Meaningful Conversations can Transform You and Your World – PS57
Episode Introduction
In this episode, my guest is Jacqueline Botting, the founder of WiseTribe.us. Jacqueline reached out to me after discovering Appreciative Inquiry, buying my book, Appreciative Inquiry for Collaborative Solutions: 21 Strength-Based Workshops, and engaging me to work with her fledgling non-profit startup. We have been working and playing together ever since. I invited Jacqueline to share her story of how and why she started Wisetribe.us.
Episode Overview – Meaningful Conversations Can Transform You and Your World
For Jacqueline Botting, it starts with a personal quest to search for greater meaning in her own life. Valuing the time in which we’re living, Jacqueline’s revelation is that we are dawning on The Collaborative Age. At this time, when we are experiencing enormous cultural and technological changes, we possesses tremendous potential to enhance our collective social well-being. Through carefully designed experiences, WiseTribe connects people of diverse ages, ethnicities, and professions to share strengths, dreams, possibilities and convert them into action-based learning projects.
Search for Meaningful Conversations and Relationships
As you listen to Jacqueline share parts of her story, you’ll become aware that meaningful conversation and relationships are the big themes in Jacqueline’s story.
It was the passing of her father, or the time that led up to his death that awakened Jacqueline to the realization that a successful life, or a life well-lived, is not only about getting ahead merely in the material or professional sense. Jacqueline discovered in conversation with her father in the last years of his life that all he really wanted was to have meaningful relationships and conversations.
Jacqueline became aware that she was running her life to a similar script as her father: all the trappings, material things, good career opportunities and even marriage didn’t add up to make her feel whole or complete.
Her father’s vulnerability and their deep meaningful conversations moved Jacqueline to begin to examine her own live. The confluence of many events – perhaps synchronicities – lead her to connect to people who were often much older than she was: and she was discovering similar stories, namely, towards the end of life, what counts is having healthy, high-functioning, meaningful conversations and relationships.
Transformative Experience
In these conversations with older people, Jacqueline was not only tapping into their wisdom, but finding her own deep wisdom. She was learning that a life not well-lived resulted in a life of emptiness, a life unfulfilled. She felt compelled to recalibrate and re-think what it means to live in a human centric world that was beyond material possessions and status.
WiseTribe
WiseTribe, the organization Jacqueline founded was born out of the idea of generations wiser together. And this is when I was brought in to help design a range of “products” to help market this concept. Overtime, it became clear that these “products” were experiences where invited participants could share their personal stories, passions, dreams and possibilities for a wiser, human centric world, based on collective social well-being.
Discovering Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) first became know to Jacqueline when when did a search for the term “collective actualization.” She came across an article by David Cooperrider, thought leader of Appreciative Inquiry, and it was as if she had come home. The worldview and practice of AI felt so aligned to WiseTribe’s vision and mission, she knew she had to learn more. She wanted to create spaces and experiences for people to share the wisdom of their lives and their insights and interests to create something new.
Contrasting the Traditional Worldview with the Appreciative Worldview.
We are moving beyond personal mastery to collective mastery. Technology has become a great enabler and democratizer. You might like to open up the Positive Lens Reveal to read some of the distinctions between the old and the new ways of experiencing the world.
POSITIVITY LENS REVEAL
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As you take a look at these slides, which worldview occupies most of your energy? When we start to pay attention to our own worldview and those around us, we expand. We are not alone in this world. We are interconnected. The language we use creates the worlds we live into. What if we were to consciously change our language so we together we create a new narrative. People are not problems to be solved, but mysteries to be embraced.
The Experience of a WiseTribe Season
Listen in to Jacqueline as she describes the WiseTribe Collaborative Season. Briefly, it’s a four part experience. The inaugural season was a partnership with Florida Atlantic University (FAU).
- Connect through Wisdom Exchanges
- Co-create in Solutionism Workshops using Design Thinking Process
- Collaborate among tribes over their projects
- Celebrate with a festival to showcase projects and learnings with artistic performances.
This four month experience is grounded in the principles and practices of Appreciative Inquiry. Therefore stories, strengths, dreams, play, creativity, art, inspiration, heart and love, as well as commitment to being in relationship and doing good work are abundant.
We experience the value of play which unleashes imagination and spirit thereby leading to innovations that allow us to live in new ways.
Appreciations
In conclusion, I invite Jacqueline to reflect on her own strengths in bringing her vision to life. It’s a joy to hear how clear she is about her talents. Having been a thinking partner with Jacqueline, I am so proud to hear describe herself with such confidence and competence. She has seized many opportunities and through her tenacity and persistence, vision and leadership, she is making a sustainable difference in people’s lives.
Finally, I was very touched when she expresses her appreciation for me and the role I have played in encouraging her and offering support and experience to achieve her dreams. That's my talent.
It will continue to be a positive co-creative enriching experience for us both.
Connect with Jacqueline
Website: WiseTribe.us and FloridaWise.us
WiseTribe on Twitter
Jacqueline on LinkedIn
Wisetribe on on Facebook
WiseTribe on Instagram
Book Mentioned in the Episode
[amazonjs asin=”0470483164″ locale=”US” title=”Appreciative Inquiry for Collaborative Solutions: 21 Strength-Based Workshops”]
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