From Kingdom to Community: Lessons from The Crucible

Abstract

The Crucible was set up as a workshop for men to practise leadership. An initial motivation was to assist a men's organization to move from reliance on the founder into being a co-created community. The Crucible was structured so that participants had many opportunities to take initiative and practise sustaining presence with self and others. Men benefitted from a background field of friendliness and movement between playfulness and challenge. An orientation was kept to experimentation and learning in comparison to “getting it right”. It is hoped that this paper will be of use to those involved in men's work, training leaders, or wanting to assist an(y) authority-bound organization to move into being more of a cooperative learning community.