Last week I was working with an interesting group of 60 Aboriginal folks who work within the Canadian Forces and the department of National Defense, providing advice and support on Aboriginal issues within the military and civilian systems. We ran two half days in Open Space to work on emerging issues and action plans.
In an interesting side conversation, I spoke with a career soldier about fear. This man, one of the support staff for the gathering, had worked for a couple of decades as a corporal, mostly working as a mechanic on trucks. We got into an interesting conversation about fear. He said to me that he could never do what I do, walking into a circle and speaking to a large group of people. I expressed some surprise at this – after all I was talking to a trained soldier. I asked him if he had ever been in combat and experienced fear. He replied that he had been on a peacekeeping mission in Israel and that at one point in a threatening situtaion he had pointed a loaded gun at someone and awaited the order to fire, but he didn’t feel any fear at all.
We decided that it was first of all all about the stories you tell yourselves and second of all about training and practice. The fear of public speaking – fear that would paralyse even a soldier – is a fear that is borne from a history of equating public speaking with a performance. In school for example we are taught that public speaking is something to be judged rather than a skill to be learned. Imagine if we gave grades for tying a shoelace, or using a toilet or eating food. If we performed these important but mundane tasks with the expectation of reward or punishment, conditional on someone else’s judgement about them, having nothing to do with the final result, we might well develop fear and aversion to these things too.
The fact is that the fear of public speaking – glossophobia – is widespread and this makes me think it has something to do with public schooling. Our training leaves us in a place of competence or fear, and, as much of the training in social skills is undertaken implicitly in school (including deference to authority, conditional self-esteem and a proclivity to answers and judgement rather than question and curiosity) we absorb school’s teaching about these things without knowing where they came from. Certainly when I grew up – and I was a little younger than this soldier I was speaking with – speaking in school was generally either a gradable part of reporting on an assignment or was competitive, as in debating, a practice that was prevalent in my academic high school that sent many young people into competitive speaking careers as lawyers and business people. If you were no good at this form of speaking, the results of being judged on your attempts to get a point across were often humiliating. You lost, or you skulked away with the knowledge that people thought you sucked.
In contrast, my friend’s ability to find himself relatively fearless in an armed confrontation was a result of his military training, which, when it comes to combat, is all aimed having a soldier perform exactly as my friend had – calmly and coolly, especially in a peacekeeping role.
These days, in teaching people how to do facilitation, I am increasingly leaving the tools and techniques aside and instead building in practices of noticing and cultivating fearlessness. When you can walk into a circle fearlessly, you can effectively and magically open space. If you harbour fear about yourself or your abilities, it is hard to get the space open and enter into a trusting relationship with a group of people. Once you can do that, you can use any tool effectively, but the key capacity is not knowing the tool, it is knowing yourself.
How do you teach or learn fearlessness?
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Just returned from an event in Victoria to raise money and awareness for the first ever Authentic Leadership in Action Institute (ALIA) on the West Coast (May 19-22 at Royal Roads University, if you’re interested). Last evening, 120 people packed in to hear Meg Wheatley talking about leadership in uncertain times. She spoke mostly about the capacity for fearlessness, or a leadership stance that operates beyond hope and fear. It is something that she has been talking about for a long time, and in fact, she has a recent piece in the Shambhala Sun on this very topic.
Following her presentation, my colleague Jennifer Charlesworth and I hosted a cafe on three questions to deepen the exploration of fearlessness. We were working off of Meg’s presentation, but also an excellent article of Meg’s describing Eight Fearless Questions.
So if you read these two articles you can follow along at home and engage in the three questions that we threw into the cafe. Round one was conversation around the question of “When have I been fearless in my life?” Participants were invited to find a story of fearlessness, anchoring it as a touchstone to a deeper inqury.
For the second round we asked: “Who am I called to be for these times?” This is about finding the bigger you that is called into the world to face the challenges of systemic collapse and bringing the future into being.
Finally, we ended with the question “What name do I call myself?” THis question comes directly from Meg’s eight fearless questions, and it invites us to choose a name for ourselves that can hold our whole life. THis is a name beyond who we are and who we have been – it is a name that we tremble to live into. Here’s what Meg says about that question:
I have a colleague who first suggested this to me. And he said, “So many of us choose names that are too small for a whole life.” So, we call ourselves, ‘cancer survivors;’ that seems to be a very bold name, but is it big enough to hold a life? Or, ‘children of abuse.’ Or, we call ourselves ‘orphans,’ or ‘widows,’ or ‘martyrs’…. are these names big enough to hold your life?
And the second question that just occurred to me as I was doing this is, Are we choosing names that demand fearlessness? You’re a coach. You’re an executive. You’re a consultant. You’re a teacher. You’re a minister. You’re a hospital administrator. You’re a civil servant. Are those names demanding fearlessness of us? I don’t know what the names are that would create fearlessness, but I think this is a very important question.
The last movement of the Cafe was an invitation to find a question that you could live into for the next 30 days that would keep these insights alive as a little learning journey for you.
It was a lovely evening, good to see many friends new and old, even though I barely had time to connect with any of them, and it was a delight to see Meg again and work with Jennifer.
We’d love for you to consider joining us at ALIA in May.
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Over the years I’ve written about how convoluted strategic planning gets for most organizations. Most of the small non-profits I work with seem to think it’s wise to use mainstream business strategic planning frameworks to plot their way forward. Even though these frameworks are pursued with the best of intentions, for many volunteer Boards of small and meagerly funded organizations, it’s usually overkill to adopt highly technical frameworks for planning. It might just be too much.
Even the process of vision, mission, goals and objectives is often too overbearing because it tends to force conversations into boxes, and it often results in Boards spending a lot of time designing statements that are too high minded, and largely forgotten. It also constrains the process and uses valuable time to talk about abstract notions that might be over kill for an organization that just does one thing well. Sometimes “providing quality child care at an affordable price” is all you need to say.
So I’m thinking about what IS essential for Board planning in small organizations, and here are some of the things that make good sense to address:
What’s going on out there? A conversation about what is going on in the world and how it effects the work of the organization. This could take the form of a reflective Board meeting, a presentation on demographics or other social trends, understanding the political forces that shape their funding and operations and so on. Could be as simple as a conversation, or as involved as a learning journey. Regardless it grounds the work of the organization in the world that it serves.
What’s happening in here? What has heart and meaning for us? What do we love about the work we do in the world? What needs to be said about our contribution? Also, what is the current state of play here? What pressing issues do we have within the organization in terms of staff, funding, capital and service? This is a look at our mission and vision but also raises awareness of the important governance issues for a Board. Keeping this conversation high level has the added benefit of resulting in only the big things making the radar, meaning that the staff can concentrate on the day to day operations without being micromanaged.
What are the scenarios that might unfold? What is possible in the next five years? How might we react to things? I find scenario planning to be a fun and creative activity, and the deeper you can go into it, the more ownership people take over their futures. This kind of exercise can involve others as well, including staff, stakeholders, clients and supporters. Everyone can be involved in imagining scenarios for the future.
What decisions do we need to make? Really, all planning comes down to making decisions. Some of these are big and others are small, but if you can get a handled on the key decisions that you will be facing in the next five years, it helps to focus the work of a Board on gathering information and preparing to choose between options. So what decisions will we be faced with? A new site? New program offerings? Changing the funding model? Capital decisions? The best planning is directed at being able to make these decisions in a timely and wise fashion.
These are four main areas to focus on. Each could be the focus of a Board meeting that drives the planning process. What other simple instructions can we use to streamline the process of strategic planning for small Boards and organizations?
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John Dumbrille on our recent efforts here on Bowen Island:
That self governance will be better enabled using web tools is probable. After all, there are economic drivers (‘more for less’) propelling it. But probable success factors are all about money and efficiency and intention, spirit and design. Thinking the litmus test is – does this BOWEGOV etc help people come home to themselves. How to measure this may be ‘happy’ indices, or, put another way – ‘spirit of giving/sharing’ indices.
I am dedicated to the face to face. Inasmuch as these tools bring us into generous relationship with each other, I say yay! And they do that in spades.
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I can’t speak for Mexico, but this fall has had a transformative effective on the other 2 countries in North America.
First, Barack Obama. And now here in Canada, the prospect of a progressive coalition unseating the newly elected Conservative minority seems like a more and more likely possibility. So what gives?
First of all, the general mood of both countries has shifted to the progressive side of things, although in Canada, a weak Liberal leader and a screwy representational system left the Conservative party with 37% of the vote and the majority of seats and thus the first shot at forming government. Certainly Obama’s leadership, vision and message has grabbed a hold of the American left in a new and energizing way and it seems like much of the centre right opposition to his leadership has simply vanished, leaving bitter neoconservative right wing idealogues stewing in their jealous regret.
Now both the Obama administration there and the progressive coalition here are trying to do things differently. That begins by reaching out to unlikely friends. In Obama’s case he appoints Clinton and some Republican and bipartisan picks to his Cabinet. Here in Canada, Stephane Dion, the man who penned the Clarity Act which drove a fairly effective stake into the seperatist movement in Quebec, has reached a pact with the NDP to govern (with six NDP Cabinet ministers), assisted by a deal with the seperatist Bloc Quebecois who have agreed to support him on confidence votes at least for the next 18 months.
Three months ago none of this would have seemed possible. Obama’s election seared possibility into the minds of everyone, and in Canada, the Parliament, which had been completely hobbled by Conservative tactics in its last session vowed to bring in new levels of decorum in the new session. Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, then did a 180 degree turn on that commitment, tabling an economic statement in the House last week to deal with the economic crisis but which contained a slew of ideological poison pills. To adopt it, the Opposition parties would have had to vote against workers rights to strike in the public service, and against the public funding that political parties receive on a per vote basis. That such a statement was made when the Canadian economy is in its worst shape in decades was simply too much for the progressive majority inParliament and they vowed to introduce a non-confidence motion, defeat the government and form their own. All the ground work has been laid for that now and we await the next moves of the Conservatives who may yet suspend Parliament to prevent the change in government. Imagine that. A party forming a minority government suspending Parliament to protect itself from a coalition representing a majority of votes and seats in the middle of an economic crises that needs a new government budget and economic policy. That would truly be the most self-serving of political acts, risking Canada’s economic position for a few months of limited power, for the Consertaives would surely be defeated in the House at the first opportunity.
Now as a progressive minded person, all of this has made me a little giddy and a little nervous. I am truly captured by the notion of politics being done differently (even though on our side the reason for it is much more opportunistic than in the States). I have been imploring my American progressive friends to remember the significance of Obama’s election and remember that what he has set out to do will be hard work and will anger and alienate many people IF people become preoccupied with the day to day struggles and appointments and policy statements. It’s akin to doing major surgery – Obama has the chance to remove a malignant pox on American politics but to do so means making friends with people and ideas that are anaethma to his supporters. But stick by him and have faith that the patient will survive.
My friend Alison made the same prescription this morning for us north of the border too. If we are to have this coalition and we are to make it wotk, we must argue its ideas with conviction but at the end of the day support it at the cost of a disunified progressive poltical sphere, ripe for the splitting by the Conservatives.
If this works, in both countries, the potential benefits are enormous for everyone. The Nothern 2/3 of North America will have a steady, progressive and creative hand on the rudder during this huge economic crises, politics may never look the same and the right wing in both countries will have a chance to reinvent themselves away from the ideological orientation of their previous incarnations, and towards a new conservatism that brings something to the table other than derision and fear mongering.
We have a chance here to seize something. Crisis. Danger. Opportunity. Political leadership will be remade in the next couple of years, and its about time. Hang on.