Draw the art you want to see,
start the business you want to run,
play the music you want to hear,
write the books you want to read,
build the products you want to use
—do the work you want to see done.

Music and Art.

Hell, yeah! I adore that book.

Structure of Temenos Lab

Temenos as devised by Siraj Sirajuddin is designed around three main parts:

• Personal Mythology, reflecting on and sharing of our past,
• Clean Slate, deepening our understanding of our present, and
• Personal Vision, imagination and articulation of our future.

The Main Parts of Temenos Lab

Rephrased, we look at how we became who we are, at success and sabotage strategies we currently employ, and at who we want to be.

Influence Maps

Temenos suggests a simple three step process to do this:
Introspect – visualise – articulate.
The visualization deepens the reflection process and supports the story telling, and enhances our ability to remember the stories we are told.
An influence maps is a graphical representation of our stories using icons and metaphors. No one needs to be an artist to do this: you may write as well. There’s no possibility to do this wrong, as you decide what to share, and every human beings’ story will resonate with the listener, no matter what you draw or write.
I gave the participants a 10 min timebox for inspection and drawing, on A4 paper. These are the influence maps we created:

Influence Maps of the Session

Speed Story Telling

Ángel Medinilla phrased it perfectly in his Agile Kaizen session a day after mine:

“Storytelling is the single best tool for understanding, codifying and hacking culture.” — @angel_m on #kaizen at #XP2013 Love this guy!

— Olaf Lewitz (@OlafLewitz) June 7, 2013

We are storytelling apes. In addition to evolutionary intelligence (shaped from genes) our species added cultural extelligence (shaped from stories) to the mix, speeding up our development multi-fold… Stories make up who we are, how we think, what we believe, they shape how we see the world. In particular, they shape how we see other people.

Story Telling with Influence Map

Temenos creates a container for us to listen to each other’s stories. We get the option to understand each other’s personal history (mythology), and begin to see the other as a human being.

I was astonished that even with the story telling container being so short (5 or 10 minutes), how the stories kindled everyone’s energy. It was beautiful to watch how the participants ran around the room, sharing their visions with as many others as possible…

Passionate Story Telling

Summary

Feedback was overwhelming. Angel was inspired to create a sketchnote:

#xp2013 – #temenos framework by @olaflewitz , session #SketchNote pic.twitter.com/y201XfFOnQ

— Ángel Medinilla (@angel_m) June 7, 2013

All participants I talked to were astonished by how quickly Temenos allowed them to go into really relevant stories. In the words of one of the participants:

“your exercise makes me aware that WE are the true story and you just need to start. I also noticed that my story evaluated each time I was telling it and I started to be proud of some facts, or concerned more that maybe it was good decision to, for example, stop playing piano, because I would not be a good pianist anyway… So the exercise gave me the time for self reflection – good!

It also remind me that you need to clarify, very strictly, your personal goals (the part with describing how do I see myself in 5-10 years). I enjoyed that.”

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Thorsten Kalnin, who unfortunately couldn’t come to the conference, so that I had the space to do this. And to the Temenos Fellowship, who helped me learn the facilitation of this amazingly effective format for human connections.

Interview

At the end of the academy all participants were invited to give a short interview on Temenos. This is mine.

I’ll publish more of them in subsequent posts. Enjoy!

Pivot by @gapingvoid

I read a lot of Terry Pratchett. I learned a lot about people, and coaching, from Discworld’s Witches. (I submitted a lightning talk on that to Agile2013, you may vote for it here)

Recently I stumbled upon this:

The Weapons of a Witch

 And what are my weapons? she thought. And the answer came to her instantly: pride.
Oh, you hear them say it’s a sin; you hear them say it goes before a fall. And that can’t be true. The blacksmith prides himself on a good weld; the carter is proud that his horses are well turned out, gleaming like fresh chestnuts in the sunshine; the shepherd prides himself on keeping the wolf from the flock; the cook prides herself on her cakes. We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told.
And I also have fear – the fear that I will let others down – and because I fear, I will overcome that fear. I will not disgrace those who have trained me.
And I have trust, even though I am not sure what it is I am trusting.
‘Pride, fear and trust,’ she said aloud.

(from I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett)

Experiment

I tried for a few days to use pride, fear and trust as a check-in tool:

• What am I currently proud of?
• What do I currently fear?
• What do I trust in (or is affecting my trust)?

I’m still experimenting with it, and currently like it. I usually use Mad/Sad/Glad/Afraid as described in the Core Protocols, and want to compare results for myself. Have you run experiments like this? Want to try this and share your experiences?

Pride

I’m proud that our first German Temenos lab filled up so quickly, two days after a private invitation we only have on space left. Thank you Christine!

I’m proud about my influence at the client I visited this week.

I’m proud I’m sticking to my plan to reach out to five people from my network every day and ask for work options.

Fear

I realised yesterday that not knowing which client I’ll work with two months ahead is something I need to get used to as an independent consultant. For some reason, that greatly reduced my fear.

Plus, allowing myself to be proud of achievements (and tracking them, my Trello board now has a column “serendipitous achievements”) helped me frame my anxiety. And improves my…

Trust

One piece of feedback this week I am very proud of was, “you helped me view my colleagues differently. Instead of judging them and thinking they don’t want to work, I now appreciate they’re doing their best and encourage them to ask for help. And you didn’t tell me to do this, I just followed your example of trusting them.” I’m really glad trust works this way, and I’m immensely grateful to Steve Holyer for helping me make my trust explicit. He’s a trust artist. Ask him for help if your organisation is lacking trust.

Check In

Pride (8). Fear (2). Trust (9). Awesome day. Enjoy it, too!

“If we’re serious about exploring the world around us, we have to explore the world within us.”

Ken Robinson

The Temenos container provides a powerful mental model for understanding and improving relationships with others.

Often we do not consider the larger context of the situations we are in. When we explicitly look beyond the specifics of a conversation or interaction to the relationship itself, we may more easily achieve relational flow.

We use the term container to talk about the underlying fabric of our relationship with another person. The same notion can be used to understand groups we are part of as well as our relationship with ourselves. 

Consider the diagram below illustrating how containers may be used. For example, we may wish to imagine our vision for the relationship, the baggage of our history or the roles we play.

Temenos Container by Michael Sahota

Roles We Play

Dave Snowden has frequently pointed out that one specific dimension of the complexity of human systems is our ability to change roles (containers) from one second to the other. For example, when my wife calls me at work my role changes from colleague to husband. One set of beliefs, principles and values is replaced with another, potentially conflicting one.

Each role we play applies to a specific context. We share most of these contexts with other beings. A container is the Temenos term to talk about these specific contexts. Within these containers we evolve the different roles we play in life.

When we consciously examine our containers we can evolve the roles we play. Or evolve ourselves so that we behave the same across containers – to our true authentic self.

What is a Temenos?

Temenos is a Greek word for a transformational container, such as a separate piece of land dedicated to a king or god. It is a contained space of spiritual importance. With Temenos we hold all our containers as a sacred enabler to connection and relation with other human beings.

The focus of this post is on the use of the container in the context of a relationship with another person and with ourself. The creation of a transformational Temenos container and how to leverage symbols of transformation will be the subject of another post.

Containers In Our Lives

In the history of our lives, these containers are formed: shared spaces for ourselves or others, each of which defines a unique identity (the role we play), unique habits we acquire, and adds specific emotional baggage to the load we carry around in our lives.

We spend our lives in different containers. Each of them helps us to grow and be more of ourselves. For every container, we have needs that we want fulfilled and expectations we feel obliged to fulfill. Every time those needs are not met (or we think we don’t fulfill the needs) we are hurt: we think we fail the container or the container fails us. Some examplesy of such containers:

• Our self. This is the most important and challenging container for each of us.

• The family we grow up in.

• The friends we make, and lose, over the years.

• Teams we join, and leave, workplaces, clients…

• People who die.

• Relationships we start, and finish.

• Our children, the mutual unconditional love that challenges us and makes us whole.

All of these relationships, the roles we play in these and how they affect us can be framed as containers:

• Containers we join (some deliberately, some by chance)—born into a family

• Containers we leave (or that leave us)—divorce, death

• Containers we enter—coming home from work

• Containers we exit—leaving home for work

Olaf’s Story

When I created my first influence map and reflected on the containers which have been important in my life, I noticed I had unconsciously (though still deliberately) removed roles from my portfolio. For example, the relationship to my parents had transformed into a mutual friendship on eye level; same with my brother. I had effectively stopped acting as a son, and brother. Don’t get me wrong: we didn’t break up, the relationship became closer. Its quality had changed, and I noticed that not playing these roles gave me ease. So I thought: why not continue deliberately in that direction? How many roles do I want to and do I need to play? I haven’t found a definite answer yet. And I’ll stop being an employee soon, which is a step on this path.

Michael’s Story

One example of using the container model to improve a relationship is with my younger son, Sean. When I considered the whole of our relationship, I could see that I was failing him in providing attention to him as an individual (rather than as part of my pack of three kids). Once I had taken stock of the current situation and our history, I was able to create a vision for how I wanted our relationship to be. For this container, what I want is for me to really see him and for him to know that I really see the special, unique person he is. Our relationship has improved. And that for me is the whole point of containers: an opportunity to reflect and create a different path for ourselves.

Acknowledgement

Michael, Siraj and Olaf in Temenos

Temenos is a special kind of experiential laboratory (usually delivered as a weekend lab) that Siraj Sirajuddin has created over many years integrating diverse influences such as Buddhist, Islamic, Jesuit and Hindu spirituality, mythology and Jungian psychology. He’s been using these labs to support lean and agile transformations in his practice as an Organisational Transformation Mentor.

Upcoming Workshops

• Toronto, April 27/28 - Michael
• Germany, July 19-20 (details tbd) — Olaf and Christine Heider
• Nashville, TN, August 2/3/4 – Before Agile 2013 – Olaf & Michael
• Washington, DC, monthly events (with Siraj)
• thinking about: September 16-18 near Edinburgh, right before LeanAgileScotland conference

Be the Only One by @gapingvoid

Gratitude

I feel glad for my family who supports me and loves me.
I feel glad and supported by Mike who helps me by challenging me.
I feel glad for the serendipitous options I’m discovering every day.
I feel afraid about the challenges that lie ahead and whether I will get through them. I feel glad that today I am confident that I can.
I feel glad that I got support coming from unexpected directions, again.
Happy to socialize with former colleagues and clients today.

Learning

I will try keeping a list of things I want to do, and a list of achievements. I discovered that while I do many things and achieve good results, my mind tends to focus on the things I didn’t do… Which is frustrating. Maybe I’m doing the wrong things, or maybe I just don’t dare to allow myself to deserve to be happy. The human mind is full of wonders.

Read a great post about Privacy today. Amazing clarity of observation and articulation.

Re-read Bob’s awesome post on organizational therapy. I love the approach and want to do exactly that, and I think it needs another name. I’ll go with trust artist for the time being. His recent (draft) paper Product Aikido looks promising as well.

Awesome ACEconf which I missed last week published their videos today.

With all my current focus on emotions on trust, I found this post insightful: When the Heart is a Fickle Leader.

Achievements

I met a coach on Tuesday night at Techmeetups Berlin Drinks & Demo Night who lives around the corner (500m), comes from a totally different background and apparently has very similar interests—empathy and emotions in organisations… My tweets about the Culture & Climate Check didn’t get much interest, though. Still looking for clients

My neighbour told me today he’ll introduce me to his business network next week. Options coming from unexpected directions. Stumbled upon an old paper by Dave Snowden about Managing for Serendipity. Recommended. It works

Live Learn Love by @gapingvoid

Live

I want to check in:
I feel glad for all the conversations I have about options and challenges…
I feel glad for my friends and family who support me and believe in me.
I feel glad that two options to host a Temenos lab are becoming more specific (Nuremberg, July and Nashville, August, details tba soon).
I feel glad for the spring and the sun and that my hay fever is much less bad than I feared it would be after the long winter.
I feel glad I took the chance to attend techmeetup drinks night: first time in a long while where I met nobody I knew. And I met new people and had fun!

Learn

Stumbled upon a nice video today in an email from Steve Holyer, and wrote down one quote:

“If you standardise work in a service organisation, you prevent the system from being able to absorb variety.”

It resonated as I had a conversation with Dave Snowden earlier, where he mentioned that one of the fundamental dysfunctiosn in software development methodology was to use methods from manufacturing when software was about service and not manufacturing.

Mike Sutton stole my diary format, so I needed to create a new one.

Lots of great feedback on my Culture & Climate Check product idea. Lots of learning to do.

Love

I submitted a lightning talk for Agile2013: Headology demystified—what agile coaches can learn from Discworld witches. Will rename it as folks unfamiliar with Pratchett might not know the concept of headology.

Preparation for Temenos labs is proceeding. We found a venue for the one before Agile2013 and are looking for one for July 19-21 in Germany. Who’s interested in participating?

more to come. stay tuned!

“And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

My dear friend and challenger Mike Sutton started a diary too. Awesome how easily connections can be amplified.

Check-In

What a day.
I’m glad I was contacted by a friend whom I hadn’t talked to in two years, and we’ll meet next week. Just one of two doors that I considered closed which reopened today… Happy.
I’m glad that some options for my independence become more specific.
I’m mad & glad (=excited) that the options emerge faster than I can write them down.
I feel grateful for an afternoon with Niels Pfläging. He was giving a lecture on organising complexity at a Berlin university and we had a long conversation afterwards.
I am glad that a friend is in Berlin whom I’d like to work with and that we’ll meet tomorrow. Woot!
Life is good to me. The universe is unfolding as it should. I’m in.

Achievements Since Last Entry

• The German translation of Commitment—Novel about Managing Project Risks is done. Had a great idea around that yesterday, will see how that develops.
• Asked for recommendations on LinkedIn and got some already.
• A German book was published with my article “Wandel wagen” in it.
• I met Niels (see above).
• I got more calm, and confidence.

Next Desired Impact

• Discover options for work for July.
• Elaborate the idea of a network of trusted influencers. Find a name.
• Rewrite the introduction to the LeanProcrastination book.

In the course of our lives, we all encounter events that shape us, allow us to change and grow, that have made us who we are. We don’t tend to acknowledge or appreciate these events, and we rarely share them. Understanding our own path, reflecting how we became who we are, which influences determined what we value and what we want, is a powerful source of personal growth. We better understand our own unique identity, our relationships with others and the related emotional baggage to the load we carry around in our lives.

Influence Maps is the module in a Temenos lab that allows you to reflect, visualise (map) and articulate your personal history, and share it with the group—as detailed and deep as you choose to. Like every Temenos module, Influence Maps works on its own, too.

Influence Maps

Influence Maps (the key/main part of a Temenos lab) are used in group workshops to:

1. Create deep personal learning and growth,
2. Connect with other participants and develop a deep level of trust,
3. Allow ourselves to be seen and accepted as human beings,
4. Create the opportunity for participants to heal one another’s emotional wounds.

An influence map is a visual depiction of the influences in our lives that have led to us becoming the person we are.

The diagram below shows the main elements of Influence Maps and how the Tememos container serves as a safe and caring environment.

Influence Map Infographic by Michael Sahota

Influence Maps help you understand and appreciate your past. This will hurt as you share past trauma, and makes you ready to be healed.

The healing and personal growth results are emergent from the container we collectively create. A high-quality container will lead to a myriad of opportunities.

Don’t mistake the Temenos’ healing effect with therapy. While we all have our unique history and individual and specific things we did and had happen to us, the strategies we use to deal with them tend to show common patterns. Many people who lose a dear person, for example, go through a stage of denial. Through sharing our history we create resonance with others who’ve been employing similar strategies.

“People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being.”

Marshall Rosenberg

Example Influence Maps

Before we explain the workshop setup and mechanics, here are some example influence maps.

Michael presenting his Influence Map

Olaf presenting his Influence Map

As influence maps are a creative expression of one’s identity, there is no one “right” way to do them.

Workshop Setup

Trust. Safety. Caring. These are the properties that participants are asked to create and nurture in a Temenos. The role of the facilitator is to work with participants to have these properties rapidly emerge. For example, supporting and encouraging vulnerability so that we can speak about the issues that shame us and hold us from our potential.

From our experience, the group size should not exceed 6-8 voluntary participants who are interested in personal growth.

Workshop Mechanics

The first exercise in a Temenos lab (and the one taking up most of the time) is drawing and sharing of Influence Maps. The process is very simple:

1. Introspect: Through a guided meditation with music, we ask you to reflect on your life. Use your timeline to guide your memories. Imagine a trusted friend asked you: What do I need to know about you that will help me understand who you really are? Ask yourself: What about me do I not dare to tell anyone? How much of that might I be willing to share to understand myself better?
2. Visualise: Each participant uses a large flipchart paper and creates their life’s story with an eye towards defining moments and key influences. Many people find it useful to draw a timeline, but any expression of your deepest self will work. It’s not about the drawing, it’s about the story you tell.
3. Articulate: Participants take turns telling their stories through their influence map. Before any person shares their story, another participant will set the stage for her, to initialise the Temenos: “Sit down, slow down, breathe, and focus on the whole person who will present herself.” Then share your story with the group. The group will help you understand yourself better: You mentioned <…>. Could you slow that down for us? How did that make you feel?
4. As a member of the group (or a facilitator): Observe for patterns. Participants are able to help each other learn and heal in two ways. When we are similar in a trait, we can see ourselves better through the other person. One person struggling with a loss will be able to help another: “If you can forgive yourself for doing <…>, I can forgive myself for doing <…>”.  An example from a recent Temenos: “If you can forgive yourself for being an average parent and making mistakes, then I can forgive myself for doing the same.” When we are dissimilar, we can see what is missing in ourselves or help others see what they may be missing.

At least two people in the group should know how to ask open (coaching) questions.

The Influence Maps add depth to the Temenos. Without them you will still identify improvement options, and have less probability for moments of true transformation.

Testimonials

“Inspiring, Healing, Present. Michael’s presence facilitates the creation of a strong container to support making the connection from the heart, not the mind. The influence map is a powerful tool for building connection.” – An Agile Coach

“Moving, Revealing, Balancing. I found that deep connections to other human beings can be found and made a lot more often than I expected. A safe space was created and held all the way through it.” – Melanie Meinen

Upcoming Workshops

• Toronto, April 27/28 - Michael
• Germany, July 19-20 (details tbd) — Olaf and Christine Heider
• Nashville, TN, August 2/3/4 – Before Agile 2013 (setting up registration) – Olaf & Michael
• Near Washington, DC, monthly events (with Siraj)

Please ping me if you’re interested to attend a Temenos lab in Germany/Europe.

Criteria

I basically look at the past day (or two, or more) and ask myself, “what has been remarkable?” “What would I like to remember in a few years? I intend to keep this concise and interesting.

Real Options

As I’m currently translating Olav’s and Chris’ book into German (in a pair-endeavour with Mike Leber) I’m stumbling on a lot of interesting information on Real Options. In a recent discussion about the possibility to evaluate/price Real Options, Chris Matts pointed to a three year old comic: Why Real Options can’t be calculated using Black-Scholes or similar mathematical approaches. Entertaining!

Community of Thinkers

Reading the decision-coach blog I hadn’t visited in a while, I stumbled upon an idea that is as relevant today as it was then: The Community of Thinkers. Chris’ take on the idea is here, the community was started by Liz Keogh, Jean Tabaka and Eric Willecke. How do we revive it? Would it help?

A Bit of Headology

I’ve advertised the opinion for a long time that most things you want to know about coaching can be learned from Terry Pratchett, his Discworld witches, especially the Tiffany Aching novels. Here’s a quote I read today, it’s from I Shall Wear Midnight:

“But these weren’t really magic. Anyone could learn them if they had a lick of sense, but sometimes even a lick is hard to find. People are often so busy living that they never stopped to wonder why. Witches did, and that meant them being needed: oh yes, needed – needed practically all the time, but not, in a very polite and definitely unspoken way, not exactly wanted.”