On the third day, we connected the feedback culture to the previous day’s value-based thinking. This is the other basic technology that is a crucial part of our common methodology. Most of the work was done in small groups, and in the second half of the day the whole team rallied. Feedback, as we collectively defined, is valid as long as it ends in an agreement between the two or more parties, which in this case means undertaking development goals. It is important that the development goal is measurable and traceable and public towards the community. We usually start with feedback where society is generally speaking: tension, criticism or advice. All of these involve some kind of distressing or tense feeling or thought. We dealt with it because leaving it untreated destroys the relationships of those involved. If we deprive each other of our inner reality, we build our own image, which was believed to be common, instead of the common image. That’s why we place great emphasis on reconciling internal images, all in a pragmatic, situational and solution-driven way.
During the previous day’s workshop, there was a lot of criticism and tension, so there was no need to look for some stuff for practice, but to bring in relevant and important topics. Unnamed are some of the important issues that have emerged: equality in communication, exercising compassionate attention, the importance of recognition, and the degree of engagement.
On the fourth day, we introduced a third important foundation besides value awareness and feedback: mentoring and personal development technology. Because our methodology is based on transparency and continuous measurement and learning, each individual question that arises requires everyone to have a “friend” who can deal with personal topics in advance. During the workshop, we worked on small groups to explore individual needs. Awareness of needs and their transformation into requests are central to the life of the community. This is how we experience being safe and counting on others. Well-formulated individual needs provide the basis for feedback and make agreed goals measurable by values. Thus, the three basic technologies rely on each other. The results will be usable and model-based in community development through the combined use of the three technologies.
To conclude the workshops, we summarized the interaction between the three core technologies and their central role in our action research topic. We have undertaken to research the development of a model of social activity that promotes freedom and cooperation and to test the foundations of a methodological meta-model. We feel that we have achieved a breakthrough in this and that our experiences will be formulated and published in the final study.
We agreed to jointly develop the results of the project in a step-by-step methodology, thus creating a training process for the practical application of our study. However, this is already done in the framework of the cooperation undertaken in the project’s afterlife.