suppose I say here’s the leader what do
you feel excited terrified nervous
suppose I say here’s the leader what do
you feel now welcomed engaged this of
course isn’t the Polian on the left and
on the right the noted restaurateurs and
hoteliers Raymond Blanc outside his
Manoir okat says all restaurants and
hotel in the Oxford in England they’re
both French they’re both men but they’re
different leaders I think and they’re
here as the archetypes of the hero and
the host leading the verb requires at
least two people you don’t just have a
leader you must have other people who
are going to be led as well so leading
is not about a role it’s about a
relationship and these two leaders want
to build very different relationships
with us let’s explore that the hero
leader of which Napoleon is the example
here the hero leader wants to build a
relationship where they turn up and save
the day they arrive they sum up the
situation they issue orders they sort
things out they rescue everybody they
sort it out
hurrah we’re saved and in a crisis
situation that might be a good thing but
I don’t think it’s the basis actually
for a continuing relationship in an
organization the hero like Napoleon on
his horse or Batman on his Batmobile
this is a very old model of leadership
but increasingly it’s not a very good
one on the other hand we have the idea
of the host as a leader the host of
course is someone who
entertains guests someone who brings
people together someone who engages
people around a project or topic of
interest British leadership academic the
professor Keith Grint has written that
leadership is about engaging a community
in facing up to complex collective
problems these days and why is that
here’s why the issues that we face today
on a large or small scale are
increasingly fuzzy ill-defined complex
interconnected messy where we take
actions where we can’t be sure what will
happen there will be unpredictable
knock-on effects and they’re not those
kind of situations very amenable to the
arrival of a decisive hero I’m talking
about on the big scale things like
climate change on the smallest scale it
might be the use of green space in a
crowded City area it might be a very
hidden and diffuse issue like the plight
of prisoners just released who’ve lost
their support networks and don’t know
what to do
all of these don’t need a hero they need
a host they need someone to engage
people around the problem and I’m here
today to tell you that I think we need
more host leaders let me explain how I
got interested in this topic my name is
Mark macoco I’m a former nuclear
physicist
I turned organizational consultant 25
years ago and I really enjoy bringing
new ideas into the world of management
and organizations I’ve been lucky enough
to be a coach for Ted fellows for the
last several years it’s been a great
privilege to work with those brilliant
young people about 15 years ago I heard
this amazing Arabic proverb out of the
blue the host is both the first and the
last the host is both the first and the
last and I immediately thought but
that’s the leader isn’t it the leader
goes first to show
along the way but they also go last to
make sure no one is left behind like the
captain of a sinking ship makes sure
everybody is off before they leave
themselves and I immediately started
thinking about this connection between
hosting and leadership and so I did what
any self-respecting consultant would do
I went to Amazon to try and buy the book
about it
but I discovered there was no book there
was nothing about this connection
between hosting and leadership at all a
few tea party etiquette manuals but
that’s it so I set off for over a decade
of research of practice of experimenting
of sharing these ideas of talking with
people about this connection between
hosting and leadership and I interviewed
great leaders who I thought were very
good hosts like Sir Chris Bonnington the
Everest Mountaineer I interviewed great
hosts who I thought were fantastic
leaders including people at Raymond
Blanc’s manoir catalyst saison I
discovered how hosting is one of the
oldest pieces of humanity goes right
back to the dawn of time when we were
hunter gatherers and nomads and it still
survives today in the deserts and on the
steppes and on the plains where they’re
going is very tough I discovered how the
Vikings used hospitality in their meat
haul feasts to build connection and
community I discovered how the word
Hospital actually comes from hospitality
and host and was originally a place in
medieval monasteries where the sick were
looked after by the monks and nuns so
there’s this amazing body of what
hospitality does but nobody’s looking at
it anymore and I think that we need to
look at it harder and one place you can
see it is right here
because Ted thrives as a brilliant
community under the very watchful and
sometimes very strict eye of Chris
Anderson the global leader of Ted and
when Ted
tedx kazimierz puts on events they’re
performing a valuable service in
bringing people together sharing ideas
and producing new possibilities so we’re
all part of this movement actually just
by being here today I first discovered
the power of leading as a host when I
founded the Soul world network in 2002
you probably haven’t heard of it it’s a
very niche little place
it’s for coaches and consultants who use
the ideas from solution-focused brief
therapy in our work and a colleague and
I had written the first business book
about this topic I liked writing the
first books about topics and we decided
to hold a meeting for anyone in the
world who was interested and we expected
about 20 people to show up and when the
day came 80 people showed up from across
Europe and indeed across the Atlantic
it’s important marker of something
interesting when many more people show
up than you expected and we had a
fantastic conference and people seemed
to want to do it again but we weren’t
quite sure how so I called a meeting in
the pub because we were in the UK and we
we decided not to form a conventional
organization with the president and the
committee in a bank account and all of
that but instead we would form a
steering group and invite people to host
future events that was in 2002 we now
have about 1500 members online we’ve had
over 40 international events from huge
international conferences to small
retreats and summer schools through that
period and we’ve done it all with no
president no committee no bank account
and no money these things are much more
sustainable if they don’t need funding I
think you’ll find and is this leadership
sustaining a community like this when
I’m not telling them what to do I think
it is and I think it’s about leading as
a host
I discovered in all of this research
that hosting is a very dynamic art hosts
have to first of all step forward create
something invite people just like you
were all invited today and then the host
has to step back to allow people to get
on with it
talk to each other enjoy the things
enjoy the process and interact together
without the host getting in the way too
much so it’s about stepping forward
create something
stepping back allowing people to get on
with it and the coasts of course serve
their guests and are not here to the
servant leadership movement that some of
you may have heard of started by Robert
Greenleaf in the 1970s about serving as
a leader I think hosts do serve but they
also do a lot of other things as well
it’s a metaphor that we all know we’ve
all been hosts we’ve all been guests we
all know the difference between good
hosting and bad hosting when we see it
but we haven’t much of us reflected on
how to do that and how that connects
with leadership and the word itself host
and the host and the guest these are
like yin and yang you can’t have the one
without the other you can’t have a guest
without host you can’t have a host
without a guest and one of the reasons
for that is that the word host and guest
comes from this ancient indo-european
word hasti and indo-european was the
language they had before all the modern
european languages and this word dosti
means host and guest and stranger all
rolled into one so it’s a a word for a
relationship and it’s a word for a
relationship about not just meeting your
friends but how we meet the stranger how
we meet the other and this art of
meeting the stranger still very powerful
in those places like the desert and the
steppe where humanity originated
this is a modern Bedouin encampment and
the Bedouins still have a very strong
hospitality tradition if you meet
veterans in the desert they immediately
like you in they offer you tea they
offer you shelter before they’ve even
asked who you are or where you’re going
it’s part of their culture to meet the
stranger in a way that it’s not really
part of ours anymore
although Airbnb and couchsurfing you’ve
done a little bit to kind of encourage
that there recently the only thing that
tells you that this is a picture of a
modern Bedouin camp as opposed to 2,000
years ago if you can see it is the
plastic water cap everything else in
that creature could have been like that
2,000 years ago you can’t see the Toyota
Landcruiser that’s just off to the right
so think about how we meet strangers in
our modern culture where do we meet
strangers where do we are we part of an
inclusive community that includes
strangers well in my country in the
United Kingdom the places where this
used to happen were the pub and the
church but both of these are losing
their power today the pub is probably
more like a restaurant than a pub and
the church fewer and fewer people are
going in the United Kingdom less than
10% of people go to church regularly
more than 50% of people say they have no
religion at all I realise that things
are a little different hearing Poland
and also in the United States where many
more people go to church so how can we
meet strangers there’s a value in
church-going even if you don’t really
believe in it because there’s useful
things that come out of going to church
then anyone here who goes to church at
Christmas or with your parents well not
all the time it’s kind of implicitly
agreeing with me
about this where can we meet strangers
today because if we get cut off from our
communities that can have very serious
consequences the problem of loneliness
is getting worse and worse in our
crowded cities loneliness has never been
such a problem if you get cut off from
your community involuntarily people’s
health begins to suffer their personal
care begins to suffer they get stress
they get depression heart disease goes
up even suicide rates go up it’s a
serious problem and even the UK has just
appointed a minister for loneliness a
few months ago so serious is the
situation so let’s think about how we
can meet the stranger without going to
church well here’s another very good
example of host leadership in action
sunday assembly my wife is a humanist
funeral celebrant that means that she
creates and leads funerals without
religion for those who want it and
they’re very good events and people
enjoy them in as much as you can enjoy a
funeral
it’s good to say it is good to say
goodbye properly to someone you’ve loved
and these events are successful and we
used to talk about we should do this on
a more regular basis have these humanist
gatherings it’s a shame to have to wait
until somebody dies to do that and then
word came out in 2013 of a a new godless
Church that was going to start in London
and it was led by two comedians
Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans and
their motto was going to be live better
help often and wonder more so did my
wife and I went along to the first one
along with 250 other people now that
paper and Sanderson expected 30 people
but 250 came and it’s another example of
more people showing up there
being interesting and this instead of
hymns we sang top songs instead of a
sermon we had a talk
instead of Bible readings we had poems
instead of prayers we had moment of
reflection we had tea and cake
afterwards that’s much the same and a
new way of coming together was born and
this is a picture of one of the very
first assemblies you see Sanders and
then his white sweater Pipper in the
band playing the guitar and I’m just
behind paper I’m the fat guy in the
purple sweater playing the clarinet just
behind him so that was in 2013 there are
now some 50 send the Assemblies around
the world inspired by the original one
meeting on Sundays to live better helped
often a wonder more we say that we won’t
tell you how to live your life but we
want to help you live it as fully as
possible this one life that we know we
have is this leadership yes I think it
is it’s bringing an inclusive community
together its leadership with invitation
not fear its leadership with engagement
not instruction and it’s leadership with
participation not passivity it’s not for
me to say if there’s a place for Sunday
assembly here in Poland will be very
exciting if there was so to come to a
close on this leading as a host is a
fantastic productive way to go
and it’s not easy sometimes hosts have
to do some pretty brave things as I’ve
learned but it can increase and enhance
the quality of the relationships the
quality of the engagement the quality of
the performance and therefore the
quality of the results in workplaces
NGOs public sector Hospital
and so on and I’d encourage you to think
about how it might help in your
workplace to improve relationships there
so to come to a close I’d say that the
thing I’ve learnt the most in this whole
project is that to meet the stranger is
very difficult if you’re in fear or if
you’re defensive we have to learn to
open our hearts to strangers and if we
learn to open our hearts to strangers
that’s when we can really open the door
to new futures new people and new possibilities thank you very much
you feel excited terrified nervous
suppose I say here’s the leader what do
you feel now welcomed engaged this of
course isn’t the Polian on the left and
on the right the noted restaurateurs and
hoteliers Raymond Blanc outside his
Manoir okat says all restaurants and
hotel in the Oxford in England they’re
both French they’re both men but they’re
different leaders I think and they’re
here as the archetypes of the hero and
the host leading the verb requires at
least two people you don’t just have a
leader you must have other people who
are going to be led as well so leading
is not about a role it’s about a
relationship and these two leaders want
to build very different relationships
with us let’s explore that the hero
leader of which Napoleon is the example
here the hero leader wants to build a
relationship where they turn up and save
the day they arrive they sum up the
situation they issue orders they sort
things out they rescue everybody they
sort it out
hurrah we’re saved and in a crisis
situation that might be a good thing but
I don’t think it’s the basis actually
for a continuing relationship in an
organization the hero like Napoleon on
his horse or Batman on his Batmobile
this is a very old model of leadership
but increasingly it’s not a very good
one on the other hand we have the idea
of the host as a leader the host of
course is someone who
entertains guests someone who brings
people together someone who engages
people around a project or topic of
interest British leadership academic the
professor Keith Grint has written that
leadership is about engaging a community
in facing up to complex collective
problems these days and why is that
here’s why the issues that we face today
on a large or small scale are
increasingly fuzzy ill-defined complex
interconnected messy where we take
actions where we can’t be sure what will
happen there will be unpredictable
knock-on effects and they’re not those
kind of situations very amenable to the
arrival of a decisive hero I’m talking
about on the big scale things like
climate change on the smallest scale it
might be the use of green space in a
crowded City area it might be a very
hidden and diffuse issue like the plight
of prisoners just released who’ve lost
their support networks and don’t know
what to do
all of these don’t need a hero they need
a host they need someone to engage
people around the problem and I’m here
today to tell you that I think we need
more host leaders let me explain how I
got interested in this topic my name is
Mark macoco I’m a former nuclear
physicist
I turned organizational consultant 25
years ago and I really enjoy bringing
new ideas into the world of management
and organizations I’ve been lucky enough
to be a coach for Ted fellows for the
last several years it’s been a great
privilege to work with those brilliant
young people about 15 years ago I heard
this amazing Arabic proverb out of the
blue the host is both the first and the
last the host is both the first and the
last and I immediately thought but
that’s the leader isn’t it the leader
goes first to show
along the way but they also go last to
make sure no one is left behind like the
captain of a sinking ship makes sure
everybody is off before they leave
themselves and I immediately started
thinking about this connection between
hosting and leadership and so I did what
any self-respecting consultant would do
I went to Amazon to try and buy the book
about it
but I discovered there was no book there
was nothing about this connection
between hosting and leadership at all a
few tea party etiquette manuals but
that’s it so I set off for over a decade
of research of practice of experimenting
of sharing these ideas of talking with
people about this connection between
hosting and leadership and I interviewed
great leaders who I thought were very
good hosts like Sir Chris Bonnington the
Everest Mountaineer I interviewed great
hosts who I thought were fantastic
leaders including people at Raymond
Blanc’s manoir catalyst saison I
discovered how hosting is one of the
oldest pieces of humanity goes right
back to the dawn of time when we were
hunter gatherers and nomads and it still
survives today in the deserts and on the
steppes and on the plains where they’re
going is very tough I discovered how the
Vikings used hospitality in their meat
haul feasts to build connection and
community I discovered how the word
Hospital actually comes from hospitality
and host and was originally a place in
medieval monasteries where the sick were
looked after by the monks and nuns so
there’s this amazing body of what
hospitality does but nobody’s looking at
it anymore and I think that we need to
look at it harder and one place you can
see it is right here
because Ted thrives as a brilliant
community under the very watchful and
sometimes very strict eye of Chris
Anderson the global leader of Ted and
when Ted
tedx kazimierz puts on events they’re
performing a valuable service in
bringing people together sharing ideas
and producing new possibilities so we’re
all part of this movement actually just
by being here today I first discovered
the power of leading as a host when I
founded the Soul world network in 2002
you probably haven’t heard of it it’s a
very niche little place
it’s for coaches and consultants who use
the ideas from solution-focused brief
therapy in our work and a colleague and
I had written the first business book
about this topic I liked writing the
first books about topics and we decided
to hold a meeting for anyone in the
world who was interested and we expected
about 20 people to show up and when the
day came 80 people showed up from across
Europe and indeed across the Atlantic
it’s important marker of something
interesting when many more people show
up than you expected and we had a
fantastic conference and people seemed
to want to do it again but we weren’t
quite sure how so I called a meeting in
the pub because we were in the UK and we
we decided not to form a conventional
organization with the president and the
committee in a bank account and all of
that but instead we would form a
steering group and invite people to host
future events that was in 2002 we now
have about 1500 members online we’ve had
over 40 international events from huge
international conferences to small
retreats and summer schools through that
period and we’ve done it all with no
president no committee no bank account
and no money these things are much more
sustainable if they don’t need funding I
think you’ll find and is this leadership
sustaining a community like this when
I’m not telling them what to do I think
it is and I think it’s about leading as
a host
I discovered in all of this research
that hosting is a very dynamic art hosts
have to first of all step forward create
something invite people just like you
were all invited today and then the host
has to step back to allow people to get
on with it
talk to each other enjoy the things
enjoy the process and interact together
without the host getting in the way too
much so it’s about stepping forward
create something
stepping back allowing people to get on
with it and the coasts of course serve
their guests and are not here to the
servant leadership movement that some of
you may have heard of started by Robert
Greenleaf in the 1970s about serving as
a leader I think hosts do serve but they
also do a lot of other things as well
it’s a metaphor that we all know we’ve
all been hosts we’ve all been guests we
all know the difference between good
hosting and bad hosting when we see it
but we haven’t much of us reflected on
how to do that and how that connects
with leadership and the word itself host
and the host and the guest these are
like yin and yang you can’t have the one
without the other you can’t have a guest
without host you can’t have a host
without a guest and one of the reasons
for that is that the word host and guest
comes from this ancient indo-european
word hasti and indo-european was the
language they had before all the modern
european languages and this word dosti
means host and guest and stranger all
rolled into one so it’s a a word for a
relationship and it’s a word for a
relationship about not just meeting your
friends but how we meet the stranger how
we meet the other and this art of
meeting the stranger still very powerful
in those places like the desert and the
steppe where humanity originated
this is a modern Bedouin encampment and
the Bedouins still have a very strong
hospitality tradition if you meet
veterans in the desert they immediately
like you in they offer you tea they
offer you shelter before they’ve even
asked who you are or where you’re going
it’s part of their culture to meet the
stranger in a way that it’s not really
part of ours anymore
although Airbnb and couchsurfing you’ve
done a little bit to kind of encourage
that there recently the only thing that
tells you that this is a picture of a
modern Bedouin camp as opposed to 2,000
years ago if you can see it is the
plastic water cap everything else in
that creature could have been like that
2,000 years ago you can’t see the Toyota
Landcruiser that’s just off to the right
so think about how we meet strangers in
our modern culture where do we meet
strangers where do we are we part of an
inclusive community that includes
strangers well in my country in the
United Kingdom the places where this
used to happen were the pub and the
church but both of these are losing
their power today the pub is probably
more like a restaurant than a pub and
the church fewer and fewer people are
going in the United Kingdom less than
10% of people go to church regularly
more than 50% of people say they have no
religion at all I realise that things
are a little different hearing Poland
and also in the United States where many
more people go to church so how can we
meet strangers there’s a value in
church-going even if you don’t really
believe in it because there’s useful
things that come out of going to church
then anyone here who goes to church at
Christmas or with your parents well not
all the time it’s kind of implicitly
agreeing with me
about this where can we meet strangers
today because if we get cut off from our
communities that can have very serious
consequences the problem of loneliness
is getting worse and worse in our
crowded cities loneliness has never been
such a problem if you get cut off from
your community involuntarily people’s
health begins to suffer their personal
care begins to suffer they get stress
they get depression heart disease goes
up even suicide rates go up it’s a
serious problem and even the UK has just
appointed a minister for loneliness a
few months ago so serious is the
situation so let’s think about how we
can meet the stranger without going to
church well here’s another very good
example of host leadership in action
sunday assembly my wife is a humanist
funeral celebrant that means that she
creates and leads funerals without
religion for those who want it and
they’re very good events and people
enjoy them in as much as you can enjoy a
funeral
it’s good to say it is good to say
goodbye properly to someone you’ve loved
and these events are successful and we
used to talk about we should do this on
a more regular basis have these humanist
gatherings it’s a shame to have to wait
until somebody dies to do that and then
word came out in 2013 of a a new godless
Church that was going to start in London
and it was led by two comedians
Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans and
their motto was going to be live better
help often and wonder more so did my
wife and I went along to the first one
along with 250 other people now that
paper and Sanderson expected 30 people
but 250 came and it’s another example of
more people showing up there
being interesting and this instead of
hymns we sang top songs instead of a
sermon we had a talk
instead of Bible readings we had poems
instead of prayers we had moment of
reflection we had tea and cake
afterwards that’s much the same and a
new way of coming together was born and
this is a picture of one of the very
first assemblies you see Sanders and
then his white sweater Pipper in the
band playing the guitar and I’m just
behind paper I’m the fat guy in the
purple sweater playing the clarinet just
behind him so that was in 2013 there are
now some 50 send the Assemblies around
the world inspired by the original one
meeting on Sundays to live better helped
often a wonder more we say that we won’t
tell you how to live your life but we
want to help you live it as fully as
possible this one life that we know we
have is this leadership yes I think it
is it’s bringing an inclusive community
together its leadership with invitation
not fear its leadership with engagement
not instruction and it’s leadership with
participation not passivity it’s not for
me to say if there’s a place for Sunday
assembly here in Poland will be very
exciting if there was so to come to a
close on this leading as a host is a
fantastic productive way to go
and it’s not easy sometimes hosts have
to do some pretty brave things as I’ve
learned but it can increase and enhance
the quality of the relationships the
quality of the engagement the quality of
the performance and therefore the
quality of the results in workplaces
NGOs public sector Hospital
and so on and I’d encourage you to think
about how it might help in your
workplace to improve relationships there
so to come to a close I’d say that the
thing I’ve learnt the most in this whole
project is that to meet the stranger is
very difficult if you’re in fear or if
you’re defensive we have to learn to
open our hearts to strangers and if we
learn to open our hearts to strangers
that’s when we can really open the door
to new futures new people and new possibilities thank you very much
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