If you believe what you hear and read in the news media we are a nation divided along party lines. But this pervasive message denies the basic truth that what we Americans share in common far outweighs our differences. This is one of the fundamental tenets of an emerging organization called the Transpartisan Alliance (TA).
One of TA’s primary goals is to catalyze a shift in the political culture from destructive polarization to a more respectful, responsible and cooperative search for solutions. Here’s a video in which they brought together founders of the Tea Party with founders of Moveon.org. Even the DC-insider participants on the panel admitted that they had never before been in a conversation quite like this.
The work of TA reminds us of our innate capacity to simultaneously advocate for what we believe in and at the same time listen with receptivity and compassion to other perspectives. When we humanize those with whom we differ and acknowledge the legitimacy of differing viewpoints, innovation happens, good policy gets made, relationships get strengthened, and our most challenging problems stand a chance of being addressed.
A few weeks ago I was facilitating a gathering of 50 leaders from around the country. The morning coffee and bagel reception ended with an announcement from the meeting host, “Would you please take your seats so that we can begin.” As I watched people moved toward their places at round tables I sensed that something was not quite right.
Past gatherings of this group had consisted of speakers, panels and workshops and had provided few opportunities for attendees to talk with each other about what was on their minds. This year the organizers had decided to design the meeting around dialogue and interactive learning. But as I looked out onto the group something inside of me said, “These people are still in the mode of being consumers of programs rather than co-creators of new insights and actions.”
I felt that something needed to be gently reset. I briefly introduced myself and reaffirmed that this would be a different kind of meeting than past gatherings — one in which they would take an active role in shaping the conversations and influencing the outcomes. In light of this I asked them to reflect on three questions that my colleague Alan Briskin offered to me at a retreat several months prior.
Who brought you here?
Who are you here for?
Why are you here?
I asked the attendees to rise and stand at their seats for a few moments, inviting them to reflect silently on these questions. I said, “As your intention for this meeting becomes clear, go ahead and take your seat while keeping this intention in mind.” Standing in silent reflection isn’t exactly a familiar business practice to most people so I was a little worried how this would be received but I trusted my instincts in the moment.
It turned out that participants were both receptive and appreciative for the 5 minute reset. I asked people to share their intention to those sitting at their tables. As I wandered the room I overheard a great deal of conviction and clarity. I heard comments like, “I’m going to raise concerns I’ve wanted to raise for over a year now” and “My intention is to make sure we come out of this meeting with a few clearly defined actions.” I listened and began to feel reassured that the group was taking ownership of the meeting.
A well planned meeting agenda matters. Having the right people in the room and a skillful facilitator are also important success factors. But how we take our seats — our guiding intention — means everything. Too often we take our seats without a lot of thought, falling into any number of comfortable default patterns like passivity, entitlement, and competitiveness. The Latin root of the word intention, intendere means to stretch. Sometimes the most important role a meeting leader can play is to stretch ourselves and others toward a more deliberate way of showing up for the important conversations.
There’s really only one thing more fun than saying the word pechakucha — it’s watching a pechakucha event unfold. PechaKucha (Japanese for chit chat) is a format for presenting projects and ideas in which you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds.
The presentation format was developed in 2003 by two architects in Tokyo because… architects talk too much. Well actually, humans (and that includes architects) talk too much.
This innovation has given birth to PechaKucha Night events taking place in 282 cities throughout the world. People are getting up in front of audiences for the first time and talking about what they love. I attended an event several months ago and saw wonderful presentations on food photography, a relationship break-up, and an innovative solution to global warming.
Just think about a Pechakucha policy or way of life taking hold in your organization! Nobody presents unless they can do it in 6 minutes and 40 seconds with no more than 20 slides! If we can solve the unbridled misuse of Powerpoint in organizations I’m thinking we may actually be able to find a cure for cancer and achieve world peace. Pechakucha makes me feel… hopeful.
Got 6 minutes and 40 seconds? Check out this presentation by PechaKucha creators Astrik Klein and Mark Dythem. It’s a PechaKucha about PechaKucha. Enjoy.
Group fire is the state in which a situation feels uncomfortable, emotionally heated, intense, and perhaps quite personal. Fire is as pervasive in human interactions as it is in nature — and just as necessary.
We see fire in the halls of government and in the hallways of our elementary schools. It shows up when the leaders of our churches, synagogues, and mosques gather. We feel the fire at town council meetings and industry conferences. When historic adversaries, diverse ethnic groups, and world leaders come together, we expect and usually get fire. When industry leaders, elected officials, scholars, social activists, and citizens come together to deliberate pressing issues like hunger, climate change, and national security, we witness the fire.
Though it may vary in its form, group fire seems not to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, education, economic class, or culture. In a wonderful documentary film titled Dalai Lama Renaissance(see video clip below), forty of the West’s most innovative and enlightened thinkers were invited to the home of His Holiness in northern India. The guests included religious scholars, writers, at least two quantum physicists, and a psychiatrist. When they arrived, they were asked by the Dalai Lama to work together to come up with a “solution to some of the world’s problems” and to identify “the transitions we must make if we’re going to survive.”
What transpires over the course of several days is a portrait of group fire. The esteemed guests could not agree on a format for their discussions, let alone on any solutions. Bickering, interrupting, showboating, or simply getting lost in wishful thinking, they struggled to collaborate. In the midst of the bickering one participant pleaded, “I’d like to feel a little compassion here.” One leaves this film with a simultaneous sense of hopelessness (“If these folks can’t get it right, how are the rest of us supposed to learn to work together skillfully?”) and relief (“Now I don’t feel so bad about all of my lousy meetings”).
Conflict and emotional intensity are everywhere, and they are often a source of suffering. But high-heat moments are as natural and as necessary to human progress as they are in nature. We need fire in our families, teams, organizations, and communities as much as our prairies and forests need a cyclical blaze to stay healthy. Nothing interesting or innovative has ever really happens in groups without the heat of passion, disagreement, fear, or confusion. In fact, fire is often the best indicator that people care about the issue with which they are struggling. The absence of heat almost always means apathy, suppression, and non-engagement.
I’ve recently finished writing a book entitled Standing in the Fire: Leading High Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage (Co-published by Berrett Koehler Publishers and ASTD, March 2010). It’s about gatherings in which conflict or confusion arise and the emotional intensity becomes very high. It’s been my experience that these kinds of meetings are becoming more and more common. Here are some predictors of meeting “combustibility” that will help you to anticipate the possibility of group fire.
The outcome of the process is highly uncertain.
The issue is complex and not fully understood.
The group has a history of disappointment, suffering and loss.
Discussion of the issue has been suppressed in the past.
Expression of emotion about the issue has also been suppressed.
The stakes are high.
Big power differences exist among those who have a stake.
The people involved are highly diverse (personalities, culture, etc.).
People have strong positions and are closed to seeing alternative points of view.
The group is physically, mentally, or emotionally fatigued.
People have hidden agendas and use manipulative tactics.
Understanding the nature of the gathering that we are walking into is useful, not because we want to suppress the heat of the moment but because we want to tend it well. When leaders become “fire tenders” they help others to hold the heat of contradictions, uncertainties, and strong emotions long enough to work productively with them. What would you add to this list?
We humans love to argue even when there is nothing to argue about. Your people say tomaeto and my people say tomaahto. But then my people cleverly declare ours the only true and moral way to pronounce the name of this beloved fruit. We invent derogatory labels for those who say it differently. Tensions build and my people begin to refer to yours as “those folks who say it the wrong way.”
Then one day “different” comes to mean “stupid” or “evil.” Self-righteousness leads to insult which in turn leads to injury. And then someone gets hurt — all because we never asked questions like:
What if different doesn’t mean conflicting? What if both of our ways of seeing, speaking, thinking about the world are true?
Too much time is wasted on false conflict. We spend hours debating different yet totally compatible points of view. Whenever we get triggered by differences it’s wise to stop and reflect on how those differences might actually be able to co-exist.
Check out Derek Sivers’ clever and entertaining 2-minute TED talk on this topic. It’s a great way to begin your next meeting.
During the course of challenging collaborations facilitators and facilitative leaders become easy targets. We can become the screen onto which people project their fears, angers and biases. And those projections can range in form from direct attack to thinly veiled insult.
Recently I facilitated a meeting involving participants with an intense history of conflict and disrespect. As I proposed a set of ground rules for the meeting, one participant reacted to my use of the term “speak your truth.” The participant told me that it sounded like I was a therapist. A few minutes later this same person commented to another participant in a very loud voice, “This guy talks like some sort of bullshit group therapist.”
In the moment I treated the comment as a request to offer more accessible language and I did my best to avoid getting derailed by what I believe was intended to be a pretty public insult (no offense to therapists). I also decided that the participant’s inflammatory comment was an expression of vulnerability and fear. I told myself it wasn’t personal.
All that said, when the meeting concluded I was feeling a bit injured – embarrassed by the public insult (and the validity of the participant’s criticism) and by the intensity of the hostility directed toward me. It’s one thing to contain our defensiveness during the meeting and choose to not take things personally but it’s another thing to walk out of the meeting and really let go of any residual anger or injury.
In my book, Standing in the Fire I call this process leaving the meeting behind. I’ve written about various personal practices I use after a meeting, including a “cleansing ritual” and “using the journey home” in a productive way. Recently I discovered an on-line “letting go ritual” developed by the Fetzer Institute’s Campaign for Love and Forgiveness. I encourage you to give it a test drive.
As facilitators we need to be mindful of not allowing hurt and resentment from previous meetings to accompany us into future meetings. I encourage you to develop (and share below) your own practices for leaving the meeting behind.
We live in a culture that values speed, productivity, results, control, and — did I mention speed? It’s no wonder that stress, fatigue, overreaction, and numbness seem pervasive in all walks of life. And it’s troubling that even the most enlightened leaders — those working toward a more just, healthier, sustainable planet — choose not to tend to their own health and sustainability. We can get so caught up in our passion and commitment to do good in the world that we neglect ourselves and disregard our souls. Poet Thomas Merton describes this as a form of self-directed “violence.”
To allow one’s self to get carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activists neutralize their work for peace. It destroys their own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of their work because it kills the inner wisdom which makes their work fruitful.
I recently facilitated a retreat for the leadership team of a Jewish organization. The theme, taken from the Old Testament, was “Shavat Vayinafash” which roughly translates to “cease and re-soul.” The day-long retreat focused on the value of bringing the virtues of sabbath into every single day. During the retreat we explored a variety of principles and practices for setting healthy boundaries, resting, being present with self, strengthening relationships, reconnecting with purpose, and experiencing awe in the everyday. It was remarkable to see a group of 25 smart, motivated high achievers slow down and examine their basic assumptions about what it takes to lead in today’s world.
Here are some of the conclusions they reached:
– The more challenging the outside world gets, the more we need practices that nurture and strengthen our inner world — our emotions, sense of purpose, intuition, and moral clarity.
– Investing time for self renewal and resouling is not a diversion from “the real work” out there. Attending to our interior is what enables us to bring our wisest, most able, most fulfilled selves to our work.
– Intentional breathing may just be the single most important practice because it sets the stage for other renewal practices including introspection, appreciation, and intimate connection.
You don’t have to work in a religious organization to appreciate the value of everyday renewal. Where does it belong in your life? How would it strengthen your ability to lead purposefully and authentically? How might the regular acknowledgment and care of your inner self improve the way you engage the outer world?
There is more to write on this topic but I’m going to follow my own advice — pause — to create a space for rest and reflection. On this day of celebrating the life of Martin Luther King’s who lived his short life in the fullest expression of his purpose, I leave you with a quote from the renowned dancer and choreographer, Martha Graham:
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
I’ve been thinking about the past year and reflecting on some of the questions that have been guiding me and others with whom I’ve spoken. I wanted to share some of these questions as an offering and invitation. As Peter Block says, “Good questions work on us. We don’t work on them.”
I can’t remember a year in which so many people I know experienced so much suffering — loss of jobs and homes, illness, death of loved ones, and anxiety about what’s next for their lives and for the planet. This is a time when it would be so easy to assume a scarcity-based mindset — “I don’t have enough time, money, energy… I am not getting my share… I am not enough.” But what I mostly encounter in my circle of friends, clients and colleagues is hope, generosity, optimism and a sense of resoluteness about making a contribution in the world. Question: In the face of very real pain and anxieties what are the most life-affirming choices I can make about how I see and think about my current situation?
2009 certainly was not the year I thought it would be. My recession-imposed sabbatical (translation: significant downturn in client work) meant that I have had more discretionary time (though it was always discretionary) and less money flowing into my life. I had the time to do some pro bono work with not-for-profit organizations I care about, including 1% for the Planet, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Reading Village. The gratitude, learning, and fulfillment I have gotten from working with these organizations has been immeasurable. Question: In any given moment, what is the gift I am prepared offer?
In 2009 I dedicated myself more seriously to writing about my work. I wrote a second book that I’m really excited to share with you. It’s entitled Standing in the Fire: Leading High-Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage. It will be out in March, 2010. I’ve also been writing a blog called Gatherings: Insights about Collaboration and Leadership. I hope you’ll find them both of value. Question: When do I lose my voice or disappear and for what purpose am I prepared to be seen and to lend my voice?
I’ve also taken some time this past year to think about my consulting practice, what I say “yes” and “no” to, and the implications of each of those responses. There have been moments over the course of my career when I have felt that the way money was flowing into my life was disconnected with my values. These days I find the choices about who I work with and how I work more consistently guided by this question: On balance am I fostering health and wholeness for me, my clients, society, and the planet?
These are not easy questions to answer. But I have enjoyed allowing these questions to “work on me.” And as they do, I find myself looking toward the new year with a greater sense of clarity and courage — combined with a healthy dose of humility. May you find the questions that awaken and inspire the best parts of you in 2010.
Fire tenders are leaders who are capable of facing incendiary conflicts and perplexing challenges, helping others stick with uncertainty, troubling emotions, and conflict long enough to arrive at new insights and common ground. This kind of leadership involves learning to face those things we most fear—to sit in the midst of intense personal discomfort, to resist acting on old stories and impulses, and to be present to what is emerging in the group and within ourselves. The path to becoming a masterful fire tender is in the conscious tending of our own fires—attending to what is going on inside us in order to assist in the unfolding of what is happening outside us.
Masterful fire tenders have an uncanny ability to stand in the face of high-heat interactions and not get knocked off balance, even as others around them do. They maintain their calm, clarity, curiosity, and resoluteness, even as others become adversarial, confused, or resigned to “another failed attempt to resolve this issue.”
I was recently interviewed at the offices of Berrett-Koehler Publishers on this topic. Here’s a 2 minute clip of that interview.
