Image description: A colorful illustration of a pink, dark blue, and green mountain next to each other. The background is a pink sky with clouds and a dark orange sun. By Chloé via Unsplash.
On Friday, April 4th, Interaction Institute for Social Change was proud to partner with Food Solutions New England to host its Spring Gathering focused on “bridging work” to advance justice, equity, and fairness. Our guests for this gathering included Troy Sambajon, writer for The Christian Science Monitor, and Soma Saha, Executive Director of Wellbeing and Equity in the World. Between them, Troy and Soma focus their work on community-level efforts to create equitable change that prioritizes those who are least served/most marginalized while weaving stronger, more resilient social bonds that benefit all.
Our conversation centered on how certain people and places are defying mainstream media reports about how hopelessly divided we are as a country by reaching out to one another and engaging in creative “solutionizing” to address hunger, poverty, economic decline, and physical violence. The stories that were shared come from people and places that many might assume would be the last to do such work, including Israeli and Palestinian women and rural communities in the Deep South of the United States working with and on behalf of Black farmers. While not easy, there is no question that these efforts are happening. We at IISC also see this in the long-term consulting work we are doing in places like the Mississippi Delta, Fresno County, California (one of the most diverse areas in our country), and western Massachusetts, where a partnership focused on digital equity unites rural and urban communities and residents of all identities.
We might ask ourselves why these stories are not more widely shared. The answer seems to be that the dominant and evermore consolidated mainstream media tends to thrive on outrage (taking advantage of our innate negativity bias) and that wealthy owners maintain their position by fomenting division. Once you start following the money and information flows, the patterns become quite evident. We are being sold a story that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if we choose to believe it and give in to fear, isolation and ongoing misinformation campaigns.
We might also ask how the places that Troy and Soma highlighted, and where we at IISC are working, are cutting through the media morass and stereotypes. Actually, we did ask that! What we heard and shared is that people in those places are willing to reach out to one another. Somehow, they can see or remember that we are all connected. And they make space for actual conversation to happen. These spaces are characterized by care-full tending to processes that always put relationships first, and where listening is crucial. In many cases, this includes at least some meeting time over a meal where people can break bread together. These processes also emphasize that “seeing one another as the problem” is not going to get people very far. Rather, they invite curiosity about systems and structures that are influencing all of us, and often pitting us against each other.
We did not have time to get into much greater depth about the processes that Troy and Soma see being implemented, but from the IISC perspective, we can share some other tips that can help to make things smooth when engaging people in tense and potentially divisive situations:
Do some kind ofbridging and outreach work in advance so that people are not cold-stepping into a shared space with one another. This could include interviews beforehand characterized by empathetic listening.
Pay attention to power dynamics, including who tends to be more central and more peripheral, can be important in terms of creating conditions for equitable engagement.
Make sure you have conversations in places that put people at ease and that are relatively easy to access. You might ask about this in those outreach and bridging interviews.
Have access to natural light and greenery when gathering in person to help settle people.
Sometimesplaying music can be helpful, provided it does not stir up nervous systems too much and has something that everyone might appreciate (you can crowdsource requests in advance).
As a facilitator, you might invite a few people to share something that is personally meaningful to them at the beginning of a conversation. This could be a poem, a memory, an object, or a short story. See more about “The Welcome Table” that we have done at the beginning of the Network Leadership Institute we have facilitated with Food Solutions New England.
Speaking of story, we often find that having some time at the beginning of a gathering for people to share a bit of their story can help to highlight commonalities and get mirror neurons activated. You can read more about this here.
Move slowly and encourage people to be okay with silence …
Invite people to pause between stimulus and response. This might look like asking people to take a step back and watch their reactions to what is happening in the course of the conversation.
Let people know that you are not asking everyone to believe the same thing or to force agreement. At the end of the day, behavior is what matters most, including how people treat one another. We can respect-fully agree to disagree on certain things and still live well together.
Most importantly, it feels foundational to continue to remember that most people share more in common than they do differences. As Mohawk elder Jake Swamp-Tekaronianeken once said, “In the end, everything works together.”
For the past month I’ve been checking in with a dozen or so networks that I support and participate in in various ways, looking at how best to navigate these times when in some cases it feels there may be a need to ratchet down or right size expectations. With so much in flux and uncertain, with many new challenges and barriers to how people may have operated in the past, when the impulse might be to pull back or bunker down, what can weavers/coordinators do, what are they doing, to keep their networks and net/collective work vital?
Below is a list of some ideas and practices that I am seeing, hearing, and trying myself, in the name of maintaining baseline connectivity, alignment and coordinated momentum. No one of them is necessarily the “right answer” in every situation, everything being context-dependent and also needing to suit the particular nature and situation of specific networks. And having shared some of these with others, I’ve heard these can be helpful for anyone now working virtually or in-person in times of greater stress. Curious to know what resonates, and what you would add!
Bring an open heart to network interactions. People are feeling a lot in these times. It can be important to allow for and acknowledge this.
Let people know you are thinking of and appreciate them. One of the practices out there that I’ve seen and am leaning into is people sending “love notes” to others in their networks.
Create more frequent, optional and informal opportunities for people to connect. I’ve been seeing and participating in “coffee chats” that happen weekly, bi-weekly and monthly for those who are interested to drop by (virtually), check-in and share gifts and needs. This includes setting up phone calls where people can walk and talk instead of being glued to a screen for videoconferencing.
Release your grip on certain standards of performance and accomplishment. This can often create more frustration and exhaustion. Model patience and grace with yourself and others.
Allow for, and maybe even celebrate, messiness, malfunctions, and “mistakes.” This is not just about cutting people slack and reducing stress, but also inviting ongoing experimentation, improvisation, creativity and playfulness.
Shore up the core of your network. With some coordinating teams working virtually for the first time or much more often, while juggling many other balls, it can be important to establish some basic expectations around communications and other working agreements. What minimally do people need from one another in order to function well in these times? What are they able to give?
Find time to disconnect and replenish. From Zoom overload to balancing needs of home and work simultaneously, it can be crucial to find time to disconnect from conversation and interaction.
Lean back into alignment. This can be a good time to put a network’s mission, vision and values back in front of its members, to remind people what holds them together and what might ground them more deeply amidst the tumult of the times. How can these values and larger goals provide ballast and guidance?
Create more slowness, stillness, spaciousness and even silence in your network interactions. Even when connected, we can practice different kinds of pacing and spacing that can help people to restore, maintain or increase their energy.
Stem degenerative flows. The 24 hour news cycles, social media wars, and spirals of outrage can conspire to overwhelm us and suck us dry, especially when there is an insidious fear of missing out. Other than simply disconnecting, we can ask what actually nourishes us in terms of connections and flows of information, interactions and other resources. Be mindful of what you consume, as well as what you send out and communicate with others.
Lead with joy and laughter. Because it feels good and can be so radical and welcomed in these times.
Really practice shared leadership. All the time, and especially now. Do what you do best and connect to the rest. Remember you are not indispensable and that networks benefit from redundancy of role and function. I was recently in a call with 8 other facilitators to develop both an agenda and executive memo for an important meeting, and while in the past I would have dreaded these kinds of endeavors, in this instance we really needed each other given the complexity of the situation and constrained capacity of each of us.
Keep an eye towards bridging. While comfort and care are important, watch the tendency to fall back into familiar patterns and relationships that can bolster bonding (birds of a feather flocking together) in your networks at the expense of bridging to those who are different in some way, shape or form, where those differences are vital to the health of the network and its work. On this front, see this resource, “On Bridging,” from the Othering and Belonging Institute.
Keep listening for and helping to meet needs, fill gaps, and leverage opportunities. What are the critical connections and flows that the network is asking for right now? Who can help to create and support these?
Ask yourself the following question and see where it takes you:
“What is something I/we can do today that our future network (and collective work) will be grateful for and benefit from?
In light of a recent conversation with Jana Carp, an academic who has studied the underlying principles of the “slow movement” and how they connect to sustainability, place-making and livabily, I am revisiting, revising and reposting the piece below. Jana and I were connected by a mutual colleague with the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, given our mutual interests in public engagement, community-building and sustainability (inclusive of justice), and had an interesting conversation about slowness and networks.
At one point, the question came up as to whether networks might cut against slowness, especially when the emphasis is on rapid growth, diffusion, and trans-local connections. My thought at the time was that this certainly could be the case, and that is why it is important to think about both the breadth and depth dimensions of networks, as well linking different scaled networks (local, regional, global). The importance of networks for social change can certainly reside in their reach and rapid scaling. Their potential also resides in the nature and quality of connection, how deep the ties that bind are and what they help to create and circulate. And this brought me back to these reflections on how to think about “social velocity” in networks and collaborative work …
My friend Joel Glanzberg is a constant source of provocation and insight. The way he sees the world, through a living systems and pattern-seeking lens, is not only refreshing but unnerving in that it is evident how simultaneously critical and rare his perspective is. Joel is great at helping me and others to see beyond objects and structures to underlying patterns and processes, and how these are what animate living systems. Read More
As we enter into the last weeks of summer (yes, it’s true), I find myself becoming more reflective, slowing down a bit in anticipation of a seasonal transition. What comes to mind is this poem from Marge Piercy, for all that it has to offer in terms of thinking about harvesting, about reaping what we’ve sown through our care-full efforts, about going slow to go fast, and what it takes to do social change work well.
Make Meetings MatterJoin us on February 5 for a practical and energizing webinar that teaches simple facilitation practices to turn meetings into inclusive, focused conversations that lead to real progress!
In light of a recent conversation with 
