A Small Group, Cincinnati
Internationally known business consultant and author Peter Block moved to Cincinnati over ten years ago and started a small group, better known as A Small Group (ASG), by inviting citizens to come together once a month to learn and practice the skills he identifies as crucial to conversations where accountability is chosen.
“If you want to change the world – or the culture – all you have to do is change the conversation. In the beginning was the word — that was how the Bible started. Asking the question of what is true wealth invites people to have a conversation they may never have had before. That itself is a measure of wealth! The value of our coming together can be measured by whether or not we are able to have a conversation we have not had before. A conversation is an action.
“The challenge for every community is not so much to have a vision or plan or program of what it wants to become. It is to discover and create the means for bringing that vision, or possibility, into being… Authentic transformation is about a shift in context and a shift in language and conversation… If we want to change the direction of our community then we must create restorative conversations.”
– Peter Block
Six conversations are the framework of Block’s model:
- Invitation. We want you to come into this conversation and here is what will be required of you.
- Possibility. Postpone problem solving, focus on the future we want.
- Ownership. Willingness to acknowledge that we have helped create, through commission or omission, the conditions we wish to see changed.
- Dissent. If we cannot say “No” our “Yes” means nothing, “No” is the beginning of a conversation about commitment.
- Commitment. What I promise to do with no expectation of return.
- Gifts. Focus on our gifts not our deficiencies. Bring the gifts of those on the margin to the center.
For more on the A Small Group model, please see the booklet Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community.
Members of A Small Group have been taking this model back to their communities and organizations. Three of these members will join Peter on June 24 at ALIA in a Day to share their work and what they have learned.
Jane Masters, LISW has used in the Civic Engagement model at a school where parents, teachers, faculty, staff, and students came together to talk about how they might better prepare the students to be global citizens. She has worked with several associations and informal groups using the conversations to enhance the connection and understanding within the groups. She hosted conversations about isolation with women living in the suburbs and that material was used by Peter Block and John McKnight in their new book, The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods.
Collette Thompson, now Civic Engagement Coordinator at Northern Kentucky University (NKU), worked with Peter for five years. She participated in many CES workshops and stated using the skills she learned at her daughter’s school, at her daughter’s Brownie Troop, and in her community. She describes her job at NKU as “I am using the engagement tools to create new possibilities for students and faculty members while at the same time breaking down the silos one person at a time to create a community on campus.”
Gus Ventura, Ed.D uses the tools he has learned at ASG both in his practice as a clinical psychologist and with the board of the Cincinnati Gestalt Institute. He has found the use the 6 questions and the shifting structure has brought new life to a well connected group.
Other members of ASG are using these skills throughout the community, changing the conversations about violence and racism, scarcity, fear, and despair to those of hope, possibility, and abundance.
