News Archive

Hosting Generative Change online course March 2023 – work with Mark himself

There is a rare opportunity coming up to work with Host author Mark McKergow in his online four-part workshop Hosting Generative Change. The material is built on Mark’s 2020 book of the same name, published by the Bushe Marshak Institute.

The course follows the idea of supporting generative dialogues and conversations – new perspectives, new ideas, with as much listening as talking. The way into these dialogues is hosting: the way we bring people together has a huge impact on what happens. In this course Host author Dr Mark McKergow will work with you to help you host dialogues, people and organisations in ways which underpin, not overshadow, this fascinating, delicate, and essentially human practice.

The programme is based around learning and applying some key frameworks to a real-life organisational development challenge or project. The modules will be varied, each one featuring input, discussion, application and reflection. The group will form a learning community with everyone both learning and contributing. Dr. Mark McKergow has been leading online courses for over a decade and is looking forward to working with you.

Online on four Tuesdays: March 21 and 28, April 4 and 11 2023. Sessions will run from 1pm-5pm UK time (14h-18h CET, also good for Asia and USA). Registration is €490 for the whole course (+ VAT if applicable).

For full details download the flyer here. Registration at https://connexxo.com/events/hosting-generative-change-interactive-online-course-in-english/. The course is happening partly for a group from Connexxo, and will definitely run. We are inviting a few outsiders to join in. Please consider yourself an inside outsider and join us!

Mark McKergow’s new Substack: Steps To A Humanity Of Organisation

Mark McKergow has started a new writing project on Substack. He’s building on his work in Host Leadership, Solutions Focus and Village In The City to explore how we might organise both humanely AND effectively.

It’s easy to see how to be humane and ineffective. It’s even easier to see how to be effective and inhumane. But how to combine both?

Mark’s career has been exploring this question from various angles in learning, coaching, organisational change and community development. Now he’s building on his 30 years of experience to put this work together in new ways, explore the gaps, look at unanswered questions and try to be as clear as possible.

It’s free to subscribe and read, with new work every Wednesday. http://markmckergow.substack.com.

Join us in Vienna for the 2023 Host Leadership Gathering: 12-13 June

NEWS: I’m very excited that the 2023 Host Leadership Gathering is going ahead face-to-face in Vienna, Austria on 12-13 June. We’d love to see you, get your proposals for a workshop/topic and have you join us there. Two days full of inspiration .

https://sinnvoll-fuehren.com/hostleadershipgathering2023/

By the way… the excellent SOLWorld international conference is happening in the same venue just before our gathering, on 8-10 June 2023. You may well be interested to join both events – many people are! More information on SOLWorld 2023 at https://www.solworld2023.at/.

Hosting Generative Change: 16 hour online masterclass with Mark McKergow starts 1 November 2022

Dialogic OD is about creating generative dialogue and conversation – new perspectives, new ideas, with as much listening as talking. The way into these dialogues is hosting: the way we bring people together has a huge impact on what happens.  In this course Host author Dr Mark McKergow will work with you to help you host dialogues, people and organisations in ways which underpin, not overshadow, this fascinating, delicate, and essentially human practice. 

Four online sessions on 1, 3, 8 and 15 November at 4pm UK time ( 17h CET, 11am EST, 8am Pacific)

Download the PDF brochure

Full details and registration 

This series has other courses through the winter 2022/23, and also includes a course from Solution Focused coaching expert Haesun Moon in March 2023.

Host Leadership Gathering 2022 – full programme now out!

The full programme for the Host Leadership Gathering 2022 is now online. It looks great – there are 12 excellent workshops from around the world including presenters from education (in Australia) and healthcare (in the British NHS) and multinational FMCG (“the beer that reaches the parts others can’t”) contexts. There are also top leadership development, coaching and agile professionals sharing their experience.

Host author Dr Mark McKergow will start the event with a keynote exploring ‘Host Leadership in the age of the strongman’. There will also be an Open Space session for you to bring along your ideas, challenges and questions. If you are keen to learn more and use Host Leadership in your work, this is the place to be, 

We had hoped to offer an in-person option but that is not possible. So, the event is online only. You can participate from the comfort of your own place anywhere in the world. And you will have exclusive access to recordings of all the sessions! 

Registration is just €99. Join us on Thursday-Friday 26-27 May 2022.  https://connexxo.com/events/host-leadership-gathering-2022/

Host Leadership Gathering 2022: Milan/online 26-27 May – Building a Host Leadership Practitioner Circle

We are very excited to announce that there will be a Host Leadership Gathering in 2022! We are hoping to gather in Milan, Italy on 26-27 May 2022 – and there will also definitely be an option to join online.

The theme of the event is ‘Building A Host Leadership Practitioner Circle’. Some of our longest-standing practitioners will be there to share their work. If you would like to make Host Leadership a key part of your own practice – as a leader, as a consultant or as a coach – then this is the moment to step forward and come to join in.

There is already a strong list of workshops on the menu, and we are seeking your proposals for sessions too (by Friday 18 February please). Presenters include Mark McKergow (UK), Veronika Jungwirth and Dr Ralph Miarka (Austria), Rolf Katzenberger (Germany), Dr Leah Davcheva (Bulgaria), Mike Brent (UK/France), Jason Pascoe (Australia) and Pierluigi Pugliese (Italy/Germany). You can see the current menu at https://connexxo.com/events/host-leadership-gathering-2022/.

The event is being hosted by our friends Pierluigi Pugliese and Katrin Seger of Connexxo. Registration is just €99 which guarantees online participation. As the travel situation comes clear, there will be an option to join in person if you can.

Come and join us – expand your practice, join our practitioner circle as it forms, and meet some great people!

NEW: Mark McKergow talks to ‘Kindness Chef’ Harpal Dhatt about ‘welcoming the stranger’

A new podcast about hosting has been released by Harpal Dhatt, the ‘Kindness Chef’. Harpal is interested in how to build kindness and has been going through the alphabet seeking different people to talk to about how we can make kindness more of a part of our own lives, and of those around us. Harpal introduces the episode:

Inclusion recipe – Welcoming a stranger – Sitting with Dr Mark McKergow

The Kindness Chef

Episode Description

I sit with Dr Mark Mckergow to talk about his work over three decades, has been about humanising organisations in learning, changing and leading. He is the co-author of six books including The Solutions Focus and Host: Six new roles of engagement.

We talk about the old Arabic proverb, “the host is both the first and the last: first to arrive and last to leave” and how this applies to leading. This idea of host fits perfectly with kindness.

I wanted to encourage people to be kindness hosts.

Some of you may already be doing this. The idea of a host stepping forward and stepping back when necessary and creating the conditions for guests to feel comfortable.

One way to do this, is to explore how you welcome people. We create a recipe for how to welcome a stranger.

Practical ways that you can observe and pay attention and help someone in a moment of need.

One of his latest ideas combining his experiences is The Village In The City as a post-COVID initiative to encourage people to build on the micro-local communities which emerged during the pandemic.

As a response to the local connections which appeared in his own street during the pandemic. Neighbours talked, email and Whatsapp groups started, people ran errands for each other and even entertained one another from their front steps.

He thought that it would be good to build on this connection, by moving up a level from the street to the ‘village’.

Using his background as an organisational and leadership consultant, Mark devised the Village In The City Manifesto to set out the benefits and building blocks for connection.

Listen on Spotify or Apple.

Mark’s new online Hosting Generative Change course starts Tuesday 7 September 2021

Exciting news! Mark McKergow’s new online course for OD professionals, facilitators, consultants, and indeed anyone wanting to bring people together to build innovative and generative change is coming in September!

Mark has the honour of leading the first in a new series of programmes on Dialogic OD co-produced by the Bushe-Marshak Institute and the Cape Cod Institute. The programme is Hosting Generative Change and runs on four Tuesdays in September 2021, (7, 14, 21 & 28 Sept) at 4pm-8pm UK time. What’s more, you can build up several programmes in the series to gain a certification in Dialogic OD!

Register before 7 August to save $50. Details and registration at https://www.cape.org/bmi-series-courses/bmi-mckergow.  There are most courses coming as the year goes on, a different programme every month. 

Host Leading – Taking a practical new view on leadership

Join us for this free online workshop with Dr Leah Davcheva, coach and facilitator specialising in Host leadership and the Solutions Focus approach to building change. Wednesday 27 January 2021 at 6pm UK time.

We will aim to discover how to act in your organisation in order to build relationships and engagement while moving forward. You are also going to look into a leadership challenge you are facing right now and, thinking like a Host Leader, find possibilities for making progress.

During the programme, you will participate in activities designed to help you

  • experience the value of the host leadership metaphor in your own context of action
  • perform in ways that bring people together
  • use, to many practical benefits, the step- forward and step-back dance of the Host Leader
  • begin adopting the new roles and positions of engagement

All are welcome! Book now to reserve your place. Book free online at HOST LEADING: TAKING A NEW PRACTICAL VIEW ON LEADERSHIP

NEW online meet-up: Host Leadership past, present and future – Mon 14 December 2020

Join us for this 90 minute online event with Dr Mark McKergow, co-author of Host and the Host Leadership Field Book. Mark will be sharing how his work about leading as a host (rather than a hero or a servant) has evolved over the past 18 years, and lead a discussion about future developments and applications. He spent well over a decade researching what great hosts and leaders really do, and produced user-friendly frameworks such as the six roles and four positions of a host leader to help apply the power of engagement in organisations.

Mark will be joined by members of the international host leadership community who are applying these ideas all over the world to help leaders to build engagement, performance and results and to make organisations more humane AND more effective.

If you have yet to explore host leadership, this will be a great introduction. If you have heard about the models and approaches, this will be a fantastic re-awakening of the work. If you are using host leadership in practice, we would love to hear from you at the session.

This session will be held on Zoom. Places are limited. There will be a chance to engage with others as well as hearing from Mark and asking questions. The Zoom link will be sent to those who register for the event.

Join us on Monday 14th December 2020 for this meet-up to explore the next stages of host leadership. All welcome. Really.

Book free online at Host Leadership: past, present and future Tickets, Mon 14 Dec 2020 at 18:00 | Eventbrite.