There is an ethical point here. It is possible to design a process that destroys people's belief systems. All such systems have cracks in their armor. It is easy to destroy them, but it is immoral unless the structure is designed to give people the opportunity to replace that. Sometimes belief systems have to be challenged or destroyed. I challenge you to name a time when you did something creative without challenging a prior construct.

Often, we have to take parts of success today. How do you decide which parts to challenge? After you have challenged, you have to come back and reconstruct something better. Trust the participants to go far enough and not too far. Do not send them out in the world unprepared. Our mental constructs allow us to respond. You cannot destroy that. You have to be careful. This is critical engineering, but it is not rocket science. Get into the space with your participant. Feel their feelings, live in their paradigm, sense their construct, and remember others. Then you will have a better sense of what to bring. You have to do it WITH them rather than TO them. You are part of the group, part of the energy. When you psychologically step out of it, you become suspect and dangerous.

Sense your way into that presence and the decisions are not that hard. But do not get co-opted. Remember who you are, what you are bringing.

A philosopher says that there are two types of love: conditional and unconditional. You are providing conditional love. Contextually, it should be unconditional love. Specifically, it should be conditional. Conditionally, you are making the decision to make change. Unconditionally, you have to have the context that people are where they are and should not be judged. You have to feed back to people that there are people who love children unconditionally, but the world does not necessarily feel the same.

As a parent, I made the rules. But you have to allow for more and more control by the child.

000706.Matt Taylor