The Art of Hosting – Spurring Innovation through Collaboration

Rapid changes and profound disruptions are creating a shift in human consciousness. People are more deeply conscious now than ever before. People are leaning towards more collaborative, participative, transparent, creative, and innovative interactions and relationships with others – interactions and relationships that are meant to bring out the best in individuals and organizations, and transform communities for the better. This is what the Art of Hosting is all about.
The Art of Hosting is an approach to leadership that scales up from the personal to the systemic using personal practice, dialogue, facilitation and the co-creation of innovation to address complex challenges. The global community known as “Art of Hosting” gave its name to the facilitation technic it origin from. Today there is numerus of independent institutes practicing the Art of Hosting within and outside the global community.

Building Sustainable and Resilient Communities

Today’s communities face unprecedented challenges that affect the well-being of their constituents and the community as a whole. What the Art of Hosting does is it guides participants in building unique relationships with their community. It is through collective learning that a community or an organization finds solutions the fastest way. Through the Art of Hosting, it’s possible for people to learn together and build partnerships that help them work better. The Art of Hosting allows individuals to connect with other heads of resilience and sustainability movements, deepen such connection, and come up with plans and practices to achieve a sustainable and resilient community.

Collaborative entrepreneurship

When the world’s best entrepreneurs come together and realize a shared vision that will change the world for the better, we have what we call collaborative entrepreneurship. It’s an improved version of social entrepreneurship in which instead of helping entrepreneurs individually, entrepreneurs from different places are gathered to support and engage with other entrepreneurs. The Art of Hosting encourages entrepreneurs to engage in deep and meaningful conversations with other entrepreneurs, and work together towards a common goal.

Four-fold Practice

Pre-sensing, participation, contribution, and co-creation are the four-fold practices that make the Art of Hosting unique and engaging. It begins with bringing our undistracted and prepared self to any situation or event that we’re in. We need to “host” ourselves first we’re able to “host” others. We need to be open to ourselves first before we welcome the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of others around us. Being present also means being aware of our environment and the people around us. The next thing we need to do is to participate and practice conversation. And the only way to effectively do this is to speak our truth in a genuine way and listen deeply and with an open heart to the people around us. The third practice is about hosting conversations. As the host, we take responsibility for building and maintaining a realm in which people can collectively work at their best. We should be willing to start conversations that matter and ensure that we get meaningful and useful answers, learning, and insights from such conversation. Finally, we have co-creation. Here, we’re not mere audiences but key persons who positively contribute to the group. It’s more than just doing things together. It’s about sharing our knowledge and experiences with other people.
People are at their best when they engage in meaningful conversations and create deep connections with people around them. The Art of Hosting is a gateway for individuals to respond to challenges and problems in innovative, creative, unique, and effective ways. After the workshop, people get better at decision-making, their relationships towards other people improve, there is more room for innovation, and people respond better and faster to challenges and opportunities. The fact that the Art of Hosting is considered as the best dialogue tool to encourage people towards social and economic cooperation simply means that it is geared towards creating a more sustainable future for communities, businesses, and organizations.  The Art of Hosting is a giant leap from existing traditional leadership practices that are more often than not considered outdated and ineffective.