Could listening save the world?

 Back when I was twenty-one I met a 12 year old who changed my life.

Her story was so compelling I've never forgotten it. She came from a challenging situation many of us recognise still.

Neighbours who used to be friends were no longer talking. People seemed overwhelmed and acted like they didn't have time for others. They didn't seem to have time to take care of themselves either.

Things were moving so fast that anger and confusion were rife. People thought that if they just became more efficient, they would save time and sooner or later there would be enough time to do what they loved.

But somehow or other it felt like things just kept speeding up. Time simply disappeared.  

Is all this feeling familiar?

This actually isn't a social media post from today's feed. It is a synopsis of one of my favourite books of all time, Momo, by German author Michael Ende. 

He created it in the 1970s as a allegory of what he saw starting to happen in society. He wrote it as a warning of what could be if we let "the grey men" of the Time Savings Bank (or whatever large institutional structure is stealing your time, there are so many to choose from these days!) take over and have their way. They rob us of connection and relationship, which are two powerful practices underpinning humanity's way of surviving and thriving for the entirety of our history so far.

^{The Momo statue in Hannover, Germany}

Ende spends the entirety of Chapter 2, describing the power of Momo's listening. She can help people come back into balance after conflict. Children discover they have imaginative ideas they can bring to life. The community is better connected.

In the end, when everyone else has fallen under the spell of empty promises that life will somehow be better if others are in charge and have forgotten what they most care about, she is the only one who can listen so deeply that the grey men are compelled to tell the truth about their plans. She finds her way to Master Time and saves the world.

Momo's story is as fresh for me as it was the first time I met her. She's still 12. And I've spent the decades since then learning all I can to help people stay together to make good stuff happen. She is still my role model for the power of listening and my aspiration about how to practice it.

For me, if our human history soon comes to an end, it might be because we forgot that listening is so important. It is one of the most powerful ways we can demonstrate we care about someone else. It is the partner to story. And therefore, part of THE 5 POWERS.

In the current moment, as things are over fast, over pressured, overwhelming and people are under resourced, under valued and under loved, what can you do about it?

Maybe you're asking yourself, like me: How can we support people to build the capacities they need to do good work together? 

In this time of over complexity, what are the SIMPLE things that can make all the difference?

This inquiry became what I call THE 5 POWERS -- simple practices that can create collective leadership and community everywhere. It's time we took simple and elevated it to EVERYWHERE.

These are the simple, but mighty important practices that underpin the health and vitality of any human system: The power of APPRECIATION, the power of STORY, the power of INVITATION, the power of QUESTIONS, the power of HOSTING.

I'm about to teach about THE 5 POWERS for the first time online and I'd love you to be part of the circle. This work is aimed at leaders, facilitators, people who are supporting people to make an impact and most of all for connectors -- those who are the connective tissue supporting organisations, groups, community and initiatives to stay together and keep going in the face of it all.

It's what we are all looking for right now -- simple, small, practical, and potent. How to help the power of all of us to rise.

Full details & Register here.