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Did we really need another bracing reminder
about the importance of maintaining a systems
perspective in our organizations and in our lives? With
each new revelation about the dramatic collapses in
global financial markets, we feel more powerless and
confused by these complex interdependencies,
unconstrained by organizational boundaries or
national borders. One consolation is that the hard
lesson at the center of the turmoil is a useful one if it
raises our awareness of the need for vigilance in
demanding integrity on the part of those we've
entrusted with policy-setting and oversight of these
critical systems.
| A "Whole" Approach to Public Speaking |
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An interview with Carla Kimball
by Vicky Schubert
Carla Kimball is a
speaking presence coach whose approach reflects
her experience as a dancer, yoga teacher, and tai
chi practitioner. She believes that some of the
learnings from these disciplines can help people
overcome fear, project more confidence, and cultivate
the type of leadership presence so essential in
today's world. She recently spoke with Leverage
Points about what she refers to as "public
speaking presence."
We are hearing a lot about "presence" these days.
In the book by that name, authors Peter Senge, Otto
Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers
identify presence as a concept borrowed from the
natural world that suggests the whole is entirely
present in any of its parts. Scharmer also talks about
presence as the capacity to connect to the deepest
source of self and will to allow the future to emerge
from the whole rather than from a smaller part or from
a special interest. For Carla Kimball in her work with
public speakers, presence is about slowing down
internally so as to enter into a shared space with
one's listeners.
In all of these cases, the idea of connecting to a
larger whole--with the goal of inspiring
transformational change--is paramount.
What Is Public Speaking Presence?
"I
think of presence as being something that we
embody," Kimball explains. "And it comes from being
truly present in the moment." Noting that the opposite
of presence is absence, Carla observes that we are
absent when we are distracted by our internal chatter
and by whatever pulls our attention away from simply
being here. She contends that presence in public
speaking requires slowing down and becoming quiet
inside, because when you are multi-tasking and your
thoughts are racing in a kind of "adrenaline soup," it's
impossible to effectively deliver your message.
Presence is also about establishing a
relationship with your audience and creating a shared
space that you enter into together. Effective speakers
create an experience of presence by making a priority
of connecting with everybody in the room.
Hillary Clinton embodied presence, Carla notes,
during her recent speech at the Democratic National
Convention. "You could see it in the way she carried
herself," she says, "even as she walked on stage
there was this sense that she was fully occupying
herself spiritually, physically, emotionally, and
mentally. It was clear that she was connecting with
people as individuals and she seemed to speak
directly to the individuals she was looking at."
Kimball works to help people minimize the feeling
of being separate from their audience, because that
separateness causes fear. Conversely, when they
have a sense that they are in community with others,
they no longer feel as though they're standing out
there by themselves with everybody shooting arrows
at them. They're much more a part of a whole.
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| Pre- and Post-Conference Workshops Expand Your Learning |
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Arrive a day ahead of time or
stay on after the conference to extend your learning
experience with one of these useful skill-building
workshops.
PRE01 - Applied Systems Thinking to
Facilitate Change
 Michael Goodman, Innovation
Associates Organizational Learning; David Peter
Stroh, Bridgeway Partners
Sunday, November 16; 9:00-5:00; $895
Practice
with a proven framework for applying systems thinking
to change, and learn a multi-stage process for
engaging diverse stakeholders. More...
PRE02 - Embodied Presence: What It
Takes to Make a True Move
 Arawana Hayashi
Sunday, November 16; 9:00-5:00; $895
Experience a user-friendly method for individuals
and groups to access embodied knowing as the
source of innovative action. More...
PRE03 - The Change Lab: Putting the U-Process
into Practice
 LeAnne Grillo and Adam Kahane,
Generon Reos LLC
Sunday, November 16; 9:00-5:00; $895
Take part
in a "mini-lab," in which you will practice the capacities
needed to navigate the "U," individually and
collectively. More...
POST02 - Facilitation Tools for Organizational
Learning
 Kristina Wile and Rebecca Niles
Peretz, The Systems Thinking Collaborative
Thursday/Friday, November 20/21; 9:00-5:00;
$1395
Master techniques for facilitating systems
thinking interventions and leading groups in thinking
systemically. More...
Sign up for the full conference
now to SAVE $200!
Teams of 4 or more pay even
less.
Call for details at 1-800-272-0945.
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| A Systems Solution to Overcrowded Emergency Rooms |
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 by Vicky Schubert
I
recently
spent about six hours in our local
hospital emergency room on a Sunday afternoon,
waiting for my husband to get stitched up after a minor
cycling accident. This first-hand glimpse into the
coordination challenges of a hyper-busy urgent care
facility helped me see why many hospitals in
Massachusetts turn to the practice of "diversion,"
when their ERs reach maximum capacity. By
temporarily closing their doors to arriving ambulances
and diverting them to other facilities, hospitals raise
the white flag of surrender in the face of excessive
patient volume.
But, according to a recent article in the Boston
Globe, the State Department of Public Health is
cracking down on the practice, suggesting that it can
cause more problems than it solves, and mandating
that hospitals take a more systemic approach to the
issue of overcrowding. While temporary diversions
may alleviate the worst pressures on an emergency
room staff in the short term, it's clear that shifting the
burden to other facilities in a regional system is not a
sustainable solution for either hospitals or patients.
As one hospital starts diverting, the number of
patients goes up at the other hospitals in the system
until they reach capacity and start diverting as well.
The result is sub-optimum care for patients subjected
to longer ambulance rides and deprived of access to
the doctors who know them best in the facilities where
their medical records are kept.
In anticipation of the new rules, a number of
hospitals in the Boston area have begun to
experiment with new ways to address the backlogs in
their own institutions--and are achieving some
positive results. For example, some facilities are
expediting the discharge process for recovered
patients by performing required blood tests earlier in
the day, thus freeing up beds for patients being
admitted from the ER, and creating capacity for
emergency arrivals.
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Watch your mailbox for a copy of our Fall
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receive a paper copy, please send us
your name and address!
"We spend most of our time and
energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along
the surface of things; but there are times when we
stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves
or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole
other world begin to whisper."
--James Carroll
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