Standing in the Fire: Leading High-Heat Meetings with Calm, Clarity, and Courage

Many experienced facilitators, OD consultants, coaches, and organizational leaders increasingly find themselves “standing in the fire” — working in situations where group and community members are polarized, angry, fearful, and confused.  Facilitator Larry Dressler has come to believe that simply picking up yet another method or technique won’t help in situations like these. What has a truly transformational impact is what he calls the facilitator’s presence. Cultivating an ability to access a compassionate presence that people experience as open, authentic, and clear in intention during the most difficult situations moves facilitators from being competent professionals to being on a path toward self-mastery.

Standing in the Fire offers a set of self-directed principles and practices that enable facilitators to work on themselves—to keep their emotional balance no matter how overheated things threaten to become.  It brings together profound teachings from diverse fields, including western psychology, eastern spiritual practices, the arts, social sciences and medical research.   Dressler’s grounded, empathetic approach helps readers reawaken and discover an untapped capacity that comes from within and is expressed as a powerful presence standing in service to a group.

Standing in the Fire offers a set of self-directed principles and practices that enable facilitators to work on themselves—to keep their emotional balance no matter how overheated things threaten to become.  It brings together profound teachings from diverse fields, including western psychology, eastern spiritual practices, the arts, social sciences and medical research.   Dressler’s grounded, empathetic approach helps readers reawaken and discover an untapped capacity that comes from within and is expressed as a powerful presence standing in service to a group.

High-Heat Meetings Require a Coolheaded Leader

Whether you facilitate meetings for a living or simply as part of your job, you’ve surely found yourself “standing in the fire”—at the center of a group that is polarized, angry, fearful, and confused. Veteran facilitator Larry Dressler has found that what makes the crucial difference in these situations is the leader’s presence. You have to master a way of being that allows you to remain effective no matter how hot things get.

Dressler shows how to cultivate six “stances”—mental, emotional, and physical— that will keep you steady, impartial, purposeful, compassionate, and good-humored,. Drawing on his own experiences and the insights of thirty-five distinguished practitioners, he helps you keep your cool and make the kind of inventive, split-second decisions these pressure-cooker situations demand.

Ch. 1:  The Dynamics of the Fire:  Facilitating High-Heat Meetings

Ch. 2:  A New Kind of Presence:  The Facilitator’s Path to Self-Mastery

Ch. 3:  Seven Embodied Principles for Facilitating in the Fire

Ch. 4:  Practices:  The Path of Facilitator Self-Mastery

Ch. 5:  From Standing to Dancing in the Fire: Committing to the Path of Self-Mastery