Introduction to Host Leading

Hosted by Leah Davcheva

Introduced by Géry Derbier

On a beautiful Sunday morning, twenty or so participants set out to explore the metaphor of Host Leadership and its practices. Mark McKergow and Helen Bailey carved out the model of two steps, four positions, and six roles of a Host Leader. With the guidance of host Dr Leah Davcheva, participants constructed ways to use this model to benefit clients and themselves.

Many moons ago, Leah first embarked on her professional path as a teacher of English and found herself involved in leading projects in intercultural education. All along these early years, the first signs of her future passion for both Solution Focus coaching and Host Leadership were discernable for the watchful in her curiosity and pleasure in endlessly seeking to open learning spaces for conversations and connections. Language has always been a primary tool and resource for her.

As luck would (always) have it, Mark McKergow first introduced Leah to Solutions Focus and later to Host Leadership. Links immediately emerged, backward and forward. With striking power, these two approaches stimulated the growth of seedlings and ideas already there. And then, almost overnight, Leah found herself thinking and acting in ways so much simpler and yet horizon driven, pragmatic and yet aspirational. So much so that she re-named the company she had founded almost 15 years ago to AHA moments, Centre for Interculturality, Solutions Focus and Host Leadership.

In this recording of the March 2021 SFiO Global Chapter Meeting, Leah runs one of the workshops that stewards within the Host Leadership community regularly facilitate to spread the philosophy and practices of the approach. The workshop provides a healthy mixture of practical activities and moments of talking about the philosophy of Host Leadership and ways to enact it through a proven practical model.

During the meeting, the guests have been involved in activities their Host specially designed for them to:

• experience the value of the host leadership metaphor in their context of action • find out how to encourage their clients to build relationships while moving forward • use the step- forward and step-back dance of the Host Leader • examine the new roles and positions of engagement of the Host Leader

Host Leadership practitioners’ best hope is that Solutions Focus practitioners and others will take further interest in the Host Leadership idea and find inspiration in its usefulness and beauty.

pdf: “Host Leading: Taking A New Practical View On Leadership Presentation”