Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Issue 247 – January 2021
Introduction
A happy New Year to you all. This is the second issue of my Knowledge Letter in its new format and location. I hope you not only enjoy it but find the material useful and stimulating. All the items are drawn from my new blog.
A major event in 2021 is our third annual Conversational Leadership workshop coming up in April – details below.
Contents
- Third annual workshop on Conversational Leadership
26 - 30 April 2021 - The Consilience Project
Making better sense of the world - Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop
February 12th 2021 - Freedom of speech in universities
It's our duty to tolerate colleagues even when they say things that we consider foolish - How to run a Personal Growth Community
Design and run your own Personal Growth Community - Talking with strangers can be exceptionally rewarding
Talk to strangers - Help Keep My Work Alive
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- Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Third annual workshop on Conversational Leadership
26 - 30 April 2021
In 2018, John Hovell, Nancy Dixon, and I ran a Conversational Leadership workshop at the Elvetham - just a few miles from my home and last year, John Hovell, Donita Volkwijn, and I reran it online.
In 2021, John Hovell, Donita Volkwijn, Saule Menane, and I will be running it once again online.
Our ability to practice Conversational Leadership depends on our taking responsibility for the issues we care about and our capacity to convene and host quality conversations.
In our 5-day workshop, you will engage in numerous experiential-based conversational practices and feedback sessions.
Join our third annual workshop on Conversational Leadership on April 26 – 30, 2021, to experience the power of conversation, explore questions that matter, learn about yourself, others, and the world, and practice impossible conversations.
You can find more information here.
The Consilience Project
Making better sense of the world
I want to introduce you to an exciting new project initiated by the Civilization Research Institute - the Consilience Project - co-founded by Daniel Schmachtenberger.
If you are not familiar with Daniel's work, take a look at this video series on the War on Sensemaking.
I have put together below a short description of the Consilience Project adapted from their Executive Summary of the project.
You will find more information in their project slide deck, and there is a Facebook group for people who want to know what is needed and provide support.
The world faces unprecedented catastrophic risks across the spectrum of finance, governments, ecological health, and global stability. To respond appropriately, leaders and citizens need increased capacities to make sense of what is happening in the world and to communicate and coordinate effectively.
The Consilience Project aims to catalyze a cultural movement toward better sense-making and dialogue - the essential foundations of a functional democratic society.
The goal is to restore the health of our information commons by helping educate people on how to improve their information processing so they can better detect media bias and disinformation while becoming more capable sense-makers and citizens.
The benefit to society is to decrease polarization and tribalism, decrease outraged certainty on all sides, and increase the quality of public sense-making and good faith civil discourse towards a civilization that can actually coordinate effectively and solve problems.
The benefit to individuals is resilience to media manipulation, increased capacity to understand the world, including the views of other people, access to a community of earnest and capable thinkers seeking to make sense of critical topics together. All of these serve to increase personal agency and the capacity to participate in improving the world meaningfully.
Consilience Definition: “In science and history, consilience is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significantly so on its own.”
Credit: Adapted from: The Consilience Project - Executive Summary
Update (17 May 2021): The Consilience Project website is now open.
Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop
February 12th 2021
I have not run a Knowledge Café Workshop for some time, but given the recent increased interest in the Café format, I hope to run two or three online events in 2021. The first half-day event is coming up on 12th February.
If you are not familiar with the method, the Knowledge Café is a simple way to bring a small group of people together to have a lightly structured conversation on a topic of mutual interest. It can be adapted for various purposes, and you do not need to be a professional facilitator to design and host one.
Although the Café was initially designed for face-to-face gatherings, it works exceptionally well for virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft teams with a breakout room capability. I will explain how to adapt the method for these environments in the workshop.
You can find more information and register here.
Freedom of speech in universities
It's our duty to tolerate colleagues even when they say things that we consider foolish
Over the past few years, much has been reported in the press about so-called cancel culture and deplatforming where activists deny speakers with controversial opinions access to University venues.
In 2019 Cambridge University rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, who has attracted controversy for his views on transgender rights, gender, and race, after a backlash from faculty and students.
Such censorship undermines freedom of speech, and so it is good to see some universities fighting back.
The University of Chicago, for example, following a Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression in 2014, adopted a set of guiding principles designed to demonstrate a commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. These have since become known as the Chicago Principles, and have been adopted on many college campuses in the United States
More recently, Cambridge University's governing body, the Regent House, published an update to a statement on freedom of speech originally adopted in 2016. Here is an extract from the new statement.
The University of Cambridge, as a world-leading education and research institution, is fully committed to the principle, and to the promotion, of freedom of speech and expression.
The University’s core values are ‘freedom of thought and expression’ and ‘freedom from discrimination’.
The University fosters an environment in which all of its staff and students can participate fully in University life, and feel able to question and test received wisdom, and to express new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions within the law, without fear of intolerance or discrimination.
In exercising their right to freedom of expression, the University expects its staff, students and visitors to be tolerant of the differing opinions of others, in line with the University’s core value of freedom of expression.
The University also expects its staff, students and visitors to be tolerant of the diverse identities of others, in line with the University’s core value of freedom from discrimination.
While debate and discussion may be robust and challenging, all speakers have a right to be heard when exercising their right to free speech within the law.
The originally proposed update to the 20216 statement required opinions to be "respectful", but after strong objections, the wording was amended to support a commitment to "tolerance" rather than "respect".
Respect: admiration felt or shown for someone or something that you believe has good ideas or qualities. Credit: Cambridge Dictionary
The concerns were about having to be respectful of ideas, regardless of their merit. It was felt that "respect" would undermine the "freedom to question", and people would be afraid to explore controversial views in case they were reported for being disrespectful to others' opinions.
Tolerate: to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them. Credit: Cambridge Dictionary
The idea of tolerating people and their ideas rather than respecting them resonates strongly with what I have written in my blook about showing respect. We need to tolerate ideas that we don't like and show respect to the people who hold them. This is at the core of ensuring freedom of speech.
It's our duty to tolerate colleagues even when they say things that we consider foolish, when we find their views offensive we should point that out politely.
We should not be running to the vice-chancellor asking him to censor them.
Credit: Professor Ross Anderson
Interestingly, given this change of policy by the Univesity there is now a call to re-invite Jordan Peterson to take up a fellowship.
How to run a Personal Growth Community
Design and run your own Personal Growth Community
In my blook, I have dedicated a chapter to Conversational Stories that takes a look at several stories of how the Knowledge Café and other Conversational Methods have been used or adapted by various organizations.
A recent addition is the Personal Growth Community (PGC) story - a group (and a concept) founded in 2011 by Jan Hellberg and Michail Papatheofrastou at the European Patent Office in the Hague.
The PGC is an adaptation of the Knowledge Café process to encourage free dialogue on various personal development topics.
Many forms of the PGC are possible, but to create a successful community, there are only a few strict rules that need to be followed. However, the Knowledge Café process has proven to be one of the best formats for the PGC.
The post is written by Jan himself, and he explains in detail how to design and run your own Personal Growth Community.
Talking with strangers can be exceptionally rewarding
Talk to strangers
As a child, we are taught not to talk with strangers, and as a 4-year-old with little experience of the world, this is probably sound advice. But as an adult, talking with strangers can be exceptionally rewarding.
Help Keep My Work Alive
For almost 25 years, I’ve been sharing the Gurteen Knowledge Letter each month, and many of you have been reading it for five years or more. My Knowledge Café also reached a milestone, celebrating its 20th anniversary in September 2022.
If my work has made a difference to you, I’d be grateful if you could consider supporting it. A small monthly donation or any one-off contribution would greatly help cover some of my website hosting costs.
Thank you to the 50+ patrons who already support me – your generosity means a lot.
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David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
