By Billian Matambo

As we admire and reciprocate the peace and harmony during nature observation, that peace and harmony was/ is imparted in us. Being a warrior is hard work or is an illusion. Learning about the warriors of human spirit became one of our major lessons at the Gateway Fellowship module 3 held at Kufunda Village Harare from 4 – 8 February 2020. Facilitated and hosted by Gateway Zimbabwe, the 5 day workshop was attended by 21 participants from all over Zimbabwe. As always the objective is to reweave the social fabric of our communities by holding  ourselves together and opening to the world as it is.

The inspirational lessons on inner leadership were of importance to us. In order to be able to became guides and facilitators of good processes in our communities we need to find peace , clarity and open heartedness in ourselves. However as shared by Ms Undina  that inner leadership manifestations are seen through implementation of good community processes that settle and quiet people and open them to each other. We need processes that  can allow us to talk about issues that we cared about and coming together in action. The key being to use action, whatever it is as laboratory for learning how to work well together even in our diversity.

By studying good listening tips we learnt that its important to focus on what matters. A good leader needs to suspend judgements, assumptions and certainties because its all about exploring together and surfacing what we do not know or see yet. Since we are often caught in hectic flow of actions, there is need to slow down and foster reflections.  As participants we master  3 ways that can be used when sharing stories from our communities.

1)WORLD CAFE

This is a method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter in real life situations .It provides great ways of fostering interactions and dialogue with both large and small groups. Particulary it is effective in surfacing the collective wisdom of large groups of diverse people. The cafe format is very flexible and adapts to many different purposes, information sharing , relationship building, deep reflection exploration and action planning. The method gave us ample time to share all our stories from 5 different places which are Chiadzwa, Lupane, Acturus, Chimanimani and Epworth.

There a number of principles that governs World Cafe

-create hospitable space.

-explore questions that matter.

-encourage each person’s contribution.

-listen together for patterns, insight and deeper questions.

-make collective knowledge visible.

2)COLLECTIVE STORY HARVESTING

Collective story harvesting enable us to track many arcs of a single story simultaneously, meaning we can practice targeted listening and group learning, while offering a gift of the story holders together with the group as a whole  in the form of collective meaning making. It is the ideal way to surface the many insights innovations and a-has that exist beneath the surface of the stories.

3)CASE CLINICS.

This method guide a team or a group of peers through a process in which a case giver presents a case and the peers help as consultants based on the principles of the U-process and process consultations. It helps to access the wisdom and experience of peers. Besides it creates high level of trust and positive energy among the peer group.

On the other hand it gives time for mirroring images with an open mind including enough time of generative dialogue on how these observations can offer new perspectives on the case giver’s situation and journey.

Perseverance, unity of purpose, positivity, trustworthiness and being servant leaders are some of the characteristics that will enable us to reweave the social fabric of our communities. However with all being said and done we are determined to cultivate only thoughts that increase trust and love, to use our hands to perform only deeds that builds communities and to speak only words of harmony and support.

Compiled by Billian Matambo Zimbabwe Diamond and Allied Workers Union(ZIDAWU).