All posts by Dorothy Nesbit

Roger Schwarz and the Skilled Facilitator Approach

All articles, Alternative approaches

Over the years, I’ve found that my learning needs have been met as much by synchronicity as by diligent research. My introduction to Roger Schwarz and the Skilled Facilitator Approach has been no exception.

As it happens, the friend who introduced me to the Skilled Facilitator Approach is also the friend who introduced me to Marshall Rosenberg’s work in the field of Nonviolent Communication – Aled Davies, Director of Resolve (GB). I remember how, in 2003, Aled thrust Marshall’s book into my hands and said “you must read this!” More recently, Aled has told me about his interest in the work of Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator Approach. I took Aled’s choice, in 2008, to fly to the US to train with Roger as a measure of the value he placed on Roger’s work. In the months running up to Christmas Aled has been planning a programme in London – Roger’s first public programme in Europe.

Now, let’s be clear. Roger’s book is rather fat and unwieldy. I’ve been reading it – slowly. At the same time, I was keen to support Aled in publicising Roger’s visit. So I asked Aled if he would run an evening workshop to which I could invite members of my network. I was thrilled when Aled said yes. I didn’t anticipate that I would come away from the workshop and sign up for Roger’s programme in December. And I didn’t anticipate just how deeply Roger’s work – and presence – and that of his colleagues would touch me.

Perhaps that’s for another posting. For now, it’s enough to say that this is how I spent the week beginning 7th December 2009. And this was, for sure, a week to remember.

Continuing the big freeze

About Dorothy

The big freeze continues. In SE13 our snow fall has been modest compared to many parts of the country, perhaps three or four inches. In Haslemere, my friend Jenny tells me they have had a foot of snow and have been unable to use their car. This week my appointments have been postponed, one by one, as my snow-bound colleagues and clients let me know they can’t get into London.

My road is close to Lewisham’s centre and used by many people who park their cars to go shopping. The pavements, ungritted, quickly turned from untrodden snow to thick ice. On Thursday, I decided to clear the ice on the pavement in front of my house. This was not an entirely straightforward decision. On the one hand, I felt sure the pavement would be safer without the ice and on the other hand I heard rumours that the liability would suddenly be mine if I cleared the ice and someone fell. Who wants to be sued?

On Thursday, I cleared a small path in the midst of the ice. On Friday I cleared a little bit more. Today I decided to go the whole hog, clearing the full width of the pavement of ice before going upstairs and admiring my tidy patch from above.

I sit down with a cup of tea (the pink, herbal variety rather than the strong stuff – rasberry and echinacea of I remember rightly) and finish my book. And then, looking up, I watch the snow begin to fall.

Hey, ho!

LinkedIn and the power of intention

Coaching

The new year has started – may it be a good one for you!

This week I have been catching up with all sorts of Christmas messages in amongst my client and other commitments. Amongst them I enjoy an invitation from Sara Milne Rowe to “Link In”. Sara and I met via our professional coach training and we both had the great pleasure before Christmas of joining Roger Schwarz and his colleagues for a week-long training in the Skilled Facilitator Approach. No doubt I’ll be writing more about this programme in the days and weeks ahead.

After accepting Sara’s invitation I check my progress in Linking In. When I set my intention last year to start connecting with people via LinkedIn I was already connected with 49 people. Today the number stands at precisely 100. I haven’t set out to send out invitations “en masse”. Rather, I have gone for the slow drip, drip of checking: “are we connected?” Over time, the numbers are building.

Of course, the question remains, why connect? This is also a question I am enjoying exploring. For the time being, I am appreciating the opportunity to read people’s updates – what are people up to? And of course, it’s also fascinating to discover what a small world we live in as I discover who else knows the people with whom I am connected.

When the snow falls

All articles

Tuesday: The news bulletins start to focus on the weather, reporting heavy snow in Scotland and the north and predicting equally heavy snow in the south as part of England’s coldest winter in 30 years.
Wednesday: The news focuses on a rather luke-warm attempt to “settle the leadership question” in the Labour Party (unseat Gordon Brown?) and continues to focus on the weather. In Lewisham, where I live, the snow falls throughout the afternoon – a rare and beautiful sight. One by one, my business apointments for the remainder of this week are cancelled or converted to telephone calls. I attempt to travel to my choir rehearsal in the evening, only to be told that there will be no trains for the return journey. I go back home.
Thursday: I could spend the time I unexpectedly have at my desk – I have plenty to do. Still, it seems a shame to miss out on the snow and I venture out, walking up to Blackheath, across the Heath and down to Greenwich. There are already many footprints in the snow and – no surprises here – people of all ages are out with their sledges. As I walk one of my coaching clients phones: can I fit in a session this week? We arrange to speak this afternoon. Returning to my desk in the afternoon I am delighted to find an e-mail from a client in Dubai, letting me know he has given my name to one of his friends in Kuwait. His friend has already dropped me a line to ask for information about my work in the field of leadership development.
As I walk, I ponder the way the newscasters have been talking of the “worst winter in thirty years”. It is as if there is no judgment or conclusion involved and nothing to be explained. “Worst” is somehow commuted to the status of a fact. Without doubt, there are inconveniences and downsides to the weather. And still, these unexpected times seem to me to offer something valuable – the opportunities that need only to be seen in order to be seized. These are some of my favourite opportunities at this time:
  • The opportunity to remind ourselves that we live within nature’s laws and to consider what we can control and what we can’t;
  • The opportunity to start the day with a blank page and to ask, “what is important to me today?”
  • The opportunity to let go of doing and focus on being; “who or how do I want to be today?”
  • The opportunity to step back and reflect; especially to ask myself, how many of the activities that normally keep me busy serve my vision for the world and my own part in making that vision a reality?
  • The opportunity unexpectedly to play;
  • The opportunity to enjoy nature’s beauty.

I wonder, what are you making of this unexpected time?

Ordinary Men

All articles
“Most of the other comrades drank so much
solely because of the many shootings of the Jews,
for such a life was quite intolerable sober”.

Following my visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau I look for a book (in Massolit Books and Cafe) that might begin to answer some of the questions we ask ourselves about the Holocaust. I come away with Christopher R. Browning’s book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

Returning home following our visit, I make this my next read and find it to be a thoughtful and thought-provoking study of the experiences of 500 members of Reserve Police Battalion 101, based on their testimony in 1962 to 1972 as part of the investigation and legal prosecution of the Battalion by the Office of the State Prosecutor (Staatsanwaltschaft) in Hamburg.

Browning avoids sweeping generalisations to explore the multiple responses of the Battalion’s members over time, from their first and unexpected order to shoot 1,500 Jews in the Polish village of Jozefow in 1942 to the Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) massacre towards the end of the war. Over time the Battalion’s members diverge into three groups, ranging from those who consistently took action to avoid the task they were allocated to those who learned to enjoy it.

The Battalion is of particular interest both because of the extensive and relatively open and honest testimony of its members and because it comprises the men of the title – ordinary men. These are not men who joined the Battalion fueled with the kind of race hatred that the naive witness might expect. The unfolding account offers a conclusion which, in turn, challenges any view of these men as fundamentally evil or in some way different from the reader. These were our fellow human beings.

In his Afterword, published six year’s after the book’s initial publication, Browning responds to scrutiny and criticism by his fellow author Daniel J. Goldhagen. His response is enough for me to decide not to seek out Goldhagen’s alternative account of Reserve Police Battalion 101.

The Massolit Bookshop and Cafe

About Dorothy

When the Nesbit family arranges “secret Santa” for our Christmas trip to Krakow it is easy to predict that Santa might brings at least a book or two by way of presents. So there’s no surprise, when I text my brother and sister-in-law to let them know of delays to our journey, that they reply from a bookshop.

The bookshop they describe when we arrive sounds like a veritable tardis. Stepping into a confined area it seems at first sight that this English language bookshop has very few books. Until, that is, it becomes apparent that beyond the initial entrance there’s another part of the bookshop – through some doors, across a corridor and through another set of doors. In addition, the books shop offers coffee and American cakes to eat in the cafe area or amongst the books.

I go to the bookshop, the Massolit Books and Cafe, with my brother and my nephew the day before we leave. Following our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau we are interested to read and learn more – an interest twinged with the pain and sadness that comes with knowing about the Holocaust. We all come away with books.

And since my mother and I have an afternoon flight the next day we make the bookshop our final stop before leaving, for a browse, a drink and cake.

A visit to Auschwitz

About Dorothy

The term “Holocaust denier” is used with great contempt by many in modern Western society and still, visiting Auschwitz for the first time, I am reminded of Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s work on grieving and the spotlight it shines on denial. For even with the weight of history – with all the evidence we have already seen and are about to see during our visit – it is hard to believe the acts of violence that were perpetrated against men, women and children at Auschwitz, Birkenau and other camps during the Second World War.

We start our visit at the main gate to Auschwitz with its sign (recently stolen and replaced) which carries the legend “Arbeit macht frei” (“work will make you free”). A number of the camp’s buildings have been made into displays so that, over time, it is possible to build up a picture of the 1.5 million men, women and children (of whom 90% were Jews) who lost their lives at Auschwitz and Birkenau at the hands of the Nazis.

Amongst the displays that strike home I am particularly touched by an expanse of human hair and a roll of the cloth into which it was woven as just one way of exploiting the Jews. In another, my mother notices a suitcase which bears the maiden name of my great grandmother. In a third, the focus of which is women in the camp, there are photos of naked women after four months of intensive treatment following the end of the war. The narrative gives their bodyweight: one woman weighs as little as a third of her pre-war weight.

We go to Birkenau and visit the gas chambers which the Nazis sought to destroy at the end of the war. At the main gate we see the railway lines by which so many thousands of people were transported to the camps. Throughout our visit to Birkenau I am struck by the number of signs of remembrance – flowers, candles and other items have been lain on the ground or attached to pictures. Somehow, they evoke a sense of connection with those people whose lives were so cruelly taken.

For my mother, who grew up in Cornwall whilst the war was waging across Europe, our brief visit is long enough and more. For all of us it raises many questions. My mother asks: “How could men have done something so evil?” As a rhetorical question, this question is at risk of being – in itself – a form of denial. At the same time, for academics and scolars it signals a primary area of study since the war.

The Jews in Krakow

About Dorothy

When my friend Mark hears that I spent Christmas in Krakow his first reference is to the Second World War, when Nazi forces established Krakow as a centre for their attempts to eradicate Jews as part of the so-called “Final Solution”.

Prior to the war, the Jewish population in Krakow was in the region of 68,000. Whilst estimates vary, this population constituted between a quarter and a third of the city’s population. Reading from her guidebook during our visit Judy, my sister-in-law, shares an estimate of just 300 Jews living in Krakow today.

The most limited research suggests a mixed history for the city’s Jews. On the one hand, it’s clear that they contributed significantly to establishing Krakow as a wealthy city. On the other hand there are reports over a number of centuries of tensions between Jews and non-Jews in the city. One report suggests that even today there are up to 1,000 Jews living in the city of whom about 800 choose not to identify themselves as part of the Jewish community.

We visit the Jewish quarter of the City on Saturday, 26th December. The main square is quiet though we catch glimpses of a number of boys playing outside one of the synagogues. We leave my nephew Edward in a cafe to read, returning to join him for lunch after walking round and visiting a former synagogue which has been turned into a museum. The factory owned by Schindler and at which “Schindler’s List” was filmed is not far away.

The cafe is next to the former bath house in the main square. Formerly three shops it is furnished with reminders of its history. One part of the cafe has two sturdy woodworking benches as tables, another has a sewing machine, a third has musical instruments.

My mother’s presence with us is a reminder that the events of the Second World War are within living memory – at least for some. I wonder what it must be like to be a Jewish resident of the city. I wonder what it must be like to be a non-Jewish resident who grew up in the midst of World War Two.

Christmas at Greg and Tom’s

About Dorothy

Recommendation is a wonderful thing. Months before our visit to Krakow Judy, my sister-in-law, receives a recommendation for Greg and Tom’s Hostel and this is where we stay.

The staff have gone to great lengths for us, allocating rooms in an apartment away from the main hostel. We join our fellow guests for breakfast and at other times enjoy our own family space.

In mainland Europe Christmas is often celebrated on Christmas Eve with a family meal followed by Midnight Mass. Poland is no exception. Along with other guests we are invited to join staff at the hostel on Christmas Eve for supper “on the house”.

The kitchen and lounge are full. We are about twenty-five guests in total. We range in age from the early twenties to the late seventies. Guests are from Europe, the Americas and Asia. The curiosity of the traveller is such that we make easy contact and share stories and information about our visit here to Krakow and our lives back home.

The staff have prepared a variety of traditional Polish dishes and we eat abundantly. After supper Peter prepares vodka shots and I can’t quite believe it when my mother is persuaded to down a shot in one.

Rebecca, my niece, yearns for some traditional carols and my mother, nephew and I agree to sing a few in the kitchen. The room quickly fills with guests as we sing and, in time, other guests coyly agree to share something in their own mother tongue. Christmas is portable, after all.

At 10 o’clock we leave in haste and make our way to see the nativity story played out in the open air. We may not understand Polish but we enjoy the story with which we are amply familiar.

A first visit to Krakow

About Dorothy

After a longer journey than we had planned to reach our destination, my mother and I reach Krakow where we join other members of the family.

Alan, my brother, Judy, his wife, and Edward, their son have already had the chance to do a ‘reccy’ and to experience the cold. Since their arrival the temperature has increased dramatically and the virgin snow is increasingly grey and beginning to melt.

Walking from our hostel we quickly arrive at the city’s main square. Throughout our stay we return to the square again and again and enjoy its festive offerings as well as its physical beauty. St. Mary’s Church towers over the square and every hour on the hour a lone trumpet player marks history, reminding the city of an attack by the Mongols in the 13th Century.

Two days in a row I am entranced by three accordion players who, at the entrance to the square’s Cloth Hall, play renditions of classical music which defy any stereotype I bring of the accordionist’s art. Together with the family I stop to listen and enjoy. Perhaps my delight reflects my surprise at the commitment that has gone into shaping Vivaldi for accordion and playing it so well.

It is Christmas and the Christmas market reflects the season. My brother has already discovered the local smoked cheese which is available as a snack – toasted and with cranberry preserve. It goes well with Krakow’s mulled wine which is also available in the market square.

Though I am no fan of the cold, I am delighted that my first visit to Krakow is at Christmas.