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The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter, often referred to as “Participatory Leadership” or “Art of Hosting,” is an approach used by facilitators. It aims to bring people together to build trust and engage in socially creative actions to address challenges within and across communities and organizations. People are purposively invited into conversation about matters they are concerned about, while facilitators act as hosts. Hosting is understood as stewarding the collective intelligence or wisdom that people bring with them. It can be compared to a party, where the host invites and provides the setting, but it is the guests who shape the direction and outcomes of the party. This methodology of engagement is seen as a way to move complex, social systems into convergence around collective actions. Participants discover and propose their own solutions.

Approach
The Art of Hosting is an approach and methodology for group facilitation and systems change developed and curated according to a commons or open-source model by an international community of facilitation practitioners. Starting around the late 1990s, or early 2000s, the community shares methods, tools, and terminology to improve how people can understand and mobilize to respond to complex social, political, and economic change in a participatory manner. It applies dialogic techniques and complex systems analysis (e.g. the Cynefin framework), consistent with social theories, including structuration, actor-network theory, and situated knowledges.

People practicing the Art of Hosting typically use a certain set of metaphors to make group processes understandable, such as Theory U, and may reference processes in the natural world, to draw insight into human interactions. They also draw upon a bundle of facilitation methods such as Open Space Technology, World café, Circle process/practice, Appreciative inquiry and Fishbowl which are applied in a customized way depending upon the purpose of the engagement. Circle practice in particular has been linked with various indigenous traditions.

Attention is given to posing significant questions for group consideration and to documenting what results from the dialogue sessions, termed ‘harvesting.’ For this reason, the overall approach is termed an “art,” which can only be refined through practice. People who initiate group conversation are often termed ‘callers,’ as they call or invite people to engage around a specific shared challenge. There is a focus upon constructing and holding dialogic containers bounded in space and time which support constructive group processes that enable new insights and decisions to emerge.

These metaphors and methods are developed and applied by a self-organising learning community. As a result, there is no central institution deciding what belongs in the canon – it emerges from what the community uses and evolves through a process of informal peer review that focuses upon application. Practitioners claim that well-hosted events and projects increase the adaptive capacity of the group.

The learning community's media of exchange and documentation are practice-oriented webpages (e.g. ) and grey literature (e.g. ).

Practice Principles


The international Art of Hosting community embraces self-organization and operates according to the basic ideas of a community of practice and a professional learning community. They place emphasis upon valuing the contributions of individuals equally, and welcoming participation in large group settings. A number of frameworks provide orientation, and articulate shared principles and activities. “The 8 Breaths of Process Architecture” , itself based on Kaner's “Diamond of Participatory Decision-Making”, gives a framework for designing group processes, while the “Four-Fold Practice” of “personal practice, dialog, facilitation and the co-creation of innovation” is used to orient practitioner development. There is no fixed terminology for Four-Fold Practice, but a brief description follows.
 * Host Self: To nurture emergent understanding within groups, hosts cultivate a personal practice that enables open listening, mindfulness and a beginner’s mind. While knowledge of techniques is important, effective application hinges upon seeing self in the particular context;
 * Be Hosted: Hosts continue to learn through dialogue and participation in sessions run by others.  For example, introductory training is carried out through immersive workshops in  which lead trainers also participate in sessions hosted by those being trained;


 * Host Others: Hosts focus on designing dialogue sessions to address common challenges and implementing them using an array of methods. The design of each event or project is customized to the context and setting;
 * Be Part of a Community of Practice: As a self organizing professional learning community, Art of Hosting depends upon free sharing of insights and cases of application.  This uses electronic mailing lists and social media channels.

Examples of application
The approach is used in diverse settings, including health care reform, the European Commission, higher education, sustainable development, as well as a methodology for evaluation participatory action research and community-based leadership development. Overall, the approach is recognized as a methodology for nurturing innovation and building experiences in democratic decision making in the context of civic engagement.