best by doing it and letting the circle teach us, letting it reveal itself as we embrace it. Or we can learn circle by immersing ourselves into the deep and profound stories that Christina and Ann recount for us. They lay the bones of circle and then weave colorful threads of countless stories that create the tapestry of our understanding.”
  —Pamela Austin Thompson, CEO, American Organization of Nurse Executives
  “The definitive work on circle process. Rich with stories and detailed instructions, this book will inspire hope and a vision of exciting possibilities in anyone who has ever wondered how to breathe life and love into unproductive or conflict-laden meetings.”
  —Roger Harrison, PhD, organization development consultant
  
  “Christina and Ann bring the magic and discipline of circle fully to life in The Circle Way. They have opened the door for circle to enter our boardrooms, corporate meetings, community gatherings, and living rooms. I can hear them cheering us on, ‘Now it’s your turn.’ I’ll gladly take the wisdom of The Circle Way with me. It’s like walking with Ann and Christina by my side.”
  —Teresa Posakony, Board Chair, The Berkana Institute, and practitioner, Art of Hosting
  
  “Christina and Ann present us with the gifts that working the circular way offers us at this time of great shifting in our world. Their writing is a piece of art in itself from two masters who through diligent practice have stayed the constant apprentices of this fine art. I am grateful for its clarity and practicality.&rdq…