Forum Support Services · Field Notes

Maps of Depth

Four maps for sharing and responding: what each of us can see, what a presenter wants back, how deep a share might go, and how a forum changes over its first six years.

Forum Support Services · August 2026

MAP ONE

The Window: Four Kinds of Self-Knowledge

The Johari Window (Luft and Ingham, 1955) [1] sorts what is known about a person into four panes, according to what I know and what you know. Each pane moves through a different practice, and those practices are the subjects of the maps that follow.

Readiness — available from the first meeting; the disclosure that shrinks the hidden pane is the ordinary work of an update. See Map Four.
KNOWN TO ME NOT KNOWN TO ME KNOWN TO YOU NOT KNOWN TO YOU Open where trust lives — grows as the other panes shrink “I was late again — and here’s why” Blind spot you see it; I don’t “you go quiet when you’re overruled” shrinks with feedback → Map Two Hidden I know it; I haven’t said it “I haven’t said how bad Q3 really is” shrinks with disclosure — the share itself Unknown neither of us can see it — yet “being late keeps me in control” opens through discovery → Map Three The boundaries are drawn wavering on purpose. They are not fixed, and every exchange moves them.
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MAP TWO

What Do You Want From Us?

At the end of a deep dive presentation the group will respond in some way, and the presenter has more say over that than most presenters use. Naming the kind of response you want — at the setup, before you begin — saves the group from guessing and saves you from receiving the wrong thing graciously.

Two questions sort most of it. Once the presenter stops talking, who does the talking? And is the attention on the presenter or on the situation? Those two questions produce the four requests below.

Experience sharing is what most presenters want, and it is what forum does best. The others are real requests too. A fifth does not fit the grid at all: an introduction to someone who can help.

Readiness — practice it from the first year; fluency, and the willingness to request something other than experience sharing, usually arrives in years two to four. See Map Four.
PRESENTER  ←      →  PEERS who does the talking THE PRESENTER  ←        →  THE SITUATION my inner state, my worth          the problem out there A reflection from you feedback · how you experience me “How do you see me?” “What am I not seeing?” “Tell me how I land on you” 3 Learn from you experience sharing · advice, by request “Have you been through this?” “What did you do?” “Here’s what happened when I…” 4 Witness me just listen · be with me “I don’t need this fixed” “Just hear it” “Stay with me in it” 1 Think with me questions · role-play “Ask me questions” “Help me hear myself” “Play it out with me” 2 Open a door introductions sponsorship 5 Depth runs through every quadrant What you want back is one question. How deep the share goes is another. (See Map Three.)
Exercises — one per cell, field-tested
1Council round with talking piece — Way of Council (Zimmerman & Coyle) [11]
2Honest, open questions only — Quaker Clearness Committee (Palmer) [12]
3Situation–Behavior–Impact feedback — Center for Creative Leadership [13]
4Speak-from-experience protocol, past tense, “I” not “you” — EO/YPO forum tradition [14]
5Requests-and-offers round — mastermind tradition [15]
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MAP THREE

Deepening a Share

This map covers any moment when a member is talking about something with more to it than the surface account. A monthly update. A deep dive presentation. A remark someone almost decided not to make.

How deep a share goes is not the same as how big its topic is. A devastating disclosure can be narrated flat, at arm’s length, with nothing moving in the person telling it. An ordinary moment — “I was late again” — can expose a belief that has been running a life. And the belief is not necessarily buried. Often it sits just under the surface, and one unhurried question is enough to uncover it.

Every layer offers two moves: do the work here, or open the door to the next one. Neither is the better choice, and a forum doing honest work at the second layer is doing honest work. What matters is that the presenter decides how far a share goes, and the group follows rather than leads.

Readiness — the first two layers from the beginning. Layers three and four ask for trust the group has to build first, and for a moderator who can sit in a silence. See Map Four.
THE LAYER WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO GO DEEPER 1 2 3 4 5 6 The event “I was late to today’s meeting” advice “I’d just leave fifteen earlier.” “Set a second alarm — done.” right when the event IS the problem “What are you feeling as you tell us this?” The feeling, named “It’s defiance, not embarrassment” validate · empathize “That calendar isn’t yours. Of course.” “Makes sense. I’d feel it too.” legitimize, don’t redirect “Can you feel it now — where does it sit in your body?” The feeling, felt present tense · groping for words witness · silence “Take your time.” “We’re right here. No rush.” the pause is the work “If that feeling is right — what would it mean about you?” The belief underneath “Being late keeps me in control” say the belief back “So the belief: late keeps me in control.” “Now you can see it — is it still true?” a belief you can see, you can question “Where did you learn that?” The story that installed it “In my family, obeying meant weakness” receive it with care “Thank you for trusting us with that.” “It can just sit here with us.” no analysis — the telling is the work forum’s edge forum can witness an old feeling arriving; working it belongs with a therapist The unfinished emotion felt through, sometimes for the first time what a therapist does goes slowly enough that it can be felt and stays past where a group would stop same person, next week — that is the method therapist terrain, by design no safe peer-group format exists here; forum witnesses what arrives and refers warmly — never excavation EXPERIENCE SHARING — a peer’s story can meet the presenter at any layer no one controls how far a given share goes — the layers are a map, not a checklist Layers 1–3 follow the Experiencing Scale [2]; layer 4, the downward arrow and subject-object shift [4,5,6]; layers 5–6 draw on clinical practice traditions [7].

Two kinds of five percent

Members are told to share their five percent, the part they don’t tell people. Most of us hear that as a category of topic. The constant fear of being fired. The marriage that is not working. Rare, heavy, disclosed perhaps once — and the healing is in the disclosure itself: saying it out loud, being witnessed, hearing someone say I have that too.

There is a second kind, and it is the one that keeps people out of the presenter’s chair. It begins with something unremarkable. I am late to almost every meeting. We haven’t had a date since the twins were born. The event is not the five percent. The root system under it is: the belief it runs on, and what it cost to see that belief. That material is just as rarely shared, and it often moves a person further than the disclosure does.

Which matters practically, because members postpone presenting for months while they wait for a topic big enough to deserve the slot. An everyday event with an honest root system underneath it is a presentation.

Example exercises — one per layer, field-tested
Check-in round: “what has your attention?” — forum / T-group tradition [14]
Weather report + feeling-without-blame naming — facilitation canon; NVC (Rosenberg) [16]
Focusing partnership: equal listening turns, felt sense — Gendlin; a 50-year peer tradition [17]
Immunity-to-Change four-column map — Kegan & Lahey; built for non-clinical use [6]
Lifeline presentation, witnessed not analyzed — YPO/EO retreat tradition [14]
Examples of exercises at the sixth layer — not forum exercises
Empty-chair / two-chair dialogue — Gestalt (Perls); emotion-focused therapy (Greenberg) [7]
Parts work with whatever is carrying the feeling — Internal Family Systems (Schwartz) [7]
any forumonce trust is built, trained moderatorbest done with a therapist, not a peer group
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MAP FOUR

The First Six Years

The three maps above describe a single share. This one describes a group, over years. It exists because the most common worry in a young forum is that the group is failing when it is simply early.

A forum meets once a month. Most members present once or twice a year. The arithmetic alone means that capacities which look basic on paper — sitting in a silence, asking for feedback and meaning it, hearing your own belief said back to you — take longer to arrive than anyone expects.

STAGE ONE · YEARS 0–2 Building the Container enough safety to be honest STAGE TWO · YEARS 2–4 Deepening the Work staying instead of explaining STAGE THREE · YEARS 4–6+ Integration seeing the pattern from inside it What the forum is learning to do Show up reliably and tell the truth about what actually matters. Stay with a feeling long enough to feel it, rather than explaining it away. Notice your own pattern while you are still inside it, and say so. What you notice in the room People arrive on time and meetings actually happen. Updates get prepared, not improvised on the drive in. Confidentiality meets its first real test. Advice is still the reflex. Someone stops mid-sentence and nobody rescues them. Feelings show up in the present tense, not reported from last Tuesday. Members begin requesting something other than experience sharing. A member names their own belief without being walked to it. Feedback is requested, and survivable. What happens in forum starts showing up in members’ lives outside it. Where shares typically land Show layers 1-2 on Map Three Layers 1–2 the event and the named feeling Show layers 2-4 on Map Three Layers 2–4 the named feeling, the felt feeling, and the belief underneath Show layers 3-5 on Map Three Layers 3–5 the felt feeling, the belief, and the story that installed it Which maps are within reach Map One immediately. Map Two as a discipline to practice badly at first. Map Two in real use. Map Three, the second and third layers. All three, plus the judgment to know which one the moment calls for. The frustration of this stage “We’re not going deep yet.” Correct. You are building the thing depth requires. “One person does all the deep work.” That is how it spreads. “Is forum the only place I’m real?” A good question. Bring it. The years are an average, not a schedule. Forums skip stages, cycle back, and settle. A forum that stays in Stage One for a decade and does it well is a good forum.

Stage names and observable behaviours are drawn from Forum Support Services practice across HBS and YPO groups; the developmental frame is Kegan’s [5]; for the longer treatment, see Why Forum Takes Years. Group-stage models of this kind are useful heuristics rather than validated instruments [18].

Why this is a description and not a prescription

Nothing here is a requirement, and no forum is behind. Some groups reach Stage Three material in their first year because of who happens to be in the room. Some spend six years in Stage One, meet faithfully, tell the truth to each other, and get exactly what they came for. A few move backwards after a member leaves, and that is normal too.

Think of it the way you would think about human development: real stages, wildly variable timing, and nothing gained by rushing a person through one.

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Using the maps

Use them the way you would use any map: to notice where you are, to name where you are headed, and to know which ground calls for a guide. The first tells you where a piece of self-knowledge currently lives. The second tells you what to offer once someone has spoken. The third tells you how deep a share has gone, and that every stopping point is a legitimate one. The fourth tells you that none of it arrives on schedule.

What these maps are not is a rubric. Nobody should be scored against them, least of all by themselves. Depth follows no timetable, and the presenter always chooses.

This is a working synthesis, held loosely and revised quarterly. Corrections and disagreements are more useful to us than agreement, and can be sent to forumsupport.org.

Sources — unified references for all four maps

[1] Luft, J., & Ingham, H. (1955). The Johari Window: a graphic model of interpersonal awareness. Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. UCLA.

[2] Klein, M. H., Mathieu, P. L., Gendlin, E. T., & Kiesler, D. J. (1969/1970). The Experiencing Scale: A Research and Training Manual. University of Wisconsin. See also Pascual-Leone, A., & Yeryomenko, N. (2017). Psychotherapy Research, 27(6), 653–665 (best-estimate effect r = −.19).

[3] Hendricks, M. N. (1986). Experiencing level as a therapeutic variable. Person-Centered Review, 1(2), 141–162.

[4] Beck, A. T. (1979). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. The downward/vertical arrow was popularized by Burns, D. (1980), Feeling Good; the term “vertical descent” is Leahy, R. (2003), Cognitive Therapy Techniques.

[5] Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads. Harvard University Press (subject-object theory).

[6] Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2009). Immunity to Change. Harvard Business Press.

[7] Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy (unfinished business); Beisser, A. (1970). The paradoxical theory of change. In Fagan & Shepherd (Eds.), Gestalt Therapy Now; Greenberg, L. (emotion-focused therapy); Schwartz, R. (Internal Family Systems).

[8] Bolger, N., Zuckerman, A., & Kessler, R. C. (2000). Invisible support and adjustment to stress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 953–961.

[9] Bolger, N., & Amarel, D. (2007). Effects of social support visibility on adjustment to stress. JPSP, 92(3), 458–475. Replication caveat: Shrout et al. (2010), in Sullivan & Davila (Eds.), Support Processes in Intimate Relationships. Oxford.

[10] Cutrona, C. E., Shaffer, P. A., Wesner, K. A., & Gardner, K. A. (2007). Journal of Family Psychology, 21(4), 754–758 (matching support to stated goals).

[11] Zimmerman, J., & Coyle, V. (2009). The Way of Council (2nd ed.). Bramble Books.

[12] Palmer, P. J. (2004). A Hidden Wholeness. Jossey-Bass; Center for Courage & Renewal, “The Clearness Committee.”

[13] Center for Creative Leadership. Situation-Behavior-Impact™ feedback model. See also Bradford, D., & Robin, C. (2021). Connect. Currency.

[14] YPO/EO forum tradition: Fathelbab, M., Forum: The Secret Advantage of Successful Leaders; EO Forum training materials (Gestalt language protocol); YPO forum exercises (lifeline; Johari-based blind-spots exercise, 2011).

[15] Mastermind tradition, tracing to Hill, N. (1937). Think and Grow Rich.

[16] Rosenberg, M. (2015). Nonviolent Communication (3rd ed.). PuddleDancer.

[17] Gendlin, E. T. (1978/1981). Focusing. Bantam; International Focusing Institute partnership protocols.

[18] Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399; Tuckman, B. W., & Jensen, M. A. C. (1977). Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 419–427. Widely taught; empirical support for the fixed sequence is weak.

[19] Tao, T. (2007). “There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs.” What’s new (terrytao.wordpress.com).

Forum Support Services · forumsupport.org Maps of Depth · August 2026