Shaping the Offer & the Offering…
I invite us to contemplate the idea making an ‘Offer’ (services or products) yet being able to present it in a spirit of ‘Offering’ enabling generative participation in the world.
Here you can witness how we shape our offer and pay attention to how we show up to inhabit the offering well. This dialogue with Jackie is messy, yet generative and afterwards we distil key ideas we carry forward.
For those who enjoy the journey not just the destination, we gladly share how we work together…
My Current understanding after our conversation:
Our offer - soul walks, dialogue circles and peer learning - is how we meet you (each other). The offer may have forms of exchange, transaction and a sense of encountering the other. We should work on the offer, its value and its price.
‘How we offer’ - is in the Offering. A spirit of meeting in companionship that opens us up to our soulful creative participation in the world. In the Offering we move beyond the self, the product or the service.
The Offering may open up an object-orientated meet point into a dialogic relationship and spirit of intersubjectivity.*
* For Martin Buber, I-Thou relations are dialogic, whereas I-it relationship is more like a monologue turning back onto oneself. The I-it is meeting the other as an object that can be manipulated, I-Thou is meeting the other person as a world onto themselves, which you can enter yet not own or manipulate. - Encyclopedia Entry
Here I see the offer as the meeting point, that can open up into a dialogic relationship or not, depending on the spirit of the offering. It is not an either-or but rather a twofold way of interacting in the world. In our work around Dialogue, we may want to emphasise the spirit of the offering, as we try to cultivate a soulful creative participation in each other.
