Participants: SusanPartnow, CarolynShaffer, HenriLipmanowicz, LynBazzell, JosephMcCormich?, GervaseBushe?, ElaineHansen?, ColletteThompson?, HeatherTischbein, RenataKowalczyk?, PeggyHolman, NatashaSacouman?, DianaSmith, KayaJacolev. (Apologies for spelling)

• Everyone has a different experience, different wants in an organization. How do you get things done? Is there a new way of organizing without an authority system?
• How do we take responsibility? How are we co-creators in what we see? We see the rage? How does it tap into our own rage?
• How do we meet the grief? How can we do this quickly? There is a moment of self-indulgence, we have privilege.
• We open conversation the we close it down when it gets uncomfortable
• We close the conversation …. From the space of authority. How do I get myself out of the way? Yet be responsible for the outcome?
• Example retreat 2.5 days of working on relations with each other, .5 day of efficient work.
• “Slow down to the speed of wisdom”. The power of soak time.
• Paradox of the world is burning and needing to move slowly.
• What do we have to do: 1. give opportunities to everyone to do what they need to do? 2. How each of us needs to develop in our group work?
• Each emotion/feeling/view is valid.
• What to do when you think someone goes off topic? Who gets to decide?
• Holding the space for that to happen. In silence.
• What enabled (the woman) to speak up? She said love. I did not get that. She was in a space of loving witness. She found that it was her place to speak
• It looks messy, that is okay.
• Being centered, discernment is essential. Whether it is wrong or right is peripheral.
• There was a power struggle we should talk about it.
• I felt there was a violation of an agreement, coupled with a responsibility to serve the group
• We need to talk about hierarchies
• Patterns of behavior that need to die
• We don’t want to admit that it is there.
• Healthy side of hierarchy. Making decisions efficiently, this is healthy for people.
• Making agreement explicit
• You cannot have a functioning group without a common purpose.
• You are valuable. We don’t have power over anyone.
• To dishonor hierarchy and not recognize rank and hierarchy is wrong. To dishonor the father is not the way to move forward.
• Global interconnected world. How to bring in more feminine energy.
• How much we have all suffered by our wanting to rush forward. This is what we got, let us honor it. Let us honor what is good about hierarchy.
• What was happening for me? I like father. I have bought into the “good daddy” and not take responsibility for my own power. I am comforted by the “good daddy.” I was uncomfortable by the whispering.
• Some were totally oblivious to what happened
• And some were only witnessing.
• I am a tasker and not a processor. I was the eldest daughter, I could argue with my father. Argument and debate does not have to be personal. I can be in the corporate world. Honor the sacrifices; honor the losses that mothers and daughters have felt. Tap into both my feminine and masculine side.
• Whose business is it? Is this my business? It is not easy to tell.
• The lesson I get, is that I have to take it in. Physiology will tell you if it is about me or not.
• Groups are dysfunctional
• It is a point of view. You could say all groups are functional.
• Imagine if dysfunctions did not come up … where would we be?
• This is not about “me”. There is a whole universe. Celebrate that I do not know.
• What would I do if I were the host?
• Energy in the room supported the women. (Men) felt rejected, abandonment. Maybe (they/he) are trying to unlearn leadership, authority.
• I felt we were disrespected and abandoned.
• Intellectually I would not have done it. It would have totally emasculated him to do what I asked. I felt like I would have betrayed my sisters, I needed to follow my two feet; I needed to breath. (She) was seething, pissed. I felt joined. How do I compassionately deal with this situation?
• Solomon Asch’s groupthink experiment. Angst about speaking their truth. The people that did speak their truth said the right answers.
• “Law of Two Feet” is against the social norm. Evolving the system forward.
• “The law of two feet” seen as walking out, debrief what we learned from it.
• What I learned, what can I learn?
• When we (people) leave without knowing why, we lose the opportunity to learn.