becoming a conscious host: catalyzing change in your community
TRANSCRIPT
Anna Pollock, Founder, Conscious Travel
Becoming a Conscious Host: Catalyzing Change in
Your Community
Paris: City of Romance or Revolution?
Today
A mere 225 years ago
The Art of Hosting
The Heart of Hosting
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Putting heart and soul back into Hospitality
Conscious Travel Strategist, thinker, “sense maker”
Purpose Today• Why change?
• Why YOU?
• What can YOU do?
“We are at that point of time when a four-hundred-year-old age is rattling in its deathbed and another is struggling to be born – with a shifting of culture, science, society and institutions enormously greater and swifter than the world has ever experienced….
Dee Hock, Founder of VISA and author The Birth of a Chaordic Organization
A Contemporary View
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us……”
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 1859
An EarlierView
"once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available…a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.” Fred Hoyle, 1948
What is “Conscious” Travel about?
Wake Up
“We have one generation in which to shift human consciousness”
Jeremy Rifkin
A profound shift in perception is required
How do YOU see this?
a piece of real estate?
a floating lumberyard?
spaceship earth?
a living organism?
Home?
This report shows the world is on a development trajectory that is not sustainable.
If we fail to alter our patterns of production and consumption, things will go badly wrong. 10 mega-forces, all connected in ways we don’t fully understand.
What “Business” now knows
• Systemic breakdowns are breakdowns that occur in an entire system, as opposed to breakdowns in individual parts and components. Systemic risks are characterised by: • Modest tipping points combining indirectly to
produce large failures• Risk sharing or contagion, as one loss triggers
the chain of others• Hysteresis or systems being unable to recover
after a shock.
EMERGING: Everything and everyone is connected
Change Drivers
We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history – a change in the actual belief structure of western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind.
By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing their world.
Willis Harman, Founder World Business Academy 1970s
Awareness has been growing over 40+ years
Waking Up to the Real Nature of Change
Grow Up
Don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
John F. Kennedy
Transformational Leadership The transforming leader looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower. The result is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents James MacGregor-Burns
A Collective Values Shift
We are growing up!
Step Up
You never change things by fighting existing reality
To change something build a new model that renders the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
On PowerPower is a verb – “to be able”
NOT a noun, a thing to be hoarded
Power WITH versus Power Over
New organisational structures warrant new forms of power
Shifting from Hierarchies to Networks
Two Powerful forces climate change and demand growth
Community resilience, adaptability and capacity to manage these forces requires empowerment at the grassroots
Empowerment is happening- power shifts
From company to customer
From company to employee
From politicians to citizens
New Power – with not over
New Power – with not over
Old power works like a currency. It is held by a few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, it is inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads and it captures.
New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.
Source: Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, Understanding New Power, HBR Dec 2014.
Another Harvard Voice on Power“maybe strength in the 21st Century isn’t about dominance but the capacity to evoke…the ability to spark the enduring bonds of shared values, intrinsic motivation, and mutually committed perseverance….…the power to inspire, animate, infuse, spark, evoke – and then connect, link, and collaborate..the power to evoke consists of four other E’s: the power to engage, ennoble, elevate, enlighten.”
Engagement isn’t the right word – It’s Passion
Passion ignited by a sense of meaning and purpose
The Purpose Economy is quest by people for more purpose in their lives. It is an economy where value lies in establishing purpose for employees and customers – through serving needs greater than their own, enabling personal growth, and building communityAaron Hurst
Hosts as Alchemists? Water is H2OHydrogen two partsOxygen oneBut there is a third thing that makes it waterAnd nobody knows what that is..
DH Lawrence
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STRETCH BREAK (Time permitting)
The Tourism Success Story: 1.2 billion
More to Come!
The Island Where Tourist Garbage is Stored in the MaldivesSource: Daily Mail
The Queue to Climb EverestSource: Guardian
• see: Can Tourism Change its Operating Model?
How will we handle congestion?
How will we handle waste?
How will we handle emissions?
How will we manage our thirst for water and land?
How will avoid residents’ backlash?
Protest Sign Erected by Young BalineseSource: ABC They Paved Paradise
How will we protect vulnerable people and cultures?
Can we handle twice the volume in less than 17 years?
Mass Tourism Showing Signs of Breaking
• Volatile demand – boom & bust• Price discounting – cheap travel• Declining margins, yield and
benefit• Pressure for volume growth• Congestion• Less satisfaction• More cost cutting• GROW, GROW, GROW
Where’s the fun in this?
We can do so much better
Dying OLD “INDUSTRY” • More• Exclusive, benefitting the few• Gross revenues• Tourist – wallet, $• Financial Transaction• Heirarchical, “top down” leadership• Silo’d, separate• Disempowering
Emerging NEW “Visitor Economy”• Better• Inclusive, benefitting the many• Net benefits• Guest – meaning, delight• Human Encounter• Networked, grassroot, leadership is
shared• Integrated• Empowering communities
I HAVE A DREAM
A Dream of PEAK PLACES…..….of People performing at peak in peak enterprises to create peak Places
PEAK PLACES are places where • All life flourishes; tourism is the means not the end• There’s a distinct, feeling, character, “spirit” and personality• Hosts are in love with their home and look after it with a shared passion• Guests experience an authentic welcome that inspires and transforms• Hosts help each other and collaborate to create sustained livelihoods• People in service to others take pride in showing they care and are valued
by the community as a result• Hosts are “passionate, smart, resilient, trustworthy, original” • Visitors generate sustained net benefits to the community as a whole• Where the community determines direction, pace and type of tourism that
is right for them.
Here’s one: www.loophead.ie
From here
To here?
YOU Can Help us Move
• In a globalised, knowledge economy, connecting people is the vital, core function – YOUR PURPOSE
• Value now lies within PEOPLE with diverse passion, intelligence, courage, curiosity
• For you a destination is not real estate, it’s HOME; it’s YOUR PLACE
• Because you love your home, you will protect it and celebrate it. PROTECTION comes naturally
• Because you love your home; want to share its uniqueness, you can slow the PACE, enable them to SAVOUR
• You are the resident, you have skin in the game, can feel the pulse, create community, & collectively have POWER
Let’s host a party!
What skills and characteristics are needed to host a successful event?
1. Humility: host knows she can’t do it well by herself
2. Curiosity: who has the skills and “know how” required?
4. Creative capacity to Inspire
5. Inclusive – create a sense of ownership among diverse groups
6. Alchemists – create and hold spaces for magic to occur: 21st Century Alchemists!
7. Excellent Listeners AND decisive
8. Responsible, Considerate, Passionate
3. Confidence in the capability of community members
These are also the characteristics and skills of 21st Century leaders
1. Humility: host knows she can’t do it well by herself
2. Curiosity: who has the skills and “know how” required?
4. Capacity to Inspire
5. Inclusive – create a sense of ownership among diverse groups
6. Convenors – space creators
7. Excellent Listeners and decisive
8. Responsible, Considerate
3. Confidence in the capability of community members
The Foundation Exists
The Foundation Exists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhjL6XM_Qq8
The Foundation Exists
So What’s Next?• From Superhost to Community Leader helping to make your community a
PEAK PLACE!
• Better understanding tourism dynamics – how do we ensure it’s a force for good.• Personal and professional development – The Art of Hosting• Build bridges with mainstream industry and wider community• Practice the art of community leadership• Identify projects and issues• Create a tourism that serves the Common Good• Link up with other initiatives – Transition Towns, BALLE
YOU are the ones we have been waiting for
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
For if not YOU, then Who?
What role do you wish to play?
