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.
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’m sorry for”
This is wrong because”
In the future, I will”
Will you forgive me?
But it’s so important. When you are engaged in work with teams of people and you are doing things none of you have done before, there are going to be mistakes made and people are going to be offended. Learning how to apologize is important for a couple of reasons.
A sincere apology builds trust and strengthens a group. There is nothing better than a group of people in which people take on responsibility for their actions. True leadership arises when folks step up, show their self-awareness and understand how their actions have impacted the group. You build tons of social capital within a group by acting this way and it makes you resilient and more grace filled and more forgiving.
Secondly, a sincere personal apology is an incredible liberation for both you and the person you have offended. If you have even an iota of moral clarity, something in you will be triggered when you have offended another person. You KNOW you were wrong. Stepping up is a cleansing feeling. And to have an apology like that accepted and to be forgiven is beautiful.
This is fierce practice. It requires us to be vulnerable and honest and to be carefully self-aware. And done sincerely it builds capacity, grace and humility.
My friend Peter Rawsthorne begins a series of blog posts today reflecting on what is required to keep a community of practice together online and across organizational boundaries.
What do you need to consider when building a Community of Practice CoP that spans organizational boundaries where client confidentiality needs to be honored. There are a plethora of things to be considered when building an online virtual community of practice, these include; the team and the contexts’ relationship with openness, the memberships ability to be self-determined, how online communication will be broadened and followed, and how the internet is the platform.
via Critical Technology: Virtual Community of Practice Conundrum.
Tim Merry‘s work on collaborative advantage:
My friend and colleague Tim Merry is sharing some of his most recent thinking on project design and development here in Columbus at the Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics retreat we are doing. This is a really useful and interesting introduction to his approach:
