Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by Adrienne Maree Brown

Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation Reviews

• 
  Ruby

  I am a couples and family therapist - this book obviously wasn't aimed at me but I found some parts to be very helpful in my work. It also sparked many interesting conversations about what *wasn't* translatable or applicable to talk therapy and why.
  
  For such a small book, it took me quite a while to get through! I often found myself only getting through one sentence then staring off into space thinking about what it could mean for me (in a good way!).
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  Tibby (she/her)

  A slim volume that packs a lot. The book is divided into two halves, one that offers more personal style essays from a variety of Black women who have done facilitation and mediation work in movement spaces for years. They don't offer advice per se, but do add context to the work and address specific aspects that they have dealt with. For me, I surprised myself and liked this part the best and found it most useful.
  
  The second half is more specific to facilitation and mediation and offers more concrete skills, questions, and advice for doing those things under a variety of circumstance. This is why I bought the book, to help in a specific community situation that called for facilitation. There is a chart toward the front, several actually, that can help point you in the right direction in this second half. It was a good jumping off point, but I ended up finding useful pieces in other sections too. Interestingly this section, while it seemed like it should be straightforward, actually felt like each section required a lot of rumination and journalling to apply to the situation I am in. I don't say that as a drawback at all, just that I expected to be able to wholesale take the talking points and apply them and that was not how it worked at all. In someways the wisdom here required just as much thought as the wisdom section.
  
  A book I found incredibly profound and useful and will return to again and again.
• 
  Lisa Kentgen

  Gave it 4 stars rather than 5 primarily because the book is less for a general audience. For those who are interested in the critically important work of facilitation, 5+ stars. I read it for a chapter I am writing on skillful ways to navigate conflict - and this is loaded wisdom.
• 
  Alissa

  Super solid guide to facilitation, one that I wish I had when I was doing a lot of facilitation work. There's some practical knowledge here on agendas and scheduling, but mostly a theoretical framework to guide facilitation that puts the emphasis on the group rather than the individual.
• 
  Hannah Bergstrom de Leon

  The Black Feminist Wisdom essays are incredible, particularly Malkia Devich-Cyril's on grief. The later portion of the book serves as a continuation of Emergent Strategy with accessible resources and inspiration to further integrate this type of being in the world into your own life and institutions. A helpful resource that will find it's place on my desk.
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  Sarah Dennis

  “The presence of difference in this phase of human history, unfortunately, and too often, leads to harm. Difference is, quite probably, the main thing we need to get comfortable with, and good at, if we hope to survive as a species.
  We are an ecosystem, being told we should be a monocrop. We have some inkling that this bad advice is costing us everything, but so far the majority of us are not convinced enough to take urgent action. Facilitating across difference might be the most urgent work we can do right now”. Although this book presents itself as a facilitation handbook, its also a guide to deep relationship with self and others. An incredible companion to her previous title Emergent Strategy.
• 
  Luca

  I was deeply moved by the Black womxnist writing in this book. I was deeply moved by the description of the experience of Black doulas, femmes, women, and mediators; how they create life and hold space to create change in spaces larger than ourselves.
  I really enjoyed the assessment tools and techniques given to the reader. Certainly helpful for folks who are holding space for others and who are interested in creating change.
• 
  Jalisa

  I've had this book for a number of years and participated in an emergent strategy facilitation training, but haven't had the chance to read the book from cover to cover before now. I truly believe the universe brings you to a book when its the right time to read it because I got so much from it this time around. I'm using the book as a guide through my own professional facilitation work and also to inform how I hold space as a friend, partner, and family member. For me this book is really about getting in right relationship with change and each other. To center the ways we hold space and create containers around seeing the divinity in ourselves and one another. adrienne maree brown says "to 'hold change' or 'hold space' is to hold both the people in, and the dynamic energy of , a room, a space, a meeting, an organization, an movement. To hold change is to make it easy for people with share intentions to be around each other and move towards their vision and values (facilitate), and/or to navigate conflict in a way that is generative and accountable (mediate)...facilitation is making it as easy as possible for group groups of people to do the hard work of dreaming, planning, visioning, and organizing together."
  I really appreciate that the book mixes tactical suggestions, assessments, rubrics and questions, with wisdom from people who have been facilitating for some time. As always Prentis Hemphill and Alexis Pauline Gumbs words served as a re-centering. Their words will definitely serve as a reference guide that I will return to again and again. Some of my favorite quotes and questions from the book are:
  
  "How do we attend to generating the ease necessary to help us move through the inevitable struggles of life and change? How do we practice the art of holding others without losing ourselves?"
  
  "Every facilitator is a doula, easing some necessary rebirth organizational, political, interpersonal, r otherwise for some folks who want change."
  
  "some of us are called to hold the containers in which life transforms and the future unfolds."
  
  "...we begin by listening; we presume our power not our powerlessness; wherever there is a problem, there already people working on the solution; center and follow the innovative solutions that come from those living in intersecting crises, because those solutions work in the widest range of conditions."
  
  "I am a commitment to trusting love the way I trust gravity."
  
  "We learn through an accumulation of lessons. We change through an accumulation of practices...release perfection. The idea of iteration is that we are repeating - not failing, but practicing and learning."
  
  "One of our facilitation roles is to help groups remember that they are not the first humans to try to change the world, have a vision, wrestle with philanthropy, grow, have a financial crisis, have internal conflict, contradiction, and/or combustion, or to end. If groups can grasp that others have tried and experienced all of these things, they can return to curiosity and experimentation."
  
  "You learn to wield your power thru surrender, particularly of limiting internal logic, imposter syndrome and the tools of the disconnected. If you are connected, there is less to figure out, less to analyze. To be a sacred being is to be connected...part of your work is to remind everyone of their sacred selves."
• 
  Myranda

  I read this for a book club, and found it really interesting. Though I don't really do much facilitation, I definitely found things to take into consideration as a person in facilitated sessions, and I think this would be a very useful resource for those who do facilitate. I did feel that, because this is part of a series of books on emergent strategies, my reading of it was weakened a bit, because I didn't have some of the foundational concepts, as it isn't clear that there's"prerequisites" to the reading and I might have been able to grasp some of the material a little better if there was some "crash course" built in for those who hadn't read the previous books/to make sure this could be more of a stand alone source. Still, over all excellent and I would recommend to those working to facilitate change.
• 
  Rebecca

  This is really meant for facilitators and mediators, but there's good insight for the rest of us as well.
  57 Many of our movements are in desperate need of, uh, movement. We can get caught up in meeting process as the sole container for how we work together, for how we practice democracy. It is the difference between understanding the meeting as one of many tools for clarifying values, work, and roles and the meeting as "the work" itself. Hint: If you are organizing and the only thing you invite your people to is a meeting, this might be an indicator of where you are on this continuum. It is sad how many groups never quite get to do change work in the world together, to learn together, make mistakes together, and most importantly, make a difference together.
  
  see 60-62 "principled struggle"
  80 "brave space"
  99 this moment is temporary and survivable
• 
  Broadsnark

  This is a tough book for me to rate. I'm not a facilitator or mediator, though I would like to increase my skills in those areas. Much of the advice seems solid, but I don't have the experience to really say. Its tough for me to dig through all the ancestor talk and building alter descriptions. I skimmed a bunch. The best parts of the book are the essays not written by brown. I read this just after my sister died and Malkia Devich-Cyril's essay on grief will be something I come back to in particular. Worth reading for that alone.
• 
  Terry Jess

  You gotta love a book that displays wisdom that is so far beyond where you are currently at that your head explodes a bit. Thankfully adrienne maree brown speaks/writes in such a way that there is plenty of accessible wisdom regardless of where I’m at. There are so many great thoughts and suggestions for holding space for change. And like me, she seems to be a convert to Earthseed. God is change. Shape God.
  
  This quote is bouncing through my head like a pinball as I finished and reflect: “We are always practicing something, and those practices move us towards and away from liberation.”
• 
  Diana Quinones

  This book was such a gift. It gave me such hope and left me filled with curiosity, joy, and I inspiration. While this is a book about facilitation and mediation I feel that there are valuable lessons that can be received by all readers. Lessons on how to listen, observe, and generate and accept change. I’m so grateful that it was written.
• 
  Amber

  This book opened my eyes to the sacredness of facilitation. I have so many single lines from this book written down, worthy of meditation. I’m grateful for a resource that centers the black feminist tradition of facilitation and mediation, so that I can learn from it. A few more stories might have helped my comprehension - but this book will resonate for awhile.
• 
  Briar

  This book was really inspiring. Changed a lot of my thinking around running groups and providing facilitation. I highly recommend this if you are running groups. I annotated the heck out of this and have already been revisiting parts to reread and gain more wisdom from. One of my top books of the year so far.
• 
  Eric Clapp

  As I prepare for a season of anti-racism trainings in the church, this was a fantastic book to help think about how I bring my self and my privilege into a facilitating role in a healthy and boundaried way.
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  Hannah Silver

  I enjoyed reading this concurrently with another, more traditional, facilitation book that offered more cut-and-dried approaches to stewarding group problem-solving. This book brought the emotional, interpersonal aspects of this work to the forefront, which the other one mostly left out.
• 
  Miriam Hall

  I used this book to train a cohort of contemplative writing facilitators - not the exact audience, but a lot of overlap.
  
  I love brown’s writing and work and passion, and the way she seeks to find the root of everyone’s wisdom while also being no one’s fool.
• 
  Jess

  I know this is explicitly not a book for teachers, but this is an incredible resource for educators, particularly in the humanities. So much of the work of the facilitator and mediator is present and necessary in teaching. I will be referring back to this book many times.
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  Cana McGhee

  such a handy, concise, powerful resource for being a better communicator during times of conflict. particularly found the section of wisdom from other fellow Black feminists to be really impactful and true to the communal spirit the book works to cultivate.
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  Ryan Hartman

  This book was not really for me. It's written well and, as always, adrienne maree brown drops hella wisdom, but it didn't speak to me where my life is right now.
• 
  esmat ahmadian

  honestly, so far i only watched adrienne's ig lives (i think 6 interviews) on this book - which was incredible!!! i am glad to have it and hope to dive into it properly soon!
• 
  Sherrice Mojgani

  Very glad to have this resource.
• 
  Carol

  A deep dive into the why and the how of facilitating groups. Multiple contributors.
• 
  Trina

  For facilitators who want to sink into justice, spaciousness, transformation, mediation, and Black feminist wisdom. Practical and aspirational. Lots of highlighting and page flagging.