As learning to swim - reflections after Kishotenketsu

What kind of teacher do we need, while internet is a teacher?

Three drunken Brabanders ask what I am. They think I am a teacher. No. Then I have to be a swimming teacher. The rest of the evening I am a swimming teacher, a Saturday evening on the train near Nijmegen, years ago.

Drunk people speak the truth. Others also saw a teacher in me. That is why the ambition to do something with this grew in me. In the meantime I already had some experience with giving courses. Fortunately, I found trainers and co-trainers who can make me the best possible teacher or rather facilitator. These were at least twelve people, successively: Margreet Pols , Arie Speksnijder , Sergio van der Pluijm , Han Verhoeven , Judith Saul , Erik Cleven , Graham Bell, Rakesh Bhambri, Maarten Onderdelinden , Jaantje Thiadens , Francis Laleman and Charles-Louis de Maere .

One of the first things I learned from them: a training is only a training if the participants practice (most of the time) skills. I had experienced this differently before. Many of my trainers matched seamlessly. The current crowning by the last two fits seamlessly with previous training courses by Graham Bell, Rakesh Bhambri and Sergio van der Pluijm , the brand new NOBTRA trainer of the year. To Sergio, I sometimes said: I am now reading a book I think you have already read: Resourceful Exformation by Francis Laleman , ISBN 9798624467897, supplemented by his blogs.

Having attended three innovative workshops with the author, a thoughtful man who invites thought, I then decided to take part in a kind of culmination while reading this book:

Kishotenketsu - a Creative Space for the Facilitation of Learning, A ten-day workshop design and facilitation program, a non-conventional creative teacher, change-maker, and community builder training program (online Global Cohort 2023, Francis Laleman & Charles-Louis de Maere).

Last week was the wrap-up and there will be a return day, Day 11, at the end of the year. This annual training includes sharing a reflection on social media.

A role that suits me well and that I have used for years is to substantiate or refute something with professional knowledge. That works well, but when training it is a pitfall: "sending" too much. Furthermore, it is difficult to take the unknown as a starting point. In the meantime I have learned to adopt an attitude of "not knowing. But what to do in a training on, for example, an ISO standard? Instead of a course on content, it can be a training on working with or despite the ISO standard, including exchanges of views on the limitations and disadvantages of that specific standard. During Kishotenketsu, I sometimes needed some time to get used to moments of delay. I then had a tendency to go straight for my interpretation or solution. When I parked this tendency, I discovered how valuable a shared searching moment can be. Difficult, of course, were the various assignments with many constraints, e.g. very limited preparation time at the last minute. At the same time, it was great fun to discover how this can be done just fine, even together. Thanks all!

During Kishotenketsu I learned, among other things: creating knowledge and skills together rather than transferring them unilaterally, sacrificing structure and control, to minimise instruction and to maximise invitation, daring to be vulnerable, collaborating with participants, enabling the emergence (rather than building) of a community, making room for the unexpected, improvising, taking on challenges with many constraints, making boring subjects playful learning, connecting maximally, remaining invitingly vague, hiding the conclusion, allowing maximum bubbling up of the wisdom of the participants and the group, tapping into imagination with resonant metaphors, maximum exposure, in a large group optimising the benefits of the collective with the benefits of pairs and triplets, creating meaningful questions to which I myself do not yet know the answer, the importance of summarising, facilitation as a playful art and as a life skill, everything designed for forgiveness, in short functioning as a serving, coaching, facilitating trainer. I have learned that (especially) even in an online training, it is important to give personal attention to all participants and their contributions. And not to use a knee chair (then I sit much too high in relation to the camera).

It is a privilege to discover and learn Kishotenketsu in this company. The seamless and vague matches the brilliant, connecting and artistically vague that I have been learning since 2019 from Jos van Boxtel . Furthermore, the participant-driven approach to co-creation chimes beautifully with the mediation style proven since 1994 by Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger and the dialogue based on it by Judith Saul and Erik Cleven , all of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation . Thus, I am pleasantly surprised at how all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

As a by-catch, all this makes me noticeably better in my traditional work as a construction pathologist and auditor on the one hand and in my second profession as a “ontklemmer” (mediator and evidence-based coach) on the other. For example, I have enriched coaching conversations with what I learned since October 2022 from Francis Laleman . Much of what I learned is suitable in conflict management, with some creative adaptation.

As I prepare a meeting now, I surprise myself how I randomly come up with new ways of working ("werkvormen", how to translate this?), even for utilising resistance, discomfort and frustration. Things I learnt as a coach, I can now translate as a facilitator of groups.

Thank all the trainers for believing in me. That really makes a difference to me. At the conclusion of Kishotenketsu: Thanks Francis Laleman and Charles-Louis de Maere (impressive how you work so naturally with so much, including clean language), all colleagues, Liz MOULIN , Greg Franklin , Alexandre Cuva , Aya Long , Vincent Hardé , Henny Bird , Saskia Listle , Kateřina Di Marco , 🎼Rijon Erickson🎶 and Justin Coyne . Thank you for this beautiful award and for the wonderfully favourable feedback. For example, a powerful compliment I received is: "You are a summary app. I feel so nurtured, you have so much wisdom." One compliment is actually too big to share here.

Three years ago, I met an architectural draftsman, Beerd Nijboer . It turned out he lived in my hometown. To our surprise, it turned out that he must have once been my swimming teacher. Earlier, he did drawing work for the construction of the swimming pool. Back then, he provided all kinds of things so that I would never unlearn something. When I swim now, I think of a question Francis Laleman asked during his workshop on Ikigai, something like this: "What is getting easier and easier?" This question gives a wonderful boost in my interaction with the water.

The drunken Brabanders are right, of course. Meanwhile, I now feel like a facilitator of learning and change. Uttering words (including compliments) can create a new reality and a new truth. All the more interesting then that new...

I am already looking forward again to upcoming workshops by Francis Laleman, although I am unfortunately unable to attend the first few.

What topic do you think is suitable for generating knowledge and skills together in this way?

Abele