First foray into question/answer and invitation

“What does an invitation look like?”

From someone who is very, very, very good at offering answers.

Let’s stay away from the really simplistic answer, asking a question.

And, right from the get go, let’s be clear that we are engaging with adults who can own their yes/no. And we’re staying within 3SDs.

Traditionally, an invitation is the opening move in a relational engagement.

You receive an invitation in the mail. 

Someone holds out their hand to you at a place where dancing takes place.

Someone catches your eye and smiles.

You open into a video chat room.

Someone raises their hand at a meeting you’re chairing.

Implicit is the desire to engage with you.

That’s why you are receiving the invitation.

Something like that. 

Makes sense, right?

Ok. 

Off to Dojo land.

Buckle yourself in.

Looks like there might be a fair bit of turbulence ahead.

For those of you who got the, “There are no sellers” thing, this could be a bit destabilizing.

You’ve been warned.

Anyhow.

Say that you want to hold someone’s hand.

The why isn’t important right now.

You just want to hold their hand.

You look over at them. 

You could just walk over there and take hold of their hand.

(It’s a very interesting Dojo exercise to go take hold of someone’s hand that your Primal Character seriously believes that you shouldn’t.)

I imagine that you can see that this one simple action could go three hundred different ways from Tuesday, depending on a whole lot of things.

So what are you supposed to do?

You want to hold their hand.

From one POV, you could go up and give them the answer to their question, “Why would I let you hold my hand?”

“Hi. I know that this might seem a little weird, but I’ll give you $1,000 cash, right now, if you let me hold your hand for 5 minutes.”

If they say yes, you have supplied the answer to their question and you have the results you wanted.

All of your answers are going to fit this format.

It can be about you.

It can be about them.

It can be about the two of you.

Or some mixture.

And you can have a series of answers that lead up to the grand finale.

Ok.

Now for the invitation POV.

There is no “answer” to be had.

There is an experience that is wanted.

From this POV, the experience just gives directionality to the dance to get there.

It helps frame the relational dance.

You may get there.

You may not. 

It’s just the music, it’s just the tempo, it’s just the melody, it’s just the bass notes.

It’s not the holding of the hand, it’s how you get there.

How do you issue the invitation for engagement, with the idea that you’re wanting to hold their hand?

It’s going to be a series of smaller stepping stones, feeling into how the quality of the connection is.

How do you get to where the holding of their hand evolves/blooms from the dance instead of it being an “answer given”?

Hope that this is making sense.

Personally, I like dancing instead of answering. 

AND

In Dojo, the invitations can look very, very, very different than the normative culture.  

It is totally possible to walk up to someone and take their hand and have it be an invitation.

You can interpret any “question/answer” as an invitation.

You can interpret any “invitation” as a “question/answer”. 

How things are defined as invitations/answers is totally culture dependent. 

Chuckling a bit.

Just the water I swim in. 

And I can see how this could be the topic for a whole weekend workshop.