Experience self-management of a training course

"The strength of water comes from the source"

Persian proverb

Context of the "meeting of the sources"

Based on the "meeting of the sources" initiated by two "source persons", Cécile and Denis with the methodological and logistical support of Frédérique, the idea of this echo is to unravel the lived experience and to understand its scope. The meeting of the sources brought together for 3 days 25 participants on the idea of learning to help each other, starting from a territory, displaying on the one hand the rejection of method for method, generating co-responsibility of all towards all, and relying on the openness of people from different backgrounds (civil servants, entrepreneurs, start-uppers, coaches, facilitators, locally engaged citizens, cultural actors).

All visible costs (venue and food) are co-financed in conscience by each participant to the extent of his or her possibilities, initiative and preparation costs are financed by the initial source people, individual accommodation and transportation costs are financed by each.

Initial intention discovered a posteriori

The meeting of the sources proceeds from pedagogical, political and local Intentions that combine in a space of collective exploration aiming at mutual support and accompaniment.

• Pedagogical because the open forum format allows for cross learning, individualized and documented. Everyone is a force for proposing workshops for reflection and convivial times, to the extent of what they wish to take with them. The pedagogical time is also an exploration because no clear objective is formulated, no more than an obvious process; the objective is revealed progressively, by friction.
  
  
• Political because the choice of the organization has bet on self-management as a principle of co-responsibility. If the intention is carried by a couple of initiators, with the support of a locally based facilitator, the choice of a self-effacement on the contents, the processes and even the meaning opens up possibilities for the members of the group to build their framework.
  
• Local, because in order for projects to take shape, they must be anchored in the reality of a territory with its local actors, its resources and its fragilities. The territory is a materiality, an environment that imposes itself and resists vague ideas.

The stakes

To reread the experience according to the systematization approach, the "meeting of the sources" allows to live several stakes. First:

• Learning to experience self-management in terms of distributed or rotating leadership. It is a leadership that is not given to anyone, it is each person who composes his or her legitimacy based on the relevance of his or her initiative or proposal. The traditional hierarchical, top-down "power over" is confronted by a "power to" dare, commit, make choices, propose and accept not being followed.
  
  
• Learn to live an experience with a maximum of open space, as much on the content as on the process or the meaning. This learning prepares for the completely informal social field where no one is placed by role or status over others. It is therefore an apprenticeship of dialogue in the strongest sense, since even the rules of dialogue are to be negotiated with others. Thus, what in some circumstances may be a security such as a turn to speak, a spatial organization in a circle is not self-evident.
  
  
• Establish the framework for mutual aid by living it. Since the deconstruction of reference points affects even the very modes of regulation, we must learn to help each other. People from completely different cultures learn to cooperate without an ultimate arbiter or cause to join them, even in the midst of tensions and misunderstandings.
  
  
• Give everyone the opportunity to recognize and be recognized, to give and receive. Since the framework is open, everyone has the opportunity to put themselves, their projects or ideas forward and through their choices of actions and support to recognize and be recognized. Insofar as the program is co-developed, from the upstream design to the final evaluation, it is a system of give and take that takes place."
  
  
• Sharing methods is a visible result, in this case the sharing of methods is colossal since the following were experimented in 3 days: wall of intentions, systemic constellation, project acceleration, sophrology, self-help circle, professional co-development, connection to life and nature, dialogue in a circle, role and super power in a group, graphic facilitation (in person but also remotely on the basis of online stories!), social preference network, nature observation walk, deep pair listening, variety of learning walks, meditation, systematization of experience, decision by consent, team cohesion through cooking, common tasks, just singing (if if) together as well as a variety of online tools and practices to trace and capitalize on the experience (cafet, video, conference with high relational quality, bullotheque and padlet, photos, capsules and videos).

How it is regulated?

The process to be lived is chaordic (mixture of order and chaos). Each step that follows is based on a brick of the living; a facilitator takes the lead and helps the group move forward. After the launch by the "source persons" at the beginning, the participants are called upon to co-facilitate, even if it is not their job. They learn by doing under the benevolent eye of the assembly. Paired facilitation, rotating facilitation, and facilitative supervision follow each other to keep the process alive.

Informal regulation in the kitchen since meals are made and eaten together, and regulation by capturing audio vignettes on "what is being experienced" allow for the deposit of emotions and learning feelings. Therapeutic supervision is even offered and implemented at the request of a person with a professional therapist on the sidelines of the process.

What it produces?

The process draws its inspiration from different sources and pedagogical orientations, Theory U, Generation Presence, dialogue circles, open forum, art of hosting, popular education, APE circle, creative risposte.

• It produces emotional variations such as anger and frustration that can be explained by the gap between what I imagined I would find and what I actually experience with the obligation to be not only an actor, but also, author of the process until the declension for me and the group of the intentions. But also a feeling of gratitude, in the feeling of being listened to if not understood, because the relationships that are established are open, sincere; a maximum of things can be said, there is room for tensions and divergent expressions. These variations are positive markers of learning because learning is fostered by the expression of emotions with the moments experienced.
  
  
• It produces concrete self-help projects for project holders in the advanced or exploratory phase.
  
  
• It produces learning on postures that each person is able to self-evaluate from "I will never experience something like this again in my life" to "I discover new practices to meet the other in depth".
  
  
• It favors networking between local and national, public and private actors, younger and older (32 years old to 68 years old), entrepreneur/civil servant/citizen/retired, distant group (archipelago networking with the Jardiniers du Nous), brings an unprecedented richness, variety of jobs and functions but also of wealth.
  
  
• It creates value (surplus of the payment in consciousness that exceeds the needs), but also deepening of individual projects and enrichment of the capital of reputation of all who have experienced a unique learning and finally, production of a "common of the transition" in the form of resources exchanged and collected (resource to be consolidated).

Perspectives of a human, territorialized incubator, potentiating mutual aid

What has been experienced can be described as a human incubator. This incubator is as if carried by the different sources that are the participants on different points of the territory with connections to nature, with the living as a compass and the motor of the gift/counter gift, the idea of mutual aid.

This incubator could be the subject of a search for financial support so that the actors can live off of what has social value. This incubator can rely on a consultation between the initial sources that forms a learning community "community of sources". The incubator can engage the practices of intervision and mutual aid between the sources to consolidate the model. A territorial anchoring seems relevant to remain very concrete. A sociocratic governance of the sources could be to build where it would be possible to manage the energies like a common good. Such an incubator could combine offered times for the most deprived and paid times for those who have the means.

In what has been experienced, there is the idea of taking care of the acts of transformation, as well as that of generative learning (that which allows the other to be creative and fruitful with new ideas and realizations) and regenerative learning (that which repairs the bonds between humans by shaking limiting beliefs)

There is also the idea of living learning that explores human potential and increases each from within (as the growth of a tree occurs that pushes the bark toward its limits). There is also the idea that there is more to oneself than one imagines and that each person can be a revealer of that power to act for the other. It is possible to dig that the power is in the group and that a collective driven by deep intention cannot be limited.

The ways of making group and of dialoguing condition the ways of making society and of strengthening our democracies. We are still beings of challenge and that today the main thing is to learn to help each other rather than to cower. The connection to the living as a driving force and inspiration to achieve this societal intelligence is a key point. The ultimate perspective is a civilizational change to quote the aspiration of Heloise, one of the participants.

To receive this award, it remains to accept the crossing of an uncertain moment of doing with oneself, one's frustrations, desires, needs, and specific modes of expression and being in the world in confrontation with those of others.

Sources

Wiki Encounters of Sources https://cocotier.xyz/forum/?PagePrincipale

Territorial Creative Response https://ripostecreativeterritoriale.xyz/?PagePrincipale

Gardeners of the We https://m.facebook.com/pg/jardinieresdunous/posts/?ref=internal_page

CircleApe https://www.cercleape.com

Art of hosting https://artofhosting.org/fr/

Presence generation https://www.linkedin.com/in/génération-présence-53924046/?originalSubdomain=fr

The U-Theory - Otto Scharmer https://www.art-of-leading.fr/inspirations/cours-mooc-dintroduction-a-la-theorie-u-parotto-scharmer/

Thot cursus - Open Forum https://cursus.edu/fr/11799/forums-ouverts-une-technologie-sociale-accessible