This is the second post in a series of posts looking at hygge and working out loud circles using Meik Wiking’s The Hygge Manifesto from his book “The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well” as a framework for discussion.
Hygge is big on candles. Just lighting a candle and you are on your way. In a sense, candles are foundational to hygge. Most Danes when asked about hygge will mention candles in their answer.
I love candles. I always ask for candles to be lit if they are on a table in a restaurant. This now also happens at church. The church was given a lamp recently as a gift and if the candle is not lit in the lamp while we are meeting, it feels like something is not right and I make sure it is lit.
Morning Service #RemembranceSunday #WeWillRememberThem @HCCBradford #Bradford#wol #wolweek #hygge pic.twitter.com/lqzTPp9mWe
— Simon R.J. Fogg (@srjf) 12 November 2017
A favourite part of Meike Wiking’s book for me is about “spoilsports”:
The Danes also love lighting in all its various forms and make extensive efforts to deploy this well in their homes as part of their domestic atmosphere to be welcoming. This speaks to me of planning your infrastructure at home and then flexing to the needs of the event you host in your home.
For me, the circle guides are foundational to working out loud circles. They need to be used in a circle to have an authentic working out loud experience. I have been in 2 circles so far and it does not feel like the exercises will get tired and not appropriate any time soon given that you always do the exercises in the context of your current goal in that circle.
As a facilitator of working out loud circles, public events at church, small study group meetings at church and large workshops at work, I know that how you issue and word joining instructions set up the physical (or virtual!) environment, how you deploy that and how you run the “meetings” is key to making people feel welcome, safe and secure to contribute and participate and have an enjoyable and productive time.
As facilitators of circles, we need to make the process as painless as possible so people are clear what they need to do, how we will do it and when. This is especially true for people new to circles.
I have never done a physical, in real life, circle so may be if you are in the position of doing a real life one you could deploy the full range of hygge lighting!
In the same way that hygge is for everybody, working out loud circles are for everybody.
What would you add to the hygge part and/or the working out loud circle part of this post?
Resources
For a full list of posts in this series see the index post
My Top Ten Resources for Encouraging People To Actually Work Out Loud (as at 6 November 2017) (this post includes links to Working Out Loud resources)
Author Info
Simon Fogg is an IT professional who has worked in IT for all bar 8 months of his 34 year career to date. He delivers business consultancy, project management and service management services as part of the Claritas Solutions team in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. Claritas deliver solutions to clients in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors across the UK. He was first introduced to Working Out Loud Circles in 2016 and has since led 2 x 12-week global/virtual circles (using Slack and Zoom) and is currently recruiting and setting up for launching an “out-of-the-ordinary” (more than 5 people) 3rd circle on a trial Workplace by Facebook community in January 2018 with members already using the platform.
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