the world game conference

THE WORLD GAME CONFERENCE
ERICKSON
INTERNATIONAL
Leading since 1980
Marilyn’s Welcome Letter to Erickson Coaches:
(Please feel free to translate and send out further)
Welcome to the Second International Erickson World Game Conference on April
24th in Istanbul. We are so pleased to welcome you to this day of events. This is
a conference on our aims as Coaching Leaders.. and we are all leaders! We are leaders who also call
ourselves coaches.
The conference will also include a meetup, a chance for North American Coaches to meet European Coaches, and Asian Coaches, and for us all to really reflect on our expansive role as leaders in the
world of International Coaching development. We hope this will also be a day of great fun for you, as
well as an opportunity to meet old and new friends from the expanding Solution Focused Coaching
World of Erickson.
The World Game is our game, and I personally hope that you will have a wider understanding and a
deeper commitment to what the wider coaching purpose has become after attending this day with
us all. Erickson players can identify as one of the earliest Coaching schools in the world and now the
largest. Therefor it is fitting that we host this conference for the world-wide coaching community at
large. Yet this conference is about the World Game and Leadership, it is not about Erickson.
We are inviting all coaching schools interested in the world game, so want to create a truly International forum for coaches here. We hope to have groups and individuals from all our 40 countries
attending this conference plus many individual participants from other countries as well. Erickson
International trainers and organizers will have their own day on the 25th for meeting and greeting.
For our big conference day on the 24th feel welcome to invite coaches and people from all coaching
schools and groups freely, as there will be much for them.
Please enjoy and contribute. We are up to big things in the world, and we want to take a day to truly
look at our joint purpose in a useful way for all of us.
In this special Istanbul Conference we will have one exciting new exercise for you on Creative
Dreaming. As well there will be many powerful conversations about the big themes, Education, Corporate Development, Families, Creative Emergence, Mindfulness, Language and Culture, Health and
Wellbeing, Teams, Negotiation, and on, that are our great interests, all linked to world game opportunities and ideas.
Do you want to play the World Game?
Welcome! All the warmest to you,
Marilyn Atkinson
2021 Columbia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5Y 3V6
Telephone: 604-879-5600 Toll-free: 1-800-665-6949
info@erickson.edu www.erickson.edu
The World Game: Our Legacy
What is it? Hooking you into your Deepest Values & Purpose and asking: What real legacy
can I give to the world?
Humans have been thinking of their children as their legacy. That was highly relevant in our
world in past times and of course relevant in part – always.
But the issue of legacy goes much deeper today.
ERICKSON
INTERNATIONAL
Leading since 1980
Your World Game Needs to be Smart
We need to ask ourselves: What is our legacy for this specific world?
To make this legacy SMART! What does smart mean? Specific to today, Measurable (our children will appreciate) Achievable (step by step), Truly Relevant, and Optimistically Realistic and timed for Now. This is a
world in danger. This is a world with deep requirements that need attention.
What makes your a game a game that is doable, achievable and that you make it
S.M.A.R.T?
• How can we measure it?
• Is it achievable?
• Is it truly relevant?
• And by when!
The World Game Needs to Matter
To build a world game means to take your aims to be useful to others and to really thank them through
multi-dimensional vision and from the long range view. After you are gone 100 years, how will your worldgame legacy matter?
Most people keep their ‘wishes for another world success’ quite abstract yet our children are inheriting a very
specific world. Our lives are busy and designing a legacy seems difficult except by helping them personally.
Yet their lives are totally dependent on the world they move into. And our children’s children?
The World Myth: A Story of Emergence
In Coaching a Family System effectively we are always coaching the mentors separately, and then the system, the ‘We System’ as a whole. We want to assist all attendees to create a self and team creation myth, a
story of emergence. This is a story of courage, assistance, care, development, a song that is not finished yet.
This is a story designed to inspire all the members to work for others development.
We need to create a story that is far bigger than the individual, a vision of emergence throughout the world
that allows us all to be proud, and to want to contribute further. This is exactly the mood, the quality of love
and contribution that is at the heart of the world game; the giant ‘we’ as our family system.
A World Game is a Calling
We are calling not just for ourselves but for those around us to awaken to our true life development, contribution, and communal purpose. We are calling others to play for their communities with courage and vision!
That means our world game needs to support every aspect of our own and the emergence of a total, strong,
human development purpose, even if it only focuses on one part. Our story is a story that necessarily supports the learning of all the members individually and uniquely, and shows inclusiveness in being open to
each and all.
2021 Columbia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5Y 3V6
Telephone: 604-879-5600 Toll-free: 1-800-665-6949
info@erickson.edu www.erickson.edu
Now this description only points to the quality of an effective world game. It doesn’t describe one singly. It describes an attitude, while in this book we are discussing very personal
and specific forays to create world game thinking with specific do-able games!
The world is in danger! We desperately need global thinking to begin to respond effectively
to the quality of living that humans need.
ERICKSON
INTERNATIONAL
Leading since 1980
As a multination Coaching School, Erickson and its partners will offer 30 World Game Scholarships this
year to persons from different countries who come up with brilliant games that strengthen:
a)
Specific People in the World and their Health, Learning and Culture;
b)
Environmental Solutions;
c)
Economic and Cultural Vision towards the Future;
d)
The Viability and Development of Coaching itself in multiple environments.
e)
We intend to build three Coach Training Centers in three less privileged areas where people can come for intensive style coach education at low or no cost.
A simple example of a ‘blessing game’ is when people decide to run a race for a charity, and get many family and friends to sponsor them with a few dollars per mile that are collected and given to the charity.
A more complex example might be using a government tax break offered, to a build an advertised business
game to sponsor one specific world challenge such as providing mosquito netting in a malaria zone in
Africa.
Blessing games are small examples of Global Thinking. They require a big change however, as they assist
people to focus on ‘beyond personal’ to global; beyond self enrichment to world development.
The Idea of the World Game is About Level 8 Thinking
We need to get real! Getting Real, means moving to Level 8 thinking in Spiral Dynamic terms. The world
economy is in confusion. We need global awareness, not just GDP, Gross Domestic Productivity, but GLP,
Gross Learning Productivity, GKP, Gross Kindness Productivity, and also GHP, Gross Happiness Productivity.
When you build a World Game you assist those around you to access sponsorship thinking: Level 8 Thinking! A sponsorship approach to life forms deep channels in your personal brain; but much more important,
it creates new waves of energy in the world mind. When we move to world game thinking, we can begin to
resolve, replenish and assist our suffering world.
Sincerely,
Marilyn Atkinson.
October 24, 2013.
2021 Columbia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5Y 3V6
Telephone: 604-879-5600 Toll-free: 1-800-665-6949
info@erickson.edu www.erickson.edu
HOW BIG IS YOUR TANK?
ERICKSON
INTERNATIONAL
Leading since 1980
Perhaps you’ve heard this story about the fish tank owner who decided to give his five years old one-half
meter salt water shark to the Sea World Aquarium. Within one year it grew to 3 meters! The size of the game
we play is like that fish tank. It really matters to our own inner growth.
Why attend Erickson’s international conference in Istanbul called Erickson,TheWorld Game, and You! I
would like to suggest that having your work as a coach link to an active world game with a great team will
assist you to build a much bigger tank and thereby create both a great coaching presence and a great practice! You will develop strong inner and outer leadership abilities, and the coaching rigor to match that.
Games have a powerful fascination for human beings. Sports games, dice games, family games, science
games, legacy games, enlightenment games; we are all players! When we stop playing, we develop sleep difficulties, worries, and physical symptoms. The idea of a strong game gives us powerful incentives to accomplish difficult projects. We live in a world of huge distractions. A strong game assists us to focus on our own
purpose, and to focus on mastery. A strong game assists us to move beyond problem thinking and engage
the quality of learning that allows us to move effectively towards the future we want to create.
Games are fun. Beyond winning or losing this round or that, we are always learning. Games keep us young!
Older folks sit around and read about the world. Young people dive in and play!
A world game is a particularly special area! We learn to do systems thinking. Any global game delivers a lot
of opportunity. And a global game moves us to a high energy state. Any world game idea leads to individual
engagement and high-level responsibility.
There are many kinds of true world games. Social entrepreneurs have been building social change games for
25 years, and interest in multi-focused cultural development games is growing. One thing is clear: the bigger
the game the better! For example, the Olympics is a world game that delights us internationally. We are all
enormously proud to be ‘world winners’.
At our conference in April in Istanbul Erickson College is planning to create a Coaching World Game mileau,
both to support our own coaches as they build personal games worthy of their own legacy, as well as to design some interactive, multi-dimensional Erickson Leadership games. We also intend to have a lot of fun.
We want to design a game intelligence worthy of the values that we hold as Erickson coaches. We believe
that if we bring the tinder we can start a great fire to light the coaching world. You are invited to strategize
with us on every level.
Milton Erickson would tell a story about puting together a snowball at the top of a mountain, making it
strong and firm. He would describe rolling that snowball to the edge of the hill, and tipping it gently over
the edge. The snowball, moving first slowly then faster, would gather more and more snow, and quickly
become an avalanche!
Come join us at the World Game Conference in April 24 2014 in Istanbul.
Let’s create an Avalanche!