Facilitating Emergence: Matrix Group Dialogue

Outcomes:  Understand what Matrix Group Dialogue is and what need it meets in today’s world.  Experience how emergence evolves, through participating in the process.  Have some take away tools to support implementation.

Inspiration My current learning edge is around the nature of dynamic tensions – male/female, spirit/matter, being/doing, individual/collective, etc. I am coming to believe that collective wisdom involves growing our capacity for being with difference while staying connected. What shows up as conflict is often simply one aspect of a larger dynamic pattern. By welcoming that disturbance and understanding the nature of what it is in tension with, we can embrace the larger context from which to draw insights and answers. –– Peggy Holman, author of Engaging Emergence, Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

Facilitating Emergence: Matrix Group Dialogue How can we use Matrix tools and principles to help solve problems or address issues and territories in a complex, continually changing emergent world?

EMERGENCE: “The arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems.” – Prof. Jeffrey Goldstein

Matrix Group Dialogue Why Matrix? What’s the gap? Theory U and the Change Lab (Reos Partners) Chaordic Design Open Space Technology Human Systems Dynamics Appreciative Inquiry The Art of Hosting World Café Deep Democracy

Matrix Group Dialogue Why Matrix? What’s the gap? The possibility of communication between each pair of people in the open … In the eyes & ears of the whole!

Keys to Emergent Wisdom ✺ Differentiating while staying in connection ✺ Distributing Roles and Fields

Beyond conflict & competition… …to collaboration and connection through the enlivened differences between them. Yields groups that move…

Providing the capacity for… Emergent wisdom through interconnection.

Practices & Principles Urge Merge Diverg e Emerge Converge Clarify Intention and Purpose Form & maintain the Matrix – P2P, GofH, Feedback – Differentiate  distribute thru as many pairs as possible – Delay solution/resolution – Leave the comfortable & habitual / question assumptions – Slow Down – Surf the creative tension – stability vs creative chaos Listen for the new future emerging – ideas, feelings, practices Plan for implementation