By Peter Block
Gift:
A natural ability or talent.
A thing willingly given to someone without payment.
Success at building strong communities and organizations is accelerated when we focus on and give full expression to our gifts and the gifts of others. This is in contrast to the more common practice of focusing on what is missing and needs to be fixed.
Giving full expression to our gifts requires us to know what they are, in specific terms. It is a challenge to own them and treat them as if they are important. This is difficult because at the moment I own my gifts, I become accountable for their application. So, we often turn our attention to deficiencies, which demand little of us other than an apology and an improvement plan.
Gifts come to life when we choose to tell others the gifts we are receiving from them at the moment, not yesterday or what is hoped for tomorrow. And, when we invite others to tell us what gifts they receive from us this time we are together. Awkward? Yes. Impactful? Yes.
For this to occur we choose to operate within a context where gifts are central, primary, the point. We choose not to treat a discussion of gifts as being self-centered or useful only on occasion.
The dominant contemporary context gives great importance to deficiencies, problems, self-improvement. Our consumer culture attends to what is missing in us, what we might become. Otherwise, we would only buy what we needed. What we are not in the habit of practicing is a conversation about gifts that are exchanged in the normal course of being together. The dominant culture does not see recognition of gifts –– our own and those of others –– as the essence of producing outcomes and of connection, belonging, and making a place better, whether a home, a workplace, a neighborhood, a council meeting, a town hall meeting, a garden or book or dog club.
Our purpose here is to encourage and underline the importance of naming gifts as a routine practice. Plus, to detail what the conversation looks like.
Our Current Habits
Naming gifts is most often saved for a special occasion. This is where we see three conversational gift habits:
Add No. 4: Exchanging Gifts as a Regular Relational Practice
As we seek connection and belonging or an alternative future, naming the gifts we have received from one another each time we are together is a powerful practice. It deserves to be ranked up there with Robert’s Rules of Order in the public sector, and PowerPoint presentations, updates, and staff meetings everywhere else. We can be very specific about what this would look like. To create the context for the gifts conversation, there are some distinctions that are useful.
The context for building successful communities and organizations begins with the stance that we are enough. Period. What builds a better world is to create ways of acknowledging and amplifying the fact that each person has all that is needed. This begins with seeing our gifts clearly so they can be amplified. This is what creates agency and accountability.
The Practice of the Gifts Conversation
The gifts conversation is powerful when we decide that exchanging gifts for its own sake is essential. The intent is to learn what action I am taking –– now, in this moment –– has value and meaning for the people in the room and the purpose of our gathering. Naming this teaches each what to focus on and shifts the energy and potential for all in the room.
Here are the practices that build a gift-minded way of being. This conversation occurs in the middle or the end of every gathering.
Practice One: When you choose to describe a gift you have received
Practice Two: When someone says something nice to you
Practice Three: When someone leaves early
The gifts conversation is also useful for small departures, moments more frequent than death and retirement. This is when someone has to leave a gathering early. Instead of sneaking out at the break or when no one is looking, we take a moment with the one who is leaving to value the fact they showed up. This expresses appreciation for the time the person was present. This serves to complete the circle in the absence of the person leaving. Even if they said nothing all day.
One More Thought
The point is to put gifts on the agenda in as many ways as possible. This recognizes that asking what we can do better next time has limits; it reinforces the idea that focusing on what is not working takes us somewhere. Start the gifts conversation, which declares we have agency for this event, with a question halfway through a gathering: Are you getting what you came for? This gives time to act, together, on getting what we came for. Surveying participants after the event is a nice gesture but treats people as consumers giving feedback, not as creators of the time we spent together.
Thanks for Reading
One purpose of every convening is to give form to the world and culture we want to inhabit. This happens when we reshape small and important elements of convening. The questions we ask and the way we convene are what creates a future we do not have to wait for. Focusing on gifts as one category of meeting design enables us to believe that all we need for transformation or shift is present in this room. Something or someone more is not required for authentic change to occur.
Full Disclosure
I was in a day-long gathering recently and I had to leave early. I had led the morning session but would be gone for the afternoon.
It occurred to me that maybe I should treat my early leaving as a rare moment where I choose to practice what I preach. Before we broke for lunch, I told the group what the three gifts were that I had received from them in our time together.
I then nervously asked in a whisper, what gifts had they received from me? I know what the process is. See practice No. 3 above. I just am not in the habit of following it.
For the next fifteen minutes, I heard from people I have known and cared about for a long while, years in many cases, and from others whom I had just met. They were specific in describing what my work had meant to them in the past and the gift of how I had been with them in the gathering that morning.
In hearing what impacts I have had on their practices, in addition to being appreciated, I received insights into the detail and texture of what words and actions of mine had meaning to them. Most were surprises. They mentioned certain times we had been together. They talked about shifts in their thinking. Ways they had transformed their own practice. Ways they had received value from my words that I could not have known without this conversation.
In those ten minutes, I was given –– in a way that surprised me –– the gift of being present in a premature version of my own eulogy. I received the gifts and experienced the discomfort of having to exhale into the realization that the work I have committed to makes a difference. That moment answered questions and doubts that haunt us all. It happened not as the point of our gathering, or as a learning opportunity, but as a footnote to the bigger reason for us to gather.
This is what the gifts conversation offers each time. A small metaphor of what will restore our humanity in the face of a commodifying culture. We may still leave the meeting with a list of what to do, but we will hold it lightly, knowing it was really not the point.
Thank you. If anything here means something to you, I like hearing that.
