If you or the people in your organization are fraying or even crumbling, ask yourself why wouldn’t you be? After over a year of a vicious virus, political disruption, and continued racist trauma, of course we are unraveling. What does fraying look like in organizations?
Staff needing to call in sick more often or take leave from their jobs to heal, restore, and pivot
Employees quitting or moving onto other opportunities, including relocating to other states as they reevaluate their priorities after a year of survival
Staff engaged in greater conflict with each other as the tensions they have tucked away come into fuller view
Individuals lacking patience as Zoom fatigue deepens to intolerable levels
People complaining of new physical pains, aches, and challenges arising from working in home offices that are not adequately set up to support physical well-being
Too many meetings and projects and not enough people to manage them, which causes stress in the workplace under the best of circumstances
An increase in racial microaggressions as stress burrows into workplaces
Lack of purposeful attention to relationships as people focus on quickly moving into reopening
Staff taking care of children or others unwilling to return to in person work and old office norms that don’t support flexible work options
As we navigate the space between how things used to be – the “old normal” – and the emergence of a new way of being and working with one another – the “new normal”- we are essentially emerging from a metaphorical portal. Indian novelist Arundhati Roy introduced the concept of the pandemic as a portal when COVID-19 first broke. She shared, “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” I believe that we are emerging from the portal like a shaking and vulnerable rocket ship returning back to earth after it breaks through the sound barrier.
What can we do to support ourselves and our teams to emerge from this portal?
There’s braiding to be done. Bringing people back into connection and collaboration to build toward the future. And it will be gradual.
We can validate the experience of others. We can help those who work for us, as well as our peers and partners, to understand that it’s normal to feel the fraying and crumbling that comes with being isolated and in survival mode for so long.
We can reflect and re-collaborate. This involves regrouping as a staff, reflecting on what’s happening to us and our organizations, and recommitting ourselves to operating in the spirit of human and community care and collaboration. We need to focus on building and sustaining relationships while we build better processes and strive for results that can build a better future.
We can give people a sense of control and hope. Ask staff and communities, what new opportunities do they envision for themselves and organizations and networks as we emerge from this portal?
We can close down our offices. For a week or two, or even a month, several times this year to replenish. If everyone’s not working, everyone can attend to themselves without distraction. It’s like a mini sabbatical for all.
We can continue work-from-home options. For many jobs, offering flexibility through continued remote work will be critical in retaining high-performing staff and boosting morale. Twenty-nine percent of working professionals say they would quit their jobs if they couldn’t continue working remotely.[1]
We can center Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color in all of what we do. Whether it’s in our planning processes, implementation, organizational culture, or visioning, we can follow their innovation, ideas, and leadership to deepen our strategies and approaches. Our workplaces can benefit from the traditions of BIPOC cultures to slow down and take time to reconnect in human ways. Strategies informed by a racial equity lens will be relevant and timely to all the decisions we are making in this moment.
We can come together in-person as soon as people are fully vaccinated. It’s not too early to plan the reunion which will offer connection and signal a new beginning. Consider planning a ritual or exercise during the time together to leave behind the old and bring in the new.
People are exhausted, mentally and physically. Expect the crumble. It’s coming, if it hasn’t already. Plan for the crumbling and consider new ways to braid people, yourself, and your community back together.
[1] According to an online survey of 1,022 professionals by LiveCareer, an online resume and job search consulting service.
It’s the days after the November 3rd presidential election in the United States. What’s a leader to do in this post-election moment? We believe the most fundamental principle that grounds Facilitative Leadership for Social Change, a transformative learning experience we teach and share with social and racial justice leaders, may shed some light.
The fundamental principle of Facilitative Leadership for Social Change, IISC’s flagship workshop, is that decisions are best made when we tap into the power of participation by involving every person who is a stakeholder in the decisions that impact their lives. Facilitative leaders create a safe environment for participation and collaboration. Those who are still counting ballots – and may soon be recounting ballots – will serve us best by being mindful of this and ensuring that every single vote is counted, as objectively as is humanly possible, and with an eye toward complete transparency. The integrity of the next steps of the election process and the outcome of any legal challenges depend on this.
In our organizations and communities, Facilitative Leadership invites us – now more than ever – to be collaborative, strategic, receptive, and adaptable. In this moment, linking arms with others safely in the streets or metaphorically in Zoom rooms, to connect deeply to strategize and engage in the work of racial and social justice with everyone at the table, truly matters. Generating and facilitating authentic conversations that help us to better understand ourselves and our country, and to adapt in peaceful and nonviolent ways to what’s happening now, is deeply needed. Greeting each decision with openness to the ideas and challenges of others without defense and ego can set our communities and leadership on the path to deep transformation.
We can tap the power of participation by applying the seven practices of Facilitative Leadership:
As we make decisions in the coming hours, days, and weeks about the shape of our country or the work in our offices, seek maximum appropriate involvement. This doesn’t mean that every person must be involved every time you have a decision to make, but it does mean considering who will be impacted by that decision and how best to ensure their voices influence the outcomes of the decision, including making them more equitable.
Discover Shared Meaning
Now is an especially important time for people to engage in conversations, transformative listening, and deep thinking about what is holding us together and what is separating us. What can we learn from this election and the values, behaviors, and interactions that came from it? What assumptions and conclusions have we been making? What new insights do we have about our future?
See Systems
How can we help others understand the ways in which systemic injustice and racism are playing out in our political process, in our work, and in our communities? How can we make more visible the different parts of our system – whether it is institutions like government, education, or health care – so that we can organize for change?
Inspire a Shared Vision
Even if you’re uncertain about the future, what do you understand about humankind and those you work with? What are the possibilities? How can we create and live into more equitable and resilient futures?
Focus on Results, Process, & Relationship
Whether we are with our families watching the election process and legal battles unfold or bringing together managers in our organizations, focus first on how people are doing and the strength of their relationships. And then go about things in a way that honors their human fragility while pointing them towards the results we are working to achieve.
Design Pathways to Action
Now is the time for us to start thinking about how we can design a pathway for getting what we need and want. The election has revealed once again the depth and level of racism in our cities, towns, and communities. What can we uniquely design to root out racism in ways that will bring along even those we think are not with us?
Facilitate Agreement
How can we work with others and with our government officials to facilitate a peaceful transition and build agreements that allow our nation to heal through the reckonings of COVID, racial violence, and election divisions? The wounds are deep and require challenging conversations that can be harnessed into agreements, concrete actions, and more repaired relationships.
Let’s be our most facilitative selves in this critical moment.
As I watch the Democratic Party presidential
debates, I am particularly struck by the large number of white males and males
of color who insist they must be candidates for president in November 2020.
Why do they feel it’s their time to step in
when there are plenty of women – including women of color – who could lead this
country as well if not better than they could? When do people with privilege
understand and appreciate that they need to step back so others can step in? A
defiant and powerful act against racism and sexism is to say to yourself, “I
have experienced what it’s like to govern, to lead, and to hold power. It’s now
time for me to support others who have not yet had that chance so we can
experience a different kind of America.”
I have a fantasy that sometime in the fall of this year, all the male candidates – yes all – will host a press conference and relinquish their nominations. If the male candidates actually ceded power, it would change the course of this country because a woman would be elected as president of the United States for the first time in our history. Our culture would see power explicitly and transparently shift to those who don’t typically have it. Policies would undoubtedly look very different if approached through a gendered and intersectional lens.
But I don’t want to just make this a challenge
to presidential candidates. It’s a challenge I want to make to us all,
especially those of us in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. There are
many great leaders holding onto their positions, titles, or spheres of
influence, not realizing that doing so comes at the price of denying others
these opportunities.
Some provocative considerations include:
If you have been in your position
for at least five to seven years and think it’s yours until you leave the role
or retire, you aren’t ceding or sharing power.
If you aren’t sharing your
relationships with people who have power and resources with others who have
less privilege, you aren’t ceding or sharing power.
If you are reading this thinking
you don’t have power, ask yourself if you have ever been in a position of
authority or responsibility. Are you in one now? Do your decisions affect
others as well as institutional or organizational policies? You may not feel
powerful but chances are you have power.
There’s reward if we step back to make room
for others to step in. We will get to observe and follow the leadership of
others and learn new ways of doing things. We will know that we proactively and
willingly contributed to shifting power unlike some of our ancestors or
predecessors. We will feel the sense of relief and humility that comes from
knowing that we are not the only ones who can answer the call of duty or lead
an organization. And if we allow others to lead and to lead fully, we will be
able to restore our energy for other ways we can contribute to the work that
remains so important to us all.
I think about this as a woman of color leading IISC. Although I am female and a person of color, I am older and I have had the opportunity to hold many positions of authority. I think about how I can support younger people to lead IISC. It scares me to think about leaving my role one day, what I might do next, how I would make it financially. But then I remember all the privilege I have earned over my fifty years. I have gained connections to money, connections to recruiters and other opportunities, and I have many family members who love and can help me.
I breathe and I remember I will be perfectly
fine.
IISC is about to celebrate 25 years of service and my
husband and I just celebrated 27 years of marriage. One of my colleagues asked
how being part of IISC has influenced my marriage. I tell workshop participants
all the time that using at home the collaborative methods and mindset that we
teach will make it easy to use them at work. They will also make your home life
better because they are rooted in values that are all about building up others
and working together toward important common goals. Sounds like family life to
me!
When I’m on my best behavior at home (as a mom, wife,
sister, daughter, daughter-in-law) I use lots of what I have learned and teach at
IISC. It’s also true that when I’m on bad behavior, I’ve usually forgotten or
laid aside what I’ve learned. Here’s a sampler …
Distinguish content and process. Use appropriate
processes for the outcomes and people you’re working with. Pay special
attention to process and how people are relating to one another.
Be clear about my role in the conversation. Am I
participating? Just facilitating? Coaching?
When I am a participant, bias toward asking
questions that build understanding and help ideas to emerge. Engage with what
others are saying rather than just advocating for my own ideas.
When coaching, ask questions and share
observations that help the coachee to gain insight. Before giving advice, be
sure the person wants it.
When I’m just facilitating, don’t do the work
for the group or turn the conversation toward me or my ideas. Help them to
think it out.
In all cases, inquire before advocating. And
then inquire some more!
Be clear about who’s the decision maker and
involve others appropriately in the process. Remember that even when I have the
authority to make a decision, I will still want to consider ways to involve
others who will be affected by that decision. And, be sure to explain my
rationale.
Remember that big agreements are often built
through a series of small agreements.
Remember IISC’s collaboration lens:
Networks – Remember that my family is part of a
broader network. Cultivate relationships, build the capacity of everyone in the
network to be strong, contributing members, build a gift culture.
Exercise “power with” rather than “power over.”
Again, even when I do have power over (as with a small child), bias toward
building the person’s power to discern and act on their best motivations rather
than just imposing my will.
Work for equitable outcomes, matching my
strategies to the individual needs. Recognize that people will experience the
family and the world differently based on their identity.
Nurture the love that does justice. Deeply honor
the humanity of everyone, even people we disagree with.
When in conflict, don’t be overly wedded to my
position. Reveal and encourage others to reveal the underlying interests and
look for common ground. Explore options without commitments before trying to
move toward an agreement.
Be clear and specific about feedback. And only
offer it when you are genuinely committed to the other person’s improvement.
Make sure to give reinforcing feedback as well as constructive feedback.
Remember where you are in the open-narrow-close stages
of building an agreement. Don’t start to narrow (analyze options) too early or
good ideas may not emerge. Don’t close (make an agreement) until you’ve got all
the ideas on the table and have thought them through together.
And, of course, many of our norms for
collaboration: Remember it’s ok to
disagree. Listen for understanding. Enable empathy and compassion. Take
space/make space. Keep it real. Keep it here. Take responsibility for impact,
regardless of intent.
I’m curious about what’s on your list folks!!
Years ago, I used to joke (only half kiddingly) with Ron and
Susan Kertnzer, who were affiliates and former staff of Interaction Associates who
were married to each other. After participating in a workshop that they
facilitated, I thought we should create a workshop called “The Learning
Marriage and the Facilitated Family.” The skills we teach could strengthen some
basic building blocks of our society. And, if we would learn and use these
skills at home, using them at work would be second nature! That idea never got out
of the discussion phase. Who knows whether it’s an idea whose time will
eventually come!?!
Image by Clearly Ambiguous, “Solar System,” shared under provision of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
Last week, I was invited to a convening held by the Social Impact Exchange to do some work with funders who are considering and/or investing in systems change (as opposed to say programmatic) strategies. The invitation was to kick the convening off by helping to “open minds and hearts to new ways of thinking and doing.”
At IISC, we have been playing with what it means to “think,” given what can tend to predominate in many maintstream settings is highly analytical, disembodied and heart-dismissing approaches. Our belief is that we need to (re)claim the fullness of our intelligence in order to create the more beautiful world we know is possible. As our friends at Management Assistance Group have written:
“Too often, we stay in generalized and practical knowing, rarely dipping into foundational knowing or artistic knowing in meaningful ways. By not intentionally drawing on these, our theories and action plans are often disconnected from our values and beliefs, and the bedrock experiences of our lives.
Moreover, privileging one way of knowing over others marginalizes and ignores other truths that people bring from other ways of knowing. This marginalization often lies at the core of conflicts, systemic barriers to change, and inequity.”
To support people in this direction of more holistic knowing, we are creating more space to explore our individual and collective interiors, sit in and with spaciousness and silence, explore reality and possibility in more embodied ways (movement!) as well as engage in deeply relational interactions that can be heart and soul expanding.
At one point during our opening, I offered a collection of systems-oriented quotes and sayings and invited people to do a self-organized group read of them (whoever felt so moved to speak, though only one quote to a person). People were asked to pay attention to what moved inside of them as they read and heard these quotes. This was done, in part, to help dislodge people from unexamined thought patters. I was explicit about this and introduced the exercise with these words from quantum physicist David Bohm:
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
When the group was over, and after a moment of silence, people were invited to share with a partner what they were most struck by and why. You are invited to do the same with the words below, to read in silence or aloud, to share any reactions and resonance and also to offer other systems-focused quotes/sayings that you have found to help open and expand some aspect of your thinking.
Image by Matthias Ripp, “Planetary System,” shared under provision of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.
“A system cannot fail those it was never intended to protect.”
– W.E.B. DuBois
“The problem with problem-solving is the idea that a solution is an endpoint.”
“We act as if simple cause and effect is at work. We push to find the one simple reason things have gone wrong. We look for the one action, or the one person, that created this mess. As soon as we find someone to blame, we act as if we’ve solved the problem.”
– Margaret J. Wheatley
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
This is a repost of a third in a series of posts on power, facilitation and collaborative process that former IISC Senior Associate Linda Guinee wrote back in 2010. Last week we reposted Linda’s piece “What is Power Anyway?,” which followed a new post by a few of us on power and meetings. Enjoy!
More about power and group processes. There have been a mountain of books written about the “bases of power” and the “types of power”. I’ve done some work to try to boil it down – and find thinking about this very useful in moving forward the conversation about how to address power issues in group processes.
In the 1950s, French and Raven put out a proposal about five “bases” of power, which others added to. Bases of power are what gives a person or group power. French and Raven came up with these five:
Reward Power – power that comes from the ability to reward the other party for complying
Coercive Power – power that comes from the ability to punish the other party if they do not comply
Legitimate or Normative Power – power that comes from accepted group, community or societal norms or values which are generally viewed as “legitimate”
Referent Power – power that comes from being identified with a person or group (for example, so and so gains power by being friends with X or being a member of Y group)
Expert Power – power that comes from the perception that the person or group has knowledge
Ecological Power – power that comes from being able to control one’s social or physical environmental in such a way that the modified environment induces a desired behavior or prevents an undesired behavior.
Many articles have been devoted to running effective meetings that build collaboration among teams, yet many fail to discuss the hidden element that can destroy a meeting almost without fail.
Power dynamics – the ways in which power works in a setting – can either sink a meeting and negatively impact relationships for years, or produce more shared power and capacity to get things done. A lot of the difference comes down to how we attend to power dynamics in meetings, how well we plan our meetings, how well we determine what happens within and outside of meetings, and how well we facilitate in the moment.
In every organization, there are people who hold formal power and informal power. Formal power is attributed to someone by virtue of their title or position in the organization. People carry informal power if they have influence over others or their organization, either because of their experience, force of personality or persuasion, unearned privilege, or because they have strong relationships with decision-makers and peers. Power is also deeply influenced by diversity and equity dynamics. In most Western societies today, many decisions in organizations are still controlled by people with certain backgrounds: over 40, male, white/European, heterosexual, and middle-class and wealthy people. Many feel empowered to lead, speak, and make decisions by virtue of the standing society gives them on the basis of their background. They get a lot of practice leading, and people are acculturated to following and respecting them.
Power — the capacity to get things done — is neither positive nor negative in and of itself. It’s all about how we construct, reconstruct, and practice power. Individuals can exercise their power in healthy ways if they stay focused on making space for others and growing power to achieve positive outcomes by building “power with” others. Individuals and groups can exercise their power in unhealthy ways if they are focused on establishing “power over” others or concentrating power in a few.
At IISC, we have made some key observations about power in meetings:
Power dynamics are always present in meetings, whether we see them or not.
Every meeting is a chance to build a group’s power and transform power dynamics. It’s important to design and facilitate meetings to create opportunities for power to be shared and openly discussed.
Meeting designers and facilitators must attend to formal and informal power and the dynamics that come along with it.
Meeting facilitators should be mindful of and acknowledge their own power and enact it in a way that builds the power of the group.
Every element of meetings needs preparation to make power and decision-making transparent. Consider questions like: Who is at the meeting, and who is not? Why or why not? What’s on the agenda and what’s not on the table for discussion that should be? Who will be making the decisions that flow from what will be discussed (both in the room and beyond)? Who plays which roles and why? What work will happen outside of the meeting? What information from the meeting should be shared and with whom?
So, what are some ways to attend to power dynamics in meetings?
Assume power dynamics are always present in meetings. Design your meeting agenda to include multiple voices and perspectives. Lightly encourage people to step forward to lead and participate, especially if they have less power in the organization, either because of role, positional status, race, gender, or other factors. Encourage people with traditional forms of formal power to do more listening than speaking.
Build a culture of collaboration in meetings. Think of meetings as an opportunity for a team to build relationships, learn leadership, design good processes, and counteract unhealthy uses of power. Design your meetings for relationships, joy, and creativity. Good things will follow! Always build an agenda that allows people to first interact on a human basis, such as starting with opportunities for people to do a “check-in” to share how their day or week is going or to learn more about each other on a personal level. Ask people a question that surfaces their personal and professional purpose. Encourage honesty, vulnerability, and calling people “in”, instead of calling people “out”. Spread a little business love around the room, creating openings for people to feel heard and noticed, and to experience a sense of belonging and interconnectedness.
Openly discuss power in meetings. Discuss openly with your team the question, “what would the benefits be to our group if we shared power?” Remind them that power is not a finite pie; rather, it can be infinite, expanded, and shared among people and leaders. Prompt them to explore how they can share “power with” each other instead of “power over.” Make a list of meeting agreements the group will use to share power. Ask people to monitor the agreements and be brave enough to intervene if people are not practicing them. Make a list of “power over” moves, so people learn the behaviors that reinforce dominant voices and power and exclude others. Have people take mental note of who is speaking the most and who is not. Make sure your discussions of power go beyond yourselves as colleagues to the people or communities you serve. How are they “at the table?” How are their priorities, assets, and skills driving the discussion?
Remember that power is a social construct. We can design spaces where individuals and groups experience their own and others’ power differently. Be proactive about ways to amplify the power of people who are typically at the margins of the conversation. Challenge the group to pay at least as much attention to the expertise that comes from lived experience (say, of poverty) as from formal theories and data. Flip questions on their head by asking “why not do things differently?” instead of “how can we work within given boundaries?” Ensure that people who are affected by the issues you’re working on are at the center of the conversation and have meaningful roles in the work over time (inside meetings and beyond).
Use your role intentionally and thoughtfully if you’re the meeting facilitator. Don’t dominate the discussion. Don’t come up with all the ideas. Stay as impartial as possible, even though you can never truly be completely neutral. If you want to contribute an idea or experience, tell the group you are switching from your facilitator role to express your view as an individual and then step back into your facilitator role. Examine who gets to facilitate meetings and who doesn’t. Meeting facilitators can change the outcome of the meeting just by how they design and run it. Rotating facilitation and supporting people to learn how to facilitate and run meetings distributes power and makes meetings more dynamic.
The skills of meeting facilitation with a lens to share power are teachable and replicable. At IISC, we share some of those skills through training and consulting. We have learned that meetings that are both well facilitated and that attend to power dynamics can transform groups into highly functioning teams with deeper purpose and intention for social change.
Last week I had the privilege of co-leading a three day Facilitative Leadership for Social Change training for a group of health equity advocates in Springfield, Massachusetts. It had been a while since I had done a training of that length, and it was a nice opportunity to not only cover more material, but to deepen the conversation and practice. Along the way there were many good questions about what to do around various challenges when one is co-leading a collaborative change effort. And a common response was, “It depends.”
Every group is different, every circumstance is different, and while it might make sense to take some cues from what has been successful in other situations, the caution is not to assume that it will work, or work in the same way, in other situations. This is one reason that I personally do not like the phrase “best practice” when talking about collaborative and facilitative change work. Given the complexity of people and social systems, I find it more helpful to think about “promising practices.”
That said, a promising practice that came up time and time again in our three day training, was the practice or practicing, of ongoing devotion to muscle-building in leadership skills such as process design, facilitation, coaching (leading with listening and inquiry), systems thinking, visioning/imagining, mutual learning and collaborative decision-making/governance. And in undertaking such practice, we at IISC would suggest this is not about achieving perfection. The humbling and exciting thing about collaborative leadership, in my humble opinion, is that it is a life-long learning pursuit and an endless opportunity to deepen understanding of ourselves, others and living systems. For this reason, one of my mantras is:
Practice for presence, not for perfection.
That is, practice can help practitioners get beyond being caught up in simply “learning the scales” of collaborative leadership, in trying to get the skills “right.” Practice at its best can contribute to a state ofbeing more fully present to what is happening in any given situation and being able to work with that in powerfully improvisational ways.
Furthermore, over the past year, there has been a clear call for practice and practices that are explicitly about cultivating spaces to hold difference and tension and trauma. That may be another order of presence characterized by a deeper tuning in and movement away from more transactional processes to ones that are emergent, co-created and geared towards supporting moral courage and imagination. What that can require is vulnerability and a humble sense of “being with.” What it stands to make possible, as opposed to business-as-usual, is growth and real movement forward, together.
“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along those sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”
– Herman Melville
2017-2018 NLI cohort members engage in a team building exercise focused on the dimensions of collaborative success.
Last week I worked with the Backbone Team of Food Solutions New England to launch the second cohort of the Network Leadership Institute (NLI) at Ohana Camp in Fairlee, Vermont. This initiative has grown out of FSNE’s commitment to cultivating both thought leadership and network leadership“to support the emergence and viability of a New England food system that is a driver of healthy food for all, racial equity, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities.” Another impetus for the NLI was a year spent doing system mapping and analysis that revealed four leverage areas for advancing a just, sustainable and democratically-owned and operated regional food system, including cultivating and connecting leadership (see image below). Read More
One of the many things I appreciate about adrienne maree brown’s new book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, are the questions she asks over and over again: what are you learning from nature? how does nature inform your organizing and movement building efforts?Autumn Meghan Brown, interviewed in this book, talks about consensus. Building consensus is one of my favorite practices to teach in IISC’s Facilitative Leadership for Social Change workshop. People love consensus and people hate it; I’ve seen many people struggle with when and where consensus is the appropriate decision making method, and with how to facilitate an effective consensus decision making process.
I believe two reasons for this are that we live in a society with an unhealthy relationship to time, and with a low level of skill for collaborative group process. Autumn says these wise things about consensus:
The history of consensus is deeply rooted in feminist and Indigenous movement work
Building consensus is the work of collective liberation
People want consensus to be an antidote to power, but it is not! Consensus does not require equal status; it requires equal voice.
So back to brown’s question, where does consensus happen in nature? What might we learn from nature about consensus?
Dreading the conversation over the Thanksgiving table this week?
Not looking forward to reconnecting with a friend, colleague or relative who thinks very differently than you?
How about inviting them into a different kind of conversation—one that enables folks to hear one another across deep divides and to share differing perspectives without inflicting excessive injury.
Try introducing the practices of deep listening to unlock a conversation where everyone can both speak their truth and hear other folks’ truths without convincing, berating, or arguing.
Try introducing the practices of deep listening to unlock a conversation where everyone can both speak their truth and hear other folks’ truths without convincing, berating, or arguing. It’s harder than you might think, especially when you think you are right. But remember, these loved ones probably think they are right, too. And, in entrenched conflicts, everyone generally tends to view themselves as the victim and others as holding all the power. Deep listening can be a powerful way to break through all of that.
In these times, deep listening seems more necessary than ever. So, take the risk to really listen to those around you without trying to convert them to your way of thinking. And ask them to take the risk to really listen to you too, without trying to convert you to their way of thinking. Some of what you hear may make your blood boil. Some may make you shake your head in wonder or despair. Some will make you want to ask more questions. This is good – seeking to understand does not imply you agree. Only that you are willing to explore. In the end, if you can use the guidelines shared below, you’ll create a safe space for conversation where you’ll end up still loving one another and you’ll be better informed and better able to engage in the tumult that is our political space this holiday season and beyond. Let us know what you learn!
Many of us who identify politically as left of center, and who work in nonprofits or foundations, have been upset, shocked, angry, sad, disappointed and more about the election of Donald Trump last week.
In reaction to this loss, many are awakening to the white supremacist (alt-right) forces gaining strength in our county. Many people are experiencing a greater degree of fear for our nation and for their safety than ever before. In the last week, I have witnessed a few reactive behaviors that are not going to serve us through this time. If we don’t stop ourselves from practicing these behaviors, we are in danger of pursuing short-sighted strategies that end up preserving the status quo, rather than taking advantage of this moment to push us forward toward a greater force of woke people standing for justice.
Make Change Stick Beyond the MeetingTurn ideas into agreements that stick, and keep change going after the meeting ends. Perfect for teams stuck in “great conversation, little action.”
