The difference between facilitating and hosting
One of my Art of Hosting mates, over in the US, Tenneson Woolf blogged a few days ago on How is Hosting Different.
It is always kind of difficult to explain to people how hosting indeed is different than the ‘normal’ facilitation. I start with the last point that was named by his colleague
powerful alliance of the hosting team, trusting each other with simple eye contact
It isn’t named very much in the Art of Hosting training itself, but the fact that we trust each other, the fact that there is always friendship in the deepest sense between hosting ‘mates’ makes it different in many ways. One is that together, the two, three, four or more people on the hosting team we form ‘a field’ – now I know that is different to explain, and the word is used for many different things – but it is about the synergy of the different people and the different competences. It is not an added list, but a weaving together of these elements.
This links with the first point
a sustained intimacy
Because the hosting team has the intimacy between them, it can invite the participants also into it, and can sustain this level of connection throughout the training.
Another important element that is different from ‘normal’ facilitation is
less attention on group guidelines — working from the assumption that it as already safe and living appreciatively with that
this also links with the point mentioned before. Because it IS safe between the members of the hosting team, we model it and we can easily invite people into it. And we live ‘appreciatively’, for ourselves, with each other, and regarding participants and projects. That is nothing we do now and then, we live it in our lives, all the time.
Trust, intimacy, appreciation… that all is part of the practice of Art of Hosting; besides a lot more!
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:36 am
“Trust, intimacy, appreciation” … what a love-ly garden of words that sprouts with stillness and movement from the intention to be hosted and be hosts
May 31st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I can a agree.
Ànd staying connected innerly and with the field is the necessary tool to make the hosting synergy work, while good programs and techniques and tools can facilitate this..