Looking back at 2022: hosting long-term emergence
How'd we do?
Looking back to assess: principles and directions for 2022
We guide and assess our work through a set of principles (is our work having its intended impact?) and directions (are we making progress in the direction we intend to travel?). This annual review—the first we’ve published publicly—summarizes evidence and stories to respond to the question, “How’d we do?”
PREVIEW
Principles we sought to apply in our work
- Work to increase relatedness
- Work to empower others
- Make joyful gifts
- Host spaces of becoming
Directions (vectors) we sought to move along
- More long-term engagements
- Explore new models for engagement
- More diverse collaborators
- Practice culture-shifting
“We’re adding ”equity” as a new goal in our strategic plan, and the entire organization believed it mattered and had ideas to contribute, naming how they see the work expressed in their colleagues.” -Nonprofit leader
“You could see the alignment between fifty people. As one group presented, many others perked up and said, ‘Yes! Us too!’ It came through vividly that we are on the same page. We were doing serious work and we’re having fun. We are living the culture we long for.” -Institutional staff member
Fit Associates’ reports
The work of social design and participating in long-term, lasting positive change is difficult, uncertain, and evolving. This is one of a series of reports which Fit Associates creates for its internal use, and which we sometimes choose to share publicly. We do so in hope that some may benefit leaders and groups who share our determination to participate in creating an equitable thriving society.
A glimpse into planning, doing, and assessing the work of social pattern-shifting
Some reports are about learning communities, some are about projects. We won’t say they are rigorous, but they are at least rigorish. They give a glimpse into what it looks like when we evaluate our work by principle and direction (rather than destination).
Report: Deepen Lead Now
How'd we do?
Report: Deepen Lead Now
The pandemic disrupted annual leadership training for a Pittsburgh foundation. They asked us to help.
PREVIEW
Burnout, stress, and desire for community
We started by listening to the cohort of regional nonprofit leaders, and heard several themes of need: people wanted support in better handling stress and burnout, and people felt alone in their challenges. They felt hungry for a supportive community of like-minded and like-situated peers.
Sessions designed to develop connections and practice personal skills
Though it lasted only nine weeks, the community of practice that developed was intensely supportive and generously open. After time dedicated to creating a group culture, we worked with themes of adaptive strategies, refuge, noticing needs, home, and self-care.
“What I thought was a hardworking nature is a complying strategy. I put my personal needs aside, because I want them to think I’m worthy.”
“Learning to listen to myself and create balance in my professional life is completely new to me.”
Fit Associates’ reports
The work of social design and participating in long-term, lasting positive change is difficult, uncertain, and evolving. This is one of a series of reports which Fit Associates creates for its internal use, and which we sometimes choose to share publicly. We do so in hope that some may benefit leaders and groups who share our determination to participate in creating an equitable thriving society.
A glimpse into planning, doing, and assessing the work of social pattern-shifting
Some reports are about learning communities, some are about projects. We won’t say they are rigorous, but they are at least rigorish. They give a glimpse into what it looks like when we evaluate our work by principle and direction (rather than destination).
The Passport Story
An artifact/experiment designed to increase relatedness
"Often we see that artifacts [from research or a project]... lose the emotional vigor, the life that they had when the team was living it. So we tend to go with more of a 'warm data' approach. Can we make artifacts that help stories live vividly in the people who receive them? That help more people participate in creating their own stories?"
An experiment in how to encourage “travel” between subcultures in the organization
Use the player and transcript below to see a five-minute story about a “Passport” experiment, designed to encourage members of a large IT department to grow understanding and relationship with people in another department. The story is from a particular company, but the approach is an example of playfully injecting listening and understanding into a culture. In this video, Fit principal Marc Rettig tells the story and shows examples.
Listen with interactive transcript
Play button is at the bottom of the transcript. Clicking a word in the transcript jumps to that part of the audio. Want it bigger? Click the full-screen button in the bottom-right of the player, or open the live-transcript player in your browser.
How listening can change everything
Group listening with collective story harvest
"Listening is an incredibly calibrating way of getting into alignment with what's really going on. It gets us out of the story about what life is like that we're married to in our heads. And that story goes from individuals to the system. This organization was living in a story that was not accurate. We can't touch reality. We can't shift reality. So how do we get our fingers on what is really happening?"
How listening without judgment shifted strategy
Use the player and transcript below to listen to a story from a project in which a “Collective Story Harvest” transformed the creative intent for the advocacy campaigns of a national nonprofit. In this audio, Fit principals Marc Rettig and Hanna du Plessis tell the story and offer insights on the transforming power of listening.
Mentioned in this conversation…
Otto Scharmer, Levels of listening
Power and love
Father Paul Abernathy
Felicia Savage Friedman
Download to your device
Listen with interactive transcript
Play button is at the bottom of the transcript. Clicking a word in the transcript jumps to that part of the audio. Want it bigger? Open the live-transcript player in your browser.
Photos: moments from the story
First steps in hosting conversations that matter
Marc: You start to feel more at home. Saying "Let's do this different thing" to a group of people is scary at first. But it becomes not scary. And it's what's needed in the world: to break those old patterns.
Hanna: Break patterns, and also switch us on. We are talking heads. Our beings need to be resuscitated. We need to learn to be embodied again. To think with our fingers, to laugh with our bellies, to move with our feet. There's an organization called "Re-becoming human" I feel like that's the core of what is happening as we do this work.
What is it like when we first begin hosting conversations that matter?
Use the player and transcript below to listen to conversation and stories about the tender experience of beginning to host (we prefer “host” to “facilitate”) gatherings that shift a group’s relationships and stories. In this audio originally recorded for the Adaptive Space Learning Group, Fit principals Marc Rettig and Hanna du Plessis offer thoughts to those setting out on their journey.
Mentioned in this conversation…
Adam Kahane
Applied improv
Chris Corrigan
Liberating structures
Re-becoming human
Theater of the oppressed
Theory U
Download to your device
Listen with interactive transcript
Play button is at the bottom of the transcript. Clicking a word in the transcript jumps to that part of the audio. Want it bigger? Open the live-transcript player in your browser.
A Liberated Life
This post describes a course that happened in the past. We’re putting the description on our blog for two reasons:
- If the topics and approach resonate with your work, we want to say, “Hello family! Happy to compare notes and talk shop any time.”
- If this sounds like something you’d like to explore for your own community or organization, let’s talk!”
Past Course
A Liberated Life
Practices for leading with all you've got
Hanna du Plessis and I Medina Jackson, instructor-facilitators
Pittsburgh is racially divided, and finding a cross-race community that supports your growth is rare. We gathered a mixed-race cohort for fifteen weeks to learn and practice being with strong emotion, pain and trauma, genuine relationship, and creative expression.
Click the CC icon under the video to turn on captions.
In this video, Medina and Hanna discuss the concept of “a liberated life,” talk about what it means to “practice” the skills we need for such a life, and offer an overview of the course experience.
This gathering is over, but we offer the full description below as both documentation and invitation. If you would like to hold a version of A Liberated Life in your organization, please contact us. Use the “Subscribe” button on our contact page to be notified when we hold a similar event in the future.
Where did you learn to be your full self?
Where did you learn to stand tall, inhabiting every inch of your body? To stand strong, even when you feel the darkest dread or fiery rage? To speak up despite the fear in your belly? To tap into the ancient aqueducts of stillness so you can rest even when the world feels ablaze? To create boldly using all the gifts that only you can give? To listen to yourself so that you know the season you are in?
If you are anything like us, you were not taught these things. Instead, you were taught to conform. To feel a little less. To put your anger aside. To keep busy so you can avoid discomfort. To do what is expected of you, and certainly not to follow your joy.
This course exists to help you find your way back to yourself—all of yourself. The world needs to come alive again, and it starts with each of us waking up from the numbing belief that we are powerless and stepping into our full selves.
This course can be transforming if you…
Feel stuck in habitual responses to life’s challenges and seek to show up with more authenticity
Desire to embrace your wholeness and create more authentic relationships, in the embrace of a multicultural community of folks on a similar journey
Benefit from having accountability and structure to learn practices that will result in lasting change
What you'll get from this course
The following quotes are from past participants’ feedback surveys and statements during end-of-course celebrations.
Develop new personal skills
Course activities draw from the arts, mindfulness, theater, personal development, and more, and combine to help you practice skills of being genuine with yourself in the company of others.
“I learned to see the beliefs that had me boxed in.”
“I’ve learned that I can hold all of my emotions in my body.”
“I’ve learned to get unstuck from pain.”
“I’ve learned to create safe space for myself, and to spend more time with myself.”
Take time to practice and internalize your learning
We take our time, so you can increase your competence and confidence in essential new skills. The length and pace of the course–eight sessions over 15 weeks–is designed to help you internalize new practices.
“I’ve learned to prioritize taking time for myself.”
“I’m learning how to relax, how to heal, how to express.”
“I’ve learned to find my vulnerability and be comfortable in it.”
Learn a grounded state of being and begin to internalize it
The course provides practices to ground you in your body, help you see your worth and show up with more confidence.
“I have more self-confidence. I’m not so apologetic.”
“I have learned to love myself again.”
“I feel more grounded, less anxious. More whole, less scattered.”
“I’ve learned that I am enough. This space helped me be enough for myself, and we were enough for each other.”
Experience welcoming community and grow your network of support
We provide a comfortable, welcoming place. The people who show up come from different backgrounds and races and are genuinely interested in becoming their best selves. Together we learn what it means to create selves and community where all of each of us and everyone belongs.
“It is profound to do vulnerable work in a group like this. It was a different experience for me–we had such a deep level of trust with one another. It has really changed me.”
“By bringing together a phenomenal range of people who were ready to dive into this work, we created a safe container for genuine sharing.”
Meet your host-instructors
Medina Jackson
Medina Jackson, M.S.W., is the director of engagement for The P.R.I.D.E. Program (Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education) at the University of Pittsburgh, a spoken word and Hip Hop artist, blogger, mama, community educator and 2017 Pittsburgh Magazine 40 Under 40 honoree.
Hanna du Plessis
This course draws from over eight years of Hannah’s study, practice and teaching, as she has lived and worked into her own journey of development. She teaches in two “social innovation” graduate programs, and is a principal at Fit Associates. Read more of her story and see her relevant writings on her bio page.
Topics
1. Pack your bags: deepen your sense of agency and gain strength for the journey
What is the relationship between personal transformation and a better world?
Learn the difference between incremental change and transformation
Learn about the different stages people go through on the journey of transformation
Practice Set #1: Gain strength for the journey
Journal exercises
Reframe the idea of “life’s journey”
Let your social system help you recognize and claim your strength
Daily practice
Create a place for reflection. Practice checking in and resourcing yourself in this moment
2. Develop night vision: increase your self-awareness and acceptance
Understand the forces that shape us
Learn the importance of self-awareness and unconditional acceptance
Understand the importance and components of self-compassion
Practice Set #2: Increase self-awareness and acceptance
Journal exercises
Explore the influence of your family history
Self-compassion writing exercise
Daily practice
Five minutes of mindful acceptance or free-writing
3. Work with your mischievous mind: learn to see and question your beliefs
Understand how beliefs perpetuate themselves
Take a look into white supremacy culture
Look at how beliefs are formed and shifted
Practice Set #3: Shifting beliefs
Journal exercises
Use the ”ladder of inference” to unpack your judgments about someone else
Write through judgment into self-knowledge and empathy
Daily practice
Keep a pain diary, question your beliefs
4. Calm your anacondas: working with strong emotion
Understand what emotions are and why they matter
Understand what is useful (or not) when working with emotions
Dig deeper into understanding and working with fear
Practice Set #4: Working with strong emotions
Journal exercise
Write through strong emotions to find their wisdom
Daily practice
Body and emotions scan
In-the-moment practice: practice the RAIN technique
5. Support the wounded elephant: working with past pain and shame
Understand trauma and healing: what it is, why it matters
Take a step toward the difficulty: choose a painful aspect of your personal or cultural past to work with
Practice Set #5: Transforming pain
Journal exercise
Explore the shadow side of your own identity and cultural history
Daily practice
Ritual: practice letting go of something tough
Self-acceptance, self-forgivenness, and resourcing
6. Learn the ancient language: become still and tap into your own wisdom
Understand why we need our inner compass and our cultural script
Accessing your inner compass: remember what truth feels like in the body
Explore practices that help us step into stillness
Practice Set #6: Deep listening
Journal exercises
Writing exercises to access your inner wisdom
Daily practice
Try different techniques to quiet your mind and let go of control
7. Flaunt those flamingos: nourishing your creative fire
Learn the conditions necessary for creative response to life
Learn how to work with your inner critic barring the way
Practice Set #7: Dig into your power
Journal exercise
Develop your rebuttal against your inner critic
Body Practice freewriting from your imagination
Take yourself on an artist’s date to rekindle a sense of wonder
Daily practice
Practice resting into this moment and entering it fully
8. Wild joy: caring as a way of being
Set yourself up for success: a closing conversation on how to stay engaged in cultivating joy, committed to your own becoming, trusting the process, and surrounding yourself with supportive relationships and practices. Discuss how these practices can be applied to groups as you facilitate change.