I’m the one that’s all shook up.  I’m just getting back from doing some very powerful work with Reading Village in Guatemala and I’m still processing the experience.  It is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of poverty and palpability of oppression.  I come back with images of the smiles of an incredibly resilient Mayan people and I can not understand how they have withstood five centuries of aggression.  It is in this context that we were called to do our work.

Reading Village asked me to facilitate a “think tank,” an event that brought together a diversity of really amazing individuals, all steeped in a deep understanding of popular education.  Our task was to contribute to a field guide, a text that will facilitate the reproduction of Reading Village and its inspiring success in reading promotion and youth development.

You should have seen how much these people gave of themselves, of their wisdom and their passion.  You should have seen them bump up against the tensions of their differences, of their ideas of how change happens, and time and time again they managed to rise above it – all in service to this brilliant idea.  I wish you had seen how the founders stood in that space, open, flexible, learning – listening while standing strong in the conviction that this is the work of their hearts.

But by far the most powerful moment was our encounter with the reading promoters themselves.  These young Mayan people are something else, they stand differently, they hold themselves differently, we could see that they have had a taste of their own power, a glance at the possibility of freedom – and they are ready for it.  Then to see them doing their work, to see the love and the care with which they tend to the younger children that they read to, to see them act out their readings, to hear them translate from Spanish to their native Kaqchikel, to witness their experiments with all sorts of pedagogical techniques – it was mind blowing.  And they do all this as young people, with all the challenges of a teenage life, plus all the obstacles of a life in poverty – how does it happen?  I’m all shook up.

My heart broke while I was in Guatemala, I had to fight off despair at the seemingly impossible barrier of poverty, I had to deal with the facts of my own privilege.  But my heart also blew open, and it has become much bigger, because in the face of it all there is the miracle of human resilience – some things are evidently working and Reading Village is one of them – consider making a gift.

As you read this post I find myself in Guatemala, honored to be working with Reading Village, a truly inspired reading promotion organization.  I’ve been impressed by the principled stance of its founders, the serious attention they are paying to respecting local culture and being of authentic service.  Having run a successful pilot, they have asked me to come a facilitate a set of conversations towards the development of a field guide – a text that will serve replication of the success of Reading Village while remaining flexible enough for local adaptation.  Wish us luck!  We are doing something good here!

This past week marked the release of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ newest action learning guide – Do Nothing About Me Without Me: An Action Guide for Engaging Stakeholders.  IISC is pr0ud to be a co-publisher of and contributor to the publication, which builds on our work with GEO staff facilitating Engage for Results.  Essentially this seminar walks foundation staff through a series of strategic questions and tools for engaging grantees, community members, and other stakeholders in their grantmaking.  Worth highlighting here is what GEO and IISC identify as being core to the case for funders doing more to involve others in their work:

• Deeper understanding of problems. In light of the complexity of the issues most foundations, and those they fund, are setting out to tackle, it behooves funders to engage a multiplicity of perspectives in any given system to develop a clearer and more coherent picture of where and how to intervene.
• Truer sense of grantee needs and challenges. Research indicates how quickly foundation staff who were previously community-based grantees, lose touch with the needs of those in the community once they change roles.  Furthermore, Barry Oshry’s work reminds us that where we sit in an organization or larger system impacts what we see and how we think.  The bottom line: It’s hard to know what grantees or communities truly need, and how to meet those needs more effectively, if you don’t ask.
• Improved strategy. A 2009 study by the Center for Effective Philanthropy identified a clear link between foundation leaders being more strategic and higher levels of stakeholder engagement.  Quoting the authors, “More strategic leaders . . . look beyond the foundation’s internal processes for budgeting or grantee selection. … [They] seek
  input from grantees, stakeholders, beneficiaries, and consultants when developing their strategies.”
• Greater effectiveness. GEO’s 2008 national survey found that foundations that have staff with nonprofit experience were significantly more likely to have “grantee-friendly” practices in place in areas ranging from soliciting grantee feedback to providing the types of support that will most contribute to grantee success.  The basis for much of this, from IISC’s perspective, is greater trust and genuine partnership between funders and grantees.

What else would you add to making the case for stakeholder engagement in grantmaking?  Where and how have you seen this be most effective?

IAF Workshop

I’m just getting back from the International Association of Facilitator’s North America Conference and co-leading a workshop focused on the facilitator’s inner journey.  It was a cool set up.  The presenters included our convener, Larry Dressler as well as experienced facilitators, Erica Peng, Roger Schwarz and Beatrice Briggs.

We began with a sort of “fishbowl conversation” during which the five of us discussed the relationship between our inner lives and our work in the world.  We then moved to small group conversations based on what our topic evoked in the participants and we closed out with a full group circle – it was a three hour workshop.

I was left impressed by my co-presenters, and by the diversity of our approaches to the inner life.  If I had to pick a single piece that I will keep with me it is what we all had in common – a recurring practice for tuning into ourselves.  In Larry’s words – “what is clear to me is that we do not want to wait until a challenging situation arises in order to start practicing, practice is instead what we draw on when all such situations arise.”

The work of holding space for people to move their dreams forward is one of the most privileged roles one could play.  There are a lot of teachable skills, good trainings and tools, but to me the most important part is our inner state and how we tend to it.  At IISC we turn to the mantra found in Otto Scharmer’s quote of William O’Brien – “the success of an intervention is directly proportional to the inner condition of the intervener.”

I constantly practice opening my heart, it is a somatic experience, a literal psychic stretch of my heart center.  I do this over and over again, I rely on my devotional spiritual practice to guide me, I am intentional about it.  This relentless practice, with a strong dose of trust and surrender is what allows me to open up my heart, and hold a room – specially when the going gets tough!

I write this on the eve of the 3^rd day of a training session of our Facilitative Leadership course, where the last of 7 practices,“Celebrate Accomplishment”, often gets the short shrift on this last day of training. The verdict is still out in terms of whether we will give it its just due for tomorrow’s class. Yet, I find myself wrestling with a provocative body of information I became aware of through a recent tweet I received on the subject of praise.

According to a study performed by the National Institute for Physiological Sciences:

Our findings indicate that the social reward of a good reputation in the eyes of others is processed in an anatomically and functionally similar manner to monetary rewards, and these results represent an essential step toward a complete neural understanding of human social behaviors.

In other words, those of us who made a conscious decision some time ago that we would not be, as the hip hop heads say, “paper chasers”, may instead just be chasers of a different kind: the currency of good reputation. Yea, even Solomon in all his wisdom suggests the NIPS report understates the reality: “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” (Proverbs 22:1). For this wise king, the pay off of a good reputation is not equal to money as the scientists suggest, it is better. Whoa. News flash: As far as this neurological stimulus package goes, we, in all of our do-gooding, may just be as excessive, greedy, and self-serving as the Wall Street titans and capitalist fat cats we are quick to condemn. At the end of the day, it may be, that we all, in a Pavlovian sense, seek the sensation of reward – and whether money or praise, its all about us/our feelings.

What, then, might be the implications of such a phenomenon for the non-profit and social change sector that we live, work and eh….strive, in? On one hand, it confirms what we already know: that for a job actually well done, where a million dollar bonus or even a competitive salary isn’t on the way, we ought to lavish folk with what author and psychologist Gary Chapman calls, “words of affirmation” – verbal appreciation, simple verbal compliments (Chapman, Five Love Languages)

But not so fast! Hold back on the flowery words, my friends, for just a sec!

Consider the words of Alfie Kohn in Punished by Rewards

“[The key factor] in a positive judgment is not that it is positive, but that it is a judgment.

Kohn makes the case that praise actually lowers confidence and heightens pressure to live up to the compliment in order to receive future compliments – setting in motion a “rat race”, or the “praise maze” if you will (explaining some folks’ negative reaction to verbal affirmation).

Not sure what all this means for outcomes, evaluation methods, organizational culture, American pragmatism, parenting or how to break the power of negative words/images over groups of people who have been systematically targeted with such, but I’m sure some of you have ideas. What of it? Anyone others who may be cash poor and reputation rich want to weigh in? (No worries if you want to say something, well, nice….;-)

Working closely with the Berkana Institute, Gibrán and Marianne had the privilege of facilitating the Barr Fellows learning journey to Chiapas, Mexico.  Here they are at the conclusion of their journey, getting ready to enter the Church of San Juan Chamula, which actually is a Mayan Temple that the people consider to be the very center of the Universe.

Facilitating discussions and dialogues about race can be tough. Lack of information and knowledge, different lived experiences, unspoken assumptions, varying definitions of key concepts and differing interpretations of problems and solutions are just a few of the things that can get in the way of groups communicating authentically and building solid agreements. I’ve found that attention to three dimensions of preparing for such conversations can make all the difference between productive engagement and destructive experiences that take years to repair.

One dimension relates to process: planning the who, what, where, when, and how of discussions. We find that some people who approach these conversations with a solid foundation on the content of the conversation—race, race equity, dynamics of oppression, and the like—can face challenges when they don’t focus sufficiently on the process. Asking the following kinds of questions are essential to setting up for success: What are the intended outcomes of the conversation—from the point of view of the conveners and the participants? What role am I playing: Presenter? Trainer? Facilitator? Coach? All of the above? How can I strike a balance between communicating information, persuading people about my analysis, and engaging participants in discussion that leads them to their own conclusions and agreements? How do I design a process that moves a group systematically to a common understanding and a shared vision of what’s possible? And, how can discussions about such potentially volatile issues be authentic, safe (note, I said safe, not necessarily comfortable), and productive? In my experience, the disciplines of facilitation and group dynamics offer useful strategies for intervening to help a group get “unstuck” and get a derailed conversation back on track.

A second dimension is preparing for the content of the conversation: What’s the history, analysis, key concepts, and information that people need to engage in order to achieve their intended results? We find that some people who approach race-related conversations with a solid foundation in more general facilitation and collaboration skills—process expertise, if you will—can face a very different set of challenges. Asking the following kinds of questions can help to prepare for the content of race equity conversations: How can I help participants understand the context of any given conversation and what that implies about what’s “on the table”? How much do I need to know about the context and the content, even if I’m not being asked to provide expertise on the content? How can I anticipate and prepare to deal with hot button issues or places where a group will get stuck? How might my own knowledge and beliefs about race and racial equity, and my own identity, either help or hinder the work?

The third element of preparation is about we can use ourselves as instruments. Regardless of our role in a given discussion and regardless of whether we are more experienced around process or content, the way we show up as people matters. If we are peaceful or angry, anxious or focused, open or judgmental, that will have an impact on the groups with which we work. We’ve found that a variety of strategies for staying centered, dealing with strong emotions, exploring our own identities and worldviews are essential to enabling facilitators of discussions about race and racial equity to meet people where they are and guide them to where they want to go together.

How are you preparing yourself for conversations about race?

• Interaction Design 10 Conference, held in Savannah, GA, February 7 – 10, 2010:Interaction design is defined as “the art of facilitating or instigating interactions between humans mediated by products. “  Check out my twitter posts from these dates for in the moment impressions and ideas shared at the Conference.

• Jon Kolko, a Conference  organizer and thought leader in interaction design, is also the founder of the amazing, and newly launched, Austin Center for Design. According to its website, the Center “exists to transform society through design and design education…and through the development of design knowledge directed towards all forms of social and humanitarian problems.”The Center will offer a certificate in Interaction Design and Social Entrepreneurship. Jon is obviously singing our song, and we hope to collaborate in the near future.

• My colleague  Curtis and I had the high honor of co-training  Facilitative Leadership to the 17 change agents who are fellows of the Gulf Coast Fellowship for Community Transformation –  at the historic Penn Center in St. Helena’s Island, SC no less!  The wisdom, flavor, knowledge and passion of this group was unlike any other group of participants I’ve encountered.

• A storehouse of cultural knowledge – Mr. Robert Middleton – graced me with a tour of St. Helena’s Island. In him, I know I’ve encountered an American legend.

• Today, I had an amazing day of meetings with professors and graduate students from the Savannah College of Art and Design. These are folks  interested in utilizing design thinking and disciplines for the benefit of social change and transformation.  The talent and commitment of these students and practitioners has left an indelible mark.

• I ended the day dining with two women who are undoubtedly a tour de force in the City of Savannah – DaVena Jordan of All Walks of Life (a youth development organization utilizing hip hop, poetry and technology) and Michelle Hunter, Cultural Affairs Coordinator for the City of Savannah. We talked of all things art, social change, knowledge based economy as drivers for economic and community development, post-Civil Rights community building and  all the best eats in Savannah.

The richness of these experiences is still sinking in. I’m certain that tangible good will come from this string of amazing encounters.  I leave this week stronger in my affinity for the Georgia Sea Coast region and for design as a discipline of study and praxis for social change.  It was entirely worth my missing out on Snowmaggedon!

The challenge of this work has been to take all the amazing things we are learning about the role of weavers in a network and figure out how to apply these to the day to day work of these weavers.  Instead of spending too much of our time in the fuzzy world of network theory, I grabbed directly from Jack Ricchiuto’s piece on The Power of Network Weaving and went on to adapt it to very practical exercises for the weavers.

This, and the awesome mentorship of Bill Traynor of Lawrence Community Works (who is working along with us under the skilled leadership of Root Cause on YPP’s Business Planning Process) allowed me to design and facilitate a retreat that focused on the very essentials of network building within the practical day to day work of these new network weavers.

To quote directly from Jack, the weaver’s are learning to:

1. Constantly learn about the assets and opportunities in the network.

2. Constantly learn about the dreams of people in the network.

3. Constantly introduce and connect people with complementary dreams and assets.

They are learning that local come first and they are building strong authentic relationships with each other.  Put these together and we are on our way!