Intentional Society: Season 10 (and marketing)
I'll put the meta first, here: I feel residual background discomfort trying to market or promote anything. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if that feeling is nearly universal in today's world. Advertising in particular largely acts as a hazardous malevolent force, against which we must steel ourselves in order to resist its corrupting influences. So as each new season of Intentional Society rolls around, it's practice in exploring "what does integrity look like here?"
I think integrity looks like non-coercive marketing (link goes to Rob Hardy's excellent definition). Creating invitations that that aren't about "closing" anything but instead are open doors of opportunity for aligned people with respect and honesty, caring for long term trust and relationship, letting go of attachment to controlling outcomes.
The following section is what I'm putting on the social sites of related communities this week — my attempt to float "invitations with integrity" out into receptive spaces. I still don't fully know how to create that kind of relationship inside the format of an invitation: How self-aware does it need to be to break the standard assumptions? How can it be as honest and respectful as possible, and be up-front about that intention without getting the object-level point lost in meta-land preface? Here's how it turned out this time — how does the following land with you?
Intentional Society, as you might have heard, is a community for people who want to grow — into being the people we want to be, based in relational and developmental practices. It is also, as our little ecosystem grows, a garden of culture-crafting and complex-system cultivation.
Each season we put out our invitation-feelers to folks who might “find their others” in this virtual-face-to-face community. We’re about to begin our 10th season — perseverance into double digits! We steer our weekly community sessions through a collective sensing process, but among our known intentions for this season are:
- A long-awaited crew-formation workshop
- Revisiting our popular “T-group Fishbowl” practice from Season 9
- Connection Shuffle v2 (1-on-1 getting-to-know-you calls)
- Case (Clinic) Work supporting perspective on personal challenges
- Giving & Receiving practice #3
…and a full slate of interpersonal practices both new and old, across I/We/World scopes, guided by our Awareness➡Acceptance➡Integrity theory of change, learning and integrating across being & doing, interior & exterior, as we all surf these turbulent times with as much fluidity and spaciousness as we can muster.
Season 10 starts this Sunday — and if you’d like to learn more and possibly participate, your next step is to attend a preparatory orientation call the day before on Saturday, April 15th at 1:00-1:55pm Pacific Standard Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). Click here to register.
(P.S. Existing members should already have a Season 10 Membership Agreement link in their email inboxes — please let me know if you need or want one!)