Conversation Starters

Those of us who have taken on leadership positions should receive consistent feedback from our peers, our supervisors, and clients/students/consumers that our organization serves.  Recently, I had the opportunity to collect such feedback and it truly stopped me in my tracks -- in an anonymous-response ESCI (emotional social competency inventory) assessment, I got an insight into how my past and present colleagues view me as a leader.   After what has been a difficult year-plus professionally -- seeing 100% turnover twice in two years in our small nonprofit staff, including an abrupt departure by our Executive Director, going through an over 10-month span without permanent organizational leadership, and now adapting to new permanent leadership -- reading what these colleagues of mine think about me brought me to tears.  Genuine, happy tears.  I am so thankful for these incredible mentors, coworkers, volunteers, and community leaders who see so much value in me....

  For me, it kept coming back to a blue dot in the center of a blank space.  Dr. Mark Chupp showed this image to all of us who were participating in the Appreciative Inquiry for Social Change workshop, which he co-lead with Carolyn Colleen over three days last week. He asked us, “What do you see here?” “A blue dot,” someone said. “A black ring around a blue dot,” someone else said. “I see a 4,” someone chimed in, noting the slide number at the bottom of the screen. “Very observant,” Dr. Chupp said. But what were we missing? We were missing most of what the image before us showed: a blank, white space surrounding a relatively small blue dot with an even tinier black outline.  Instead of seeing the entire picture, our eyes were drawn to one focal point -- all of our attention and effort went there, with the only exception being a page number.  But what about the rest of it?  What could we see if we took it all in? Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a strengths-based met...

 Originally published on The Community Innovation Network website. I Am What I Think You Think I Am Sarah Wolf , MFA, MSSA Candidate Community Innovation Network Graduate Student Research Assistant February 8th, 2021 On February 1st, we launched our brand-new Foundations of Collaborative Community Change (FC3) with the first workshop, Change Agents Unite. As a Graduate Student Research Assistant at Community Innovation Network, I was so ready to be part of this incredible group of participants from all over the United States. We gathered in a virtual space ready to be inspired by the facilitators -- CIN Founder Dr. Mark Chupp and his Mandel School colleague Dr. Adrianne Fletcher -- and inspired by each other. To spark new joy into our community work. To aid in that process, Dr. Chupp and Dr. Fletcher guided us in thoughtful dialogue -- and introduced some very poignant exercises. Namely, we did “ The Looking Glass Self Exercise ,” something always available in our  CIN Toolki...