GLEN Exchanges
These dialogues are sourced and hosted by members for sharing insights, tapping into collective wisdom, and leaning into inquiry as we learn and evolve together. Programs are overseen by a Stewardship Circle of members selected by members.
Exchanges are the heart of our peer-learning community.
The GLEN Café
Date: Every Friday Morning; Time 9:00 am PDT/12 pm EST
Changing systems and ourselves is hard work. You don’t have to do it alone.Join us Friday mornings to connect with a creative cohort of allies for inspiration and support. If you are new and interested in learning about our community this is a great place to get started. ALL ARE WELCOME!
OPEN / NO FEE
Recent Exchanges
Turning Poison into Medicine: Alan Wick on Love and Business
Date: Nov 29 Time: 9-10:30 am PST/ 12-1:30 pm EST/ 6-7:30 pm CET
In uncertain times, how can we embrace change, discover the gifts in challenging situations, and connect to creativity? UK-based Business Coach Alan Wick says we can do all this and more by tapping into an inexhaustible resource — love — and allowing it into every aspect of our work. Love, he claims, makes companies more productive and profitable – and work more relational and rewarding. In this interactive exchange, he’ll guide us through exercises designed to help us reframe challenging experiences, discover unexpected gifts, and revive our creativity and generosity. You're invited to bring to this exchange a specific challenge you have faced or are facing in your professional life.
Responding to Global Challenges: A Guided Exploration of Reactive Patterns
Completed Nov 20
Reactive patterns are one reason we can't create more coordinated responses to global challenges. Certain information may send us into overwhelm, denial, numbness, or absence. The purpose of this exchange will be to become more conscious of our reactive patterns to challenging information as we broaden our perspective on climate change. Mathias Weitbrecht will first present an additional perspective, including more scientific causes that amend the current discourse of CO2 being the sole cause of climate disasters. Then he will guide us through a mindful exploration of this new perspective on global warming — and together we will become aware of our embodied reactions that may undermine our individual and collective engagement with this issue.
Mapping the Mystery: Cohado's Cycles of Regenerative Development
Completed Oct. 26 2023
Paulo Gregory has developed a collaboration game called Cohado that is growing into a way to teach groups an underlying, integrated theory of cooperation. Paulo has been influenced by the Grove's Theory of Process and some other sources. Paulo uses the game to help groups evolve a sustainable ecosystem with the capacity to transform. Paulo has been applying this approach in Baltimore to help the Black Butterfly project, the subject of an earlier exchange. In this one we will go into the underlying theory that informs Cohado in an interview with David Sibbet.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC/ NO FEE
Mapping the Mystery: Exploring Scriptures
This conversation is part of our Mapping the Mystery series exploring mental models that can help us orient to the unknown.
Completed Sept 27, 9-10:30 am PT/12-1 30 pm EST
David Sibbet and Phil Bakelaar had a wonderful conversation about how the Apostle's Creed and other scriptures can be maps for living. For the past 37 years, Philip Bakelaar has been a parish clergy within the Reformed Church. He is also President and founding member of the International Forum of Visual Practitioners Institute. Dr. Bakelaar holds a PhD in Rhetoric and Communication from Temple University. In addition to his pastoral work and IFVP work he is an active adjunct professor at Montclair State University since 1992. His courses include communications theory, visualization, AI, organizational development, and more. The oldest son of a Presbyterian Minister, David shares Phil's interest in the scriptures, having been raised with them as guideposts for many years.
Power and Transparency in Human Collaboration
Exploring dynamics of human systems
Date/Time : August 30, 10-12 PST/1-3 EST/7-9 CET
Human systems - formal and informal - are consistently crucibles for issues of transparency and power. Through brief presentations and experiential, interactive exercises, we will explore concepts and aspects of power in human interactions and how they relate with our experiences in various organizational contexts. We will also explore how transparency relates with implicit and explicit power in groups of people. This session will be facilitated by John Schinnerer, a whole systems design consultant, teacher, and facilitator who works with a broad variety of clients developing cultural and ecological systems. He is also a founding member of The Sociocracy Consulting Group.
FREE FOR GLEN members
Incarcerated Innovator Steven Clark on the Power of Appreciative Inquiry
This conversation is part of our Mapping the Mystery series exploring mental models that can help us orient to the unknown.
Completed: Aug 17, 9-10:30 am PT/12-1 30 pm EST
Steven Clark, who has been confined for eighteen years in a maximum security prison in Maine, is the creator of The Awakening, an initiative to support those impacted by mass incarceration and transform the prison system from the inside out. In this conversation with David Sibbet, founder of Grove Consulting International, Steven will discuss how appreciative inquiry has been transformative for him personally and professionally. This positive and strengths-based approach has had a profound impact on how he engages with others, navigates challenges, facilitates his monthly exchanges, and brings a sense of joy, empowerment, and purpose to the Awakening community.
Love and Work
A conversation about deeper levels of transformation of self
Completed June 21, 2023
When some people hear the word love they think of emotion, or romance or sentimentality. Or they associate love with their personal, not professional lives. But what if love awakens our greatest gifts and calls us to what we have come here to be and do? What if love is the great disruptor – burning through our veils of denial, shaking us awake from sleepwalking routines, unifying us in a polarizing time? What if love is the inexhaustible creative fuel that we need to support real change in the world? This invitation to place love at the center of our lives and work will be facilitated by Michael Regan, a speaker, consultant, and guide who explores where leadership and innovation meet the deepest potential of love. (For more information about Michael, visit www. michaelregan.org.)
FREE FOR GLEN members
Mapping the Mystery: The Medicine Wheel
A conversation with Firehawk Hulin, co-founder of the Center of Timeless Earth Wisdom, about embodying Earth's wisdom in our daily lives through the system and design of the Medicine Wheels.
Completed July 12
After working for more than two decades in creative media production for organizations, Firehawk completed an eight-year formal apprenticeship with WindEagle and RainbowHawk, métis keepers of The Origin Teachings of the Delicate Lodge. This is one of the ancient wisdom bundles of Medicine Wheel Teachings handed down orally by travelling teachers for thousands of years. Center for Timeless Earth Wisdom is currently developing a three to four-year intensive training in embodying and applying Earth's Wisdom in daily life — a subject he'll explore in conversation with David Sibbet, founder of Grove Consulting International.
FREE FOR GLEN MEMBERS
Mapping the Mystery: Gisela Wendling on Liminal Pathways
A conversation with the vice-president of global learning at The Grove Consultants International, about her framework for navigating change
Coimpleted June 14, 2023
Gisela Wendling, Vice President of Global Learning at Grove Consultants International, developed the Liminal Pathways Change Framework to help clients and organizations design change, orient to its three basic phases, and activate the dynamic interplay between inner process and outer support that unlocks the potential of uncertain times. In this conversation with David Sibbet, she’ll explain how this framework applies to individuals, organizations, and even larger social systems.
Mapping the Mystery: Integral Theory
A conversation with Joran Oppelt about using Integral Theory as a personal and business operating model.
Completed May 17, 2023
In addition to being CEO of Illustrious Consulting, Joran is an international speaker, author and consultant with certifications in coaching, storytelling, design thinking and virtual facilitation. He has been a serious student of Ken Wilbur's Integral Theory, which works in the background of his thinking. He leads game-changing meetings for clients and has trained other facilitators to drive transformation and alignment, delivering “great reckonings in small rooms.”
He is the co-author of Facilitation: A Human-Centered Guide to the Art of Collaboration; The Visual Meetings Field Guide: How to Facilitate Great Meetings with Amazing Teams; Visionary Leadership: How to Live Your Strategy, Create New Habits, and Inspire Your Team; and contributing author of The Creativity Workbook for Coaches and Creatives.
Mapping the Mystery: Developmental Models
A Conversation with Heiko Veit about Stages International & Spiral Dynamics
Completed April 12
With trained intuition and conceptual clarity, Heiko Veit designs developmental spaces for asking better questions and finding more effective answers. Whether he is working with organizations or individuals, his aim is to address underlying causes instead of working on symptoms so he can accompany development and initiate transformation. He is currently working on a translation of the Stages Model into German and is very conversant about developmental models in general.