On the Line - Hackathon May 2025

“Life doesn't move in straight lines, and neither does a good conversation." Meg Wheatley

Many times in group conversations, we’ve experienced the surprising power of a humble line to stimulate illuminating conversations and shift perspectives. 

This week, a group of us - h³ partners, long-term friends and associates and some new faces - gathered around a line of masking tape on the floor and used its radical simplicity to facilitate a series of open conversations, learning and deeper connection. 

We took it in turns to used the line as a group to:

🌀Acknowledge how we are showing up, bring our individual energies into the group, and use it to shape the conversation and connection

🌀Reflect on what takes us 'below the line' (like road rage or overwhelm) and develop a personal plan to notice, accept and move back above the line when we find ourselves in the grip of something unhelpful 

🌀Explore our individual attitudes to trust on a continuum and the extent to which it is freely given or earned for each of us; and how that is reinforced or broken; which led to a deeper conversation on different trust states

🌀Represent where we put the balance of our attention as coaches, facilitators and leaders in relationship, and the effects of altering the balance between ourselves (‘I’) and the other person (‘Thou’)

🌀Hold a reflective circle (‘a round straight straight line with a hole in the middle’), muse on what we have felt and learned; and what that might mean

A couple of reflections and reminders from our conversations on and around the line: 

💡By making differences visible and physical, we can much more easily understand, work with and make use of them together (‘you have to earn my trust’ vs. ‘I trust people until they give me a reason not to’)

💡The simplicity of a straight line is both useful and wrong, and opens up conversations about the rather more squiggly truth (‘I’ve put myself here but it depends on context, history, and a load of other things’)

💡Which way we are facing, and our direction of travel, are often as important as where we find ourselves (‘I don’t yet trust you, but I hope to, and we are doing the right things to achieve that’)

As coaches, facilitators, and development professionals, we spend a lot of time doing a deeply social and collaborative thing. To share, think, reflect and breathe together as friends, practitioners, associates and colleagues was such a treat. Thank you to our friends Dr Sam Humphrey Amy Fancourt Brad Jennings George Bruell Steven Fine Steve Rowan and h³ partners Hilary Duggan Helen Hopper and Andrew Wood for a wonderful morning.