Event report: Power of dialogue – your leadership in a changing world

Event report: Power of dialogue – your leadership in a changing world

Date: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, Sunday, November 10, 2019

Venue: 309A, South 6 building, Ookayama

Guest facilitator: Bob Stilger, Tamio Nakano

ToTAL invited Bob Stilger and Tamio Nakano, two leading facilitators who have long been committed to community building where change and uncertainty are present. They have worked to co-create the spaces where people can create their own future. Bob Stilger is regularly called to North and South America, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and Southern Africa. In this one day session, Bob invited students to dialogue within and among themselves and guided them with intriguing questions to be aware of “what is important for me right now, right here?”, which makes the foundation of their leadership.

How it turned out

1. Check-in

• Your name, by what name would you like to be called?

• Where were you born?

• Where are you living now?

• What brings you here?

2. Life story sharing – Bob Stilger and Tamio Nakano

• Bob Stilger shared his stories when he arrived in Japan immediately after 3.11 disaster, how he spent time and built community together with people in Kesen-numa. He shared many leadership-related stories, for example, about how a young man, who arrived at a village with the full intention of helping but didn’t know anything, has found what to do by listening to people. Leadership is not only for disastrous times, but such alarm clock events often work to wake people up. Tamio Nakano told his experience of volunteering work after 3.11 in Tohoku and how it led him to an academic career.

You can see more about Bob’s story in his book:

-English: https://www.amazon.co.jp/AfterNow-Cannot-Future-Where-English-ebook/dp/B07H469SKM

• Bob introduced a core question for the day: “What’s important for you?”

• Dialogue with students

  

3. Silent walk – with a question “What am I ready to let go of?”
   What really matters is not the answer but holding questions with you and asking yourself.

   

4. Lunch and sharing of what you have found during the silent walk

5. Play-doh work (pair work)

   

   

• Building a model of the system you are in and place you in the model

• Looking at the model from 4 directions

1. E: What do I love about it? What ignites my energy?

2. S: What are the key issues, conflicts and hard truths I must face?

3. W: What is coming to an end? What is waiting to be born?

4. N: What, for me, is the essential core?

• See other people’s models

• Dialogue with students

1. What did you find?

2. What does this work have to do with leadership?

6. Check-out