I’m thrilled to *finally* share my conversation with the amazing and electrifying Nikki Silvestri.
We connected back in early March and recorded our conversation in late May, at the height of the quarantine. It’s been a process to find the time to sit with this deep conversation and pull together some insights for you.
A friend shared Nikki’s work with me and I was hooked - Nikki was setting up a program to teach facilitation to Rural Women, and I was so curious to dive into her facilitation and leadership approach and her critical work.
Nikki’s core metaphor is soil - the complex place that gives life to us all - the source of our nourishment.
Monoculture vs Food Forests
Soil can be thought of as a series of inputs - minerals, water, carbon, etc. A mathematical equation for creating a space for life. But rich soil is not simple. It’s a complex, living thing that responds unpredictably to attempts to control it.
In agriculture we can have a food forest - a near-wild combination of plants and animals feeding each other and ourselves. Or, we can have a monoculture - sprawling spaces where we use as much science and technology as possible to sustain maximum outputs at all times and at all costs.
Nikki suggests, rightly, that monocultures can also exist in our own organizations...and that when we have such a monoculture, when we are not doing what she calls “basic diversity and inclusion work” innovation and creativity will be lost.
Esther Derby, a noted Agile consultant, touched on this forest metaphor in our podcast interview - she said that she would rewrite her whole book about leading change using food forests and forest succession as her central metaphor.
Mechanistic thinking vs Complexity Thinking in Group Work and Leadership
We push this metaphor of soil and complexity deeper into growing personal leadership and holding space for deep group work. Nikki describes the central tension:
“I was trapped in mechanistic thinking because nonlinear complex thinking, it had too many unknowns and it made me too uncomfortable....With the amount of responsibility that I felt like I had, I needed to know. And frankly, I needed to know that I could manipulate my way into the linear outcome that I was looking for because there was "too much at stake" to not have that happen.”
After all, control is rewarded. As Nikki suggests: “The people who are able to manipulate, and dominate, and control the outcome the most are the ones who are rewarded.”
Links, Notes and Resources
Nikki Silvestri on the web https://www.nikkisilvestri.com/
Gestalt Organizational Development
Carter's Cube (free login required)
Full Transcription
Daniel Stillman:
We're live. I will officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory. All right, Nikki, I am so excited you're here. Man, I think the opening question I want to ask you is, what is the soil you came from?
Nikki Silvestri:
Oh, that's such a beautiful question. Are you just asking me that because I'm Soil and Shadow, or is that the way you usually phrase that?
Daniel Stillman:
I never ask that question, and I know that that's your question. I think it's a great question.
Nikki Silvestri:
It's such a great question. I love it so much. Okay. Okay. The soil nerd in me just was delighted that that was your first question. My soil that I come from is the soil of Los Angeles. And what I love about that, about being a fourth generation Los Angeleno, is that one of the oldest graveyards in the city is on a border town of Koreatown and toward downtown LA. And my great grandparents are there, and there's not a lot of people whose great grandparents are buried in a city like LA.
Daniel Stillman:
No.
Nikki Silvestri:
So I love the fact that I have such deep roots there, and that then before that my people came from the South, like so many Black folks. I'm from the soil of that land in that place, and I feel grateful for that. I'm from the soil of artists and entertainers. My great grandfather was a Black man and black-faced in a Minstrel show. And my grandfather was in a really famous blues quartet back in the day. Just the entertainment industry and how Black folk in particular intersected with the entertainment industry for activism, for care, for telling our story in a time when it's not really safe to tell our story in a complex way, I come from that too.
Nikki Silvestri:
I think the last piece of the soil that I come from is mothers, which has become a more relevant topic for me now. I'm almost 20 weeks pregnant. I'm 18 weeks pregnant with my second child right now. And just raising my toddler while being pregnant has given me such insight into the legacy of just all of the mothers before me and how hard it is to raise humans. I'm just like, "How do any of us get here?" I'm astonished that any of us are sane, honestly. That's the soil I come from.
Daniel Stillman:
It's rich and loamy. I heard your voice catch when you talked about mothers. That feels really real, and that's something that you're really connected to right now.
Nikki Silvestri:
It is.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I have my stickies here, snippets of your work that I've snipped, that I think would be worthwhile to circle back around. You've written about the complexity mindset and facilitation and work. And I feel like you have a really interesting perspective on complexity because of soil and because of the complexity of soil. You were talking about the magic that people wind up growing up and becoming people from little people. Can you talk about why complexity mindset and facilitation and then work is important to you? Take us through how you got there, how it became helpful and clear to you.
Nikki Silvestri:
Those are two separate and deep questions.
Daniel Stillman:
Cool. Take them as you will.
Nikki Silvestri:
Okay. The second one, how did I get here? One of the reasons I like soil metaphor so much is because I feel like they're so clear. When I was in the earlier part of my career as a nonprofit executive director, I was in an organic monoculture, is what I like to call it. So, because I had really good values, that was the organic part, the pesticide would have been just straight, get as much money as you can, or not anything even unscrupulous, just the social justice, social equity, progressive, that was my "organic mindset". But the monoculture part is that you can have that mindset. This is what I discovered. I'll use "I" statements like I do in facilitation.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you.
Nikki Silvestri:
I had that mindset and was still working in a way that was depleting myself. I was pushing my team in a way that was depleting. I was sacrificing our long-term health and sustainability for short-term goals, and then wrapping them in all these pretty progressive words, and thus it's okay, which I see so many-
Daniel Stillman:
And this is the joke, when sustainable isn't sustainable, right? Ha ha ha-
Nikki Silvestri:
That's exactly... Well, inorganic-
Daniel Stillman:
Certainly not for the people.
Nikki Silvestri:
... monocultures are not sustainable.
Daniel Stillman:
No.
Nikki Silvestri:
You could be certified organic and still stripping the hell out of your soil. Taking that metaphor and bringing it into social contexts was really fascinating for me because then it led to break down for me. I was just experiencing a personal journey and I was trying to put language around it. What led to my breakdown? Why did I have an existential crisis at the peak of my career about the fact that I didn't think any of my work was going to work? Why did I hate people, like just straight up? I never wanted to work on a team again. It was so bad. It got so bad.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh boy.
Nikki Silvestri:
And so, then soil, I just started going to workshops on soil carbon sequestration, because I wanted to find some avenue to hope when it comes to the climate. And getting carbon out of the air and into the soil was very inspiring to me. And it was in that journey that I started learning about healthy soil and how to build healthy soil. It was fascinating to me, just what fertility actually means, that you could have on the one hand, you put a bunch of minerals into soil... Not a bunch, just like three main minerals into soil. And then those three main minerals, you can have an equation.
Nikki Silvestri:
You put in this many minerals, you get out that much yield, and the equation will work for a period of time. And I found that in social systems, you can do the same thing. You can put in a salary, a work plan, a mission statement into an equation and pop out a certain level of productivity or a project management software, whatever the widgets are that people identify as being what keeps people motivated and productive, and a high performance team. People get attached to these widgets? I mean, it's one of the things I coach on all the time.
Nikki Silvestri:
The meaningful part of facilitation and the meaningful part of gathering people is social fertility. If you give them the healthy ingredients that they need to convene amongst themselves... The way that I define fertility is increasing the complexity of relationships. If you do that in the soil, when it comes to water, and carbon, and all the different minerals and bacteria that live in the soil, give them the freedom to increase their complexity of relationships. And not only will you grow what you intended to grow, you're going to have a bunch of co-benefits.
Nikki Silvestri:
You're going to build nutrient density in the food. You're going to stop soil erosion, etc. If you do the same thing, whether you're facilitating or just building a team, you have these basic ingredient building blocks of how you create a healthy socially fertile environment. And then that team of people create stuff you never would've dreamed of creating. It's the foundation of all my work. And in facilitation, it's an art form because it's not just about the outcomes of whatever the gathering was that you were going to do. It's about creating the environment for magic.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Well, and so that's interesting. I don't think you would propose that because it's an art, we don't have any control or agency in the process, right?
Nikki Silvestri:
Not at all. It's a co-creative process.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. It seems like underneath it, you still have core theory you're working with. There is soil science. There's there's group dynamics, right?
Nikki Silvestri:
Absolutely.
Daniel Stillman:
Which I'm guessing you are as deep of a student of group dynamics as any facilitator who's serious about their craft.
Nikki Silvestri:
Absolutely. I like to translate the part that we can control. It's the difference between the owner's manual of how to run a 10,000-acre chemical-laden monoculture, and the manual of how to build healthy soil on a regenerative ranch or farm. The regenerative ranch or farm, there's the five principles of soil health, and diversity of the plants and the animals, well, having animals on the land, having a diversity of plants, making sure your soil is covered. And then two more that are escaping me. But I translate those all the time into what that looks like in the social context.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Diversity.
Nikki Silvestri:
Diversity and inclusion is something I work with all the time. Yeah. You have the same group of people. You have a monoculture in terms of the culture of the people who are in the room, there's a certain amount of innovation that will be lost. It's basic in diversity and inclusion work. But how to do that without having so much conflict that you break the container completely, that is an art form. And that has very specific things you can do.
Nikki Silvestri:
When it comes to keeping the soil covered, that one is very interesting to me because it's about when you have a vulnerable resource. How do you protect an idea when it's brand new and learn how to improve it in a way that doesn't destroy it completely, but that gives it enough cover so that it can grow? One of the best descriptions of this I've ever seen is the brain trust concept that was in Creativity, Inc. the book Creativity, Inc by the dude who started Pixar.
Daniel Stillman:
John Lasseter.
Nikki Silvestri:
His last name is Arthur.
Daniel Stillman:
Is it John Lasseter or is it the other... Ed Catmull's. Ed Catmull is the one you're talking about.
Nikki Silvestri:
Yep. It was Ed Catmull's book. That's right. Pregnancy brain is real. So you're going to have to prompt me several times in this conversation.
Daniel Stillman:
I don't have an excuse for it. Not that I know.
Nikki Silvestri:
But just that description of how creative companies are able to protect a new movie idea and then make it better, but without destroying it, knowing that something needs to change almost completely from one form to another when it's new. Groups of people when they get together are really quick to criticize. And so, a part of creating fertility is the ability to improve without damaging the sanctity of newness, which is also specific in an art form. So those are just a couple of examples. You're not taking your hands off the reins at all. You're actually doing things that are very sophisticated, that are guiding, but are not controlling.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. If anybody's listening and happened to hear... I don't know if you've checked this episode out, but Esther Derby came on the show a couple of months back and she's a wonderful, wonderful speaker. She wrote a book about seven rules for positive, productive change. And she's, "I've got this last one that's not in the book," and really it was about forest succession. The power of the metaphor you use, the metaphor you use is the question you ask, and the questions you ask are the answers you'll get. It's what you see. It's what you can even ask about.
Daniel Stillman:
Sometimes people talk about innovation management, which is this mechanistic perspective that creativity and innovation and change can be done in a one plus one equals two kind of a way. What we're talking about here is not even gardening, which is this... I've got this sandbox and I've got rows and beds and there's inputs and outputs. But this is the idea of the food forest. How can I have something that is truly self sustaining, that is truly natural, and truly regenerative? And there's just great stuff that just pops out of it more than I could have ever imagined.
Daniel Stillman:
How do you get from what my friend, Robert, calls not just going from A to B, but going from A to B prime, more than we could have ever expected. You don't get that from mechanistic thinking.
Nikki Silvestri:
No, you don't. The question is, how do you do that?
Daniel Stillman:
I mean, that was more of a comment than a question, but if you want to yes and that.
Nikki Silvestri:
I am so in the yes and camp. I mean, what's interesting to me is that if I go back to my breakdown, I was trapped in mechanistic thinking because nonlinear complex thinking, it had too many unknowns and it made me too uncomfortable. It was actually intolerable. With the amount of responsibility that I felt like I had, I needed to know. And frankly, I needed to know that I could manipulate my way into the linear outcome that I was looking for because there was "too much at stake" to not have that happen.
Daniel Stillman:
Right. Yes, and that's putting your hands on the wheel because we're panicked.
Nikki Silvestri:
Yes. And it's the way the world works. The people who are able to manipulate, and dominate, and control the outcome the most are the ones who are rewarded. There are different schools of thought when it comes to, is it a spectrum? Is it an either or? I honestly don't have an answer for that. I feel like I've just gotten to the place where I know where I'm orienting and the people who feel most aligned with my work are orienting, and it starting from a different place. It's starting from the perspective that you can never actually understand in totality an ecosystem, full stop.
Daniel Stillman:
Right. Which is a really humble place to come from. And yet-
Nikki Silvestri:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
And yet I'm willing to bet that, as we must, you are in my perspective, a designer of conversations and you put guardrails on a thing. And so, I'm wondering-
Nikki Silvestri:
Oh, absolutely.
Daniel Stillman:
... what is the wisdom you try to impart to people when it comes to intelligently guiding dialogue in a way that is safe and productive?
Nikki Silvestri:
Well, and that's the step by step, is if the origin point is you can never completely understand or have your arms completely around an ecosystem, then that goes for the land, and that goes for social dynamics. That goes for any system where there's more than one piece interacting with one another. In conversation, part of that starting point is you need a ton of practice with things going off the rails in order to trust yourself and your ability to get intuitive at some point. Because, honestly, at some point, all the learning goes out the window and you just have to know and trust yourself and your ability to manage things that you could not have at all planned for and were completely unexpected.
Nikki Silvestri:
That's one of the first things I introduced. Are you comfortable going there? And if you are, then we can go through the other steps. But then there's just some basics when it comes to... A lot of this is organizing principle, which I also think is interesting around the art of one-on-ones. Before you walk into a room full of people, you should know as much as you possibly can about the system from a humble place. Knowing you're not going to know the whole thing, try to know as much as you can.
Nikki Silvestri:
It's extraordinary to me the number of people that don't do that kind of basic thing. Then also group process agreements. But the complex group process agreements, it's a lot deeper than just, "If you're used to talking a lot, don't talk so much. And if you're not talking so much, go ahead and step in."
Daniel Stillman:
Right, as if I knew how to self-manage as a participant.
Nikki Silvestri:
Right.
Daniel Stillman:
Which I don't.
Nikki Silvestri:
Right. But there's one of my favorite group process agreements is expect and accept non closure. Like walking into a meeting and saying, "This is one of my basic operating principles." In a meeting where the outcome is to have closure on something, usually messes with people's heads. [inaudible 00:17:30] kidding. You set the expectation of, "This is how nonlinear complex systems work. Here's what we can manage for. We can manage for having next steps for everything that comes up. We can manage for having a spirit of generosity when things come up. We can manage for not looking at conflict as a bad thing."
Nikki Silvestri:
In fact, looking at conflict from the perspective of Gestalt Organizational Development, and Carter's Cube as a part of what leads toward cohesion, when you have an orientation phase of a group, there's a whole series of tools that I pull out just to give people context for, "This is the natural progress and process of how a system moves from one place to another." We can't control the outcome of where we will get to in the end 100%. But what we can do is manage for each step in the process and keep it safe enough so that there's enough conflict when we get to the next phase, but there's not so much conflict that we break trust.
Nikki Silvestri:
The last thing I'll say about that is then another piece of facilitation in the art is knowing when to intervene, when there's too much conflict, and knowing when to just let it ride and let people work out their own stuff. That's why I feel like so much of this, you can teach as just, "These are the practice agreements of engagement." But then at least 50% of it, if not more, is the practice of being able to feel into a group. It does feel like parenting to me.
Nikki Silvestri:
It's one of the reasons my voice cut in the beginning when you were talking about motherhood, like when do you push a toddler and when do you be gentle? There's all these guidebooks on it. And at the end of the day, you just need to practice and figure out how children work. And it's the same in groups.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I went through a whole phase in my life where I was rejecting all of the tough love that had been given to me. I was like, "Tough love is not the same thing as love." And I think there's very often this idea of, "Well, they need to each toughen up. We need to straighten this out. We need to have some hard talk." I often just have a sticky note on my wall, just to love my participants as much as I can because everyone's just going through a rough time, now but also always.
Daniel Stillman:
Was it Emerson who said... Or is it Whitman, it's like, "Be gentle. Everyone is fighting a mighty battle, and we know nothing of." I actually don't know anything about the Carter's Cube. I'm trying to find it out on the internet, but it looks like Gestalt theory, there's not a lot of it on the internet.
Nikki Silvestri:
No. John Carter is the person I'm talking about, and he published a few books a long time ago. But it's very, very, very, very niche. Unless you're in the Gestalt Organizational Development community, you probably don't know what I'm talking about.
Daniel Stillman:
I mean, I'm looking at it now on the internet. Yeah. This is a corner of the internet.
Nikki Silvestri:
It's a corner, but it's brilliant work. It's brilliant. It's brilliant work.
Daniel Stillman:
What's important for us to know about it. Because I definitely understand this idea of the push and pull and the two hands of the Potter's wheel forming and opening the clay pot. And if you've got one and not the other, you've got nothing. And so, it's about balance for me. But I have a feeling you're seeing some other forces at work when you're thinking about group dynamics. So maybe I'm not even seeing.
Nikki Silvestri:
Well. An example I'll give that's more common is the Gestalt Cycle of Experience. And that one just describes how groups and individuals process information. You go from sensing something to then being aware of it, to then experiencing anxiety or excitement about it, to then taking action on it. And then that action leads to some kind of contact with your original role, which allows your shoulders to drop. And then there's withdrawal from the entire process, and then it starts again.
Nikki Silvestri:
That's an example that I can give people around... There's a step by step of how groups move through dynamics. Where are we right now? That's just one of a number of things. But one of the things that is similar in soil is that people have a bunch of different models that they use for how they do regenerative agriculture. Different frameworks. Frameworks are an opportunity for us to at least locate ourselves in a process when we're uncomfortable, and naming the discomfort, and knowing what came before it to potentially cause it and what could come after it if we integrate it. It's just that by itself is a really great tool to use no matter what the framework is that you're throwing in there.
Daniel Stillman:
This connects to a question I wanted to ask you because you mentioned safety. And I feel like everyone has their own... Well, no. I feel like many people don't have their own. Everyone should have their own perspective on what it means to and how we should or can even facilitate safety. When I think about physical safety in the way that I've been teaching it, it's like, we know, if you show somebody a picture of a blind, dark alley, you feel unsafe because you can't see the exits and you don't know what's down there, and you don't know what's safe.
Daniel Stillman:
This idea of having a framework and saying, "Where are we now?", where does everyone think we are? I'm looking at this now. Are we observing change? Are we scanning or making change? Are we developing practices or making choices or are we leading and managing?
Nikki Silvestri:
Exactly. Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
If everyone says, "I think we're here, but I want to be here," then we have the beginnings of a really interesting conversation.
Nikki Silvestri:
Exactly, exactly. This idea of safety is... That is a topic for me because I get irritated. Let me tell you what-
Daniel Stillman:
Don't hold back from [inaudible 00:23:50]-
Nikki Silvestri:
Irritated when people feel like comfort is equivalent to safety. I can't stand it. It's one of the reasons why my firm is called Soil and Shadow, because I just wanted to be clear. You talk to me, we're about to box with some shadows. That's just what's going to happen because I don't do a resistance to discomfort. Discomfort is how you grow. And I also feel that it's one of the deep, deep ways that I approach diversity and being a Black woman. It's just so much of my life has been not seeking comfort as a state of being that will let me know when I've "made it" or will let me know when I'm able to "live fully".
Nikki Silvestri:
It's such a deep, personal thing for me, the equivalence of privilege and comfort. And so, when I'm managing groups and when I'm facilitating groups, the way that I describe safety is if you have enough risk to grow, but not so much risk that you break trust and damage relationship. And it's a very fine line. It requires a few basic tenets, which is another thing what I facilitate. One of my facilitation tools is the scale of emotional intensity from one to 10.
Nikki Silvestri:
I tell people in the beginning, "I am prepared to hold a container up to about a level six today, because we're going to be getting into some difficult, deep conversation." Unless I'm doing just straight up spirit ritual and we've got libations-
Daniel Stillman:
11.
Nikki Silvestri:
... and we're sitting naked on the earth or something. That's a 10. I don't get paid to facilitate a 10. You feel me?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I see what you mean.
Nikki Silvestri:
I will go up to an eight.
Daniel Stillman:
This is like when you go to the nurse and there's the smiley face to the frowny face, like what amount of pain are we having here?
Nikki Silvestri:
That's exactly right.
Daniel Stillman:
I love this idea of asking people what they're willing to contain because what you're willing to hold space for is what you can accomplish.
Nikki Silvestri:
That's exactly right. And it's a tool for me because I say in the beginning, "The container is a six. If you feel yourself at a six moving to a seven, I need you to remove yourself from the group. We have a space over there." If I know it's going to be an emotionally intense so and so, the conversation we're having, then I have a place to go. There's either a separate room or a separate place in the room that has blankets and candles, and whatever people need to just go take a time out like a child. You're experiencing an inner tantrum, but my job is to hold the group. And your job is to hold yourself in the group.
Nikki Silvestri:
So if you feel yourself in an inability to meet where I'm prepared to hold the group, I need you to take responsibility for bringing yourself back down to a six. And if you go to an eight in the group dynamic, I will take you out of the space myself. Unless I'm co-facilitating, and most of the time, if I know I'm going to be in a deep conversation like that, I do try to co-facilitate. So one of the facilitators can remove themselves and go and be with the person, because it's not a punitive thing at all. It's just that we will break trust if the container is set at a six and you go to an eight, and then we in the moment try to develop agreements for what it takes to hold an eight without breaking trust. So that's an example.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. What's tough for me about that is that I think I try to create a safe space where everybody's voice is heard and matters, but I can screw up. I can say something that can set somebody off and not know it. There's still that moment where it's like, "How much of this do I need to take responsibility for?" Especially, and maybe this is when we make the transition to talking about distributed facilitation, it's much harder to take somebody into a side room and have a side conversation with the same level of smoothness on the internet, because I can't just put my hand on somebody's shoulder and say like, "Hey, where are we with this?"
Nikki Silvestri:
Totally. Well, and that's a good distinction to make in terms of what I'm saying, because the only thing I'm talking about is emotional intensity on that scale. If you can be with what just occurred and stay at a five, knowing that you could go to an eight, but you're a mature person who can manage your own emotional expression in a group space, then 100%, we need to talk about it. But we're talking about it at a five, you know?
Daniel Stillman:
I do know.
Nikki Silvestri:
I've done this before in real time. If it's something that needs to be addressed, but you need to actually cry because it was so triggering for you, then maybe the whole group needs to take a 20-minute break so that you don't feel isolated and we're continuing to have a conversation. But all I'm saying is that I'm changing the group process agreements to hold the container for a higher level of emotional intensity for everyone. I don't, at this point, do that unless it's a serious emergency situation because it's an incredible drain on the facilitator-
Daniel Stillman:
Well, yeah, let's talk about that.
Nikki Silvestri:
... to do that. I would rather take a break.
Daniel Stillman:
Because I've got that written down here. I know that facilitation can be draining, and that we have to take care of ourselves. And on the flip side, what we are capable of holding space for, if we can't hold space for this kind of uncertainty, emotional intensity, ambiguity, we're not going to find anything wonderful on the other side. My friend, Bob, who came on this podcast ages ago, who teaches negotiation at Harvard, he talked about how you can design a negotiation so that nothing actually happens. It just becomes sterile. It's so contained that nothing interesting happens and there's no resolution because nothing was actually truly put out on the table.
Daniel Stillman:
And so, in one hand, we have to create a space where real stuff can come up, But that's draining to hold space for it. So, I mean, what do you do to take care of yourself as a facilitator?
Nikki Silvestri:
Yeah. It's one of the reasons I have a spectrum of emotional intensity. Because the first part of that is, I look at the outcomes of what's meant to be discussed and held. And then I usually have a pretty good read on what level of emotional intensity is likely to come up holding that level of space. So if I know that we need to have the space to go to an eight, if it comes up, for example, then I'm taking a day off before the facilitation. I'm taking a day off after the facilitation.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh man.
Nikki Silvestri:
I am calling in my ancestors straight up like, "Grandmamma, I need you up in this room to make sure I've got my shit together." And other people's ancestors. I need the grandparents in the room who can look at you crazy if I can't look at you crazy. If you're starting to break the container and just, there's a whole level of prayer and self care. And just me trying to make sure I'm in alignment. I mean, facilitation is a very spiritual thing for me. The oldest version of it was like holding counsel space, and counsel space is deep.
Nikki Silvestri:
Lives were decided in counsel spaces. War was decided in counsel spaces, whether excise a person from a community and send them off into exile was decided in counsels. It's profound when people give you the trust to hold them. And so even the way that a building breaks during a highly intense space, how much food do I have in the room? If it's a level eight, there is constant nourishment, constant. And I will even do some juju like having flavored water. What particular vegetables and fruits am I flavoring the water with?
Nikki Silvestri:
Sliced cucumber evokes a particular kind of nutrient in the water that people might need to have this particular conversation. Or do we need pineapple water? I'll go really deep into the details of how I'm setting up a space. And that's a part of creating fertility. It's like a basic tenet of fertility, is what are the pieces that you're putting in place? What's the level of detail and care you're taking in curating the environment within which then the pieces of the ecosystem are coming to play?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. This is a perfect transition because work time, time moves a pace, and I want to make sure we talk about Gathering Fire and what's become of that project. Because when my friend, Jen Hayzlett sent me your newsletter, this idea of teaching rural women, the art of convening and facilitating, because community building and counseling is so critical to community building, I was like, "This is such a..." I never thought about how important it was and how critical it was to teach these mindsets and skillsets to that group.
Daniel Stillman:
But I'm wondering, A, what's being done with that initiative now, and how can we have that level of detail and care when we can't send people cucumber water through Zoom?
Nikki Silvestri:
Indeed. One thing that's been interesting in this era of social distancing is that I've been converting a lot of my in-person care that I would do to pre-gathering instructions for people to do for themselves. And it's really testing this question of, how well do you care for yourself? It's the same when I'm talking about going to a level of emotional intensity. If someone's coming in and they don't care for themselves well at all outside of the group, and they come into a really well-held container that I'm holding and they find that it actually works, then it turns me into some kind of magical unicorn that's just-
Daniel Stillman:
Which you are, but that's-
Nikki Silvestri:
... super skilled. Of course, I'm a magical unicorn. Of course, I am. Anyone can do it. It's just how much level of detail and care are you willing to take and how much practice are you willing to have with extraordinary discomfort? So I have had instructions-
Daniel Stillman:
Simple. There you go, but you make it seem so simple.
Nikki Silvestri:
... before. I'm just like, "Yeah, it's just discomfort that makes you feel like you're going to crawl out of your skin and sit with it. That's all." But so the instructions before a gathering. Prepare cucumber water. I'm sending you a package with the workbook and a candle. I would like you to have a floor chair that's comfortable. Here are several links. If you're paying to come, then this is something I will send you as a part of the package, a floor chair, because when that computer opens, I want to see you sitting in front of that floor chair, with a candle in front of you, with that workbook, wearing the t-shirt that you got in the mail, wearing the essential oil that's the main theme.
Nikki Silvestri:
There's a way to bring in sensory stuff. It means that there's a lot more mail flying back and forth, just as a logistical thing. And if someone really takes the time to prep for the gathering, the way that I would prep for them and I send them the materials to do so, it really does evoke a sense of care and it creates its own container. The Gathering Fire Initiative is still happening in some form or fashion. The idea behind women leaders in rural America needing facilitation support is that just so much of what is controlling and dictating what happens in this country is happening in rural spaces right now.
Nikki Silvestri:
It's things like the majority of California is technically rural, and people don't think about that. But this power, intense power, is concentrated in rural America, and women are stepping up to just be the eye in the churches and to be the eye in the county meetings. They're trying and they need help. If what happened in 2016 in terms of this intense political divide in our country, so much of that was split between rural and urban as well. We just felt like it was time to really care for the folks who were living at the intersections, who care about all of us who happened to be in rural communities, considering that the face of rural communities is incredibly diverse.
Nikki Silvestri:
But the folks that we think of living in rural America may not be the faces we initially think of in terms of that diversity. So there were a lot of complexities there and we wanted to just make sure we were properly serving that community. In this era of social distancing, I don't know, being on land and being in person together was a huge component of how that training was going to happen. One interesting thing is that in the next two to four years, as we're figuring out, before there's a vaccine, just what the safest way is to gather in person.
Nikki Silvestri:
Land is coming up in a lot of my conversations because it's just safer to be outside. And considering that that was something that was always a part of my in-person gatherings, it's coming up to me as fascinating. There is a now a meme in popular culture that being indoors in circulated air is not healthy. And it's like, "D'oh, yeah, it never was sedentary-
Daniel Stillman:
We call it fresh air.
Nikki Silvestri:
...lifestyle. Never was healthy. How about that? And now there's a virus that's like, "Oh no, I'm just kicking you out," kicking me out of the nest. "Go do all your convening six feet apart in a field." And it's like, "Great, convening six feet apart in a field, done."
Daniel Stillman:
Right. It's just a constraint and we can work with it. This is only slightly relevant. An NPR did a bit about, in Germany, they basically opened up a restaurant outside and they gave everyone hats that had Pool Noodles attached to those.
Nikki Silvestri:
Pool Noodles. I saw that.
Daniel Stillman:
You saw the Pool Noodles?
Nikki Silvestri:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
I just loved it's like we're just all going to have Pool Noodle hats on and doing paired conversation six feet apart. Grab a partner but don't actually grab them.
Nikki Silvestri:
Yeah. I mean, it's adjusting the idea of personal space. And it's also been interesting to me thinking about the idea of circulation, because that's a big thing too. When you're inside, you're in a very controlled environment in terms of temperature, in terms of air flow, in terms of the floor and the ceiling and the walls. It's a controlled environment.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, it's a container.
Nikki Silvestri:
It is a container. It's a total container. And when you're outside, the ability for things to circulate, where you're standing is on the actual earth. So whatever you're talking about is held by a living substance underneath your feet. Then there's air flow that's just a straight wind. I have found that when I facilitate conversations outside, the harder the conversation, the further outside I go. I bring more plants into the space if it's an indoor conversation, but if I'm going to an eight, as much of that conversation as possible is happening outside.
Daniel Stillman:
Why so?
Nikki Silvestri:
I might even take us to the ocean. Well, just because I feel like nature is a great container for really intense emotion. Then we're not limited to directing it at each other. I've had people turn to the ocean. I'm like, "Whatever you're about to say right now, it looks like you might start screaming. Just turn to the ocean and tell it to the ocean, and we will witness you tell it to the ocean. But let the ocean hold it so that we're not the ones holding it."
Nikki Silvestri:
Then they turn back around and we can process it together. But asking non-human ecological entities to hold the intensity of some of the stuff we come up with, it's a tool that I use. It's been very, very, very helpful to distinguish. I mean the more facilitation "version" of it is just the witness stance in listening versus the responder stance in listening.
Daniel Stillman:
Right? This is the third point. This is why even just writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it on the wall means that we can look at it together instead of me giving it straight to you saying, "This is what I think about your project," versus saying, "Here's what I think about the project." It's on the wall now. And we're both looking at it. The space says something.
Nikki Silvestri:
Even if it's about the other person, taking the witness stance about something that's about you is very hard, and it's totally possible. If you set a container that's basically about things need to be surfaced, and this is way too hot to try to integrate or decide right now. But having it be in the shadows and in the background is completely eroding the trust. So the first step is going to be expressing it. And your job is to witness in a pure, in a pure way. There's no responding. Maybe there's no eye contact.
Nikki Silvestri:
I've done that as well. Like look at a spot in the wall or look at a spot on the floor and share, but don't look at the person. Then there's just an acknowledgement, "I've heard you." Then there's a break or lunch or something. Then there's some processing afterward. I've even taken entire days of space. A lot of what you're hearing, because I have Soil and Shadow, Shadow in my name, a lot of folks come to me for level eight conversations, which is a lot of what you're hearing now.
Nikki Silvestri:
I can do a four. I have. It's super fun. And just part of the work that I love and part of the work that I feel really well suited for is going to a level eight when it's not direct conflict resolution. But there's just intensity in a system and we need to move forward in some way. And we need to get through things that are hard to talk about. So come and help us work that out.
Daniel Stillman:
We're coming up against our time. It really flies. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Is there anything that we have not talked about that you think... What have I not asked you about that we should talk about with regards to convening, facilitating, and holding space?
Nikki Silvestri:
Yeah, the only other thing I would say is it's just specific to this era, knowing that many people are not going to be feeling safe to get together in person at all. It is possible to curate, as I was talking about earlier, a virtual space that is so much more intentional than you ever might have thought of going or doing. It's in that level of detail orientation and care that you can curate a level of intentional virtual space that feels so luscious and so nurturing that you can get into hard conversations. There's tons of tools out there for when you get into the part of the hard conversation. But what I would really want to emphasize is just the care, the before and after and attending to the senses type care.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I think what I'm really taking away is the intentionality of building capacity in the soil, and really nourishing that, the space in the ground, and being detail-oriented about that is caring for it.
Nikki Silvestri:
That's right.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Nikki, honestly, it's such a pleasure. I think there are a lot of people who look at facilitation as a mechanistic process. And if I have more recipes and better ingredients, I can make more delicious food. We started our conversation talking about making a Dutch baby for your son for breakfast. And it's like, when you see a recipe, you can reproduce it ish, but there's still something that the chef brings to the recipe.
Nikki Silvestri:
Totally. Totally.
Daniel Stillman:
The recipe does not make the chef. And so, I really appreciate you talking about all the inner stuff about what the chef brings to the recipe, the inner stance.
Nikki Silvestri:
Thank you.