Art of Hosting Training – Lead and Design Participatively
Art of Hosting is a mindset and practice for meaningful conversations, collective intelligence and effective collaboration.
What is Art of Hosting?
Art of Hosting literally means “the art of hosting” and in its full name is: The Art of hosting and harvesting conversations that matter”. It refers to the art of designing conversations, meetings, conferences and change processes in such a way that people do not merely attend but become genuinely involved.
At the centre are questions that matter, spaces where trust can emerge, and methods that help make existing knowledge, different perspectives and collective intelligence visible. Art of Hosting combines mindset and craft: it is about presence, listening and mastering hosting as much as concrete formats such as Circle Practice, World Café, Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry or Harvesting.
Especially in complex situations, where no one person alone knows the right answer, Art of Hosting opens a different way forward. Instead of prescribing solutions from above, people are invited to take responsibility, think together and develop next steps collectively.
Salonhosting – Ursula’s Approach
Salonhosting is Ursula Hillbrand’s own translation and further development of this approach. It combines Art of Hosting with the culture of the salon: a space where people meet one another, thoughts are allowed to unfold and new orientation emerges from conversation.
For this, the Bregenzer Salon is not only an intentionally designed physical place, but also an image for Ursula’s way of working. Good processes need atmosphere, clarity and careful design. They need hosts who can hold the frame without controlling the outcome. And they need a process architecture that provides safety while leaving enough openness for something new to emerge.
Ursula Hillbrand brings more than twenty years of experience in participatory leadership and dialogue processes to this work. Her practice has been shaped by international institutions, European politics, public administration, universities, companies and civil society organisations. Salonhosting stands for a form of process facilitation in which methodological precision, human presence and strategic impact come together.
AI Accelerates. Resonance Connects.
Artificial intelligence is changing the way organisations work, communicate and make decisions. Processes are becoming faster, information more readily available and possibilities more complex. Precisely for this reason, those qualities that cannot be automated are gaining importance: trust, relationship, judgement, shared understanding and the ability to find orientation together in complex situations.
Salonhosting creates spaces for exactly this. While AI recognises patterns and accelerates processes, good process facilitation enables human resonance: people listen to one another, bring different perspectives together and develop viable next steps. In this way, information becomes meaning and complexity becomes shared capacity to act.
Because the future does not emerge from technology alone. It emerges where people share responsibility, think together and enter into genuine dialogue. The more digital the world becomes, the more human the future must become.
World Café
The World Café is particularly suitable when many people need to enter into conversation and explore a topic together from different perspectives. In changing small table groups, condensed insights, new connections and a shared understanding of central questions can emerge.
Although World Café is one of the best-known methods within Art of Hosting, it is often underestimated or applied too superficially. An effective World Café requires more than beautiful table settings and open conversation: it needs powerful questions, a clear process design, skilled hosting and a conscious harvesting of insights. In Ursula Hillbrand’s trainings, participants learn what really matters in this format and how to design it in a way that enables collective thinking, clarity and meaningful next steps.
Open Space Technology
Open Space Technology is a self-organised large-group format. Participants develop the agenda themselves and work on those questions for which they bring responsibility and energy. This format is particularly suitable when complex topics need to be addressed, and many perspectives require space at the same time.
Circle Practice
Circle Practice is a fundamental form of dialogic communication. People sit in a circle, speak one after another and listen to one another consciously. This seemingly simple form often creates a different quality of attention, presence and shared responsibility.
Baldwin, Christina; Linnea, Ann (2010). The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Baldwin, Christina; Linnea, Ann (2014). Circle: Die Kraft des Kreises. Gespräche und Meetings inspirierend, schöpferisch und effektiv gestalten. Beltz
Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is a strengths-based approach to developing organisations and teams. Instead of looking first at deficits, this method asks what is already working, what resources are present and what future can emerge from them.
Pro Action Café
The Pro Action Café is a dialogic consultation format for concrete projects, questions or initiatives. Individual hosts bring in an issue they would like to develop further. In several rounds of conversation, they receive resonance, new perspectives and concrete next steps. The format is particularly suitable when people work with real initiatives and want to use the collective intelligence of a group without turning it into classic consultancy or a ready-made solution from outside.
Collective Story Harvest
or Strategic Story Harvesting
Collective Story Harvest is a format in which stories are not only told but collectively explored and evaluated. A person or team shares a relevant experience from a project, a change process or a transition. Listeners pay attention to different aspects, such as turning points, leadership, collaboration, learning moments or systemic patterns. In this way, the knowledge contained in lived experience becomes visible and can be made fruitful for other contexts.
Harvesting
the Harvest of Good Conversations
Harvesting is one of the core elements of Art of Hosting and Harvesting. It asks: What has emerged in this conversation? What should be made visible? What is needed so that insights can continue to have an effect? The harvest of good conversations can take written, visual, narrative or concrete next-step forms. It ensures that dialogue does not simply fade away in the moment, but creates impact: as shared understanding, as a basis for decisions, as a next action or as the visible trace of a shared learning process.
“We host in order to harvest.”Ursula Hillbrand
Art of Hosting Meets Transformative Leadership
Art of Hosting is closely connected to a contemporary understanding of leadership. In complex situations, leadership no longer means knowing everything or controlling everything. Leadership means creating spaces in which people can perceive, think, decide and act together.
Here, Art of Hosting touches on approaches such as Theory U, systems thinking, dialogic leadership and transformative organisational development. It is about the ability to lead from the emerging future, include different perspectives and work productively with uncertainty.
Ursula Hillbrand combines this theoretical depth with practical experience. Her work shows how participatory leadership can become effective in real organisations, international institutions, conferences, strategy processes and Communities of Practice.
Applying Art of Hosting Yourself
Those who want to deepen Art of Hosting and apply it with greater confidence will find further learning spaces in the Salonhosting Academy. The focus is not only on getting to know individual methods, but on developing one’s own stance, process competence and role as a host.
The Academy is designed for people who want to create spaces for participation, reflection and change in their organisations, teams or networks. It can serve as a deepening after a training or as a tailor-made learning format for groups that want to systematically build participatory competences.
“Over the past few years, we have had very positive experiences with the ‘Art of Hosting’ in both our internal and external work processes.”
“The Art of Hosting training has indeed provided us with excellent support in many areas – especially regarding the department’s self-organisation – and continues to do so.”
Art of Hosting is an international practice for participatory leadership and dialogic process design. It helps design conversations, meetings, conferences and change processes in such a way that participation, trust and collective intelligence can emerge.
Classic moderation often focuses on process flow, facilitation and documentation of results. Art of Hosting goes further: it combines process design, mindset, participation, self-organisation and the conscious harvesting of both visible and more intangible insights that lead to collective clarity and implementation. Participants are not merely guided through a process; they are actively invited into responsibility.
Participatory leadership means meaningfully involving people in, learning and change or decision-making processes. It creates spaces in which different perspectives are heard, responsibility is shared and solutions can emerge from collective intelligence. Managers need impactful briefings to overcome possible fears of losing control in the process and to gain a new way of living their leadership role.
A World Café is a dialogic format in which people speak at tables in small groups about central questions. After several rounds of conversation, the insights are brought together. The format is particularly suitable for making many perspectives visible and developing shared understanding.
Open Space Technology is a self-organised large-group format. Participants bring in their own topics, choose the working groups that are relevant to them and take responsibility for what matters to them. Open Space is particularly suitable for complex topics with many participants.
Collective intelligence emerges when people connect their knowledge, experiences and perspectives in such a way that new insights become possible. In well-designed dialogue spaces, a group can recognise and develop more than individual people could on their own.
Chaordic describes the interplay of chaos and order. Participatory processes need enough structure to provide orientation and enough openness for something new to emerge. Art of Hosting works consciously with this balance, and innovation emerges in the overlapping space of the two.
Art of Hosting and Theory U share a similar understanding of change: both emphasise listening, perception, presence and acting from a deeper connection with what wants to emerge. While Theory U offers a great theoretical framework for transformation processes, Art of Hosting provides many practical methods for dialogue and participation.
In an Art of Hosting training, participants learn core methods such as Circle Practice, World Café, Open Space Technology, Pro Action Café, Collective Story Harvest, Appreciative Inquiry and Harvesting. They practise asking powerful questions, holding space, designing processes and enabling meaningful participation in groups.
A classic Art of Hosting training usually lasts three days. Depending on the context, Ursula Hillbrand can also design shorter introductory formats, deepening modules or tailor-made in-house trainings for organisations.
The training is suitable for leaders, teams, NGOs, public institutions, companies, universities and also process facilitators, facilitators, trainers. It is especially helpful for people who want to shape collaboration, participation and change in complex contexts.
Depending on the format, a confirmation of participation can be issued. However, Art of Hosting is above all a community of practice and not a classic certification programme. What matters is the practical application and deepening of the mindset and methods.
Yes. Art of Hosting trainings can be designed as in-house formats for organisations, teams or networks. Content, duration and process design are adapted to the respective context, target group and desired impact.
The Bregenzer Salon is Ursula’s work and meeting place in Bregenz. It serves as a space for trainings, coaching, salon evenings and meaningful conversations. At the same time, it symbolises the Salonhosting approach: professional process design in an atmosphere of resonance, beauty and encounter.
In companies, Art of Hosting is used for strategy processes, leadership development, cultural change, teamwork, innovation processes, Communities of Practice and large-group events or conferences. It supports organisations in making participation and collaboration more effective.
Salonhosting is Ursula Hillbrand’s own approach, combining Art of Hosting with salon culture, process facilitation and transformative leadership. It is about creating spaces in which people enter conversations openly, structurally and effectively.
Ursula Hillbrand offers Art of Hosting trainings in Austria, at the Bregenzer Salon, across the wider EU region and as in-house formats for organisations. Through Salonhosting, you can inquire about a training or clarify which format is best suited to your needs.
Facilitation generally refers to the professional accompaniment of group processes. Art of Hosting is a specific practice within this field that combines dialogic methods, participatory leadership, collective intelligence and a particular attitude of hosting.
