Facilitating Breakthrough with Adam Kahane

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today I talk with Adam Kahane, a Director at Reos Partners. Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the</span> <a href= "https://reospartners.com/wp-content/uploads/old/Mont%20Fleur.pdf"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises</span></a> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country’s transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He’s gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars,</span> <a href= "https://reospartners.com/projects/sustainable-food-lab/"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> transforming the food system,</span></a> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">and pretty much everything else in between.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He’s also amazingly open and honest about his growth and transformation as a facilitator, and his own failings along the way. It’s encouraging to hear him talk about feeling a little like a cobbler without shoes. Shouldn’t a breakthrough facilitator be able to facilitate the conflicts in their own lives with the same ease? It turns out, it’s not that simple.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adam is also honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy,Transformative Scenario Planning and Solving Tough problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt while you wait for Adam’s 2021 book, Facilitating Breakthrough, to come out. It’s all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it’s an eye-opener.</span></p> <p><span style="font