This afternoon Caitlin and I were in a delightful conversation with new colleagues that ranged across the landscape of the work we are all trying to do in the world, supporting leadership, supporting quality and addressing the ineffable aspects of human experience that pervade our work on leadership.
And in the conversation we found our way to the idea of friendship.
In our Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics offering we are exploring friendship as a key strategic pillar to transforming the nature of engagement, organizational life and community development. And today as we were discussing friendship as the highest form of accountability, I was reminded of my work 15 years ago in the BC Treaty Process.
Back then I was employed as a public consultation advisor for the federal government. It was my job to talk to non-indigenous people about the treaties that governments were negotiating with First Nations. Most of the non-indigenous stakeholders I had to meet with were hostile to the treaty process, to put it mildly. Some of them were just downright furious, driven by the white hot heat of completely irrational racism, uncertainty and disruption to their lives. At their worst, hey shouted at us, threatened us with violence and tried to have us removed from our jobs. these were not folks that I would ordinarily try to meet with, let alone befriend. But I found I had no choice. No amount of rational discourse about rights, law, policy and economics could persuade these people that treaty making was a good idea.
And the truth is that I didn’t have to have them think it was a good idea. But I did need them to understand what was happening and I did need to offer them many many ways to engage with what we were doing, even if they were 100% opposed to it. It was my professional obligation as a person responsible for the mundane daily workings of a democratic government, and it was my moral obligation as a human being who saw a group of people in danger of being dismissed by their government for their opinions, no matter how odious those opinions were to the government of the day, or how opposed those opinions were to government policy.
I realized that the only way we were going to create lasting agreements that gave First Nations the best possible future was to treat the noin-indigenous stakeholders as human beings. And that meant that I quickly abandoned my professional guise of talking to them as experts in their field and instead I adopted a stance of friendship. Instead of asking them questions I was interested in answering, I asked questions about what they were interested in: logging, ranching, fishing, making a living, what they did in their spare time, what was important to their families.
In due course I found myself hanging out with these folks. Having dinner, going on long drives through the British Columbia wilderness to visit clear cuts and mining sites. Joining them on board their fish boats and in their pastures, hanging out in local hockey arenas watching junior teams from Quesnel and Prince George and Powell River ply their trades. I ended up playing music with people, drinking a lot of beer and whisky and meeting up with folks when they were in Vancouver. It became social. We developed friendships.
And in the end I believe it helped to transform the atmosphere in BC from an angry and bitterly divisive climate to one where folks were at least tacitly okay with treaty making, if not outright supportive. My seven colleagues and I and our counterparts in the provincial government worked hard at developing these relationships.
Friendship is not something that we set out to create. It is an emergent property of good relationships and good collaboration. When you do a few things together that end up being – well – fun, then you begin to experience friendship. And in the end when times turn a bit hard, that friendship will see you through, helping to sustain the work you have done.
It is not perfect by any means, but those three years spent in the late 1990s befriending folks all over BC proved to me that no one is above friendship, and that the results of dedeicated and personal relationship building are essential to a humane society.
What passes for “engagement” these days is so professionalized and sterile that I think it threatens the very fabric of the kind of society that we live in. Society by definition is an enterprise that connects everyone together. “Public engagement” that does not also include the capacity for personal connection is a psychotic and sociopathic response to the need to care and be cared for. And when we get into hard places – think Ferguson, Burnaby Mountain and even Ukraine – it is friendships, tenuous and strained, but nevertheless intact, that offer us the way out.
View from my garret
When i am working at home, as I am today, my office is a stand up desk in a window dormer that ingeniously is surround on all three sides with windows. This means I can see the forest off to my right, trees and neighbours down below me on the stretch of Miller Road we call “Seven Hills” and to my left is a glimpse of the Queen Charlotte Channel between our island and the continent of North America, more specifically the low ridge of Whytecliffe in West Vancouver.
Last night and this morning the sky has been what is sometimes called angry. It has been raining fierce and thick showers, broken by strong gusty winds and moments of serene calm. i photographed this band of light breaking in the distance over English Bay. It looks like the sky is clearing but it is just temporary. Another shower descended upon us ten minutes later and this view was completely obscured by fog and rain. And ten minutes after that it is clear again.
I love this time of year on Bowen Island. The waiting and darkness of Advent. The stormy and unstable weather that swells the creeks to breaking and invites the salmon home. The journeying through the cold and wind to small warm refuges of fire and friendship as we visit friends, share a pint at the pub or a quiet lunch at The Snug or Rustique. The island tucks in to its friendship. We come to remember that we need each other to move fallen trees, deliver firewood and check in on each other (my neighbour is 85 years old and basically housebound). There are very few visitors to our island and the beaches and forests are quiet, left only to the seals and the deer.
It echoes, I think, the best of what I am able to extract from this time in my life. And it reminds me that some days I am at the bottom of the U in all kinds of ways.
My son has been working on a project for his grade nine year. At his middle school, graduating students are required to complete a year-long project called a MasterWorks. Finn has chosen the reconstruction of a downhill bike skills park. Earlier this year, our local government flattened the one we had without consultation, and Finn has been part of the team leading the charge to rebuild it in a different location.
My dad has been active in his community working on developing a dog park and also helping the village with it’s official community plan. As a result, he has become an official mentor for Finn on his project and yesterday he sent along some great advice about how to get things done with local government.
Here’s his advise:
Finn:
Your mom told me about your Masterworks project. I would love to share some of my experiences working on projects with the Town of the Blue Mountains. Here are some thoughts to start with if you want to get help from your local government.;
1. Clearly Identify Your Project (New Bike Park)
Describe why this is important to you and your community and other bikers. You are competing with many other municipal projects such as roads, water systems and other things which might have been discussed during your recent election.
Identify any benefits to the community such as a safe place for kids to develop their biking skills and to hang out. A healthy place to play outside without electronics. A showplace for the Municipality.
2. Build a Support Group
Set up a spreadsheet or Word table and add a line for each of your biking friends, their parents and anyone else who will support you. Each line records their name, mailing address, phone number and most importantly, email address. The more names you can get the better. Municipalities will pay attention to groups of people who need something. They often ignore individuals.
Use the email addresses to send out newsletters to the Group whenever something is happening. Ask the Group for additional names of people who might help or offer support.
Provide a copy of the list to the Municipality to show them that you are not alone.
3. Build Bridges
Never bad mouth members of your Council or municipal staff. They were elected by your neighbours or were hired based on their credentials. Getting them mad at you will not help your project.
Find ways to meet individual members of Council or staff to ask for advice on what you need to do to complete your Project. I think you have already done some of this. Do not stop with one meeting. Once you have made some contacts, stay in touch either in person or by phone or email. This shows them that you are serious about your project.
Send a note to each person recently elected, thanking them for being willing to help govern your community. Ask for their support for your project. You can also contact those who lost the election, thanking them for running and asking them for any ideas on moving your project forward.
4. Set Up a Project Plan
I think you have already started this.
1. Create a design for the bike park. Define the dimensions (how much land will be required). What materials will be needed (fencing, ramps, jumps etc).
2. Who will build the Park. Your Support Group? The Town? Local contractor donation of time and equipment?
3. How much will it cost. Where will the money come from? Can your Group do some fund raising? This is always helpful. Municipalities prefer not to fund special interest groups by sharing the costs with all the property owners (tax payers) who may not want to use your Park. I believe the Town is interested in providing another site from land available as public parks.
4. Who will manage the Park. What rules will be required to satisfy the Town so they can avoid liability if someone gets hurt. Usually the Town will cover themselves with a sign at the Park. What rules do other Municipalities use?
5. Who will maintain the Park. Your Support Group? The Parks department? The more you can find ways to limit the cost of the Park for the Municipality, the more they will be interested. There is never enough money to provide all the things that everybody wants.
6. Identify the Project Schedule. When do you want the Park to open? What does the Town need to do to make this happen? By-law changes? Approval of a budget. Availability of Town staff to prepare a site, install fencing etc.
Fantastic eh?
I had the great pleasure of coaching a team of folks last night who were running their first World Cafe. I’ve been working with this crew for a while – a core team looking at the future of the Victoria Presbytery of the United Church of Canada – and this was the first time they’ve stepped up to run their own conversational process as part of our work. Last night it was a Cafe to sense the future of what the Presbytery could be and do. And they did great.
One of the advantages of coaching is that one gets to reflect on the little bits and pieces of practice that make things work. Last night a number of them came up, so I thought I’d share them here.
Give instructions one at a time. Don’t give a long list of instructions. At the beginning of the Cafe let people know how the time will flow, but when it comes time to invite people to do certain things (move between tables, change questions, reflect, summarize…whatever) just give one instruction at a time. It is important that people know WHY we are doing a thing, but not important that they have the whole flow. And especially if your instruction involves them moving, then don’t give any more instructions until they have stopped.
Invite people to mark the paper early. The paper in the middle of the table is for all to use. “Typical” facilitated sessions imprint people with the pattern that someone will take notes while everyone else talks. It’s important that before the conversation begins, you invite people to pick up a marker, write something and draw something on the paper in front of them. That way, before the conversation begins, folks know that the paper is for everyone to use, there is no top or bottom, and images and words are equally welcome.
Have one more marker and one fewer post it note than people. If you have tables of four, give them five markers. This means that people can trade colours without prying a marker from someone’s hand. And if you are summarizing key findings, have three post-its for a table of four, to encourage people to pick three things together rather than just having everyone put their best thought down. World Cafe is about tapping and making visible collective intelligence. You lose that if you just have individual thoughts.
Build in silence. At the conclusion of a round, have a minute or two of silence. It calms the room down, allows people to reflect and integrate what they are hearing and makes it easier to give directions. This is especially important if you are wanting people to raise their level of awareness from what is important personally to what patterns are emerging. It requires a shift in awareness to see that.
Collect post its before having a summary conversation. Last night we used post its at the conclusion of the third round to capture the patterns that people were hearing consistently in all three rounds. Collecting the post-its before we had a summary conversation meant that people couldn’t “report out” and instead we hosted a “conversation with the whole” whereby we roved around asking people what stood out for them. What emerged was indeed a conversation and not a boring reporting out of things that everyone knew anyway.
Avoid the temptation to use a different question for each round. This is important. Having a different question for all three rounds creates three shallow conversations and inhibits pattern finding. It can also leave people feeling like they are being led down a garden path and it doesn’t leave a lot of space for emergent conversation. For all Cafe beginners, I always suggest they do their first Cafe with a single question for all three rounds. This gives you a clear picture of how the process can work to surface COLLECTIVE intelligence.
Keep the question simple and broad and make sure you can answer it on your own. Trust the group. They want to have a conversation, not guess at answers that you are trying to get them to. Last night our question was simple; given a context in which the structures of the Church are becoming increasingly unsustainable and in which congregations still need to be connected on a local level “What should Presbytery be and what should it do?” That was it. Three rich rounds on that, with lots of great insight and some amazingly courageous admissions (“Time to finally admit that this structure is dead.” etc.)
Invitation matters. Even though the 50 people we had out last night are used to being together every few months, the core team mworked on their invitation for a month. They held the purpose of the event close (discovering what the new shape and function of the Presbytery could be) and they shared the question with participants, even before we had decided on what the final question was. The team made sure people RSVP’d on the invitation which helped us to know the logistics of food and space, and also gave a chance for the conversation to begin as folks started sharing what they were thinking right away. This primed the conversation and meant that people were really ready for the work. Ninety minutes was not enough.
Know what you will do with the harvest and tell people. People learned in the invitation what our plans were for the harvest. This even was about helping the core team design some experiments over the next year for new ways that the Presbytery could meet and be useful to the two dozen United Church congregations on southern Vancouver Island. We summarized the patterns that people found (above photo) and began right away writing a report. But the bigger piece of work will be engaging in design over the next couple of months to create new and interesting gatherings in line with what the Presbytery members actually want.
Caitlin Frost, Tim Merry, Tuesday Ryan-Hart and I have been loving offering our Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics workshop over the past nine months.
We’re really pleased to announce that we are coming to Minnesota May 6-8, Staffordshire UK July 8-10 and Ontario this fall. And we’re really happy with the video invitation.
If you have been working with participatory methods and are curious about extending these tools and forms of leadership to systemic challenges, please consider joining us!