Wilderness Drum > Wilderness Writings > Team Building

Team Building in the Wilderness
Steve Beyer

Introduction
Campfires
Conflicts
Confrontation
Cooking
Council
Darkness
Decisionmaking
Development
Drumming
Followership
Leadership
Meetings
Stress
Trust
Wilderness Ethics

Council

The Form of Council

Corporate and business teams seem to spend a lot of time in meetings. While wilderness teams also have good reasons to meet, it is worth exploring alternative methods of sharing information and coordinating group activities, for several reasons. First, the technologies of modern meetings are unavailable in the wilderness. There are no overhead projectors or flip charts; indeed, team members may be limited to a small notebook, which is wet, and a ballpoint pen, which has stopped working. Printed agendas are unlikely to be distributed ahead of time. Second, a wilderness team spends more time in closer quarters with each other than a corporate or business team, and discussions of personal interactions therefore are more frequent and more intense. Third, the subjects a wilderness team discusses are sometimes more intimate than those of a business or corporate team. Few business teams need to discuss the proper disposal of their used tampons.

An alternative meeting format is often called, simply, council, or sometimes wisdom circle, or just circle. This format seems to flourish in the wilderness; one is tempted to see in council a primordial form of human interaction and decisionmaking that is deeply appropriate for the wilderness setting (on council generally, see Zimmerman & Coyle, 1996; Baldwin, 1998; Garfield, Spring, & Cahill, 1998). In council, the team members sit in a circle, and pass a talking stick. The talking stick itself may be simple or elaborate, prepared or found. It doesn't even have to be a stick; it can be a stone, or a feather, or an object which is personal or sacred or symbolic to the facilitator or a participant. The idea is simple. Whoever holds the talking stick talks, and everybody else listens. There are no interruptions, no questions, no challenges, no comments. Usually, the talking stick is passed from person to person around the circle, ordinarily clockwise. There are variations: for example, under some circumstances, the talking stick may be placed in the center, and whoever is moved to speak, in any order, simply goes to the center, picks up the talking stick, and returns to his or her place to speak.

The Four Intentions

The purpose of council is to create a safe space in which people can simply talk honestly and sincerely with each other. The talking stick is a way of providing some of that safety; a participant can speak without being interrupted or argued with. Thus, too, assurances of confidentiality are crucial. What is said in council remains in council. According to the model of council promulgated by the Ojai Foundation, at the center of council lie four intentions, which are to speak from the heart; to listen reverently – or devoutly – with the heart; to speak spontaneously; and to be of lean expression.

Speaking from the Heart The term heart is deeply resonant for the culture in which council is embedded. The heart, with which we speak and listen in council, is the center of our being, that which integrates passion and energy. To speak from the heart is to speak one's own truth, honestly, sincerely, and humbly. There are several corollaries of this intention. First, it must be made absolutely clear to all participants that silence is acceptable. No one has to speak. Indeed, any form of mandatory participation is contrary to the spirit of council; a team member may choose to move out of council and sit outside the circle simply as a witness. Second, one can speak from the heart only about oneself; statements made in council are I statements, not you statements.
Listening from the Heart Much more difficult than speaking from the heart is listening – devoutly – from the heart. Each participant has to intend to listen – suspending criticism, refraining from argument, not preparing a response, not judging appearances. This is remarkably difficult; it goes against all our ingrained habits of conversation.
Spontaneity The intention to be spontaneous means, simply, that each participant does not plan ahead what to say, but simply speaks without preparation. Spontaneity is a very difficult intention for many participants. We probably all would have to admit that, most of the time, when we are talking to someone else, we are not listening so much as patiently – or impatiently – waiting our turn to speak. I have heard it put this way: we spend half our time during a conversation not listening but reloading. Moreover, while we are listening in council, we think of things we want to say, important things, meaningful and impressive things, that we don't want to forget; so we constantly make covert mental notes of the topics to cover when it is our turn. An intention to be spontaneous when we speak is a means to allow us to listen undistractedly.

But spontaneity in council means more than avoiding distraction while listening. The intention to be spontaneous is a form of surrender to the process – a trust that the participant will say what needs to be said. This trust is expressed in many ways by different participants and facilitators, but the remarkable experience of finding oneself speaking spontaneously from the heart, without notes or preparation or rehearsal, is often stated in spiritual terms – that the speaker is moved by spirit, or spirit is speaking through the participant. In fact, spontaneity includes spontaneous silence – the willingness simply to pass the talking stick if one finds that one has, on that round, nothing to say. Spontaneous silence, and the acceptance of spontaneous silence, is also a way of trusting the process. The assumption is that the individual participant is not necessarily responsible for making a point to the council; what needs to be said will get said, by someone, or by spirit, and spontaneously.

Lean Expression Concision or ”lean expression” is, among other things, a courtesy to the other council participants. The term means that the speaker avoids digressions and long-windedness. More important, the intention to be concise interacts with spontaneity: the speaker trusts the process enough to feel that what is said is enough.

Variations of Council

There are a significant number of variations on the basic council structure. A dyadic council, for example, is a council of just two people, usually held to work out an interpersonal problem, with the remainder of the team functioning not as participants but as witnesses. In the popcorn format, the talking stick is placed in the middle of the circle, and participants pick it up and speak as they are moved, returning it to the center when finished. Council can range from the highly elaborated and formalized to the quick and simple. In a wilderness team that is accustomed to council, it would not be unusual to hear someone say, ”Guys, an issue has come up about cleanup. Let's circle up for a minute and deal with it.”

References

Baldwin, C. (1998). Calling the circle: The first and future culture. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Garfield, C., Spring, C., & Cahill, S. (1998). Wisdom circles: A guide to self-discovery and community building in small groups. New York, NY: Hyperion.

Zimmerman, J., & Coyle, V. (1996). The way of council. Las Vegas, NV: Bramble Books.

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