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Understanding the whole : Sensemaking with the whole in the room.


The LSI-approach is aimed at sustainable change, rooted in the development of collective learning and building capacity for change. An assumption is that sustainable experience is created by engaging the whole person (mind, body, spirit), because reality is defined by meanings as well as facts. The underlying worldview is that everything that lives wants to grow, to flourish, and that development of capacities is possible under the right circumstances ref ( The Living Company by Arie de Geus ). Collective learning is developed through action learning, and by working together with the goal of looking for new meaning and growth described as looking for new meaning as ‘sensemaking’, a process with seven properties As explained by Karl  “: "If people start to act (enactment), they generate tangible results (cues), in a context (social), and this helps them to discover (retrospectively) what is going on (ongoing), what has to be explained (plausibility), and what has to be done (identity enhancement)".
Working together in highly diverse groups , sensemaking is the need for people to be part of a group, and the need to work together on a larger goal that makes sense to them, something they can believe in. it is a very humanizing experience that travels with participants . Meeting and working face-to-face plays an important role in sensemaking  “If people want to share meaning, then they need to talk about their shared experience in close proximity to its occurrence and hammer out a common way to encode it and talk about it”. dialogues and arguments are bound to happen but they need not to be seen as a problem that has to be solved, but as a source of diversity for renewal.
To address as many learning styles of participants as possible, a diversity of work forms is used. Although some methods emphasise dialogue, visualising of patterns and results plays an important role in LSIs. It has been suggested that visual reasoning is more universal than verbal reasoning and that it enablle groups to contribute as well. Collective meetings, working on common ground Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff explain: “Fred Emery, a pioneer in his field, held that when two people work on a common task outside themselves they are more likely to improve their relationship than if they confront one another’s habits, styles, and quirks directly in the absence of any other task.”

Characteristics of LSI that are mainly based on the principle of understanding the whole, of looking for common ground are:
· Looking for new meanings
· Face-to-face communication
· Addressing a diversity of qualities of participants
· Use of a diversity of work forms to meet all learning styles
· Working with emerging processes
· Focus on common ground and future action
· Rationalizing and acknowledging of conflicts
· Need for facilitators

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