Every time we gather, there needs to be space for a discussion of what gifts have been exchanged. This question needs to be asked of the community:

What gift have you received from another in this room?

Tell the person in specific terms.

We focus on gifts because what we focus on, we strengthen. The gifts- of-this-gathering question can be asked this way:

What has someone in your small group done today that has touched you or moved you or been of value to you?

or

In what way did a particular person engage you in a way that had meaning?

In practical terms, this means that in each small group, one person at a time tells the others what they have received and appreciated from others.

Because we are so awkward about this kind of discussion, the conversation needs to be set up in a special way. We ask the person who hears about what they have given another to say, “Thank you, I like hearing that.” We want to let the statements of gifts to have a chance to sink in. Don’t deflect the appreciation. Help them put aside the routine of denying their gifts. Encourage them not to say that others brought it out of them, or what a great group this is, or how they got lucky for once and will try to not let it happen again.

The gifts conversation can be so easy to miss. We have often packed a lot into a gathering or been taken off guard by a dissent or commitments conversation. It takes discipline to lead people to share the gifts and to truly receive the feedback.  But this is what grounds each meeting.

How will you remember to share gifts at your gathering?

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 140). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The most radical and uncomfortable conversation is about our gifts. The leadership and citizen task is to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center. The gifts conversation is the essence of valuing diversity and inclusion. We are not defined by deficiencies or what is missing. We are defined by our gifts and what is present. This is so for individuals and communities. Belonging occurs when we tell others what gift we receive from them, especially in this moment. When this occurs, in the presence of others, community is built. We embrace our own destiny when we have the courage to acknowledge our own gifts and choose to bring them into the world. The questions for the gift conversations are: “What is the gift you still hold in exile, what is it about you that no one knows, what gratitude has gone unexpressed, and what have others in this room done that has touched you?”

The conversation about gifts is what unlocks belonging. Is there someone who is a gift in your life and community that you have not yet told?  Imagine what that would bring forth for them and for the community you share?

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 124). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Sometimes we act as if we need to choose between commitment and refusal or dissent. They are friendly to each other, and both important conversations. Saying no is a stance as useful as a promise. Both offer clarity and the authentic basis to move forward, even if there is no place to go at the moment. Lip service is another story. Nothing kills democracy or trans- formation faster than lip service. The future does not die from opposition; it disappears in the face of lip service.

Lip service sabotages commitment. It offers an empty step forward. It comes in the form of “I’ll try.” It is an agreement made standing next to the exit door. Whenever someone says they will try hard, agree to think about it, or do the best they can, it is smart to consider that a no. It may not be a final refusal, but at that moment there is no commitment. We can move forward with refusal; we cannot move forward with maybe. Trying hard is too often a coded refusal. Whether it is a response to feeling coerced, a sense of internal obligation, or just a desire to look good, it is really a way to escape the moment and hijacks commitment.

Wholehearted commitment makes a promise to peers about our contribution to the success of the whole. It is centered in two questions: “What promise am I willing to make?” and “What is the price I am willing to pay for the success of the whole effort?” It is a promise for the sake of a larger purpose, not for the sake of personal return. Commitment comes dressed as a promise.

What does lip service look like in your life? Is there a promise that you no longer mean? Is there a no that you’ve been postponing?

What will it look like to be prepared for lip service in your gathering, and how might you allow that to mature past barter into commitment or dissent?

Commitment usually comes later in the process, after the first four conversations and some of the work on substantive issues has been done.

Commitment is a promise made with no expectation of return. It is the willingness to make a promise independent of either approval or reciprocity from other people. This takes barter out of the conversation. Our promise is not contingent on the actions of others. The economist is replaced by the artist. As long as our promise is dependent on the actions of others, it is not a commitment; it is a deal, a contract. A bargained future is not an alternative future; it is more of the past brought forward.

The declaration of a promise is the form that commitment takes; that is the action that initiates change. It is one thing to set a goal or objective, but something more personal to use the language of promises. Plus, to the extent that a promise is a sacred form of expression, this language anoints the space in the asking.

• What promises am I willing to make?
• What is the cost to others for me to keep my commitments, or to fail in my commitments
• What is the no that I am postponing?

These are good questions to ask with someone you already work with and trust. How might you use these question in your gathering?                 

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 124,136-138 ). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The dissent conversation begins by allowing people the space to say no. It rests on the belief that if we cannot say no, then our yes has no meaning…

The dissent conversation creates an opening for commitment. The questions explicitly ask for doubts and reservations. When they are expressed, we need to just listen. Don’t solve them, defend against them, or explain anything. People’s doubts, cynicism, resignation are theirs alone. Not to be taken on by us. …. Without doubt, our faith has no meaning, no substance; it is purchased at too small a price to give it value.

This sounds simple and true enough, but in a patriarchal world, dissent is considered disloyalty. Or negativism. Or not being a team player. Or not being a good citizen. America, love it or leave it. You are either with us or against us. This is a corruption of hospitality and friendship. Hospitality is the welcoming not only of strangers, but also of the strange ideas and beliefs they bring with them.                                                                                         

A critical task of leadership is to protect space for the expression of people’s doubts. The act of surfacing doubts and dissent does not deflect the communal intention to create something new. What is critical, and hard to live with, is that leaders do not have to respond to each person’s doubts. None of us do. Authentic dissent is complete simply in its expression. When we think we have to answer people’s doubts and defend ourselves, then the space for dissent closes down. When people have doubts, and we attempt to answer them, we are colluding with their reluctance to be accountable for their own future. All we have to do with the doubts of others is get interested in them. We do not have to take them on or let them resonate with our own doubts. We just get interested.*

Who are those you currently plan and live with? How might you remain open or closed to dissent that they are expressing, in an effort to be accountable for their own future?

As you plan for your gathering, how will you leave room for dissenting conversations?

*Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 124, 132 ). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.                                               

At some later point, the essential question upon which accountability hinges needs to be asked:                                                           

What have I done to contribute to the very thing I complain about or want to change?

This question, higher risk than most others, requires a great deal of trust. It can be asked only after people are connected to each other. This may be the most transforming question of all. If I do not see my part in causing the past and the present, then there is no possible way I can participate usefully in being a coauthor of the future.

Another ownership conversation is to confront our stories, the stories we talked of earlier that limit the possibility of an alternative future…                                                           

The sequence… goes like this (adapted from Werner Erhard):                                                

What is the story about this community or organization that you hear yourself most often telling? The one that you are wedded to and maybe even take your identity from?

Then ask:

What are the payoffs you receive from holding on to this story?

The payoffs are usually in the neighborhood of being right, being in control, being safe. Or not being wrong, controlled, or at risk.

And finally:

What is your attachment to this story costing you?

The cost, most often, is our sense of aliveness.

These are the questions that allow us to complete our stories. Not forget them, but complete them. The naming of the story to another, in the context we have created, can take the limiting power out of the story. This allows the story to stay in the past and creates an opening for us to move forward.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p.129-130). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Ownership is the decision to become the author of our own experience. It is the choice to decide on our own what value and meaning will occur when we show up. It is the stance that each of us is creating the world, even the one we have inherited.

The key distinction for the conversation is between ownership and blame (a form of entitlement).

We have to realize that each time people enter a room, they walk in with ambivalence, wondering whether this is the right place to be. This is because their default mindset is that someone else owns the room, the meeting, and the purpose that convened the meeting.

The idea that “I am cause” can be a difficult question to take on immediately, so lower-risk questions precede a direct approach on this one. The best opening questions are those about the ownership that people feel for this particular gathering. The extent to which they act as owners of this meeting is symptomatic of how they will act as owners of the larger question on the table. The extent of our ownership for larger questions is more difficult and therefore requires a level of relatedness before it can be held in the right context.

Here is a series of questions that have the capacity to shift the ownership of the room.

The most effective way to renegotiate the social contract is to ask people to rate on a seven-point scale, from low to high, their responses to four questions:

• How valuable an experience (or project, or community) do you plan for this to be?
• How much risk are you willing to take?
• How participative do you plan to be?
• To what extent are you invested in the well-being of the whole? 

These are the four questions to ask early in any gathering. People answer them individually, then share their answers in a small group. As mentioned above, be sure to remind them not to give advice, be helpful, or cheer anyone up. Just get interested in whatever the answers are.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 128-129). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The ownership conversation asks citizens to act as if they were creating what exists in the world. Confession is the religious and judicial version of ownership. The distinction is between ownership and blame. The questions for ownership are: “How valuable do you plan for this gathering to be, how have we each contributed to the current situation, and what is the story you hold about this community and your place in it?” It is important for people to see the limitation of their story, for each story has a payoff and a cost. Naming these is a precondition to creating an alternative future.

Community will be created the moment we decide to act as creators of what it can become. This is the stance of ownership, which is available to us every moment on every issue, even world peace, the overdependence on fossil fuel consumption, and the fact that our teenagers are slightly self-centered.

This requires us to believe in the possibility that this organization, this neighborhood, this community is mine or ours to create. This will occur when we are willing to answer the essential question, “How have I contributed to creating the current reality?” Confusion, blame, and waiting for someone else to change are defenses against ownership and personal power. This core question, when answered, is central to how the community is transformed.

Begin with yourself. What have I contributed to creating this current reality? If your answer sounds like confusion, blame, or waiting on someone else then you are in good company.But, to call forth transformation is to realize this and to take responsibility.

This would be a good time to check your motivations for convening others. If you believe you are recruiting people to a solution you’ve already arrived upon, then you are not yet vulnerably ready to ask the questions of the group.

We move from stanger to neighbor by admitting our participation in the current reality with a statement of ownership.

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging(p. 123, 128). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

The possibility conversation gives form to one way the gifts of those in the margin get brought into the center. Each person’s possibility counts, especially those whose voices are quieted or marginalized by the drumbeat of retribution. In fact, what distinguishes those on the margin in communities is they tragically live without real possibility. For many youth on the margin, the future is narrow, perhaps death or prison. They have trouble imagining a future distinct from the past or present. This is the real tragedy: not only that life is difficult, but that it is a life that holds no possibility for a different future.

There needs to be a point in each gathering where time is created for the private possibility to be developed and then made public. This works best in two separate steps. The best opening question for possibility is

What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your life or work or in the project around which we are assembled?

Later, the more direct individual question for possibility will be

What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform

When you conviene strangers through a deliberate invitation that costs something, they typically arrive as strangers. Insofar as those convened experience marginalization, those strangers are not just estranged from one another, but also from their possibilities. To call forth possibility in the room is to ask everyone as individuals what their next choice is (this is the cross-roads question).  To awaken to that together begins to introduce a shared possibility for the gathered room. There is an African proverb that says “It takes a village to raise a child.” Moving from private possibility to community possibility is a “village” habit, strangers cannot make community possibilities come to life.

But this is not enough. That possibility will take time and commitment to mature. So as you invite others, notice that the depth of commitment baked into the invitation often predetermines how far-reaching the imagination and courage of the collective can be. If you invite folks to gather one night, the depth of risk will match that. If you invite folks to a year of month gatherings, the depth will be different.

Did your invitation list include strangers? Are you inviting anyone who does not experience the advantages of life at the center of the community?

Block, Peter. Community: The Structure of Belonging (p. 126). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.