4.02: Outside Conversations with Adam Kahane - On Facilitating Breakthrough
Episode Description:
Tuesday and Tim are joined by long-time friend, mentor, author, and thought leader, Adam Kahane, Director of Reos Partners, where he talks about the inspiration and reasons for writing his most recent book, Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together.
Tuesday, Tim and Adam discuss transformative facilitation - putting the pragmatic in the centre of the work, Adam’s broadened definition of facilitator, the importance of removing obstacles to and understanding of love, power, and justice, the learnings gained through practice and failure, and the core practice of paying attention.
About Adam:
Adam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners, an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
Adam is a leading organizer, designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address such challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.
Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems, about which Nelson Mandela said: “This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.” He is also the author of Power and Love, Transformative Scenario Planning, Collaborating with the Enemy, and Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together.
Resources:
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McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
“Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future” by Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski & Berry Sue Flowers
Francisco De Roux, Head of Jesuits Order in Colombia
Adam’s interviews with: President Juan Manuel Santos, Christiana Figueres, and Trevor Manuel
Martin Luther King Jr. : “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
German-American theologian and philosopher, Paul Tillich
“Love, Power, and Justice,” by Paul Tillich
Rumi: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Bill O’Brien: “The success of the intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.”
Adam’s recommended song/poem: “Different Sides,” by Leonard Cohen.
Final question for Adam: “Who should we [Tim & Tuesday] be talking to?”
Response: adrienne marie brown + Jim Gimian
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