Listening as a Leadership Skill

Posted on April 17, 2026 by jofacilitator

A number of current events and posts by colleagues have catalyzed my thinking about leadership. 

As a facilitator, I have experienced a range of situations with clients where leaders thought that leadership was about presenting their own insights and requiring others to follow them. 

Telling, Not Listening

One was a CEO who brought a whole team together from across the country and then started the meeting by telling them they were all incompetent.  The group had been very successful in the past year, according to documented accomplishments, but they retreated from that assessment because he told them they were incompetent.  This affected their willingness to take risks, and the company suffered.

Another was a government department who set up a community consultation saying that they wanted input but immediately told the group what they had already decided.  Someone in the group wrote a card that said “Here we go again…”  and propped it up on the table so all the other participants could see it. Authentic sharing of insights was squelched, and no results came from the session.

From Telling to Listening

One quarter I had three very different clients in quick succession where there were new leaders who had asked for a participatory planning exercise because they were replacing autocratic leaders who had demeaned the insights of their employees.  One was a company, one was a non-profit, and the third was a small university department.  In each of these, a few participants were not only hesitant to participate but also contributed anonymous defiant ideas that were designed to undermine the work of the group – their trust that the leader would actually listen to them had been destroyed by the leader’s predecessor.   In each of these participatory events, facilitation was not easy – the facilitator had to prove that everyone’s ideas were valuable by very strongly demonstrating that the ideas that came forward were heard, and that people were respected.  In two of these, the anonymous defiant ideas in the obstacles workshop were written on cards and no one would own up to them or even answer questions of clarification.  I did not throw the cards out.  I took the words at face value and asked the group where the cards best fit with the clusters that were emerging. The cards were clustered using the hidden wisdom in them, not the surface level defiance. In this way, everyone’s wisdom was respected at a deep level.    

Follow-up sessions with these groups demonstrated that trust in the new leadership was gradually increasing as a result of the facilitated events.  In each of these situations, leadership was ineffective until the leaders began to listen to the wisdom of their followers. 

Listening as Leaders in the Political Realm

I was a child in Iowa in the 1950’s, when Iowa had precinct caucuses for political parties instead of primary elections. In these caucuses at that time, neighbours gathered together to discuss issues and values and decide on the “planks” of the party “platform”, as well as choosing someone to represent their decisions at the next higher level of the party, the county party convention. (When I was about 9 years old, the caucus in our precinct was held in our family living room – I remember it clearly because I was helping serve coffee and spilled some very hot coffee on myself, creating an indelible memory.)   

The representative group at the county level looked at the recommendations from the precincts, put together the party platform at the county level, and selected representatives to take their recommendations to the state conference. The same process happened at the state and national levels. Candidates were chosen at each level who would support the issues and values that arose from the people.  The grassroots wisdom percolated upward from local neighbours to the national level.  My father really loved this grassroots process.

Several years ago, there were a number of private groups in Canada who sponsored Syrian refugees during the civil war there.  At a local meeting about the issues of sponsoring refugees, the local member of Parliament was listed as a speaker.  Instead of speaking, he asked the group, mostly people who were part of sponsor groups, for their reflections on the process and how government could support them.  People came up with many suggestions. I was astounded – it is seldom that one hears a politician asking questions and listening intently to the answers. He was re-elected several times.  

Recently in Toronto there was a by-election for Parliament. A candidate had formerly been a member of the provincial legislature who had a reputation for really listening to her constituents’ needs and standing up for them. Although she had changed her party affiliation to run for this new office, she won a resounding majority as a member of Parliament.

And I am hearing very positive stories of a candidate for Congress in Iowa who has built a reputation for overcoming great obstacles to listen to ordinary people of all stripes about their concerns and has explained his positions on issues by relating what local people have said.     

Effects of Listening to Those You Lead

The first 40 years of my life, I was known as a talker – once someone asked my father if I had been born of a talking machine! I hid an inner insecurity with acting as if I knew all the answers. I found myself isolated as a result. It took a significant life event just before my 40th birthday for me to discover that I was deeply curious about other people’s stories, experiences, and wisdom. That was a catalyst for my career as a facilitative leader. 

As individuals, we see one facet of the whole reality.  When we are curious, ask open questions and listen to the answers from a wide variety of people who have a stake in the results, we gain a variety of grounded, realistic perspectives.  If we don’t agree with the answers, asking questions that help someone articulate why they have come up with their answers helps us (as well as that person) to understand the bigger picture and make wiser decisions. 

Really listening gains respect from those you are listening to.  That respect allows creativity and teamwork to flourish.  That in turn makes you and your team more productive.

The incorporation of more perspectives and life experience from a variety of people creates commitment and makes plans more effective.

And your increased productivity and effectiveness makes you more valuable, so that you are more likely to keep your job, get a promotion, or even get elected!

(And of course, given the topic of this post, I invite you to share your perspectives on this in the comments so that all of us can continue to learn from each other!)

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A First Step in My Facilitation Journey

Posted on April 3, 2026 by jofacilitator

Someone asked me this question:  If a career as a facilitator is lifelong, when did you decide you wanted to become a facilitator?

When I started facilitating, there was no profession called facilitation.  I started out as a teacher. I had wanted to be a teacher ever since I taught my sister how to read when she was four years old and I was 6. My university education was focused on Education and Anthropology.

My first experience facilitating, although I didn’t call it that at the time, was when I was teaching music to black kids in an inner-city school in 1972.  I was 22 years old, a white farm girl, and it was my third year of teaching.  The students were ages 12-15, bigger than I was, and they did not want to be in school. Many couldn’t read in Grade 7 or 8, although they could copy off the blackboard.  I wanted to teach reading, but the education system assigned me to teach music. 

So, copying a colleague in another school, I did a life planning exercise with the students on the first day of class that asked them questions. I told them that this was a personal exercise, and they wouldn’t have to share anything except the answer to the last question. I asked them each to take a sheet of paper, write their name at the top, and how old they were.  Then I asked them to write how old they would be in 10 years, which for them was the age of an adult.  Then I asked, “What do you want to be or be doing when you are that age?”  I emphasized that this was what they wanted to be, not what someone else wanted them to be.  The answers ranged from beauty operator to professional football player. 

Then I asked them, “What are 10 things you need to do to get where you want to be in 10 years?”  I gave some examples and helped those who wanted help. Clearly passing Grade 8, which required passing a 6th grade reading test, was one of the foundational things they needed to get to wherever they wanted to be.  

Then I asked “What are 10 things you need to do in the next year to get to where you want to be in 10 years?” Again, I gave examples if they wanted help.

The final question was “What do you need from my class, to get to where you want to be in 10 years?” This was the only question where they had to share their answers. I went around the class and each person had to say what they needed from my class. I wrote these on the blackboard, and had someone copy these down.

Then I took all these notes home (I had 7 classes of 30 kids every day) and looked for the patterns of what they wanted.  I merged that with what the curriculum said (which was luckily very vague), and what I knew they needed, which was to a) learn to read and b) to believe in themselves.

From this together we created a Black Music History class.  We started with African history and African music, then went through gospel, blues, jazz, and rock music. (At that point I did not know about Caribbean music, and hiphop and rap had not yet evolved, or I would have used those as well.) We listened to various songs, while looking at the lyrics. I played my guitar when appropriate, and we sang.

I taught them reading through the words of the songs, and to believe in themselves through learning their own history.  It was amazing, and all of us learned so much! I had very few discipline problems with the kids that year. They even brought written music for me to share with everyone.

My discovery from this experience was that asking people for their wisdom and really listening is a very powerful tool, and not only does it come up with powerful solutions, but the facilitator is learning from each encounter as well.  I also learned that connecting lessons with students’ life needs is very important for success, both in the classroom and for students personal goals. 

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Using the Focused Conversation Method with Dots to Prioritize Consensus Workshop Results

Posted on March 26, 2026 by jofacilitator

I’m not sure when I discovered this process based on the Focused Conversation Method, but it allows thinking through a number of perspectives on priorities at different levels to discover which item is the biggest priority overall. Instead of just gut level reactions to “What is our biggest priority?” participants have a chance to think through and record different perspectives on priorities, which makes the conversation on priorities as the whole group more accurate. The questions can be adapted, as can the number of dots (as long as you have enough different colours).

Give each person 4 dots:  one each of red, yellow, blue, green.

Looking at the results of a Consensus Workshop Method (the names of the clusters)

O.  Read the names of the clusters out loud

R.  Each person put a red dot on the one you are most passionate about.

I. Each person put a yellow dot on the one you think is easiest to do. (or this could be the one that has to be done so the others can happen)

 I. Each person put a green dot on the one that would cost the least.

 I. Each person put a blue dot on the one that would have the most positive impact.

 D.  Look at the whole picture of dots and do a quick reflection on the whole picture:

Whole Group Together:

 O.  Where do you see a big concentration of dots?

Which of these has the most different colours of dots? (clues to priority from different perspectives)

What questions of clarification do you have? (i.e. ask the person who did it what was their thinking behind where they put a dot)

R. What surprises you here?

I. What insights do you see here about what we see as priority?

Which of these are clearly low priority (few dots)?

Which of these are clearly highest priority? (Can rank them from highest to lowest if you like)  

D. Given their priority, which of these are we committed to working on?

(If you are interested in group facilitation tools that have a deep theoretical base and are grounded in years of real-life experience with groups all over the planet, search for ToP facilitation, or the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in your area. In Canada, it is ICA Associates, Inc., http://ica-associates.ca , a company related to the not-for-profit ICA Canada (The Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs) http://icacan.org .)

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ORID Thinking to Address a Facilitation Emergency:  A Participant Who Tried to Take Over a Meeting

Posted on March 12, 2026 by jofacilitator

I was facilitating the first meeting of a steering committee for a proposed province-wide public consultation on a painful and difficult topic involving abuse. 

My colleague and I had worked hard to find a wide range of participants who all had a good deal of wisdom on how to deal with the topic and had a stake in the results of the conference.  Most of these participants were service providers, not necessarily those who were personally affected, but who cared deeply about those where were.  Survivors were reluctant to be identified publicly.

One woman who insisted on participating in the steering committee had a reputation for obstructing any meeting on the topic in nasty and very personal attacks, including staging very public walkouts that had scuttled any work on the topic.

I tried to make sure her views were heard, as well as everyone else’s ideas.  

We had been working for two days and were getting very close to the time we had to finish so that participants could catch planes and other public transportation to get home. We were in the midst of a brainstorm to articulate the way the conference should address the issue, but I had been told that I could not use the consensus workshop method with cards, so I was using the flipchart method which presents challenges in showing common patterns among the ideas.   

The process bogged down, and suddenly she stood up and declared, “I refuse to go on until you all admit I have the only right to an opinion.”

The group froze.  At the front of the room, I noted in my head the words she had said. I noted the background information I knew about her.

Then I noted my reaction – a crouched defensive posture; and the reaction of the group – everyone looked down and tried to become invisible. 

First I thought about why I had reacted in this way:  I admitted to myself that her behaviour was threatening my right to lead the group, which also challenged my self-story of service. Then I thought about why this might have happened and realized that the group, afraid of attacks from her, had abdicated taking responsibility for her behaviour in the group, and left it to me to handle her for the whole meeting to this point. 

So I thought about possible responses.  Should I stand up to her and emphasize that everyone had a valid opinion?  The consequences of that would likely be that she would then focus her attack on me personally, and I would not be able to facilitate the group. The whole group really needed to take responsibility for the situation.  How might I get them to do that?

Intuitively, I pulled my chair over to the side of the table leaving the front of the room empty. I silently projected the question that the group needed to ask into the middle of the room. After a few minutes someone asked the question of her: “Why do you have the only right to an opinion on this topic?”  She answered, “Because I am the only advocate in this room who speaks for the survivors”.  She had a valid point hidden behind her behaviour.  My co-facilitator and I had not been able to find survivors who would come out publicly to be on the steering committee to represent themselves.

Participants in the group began to speak up: “I know a couple of people that I can ask who will probably be willing to be a part of the steering committee…”  Others volunteered to ask others that they knew. 

Finally the group closed the meeting.

In the next meeting, survivors were present.  Because the group had been unable to find the patterns in their brainstorm, my colleague and I had taken all the individual ideas from the first meeting, clustered them using our best understanding of their meaning by the people who had said them, and named the clusters. We shared the results with the whole group.

The woman who had caused the situation turned to her friend and said, “We don’t need to be here.  They’ve heard us.”  For the rest of the steering committee meetings she participated positively. 

When the actual conference of a hundred people was held, her old behaviour re-occurred. She invented a reason and tried to stage a walkout.  Survivors stood up and said “You don’t speak for us.  We speak for ourselves, and we want to finish this consultation with results.”

The consultation was a success. Afterward I heard that people’s lives were changed positively because of their participation in the conference. 

Note that my silent thinking process to address the issue in the steering committee followed ORID.  It was not a focused conversation. 

If you want to know more about the roots and history of ORID, contact the ICA in your country or http://ica-associates.ca ORID is also explained in depth in The Art of Focused Conversation, Second Edition, and Getting to the Bottom of ToP.

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Focused Conversation On Current Events with One or a Few Others (Or with Self)

Posted on February 25, 2026 by jofacilitator

This conversation was catalyzed by a conversation with a couple of other ToP facilitators in this month’s ToP Community of Practice meeting about how in current times it is challenging to have conversations about anything because people cannot agree on whether something is objective data or not. Arguments break out before a conversation can even start. The question was how to have these important conversations to begin to address polarization. 

The conversation was also triggered by reflection on a set of “kitchen table” conversations I posted here on March 23, 2025.  I decided that there needed to be an update on these conversations given what has happened in the past year.  

I have written this for a small group, but it is equally helpful for a conversation with one’s self.

Preparation: Find an article or a short video clip for the tangible beginning point. For this conversation to work, it is very important that the starting point is something brief and on topic that everyone in the group can see or hear.

It is important to start with the Working Assumptions to create a space where people can listen to each other’s answers before reacting to them.  (See post from Feb. 5, 2026)

Rational Aim:  To discern the meaning of current events or posts. (Consensus is not necessary.

Experiential Aim: To decrease anxiety and to ground external reports in real life

Opening:  Tangible Beginning Point:

We will start with an article (or a short video clip) from the news. Take a few minutes to read or watch it.

Objective Level: What is a word or phrase you saw in this article (Or saw or heard in this clip)? 

Just quote the word or phrase you actually saw or heard.  

Somebody else — a different one that you actually saw or heard?

Reflective Level:  What is a personal experience you have had of this or a situation like this — not what others say or tell you, but your own experience.

Someone else – your own personal experience?

What is your gut level reaction to the situation?

Someone else?

Interpretive Level: Why do you think is behind your reaction? Or Why do you think you reacted this way?

Someone else?

What historical events might help us understand this event?

What might be the significance (or meaning, or impact) of this event from your perspective?  Short term?  Long term?

Someone else?

Decisional Level: What might we do to respond to this event? Personally?  As a group?

Someone else?

Closing: Thank you for this opportunity to discuss a tough topic.

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Facilitating Diversity

Posted on February 19, 2026 by jofacilitator

(Photo from the front cover of The Art of Focused Conversation, Second Edition)

This week in February 2026 marked significant religious events in several different traditions. Lunar New Year, the beginning of Ramadan, and Ash Wednesday all happened within 2 days. And within a month, there will be Purim and Nowruz, followed closely by Easter. This led me to a reflection on facilitating diversity.

I grew up in a community where the ethnic differences (and accompanying ancient prejudices) were between the Swedes, the Danes, and the Norwegians, all immigrants or first-generation Americans. It wasn’t until I was grown that I knew people of many backgrounds. Then our family was assigned for 10 years to work doing participatory development in 5 cultures on different continents. We listened to the wisdom of ordinary people from each of the cultures as we facilitated participatory planning and worked shoulder to shoulder with community members in planning and carrying out appropriate development led by them. Then since we moved to Canada, I have had the privilege of working with many different cultural groups and indigenous communities across the nation. In all of these settings, my primary role has been that of group process facilitator, one who asks questions and listens, and learning what it means to do this across differences.

One of the things I have learned is that we are all human beings. None of us, and no one culture, has all the answers, but we all have insights into what it means to be human. We all have insights into what we need to live fulfilled lives.

Someone asked me the other day what we can do these days to build the economic and political structures that we human beings need in this world. My answers to this, not complete answers but starting ones, were that we can first be kind, generous, respectful, and supportive to people in our local community, wherever and whoever they are. That is a foundation. The second is that facilitating groups to listen to each others’ wisdom and to come up with common solutions is a doorway to creating human solutions to profound underlying challenges.

Years ago, I was facilitating a workshop at a conference of multi-cultural organizations in Ontario, to demonstrate some practical tools of facilitation. I had made a point of sharing my “working assumptions” for facilitating groups, which include “Everyone has wisdom” and “We need everyone’s wisdom for the wisest result”. About 20 adults, representing a good cross-section of the world, were actively participating in envisioning what they wanted our multicultural society to look like, brainstorming and sharing their ideas on cards on the wall. My youngest son, then about 7 years old, had accompanied me as it was a Saturday and I hadn’t been able to find child care. He was quietly playing with his Legos in the back corner. Suddenly, one of the participants said, pointing at my son, “What does he think? After all, it’s the next generation who will benefit and continue this!”

I called out, “Tim, what do you want our multicultural society to look like in 5 years?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Can I have three colours of markers?” I said, “Sure”and handed them to him. He took a card and drew 3 stick figures of different colours dancing together.

The card went up on the wall and clustered with all the cards that said that we would be working and playing together in our multicultural society.

We were all astounded that a child’s spontaneous non-verbal contribution could add richness to the product of the adults, although in retrospect, we shouldn’t have been surprised.

We are the ones who can shape the future. And group process facilitation is a profession that has matured in time to help us do that with the wisdom of all.

What do you want to see in our world in 10 years? What can you and we do to help bring that about?

(If you are interested in group facilitation tools that have a deep theoretical base and are grounded in years of real-life experience with groups all over the planet, search for ToP facilitation, or the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in your area. In Canada, it is ICA Associates, Inc., http://ica-associates.ca , a company related to the not-for-profit ICA Canada (The Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs) http://icacan.org .)

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My Working Assumptions as a Facilitator

Posted on February 5, 2026 by jofacilitator

I have recently read reflections by several facilitators on group norms, facilitator neutrality, and “facilitation as manipulation”. I think that this is an important topic, especially in these times.

Thirty-two years ago a group of people (I was a part of it) began the International Association of Facilitators to separate the role of a group meeting leader (a consultant or content provider) who has knowledge or wisdom to present to a group, and the role of a group meeting leader (a facilitator) who has questions and process to help a group discover and create its own knowledge and wisdom. The role of a meeting leader who led with questions and process was barely known in the western world, and certainly not separated clearly. So it was necessary to bring attention and professionalism to the role.

These two roles are on opposite ends of a continuum, and there are roles that contain elements of both, such as a facilitative trainer who shares content but guides the group to discover how it relates to them. However, it is still a challenge for a group leader to understand that being in front of the room doesn’t mean that you have to know and tell people something, and for the group to understand that it is safe to say what they know.

My experience is that when you ask people for their wisdom, and you really listen, they think YOU are wise. And of course when you ask people for their wisdom, and you really listen, you gain more wisdom and get more wise!

The following describes how I begin meetings that I facilitate, to rehearse for my self and make clear to the group that my role is that of a facilitator.

Edited from original post on this blog from February 23, 2015

In the 1990’s, I had a client gig that I knew was going to be a challenging one.  Their director had spent 3 years strategically building consensus that they should have a consensus-building workshop!  So I decided that I needed to think through some ground rules to start with.  Now I have always hated ground rules.  They generally come to me as “thou shalt not”s, all negative energy about what you shouldn’t do. Very de-energizing.

So I created something that at first I called “Ground Rules”.  And then I realized that they were not rules at all — they were presuppositions — assumptions that I was making and expected the group to make  in order to work together productively.  But who wants a 5-syllable word at the top of a flipchart to start the day?  So I named them “Working Assumptions”. I have used them ever since with most groups. I write a cryptic form of them on a flipchart (like the image above or the bold type below) and talk through a description of them with the group (in parentheses below).

Working Assumptions

  1. Everyone has wisdom. (This doesn’t mean everything that everyone says is wise. It means that behind what they say is wisdom, and we will listen for it.)
  2. We need everyone’s wisdom for the wisest result. (In the same way that a diamond is more valuable when it is cut with more facets, what we come up with will be more valuable when we have illuminated more facets of what we are working with — we all come from different perspectives — some are near each other, some opposing sides, others in a totally different plane from the others, like the facets of a diamond.)
  3. There are no wrong answers. (This doesn’t mean we agree with everything — I have never been in a room where everyone agreed — even if I’m the only one in the room!  Also, see number 1 — behind what may seem on the surface as a wrong answer — and I have heard some that were positively evil on the surface — there is wisdom, and that is what we will listen for. The corollary, of course, is that there are no right answers, only the best we can come up with given our limitations.)
  4. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (A cliche, yes, but it points to consensus as creating a larger answer that is not identical to any one view, but includes the wisdom of many. I think of compromise as smaller than the sum of its parts, consensus as larger. Like a puzzle picture, which is the sum of the puzzle pieces and their relationships. All puzzle pieces are included, or there is a hole. I learned recently that Aristotle came up with this phrase.)
  5. Everyone will hear others and be heard. (This doesn’t mean that everyone has to talk all the time — then nobody would be heard. It means listening to others as well as making sure your wisdom is on the table.)

I’ve recently concluded that Aretha Franklin would probably summarize the whole list with “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.”

I have never had a group reject these working assumptions altogether. Someone in the very first group, however, did differ with the 3rd one.  As soon as I said “There are no wrong answers”, a lady at the back of the room pounded on the table and shouted “There are too wrong answers!”  And I thought really, really fast and replied, “And that’s not a wrong answer either!”  Everybody laughed. “There are sometimes wrong answers on the surface, but it is the wisdom under them that we are listening for.”   The group had a great retreat and listened to each other for maybe the first time in their history.

For number 4, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” I have had various people try to make this more clear.  Tim, one of my Cree trainees once said, “You know, it’s like a band.  Each instrument — the guitar, the bass, the drums — makes a good sound on its own.  But when you put them together, the music they create is greater than any one of them could come up with on their own.”  I’ve used his analogy ever since and get lots of nods of understanding.

In order to carry these out, I “hang my opinions on the doorknob” to detach myself from them, so that I am open to hearing the group. If something comes up where I have an opinion or some knowledge that might be useful to the group, I move to another part of the room, tell the group I am taking my “facilitator hat” off for a bit, and make my suggestion. Then I put my “facilitator hat” back on, and move back to the facilitator’s place in the room and ask “Where do we go from here?”

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Focus Group/Plenary Process for Large Group Consensus-Building  

Posted on January 29, 2026 by jofacilitator

The process used in “Large Scale Participatory Process: A Municipal Consultation…” in this blog uses the Consensus Workshop Method at two levels, first using the same focus question in a number of small groups or focus groups to create consensus in each at a grassroots level, and then taking all those verbatim results and clusters them in two consecutive steps at a system-wide level.  I have used this process in a number of large group situations, with consistent positive feedback.

This process is easier to describe with an example.  In a training session in one First Nation, I demonstrated this method with 3 very small groups and a plenary of the whole.  I have attached photos of the results of the steps of the demonstration in sequence with the description of the steps as an example to make the process more clear. I have blocked out the name of the First Nation for privacy reasons.

Comparing the example of the steps provided here with the story of the municipal consultation process is intended to help to understand the process.  The strength of the process is that every single individual insight on a card from the focus groups finds a place in the product of the whole that informs and strengthens the broad consensus.  Each person’s idea is a valuable piece of the whole, in the same way as each small tile is needed to create a large mosaic.

If this is confusing, looking at the data on the cards as they were drawn from one step to the next will help you understand the procedures.

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Facilitating Your Family 2: Another story about facilitating one’s family

Posted on January 16, 2026 by jofacilitator

In 1992, Wayne and I and our 2 sons were living in a small apartment belonging to the organization we worked for, after having lived in many places around the world in our married life. We had already decided to stay in Toronto. We realized that by pulling together all the assets we had, and some other supports, we had the possibility of buying a house.  So Wayne and I sat down with our boys (11 and 17 at the time), and did a consensus workshop on “What values do we want to hold in buying a house?

We sat in a semi-circle around our dining room table to think about this question.  Each person brainstormed quietly onto cards, and then read them out and clarified them.  Both boys wanted to stay close to the schools they were in.  Aaron wanted to stay close to friends.  I wanted a garden, and a place to sit outside.  Wayne and I both wanted to stay close to our work.  Tim wanted a curb for skateboarding, and a dog.  Wayne wanted to have a place to do woodworking.  I wanted a separate bedroom for each of the boys, and one for us. I also wanted to be close to public transport, since we didn’t own (or want to own) a car. I also wanted something really affordable.

Then we started to cluster them by similar values.  At first glance, the ideas were very diverse. But then we started to see the larger patterns.

Staying close to current schools, friends and staying close to our office were clearly staying in the same part of the city. A curb for skateboarding and being close to public transit also expanded this cluster.

The value of being affordable clustered with Wayne’s value of being able to do woodworking.

Tim’s value of a dog clustered with my value of a garden.

So when we named our common values, we named them something like

  • An urban neighbourhood close by where we had been living, with public transit.
  • An older home (fixer-upper) that was affordable.
  • A house with a backyard (for a dog and a garden)

Our colleagues who were also looking for a place to live found condos that suited them.  But our values showed us that we were not looking for a condo. 

We found a nearly hundred-year-old house that needed upgrading and that had a backyard, in a lovely shady neighbourhood, close to where we had been living and walking distance from two forms of transit.  The house had three bedrooms.  When we learned that there was a workshop in the basement and the owner was willing to sell all his tools and equipment for a reasonable price, that was the clincher for Wayne. And within a few weeks, we found a rescue dog to join us.  32 years later, we are still living in the house, upgraded with Arts and Crafts style design and cabinets that Wayne built.  Involving the whole family in clarifying our values made that possible.

What family decisions would be enhanced if you involved the whole family in contributing to the decision?

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