The Art of Hosting a Meaningful Conversation

By Charles LaFond, ISR Senior Director Development

The only thing about life that seems “for sure” is change. I remember seeing a letter penned by my great-great-grandmother who felt that the telephone would never catch on and that if it did, it would make us lazy – unwilling to host dinners and visit front porches when the porch light is on – reluctant to stop by for a visit. She was right, not about the phone catching on, but about its effect on face-to-face conversation. How many kids look at their phones when eating at the family dinner table?

COVID did no favors to face-to-face conversation either. Over those three years, COVID dismantled our willingness for and experience with face-to-face conversations. Isolation and loneliness are the great ills of our nation and our time.

For Island Senior Resources to thrive in the future, we use “The Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversation” and its various tools to gather island leaders in meaningful conversation. These are not focus groups, though they have their uses. These are not social events, at least not entirely. They are carefully crafted conversations that hold space for safe interaction and inspire great ideas from donors, community leaders, and clients because the issues we face today are too complex for one person to figure out.

My training in “The Art of Hosting”

I began on an island off the coast of Vancouver with my friends Chris Corrigan and Kaitlin Frost, who taught and modeled this work for me over the past ten years. Using these tools has transformed my work of 40 years for nonprofits because it is a different model for conversation, dismantling power structures, calling forth the voices of those who are shy and introverted while at the same time confining mega-phone voices who attempt to dominate conversations.

Using “The Art of Hosting”

The art of hosting a meaningful conversation, be it in a disruptive family at Thanksgiving or in a city, board, or agency in which complex decisions must be made, will produce a “harvest” rather than “Meeting Minutes” or “Executive Directives.” It dismantles power and welcomes conversation. The practice is four simple tasks in any meeting:

  1. Be present – listen rather than rehearse your response
  2. Practice Conversations – what we practice is that at which we get better
  3. Hosting Conversations – gather people. Let them talk without them being talked “at” or “to.”
  4. Co-creation – create things together as a community. Include experts, but confine their speech-making and debating.

Be it in a national forum, a village hall, a nonprofit board room, a gathering of concerned citizens on an island, or a family meeting, The Art of Hosting a Meaningful Conversation will dismantle power and invite collaboration. We can imagine and then build our best future by improving our conversations.

To learn more about the Art of Hosting