needs are never in conflict; only strategies are. I go even further and say that no amount of difference in strategy by itself would lead to conflict; only mistrust does.
Open my heart to fully make sense of their actions, beliefs, preferences, perspectives & habits of relating.
Empathy across Power Differences - Miki Kashtan
- Be vulnerable first
- Tell them why you are asking
- Use familiar forms
Patriarchal system keeps us separate from another = We're easier to subdue
When we empathize, we change the system.
Everyone is afraid. How can I cross the gap?
Strange form: Have you ever lost people to their discomfort about the form?
Connect to their experience, ground it in
When we're asked a question, without saying WHY that question is asked, we feel uncomfortable, since as children we're asked without knowing the agenda & we're forced to answer.
=Just check in your body what it feels like:
Are you feeling sad because you need connection? @people don't like talking about YOU
I'm asking because I want to understand, I have been hearing and I feel worried.
=Hell is being a parent and thinking there's such a thing as a good parent.
You think there is a bad way and you might as well don't do anything.
We cannot bridge across places where there is no flow without the WILLINGNESS TO MAKE MISTAKES ALL THE TIME.
I know you understand, but How do you feel in your heart?
There's some expansion. Stay in it, mark it, feel it, sense it, like remembering the landmarks of a restaurant, so you can come back, let it stay for a few seconds.
The people you interact didn't sign up to be lab animals. They won't be nice. You're not likely to get gratitude just for trying.
Do it because your heart know this is who you want to be.
Get the reward from within, not wait for someone to appreciate you.
Mistake club, whenever you go outside of what is uncomfortable, you tell each other to accept the mistake, appreciate each other, and move on
Real presence, in context
=I want to open a bubble to talk about ...
Power=capacity to mobilize resources to attend to needs.
Baby's direct capacity: crying and smiling = We only say 2 things PLEASE & THANK YOU.
Babies held in arms all the time doesn't even cry at all, because of constant non-verbal communication.
Individual differences
Structural & systemic power differences
- Structural: Doctor-patient, landlord-tenant:, boss-employee When I'm outside that structure/ relationship, I'm no longer affected. Asymmetrical - powerful people can do things that less powerful ppl can't.
- HAVING POWER MEANS YOU RARELY HEAR NO.
- Other parts of complexity are a lot smaller, liberal mythology prevents us to see.
- Most friendship circle = within your class = you can PRETEND differences in power are not there.
- Systemic: race, gender, ...
We don't HAVE power over others, we USE power over others.
=I confess I lost my track
- Presence: first step, stop chatter, BEHOLD
- Imagination: you read novel and follow the character, cultivating the muscle of empathy by imagining
=Thank you so much for the vulnerability of naming it, going straight to the issue
Remember yourself in the day when you had a strong us & them, remember in your body what that felt like, actual experience of it. Now, Plant that experience inside that person. They don't have the exact same, but some variation. Are they becoming understandable to you? Can you imagine what is important to them the moment they say this.
I don't know if that is or isn't true, and that is not the point. The important point is you're in empathy.
If the circumstances are aligned, it's a blow to hear what you said, and I still want to understand you, and I want to check, if the heart of what you said is how important dignity is to you? Because that's what it would be for me and I'm not sure if that's what it's like for you.
=This is important. ALWAYS IMPORTANT TO WHOM. Forget about anyone else in the world, TO YOU, are your needs as important as your boss? There's never any external judge to say what needs are more important.
It's not that I don't see your boss have complexities, I want YOU to value your needs fully.
This is how the system gets us.
Inside you, no one can take away anything without your permission. Outside, people do many things. You CHOOSING your needs, not because their needs more important.
In order to protect my safety, I always do what my boss says.
=I failed in my empathy.
Control - purpose
Either/or - integration
If we don't know what our theories are, we use the default
1. Needs-based view of human nature -- World based on attending to needs
2. Willingness as a core organizing principles (incentives = a form of coercion)
3. Systemic agreements within capacity as a path (not based on aspiration & obligations)
- Agreements support us to grow in capacity
Why we choose common & control
- either/or thinking: "Efficiency & collaboration don't go together"
- crisis of imagination
- lack of systemic support
- habits of competition
- lack of models that work
- internalized powerlessness: from being children, give up on ourselves/others/possibility of togetherness
Consensus:
- desire to include every voice
- avoid pitfalls of power (always certain things don't come to the table)
- wisdom of the group
From Consensus to Intergration
- Include every need rather than every voice: not majority game
- Engage with power difference rather than avoiding
- Invite dissent rather than pressing for agreement as the basis of collective wisdom
As a child, you're trained to ask: "Can I do xyz?" VS. "Are you okay if I did this?"
I interfere with their understanding of reality.
I'm pretending that there is causal link between what the child does & the "consequences".
NONVIOLENCE IS A WILLINGNNESS TO ACCEPT WHATEVER IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF OUR ACTION.
800 People rescued Jew - tended to come from non-punitive households, oriented by values not fear
The people who runs the process BELIEVE that the gap can be bridged. Participants don't.
Distinctions in support of integrative decision-making:
- agreement on principles rather than agreements on positions
- presumption of shared equal parent. What is it that makes it not wise. Each family gets an agreement that works for them.
- =save the but for later
- shift rather than compromise
- Compromise: assume scarcity, quantitative
- Integration: same solution, energetically feel creative not coercive
- willingness rather than preference
- solutions that work for everyone mindset, rather than either/or mindset
- Don't say it, finish thinking. From large gap, we go to small gap.
If we don't pay attention to power differences, we'll recreate it.
Puerto Rica: participatory budgeting, 50k people participate by going to meetings & discuss, every measures improved, index of inequality dropped. When you involve more people, you get better decision, but you need to attend to the discontent of the powerful.
Optimal conditions for collaboration
- Clarity of purpose
- Practical (not ideological) framing of issues
- People are directly impacted (I'll live with this)
- People have the stake in the solution (it matters to me)
- People have authority to implement solution (if not practical authority, moral authority counts too)
- Necessary people are in the room
- Trust exist in the group
Consensus vortex: up to a point, dissent it good. Over integration = decision fatigue.
Outliers = gifts, when I talk with 1 then 4 others feel safe
Raise your hands if you think this proposal will derail our mission vs if you think it can improve a little bit.
I open & close it to the content NOT specific people
Include needs, perspectives, ideas, concerns of those with less power
I want to hear even the smallest concern of people in the field, and from office people only if you have red flags
A deep degree of accuracy of what is capacity: is there capacity? if there isn't, mourn it.
Use capacity as a place of rest so you can grow
From Local to Global collaboration (radical-heavy & tech-light)
- make things work for the most powerful & the least powerful: The powerful has tremendous fear that my power is the only reason why people care for me.
- localize as many decisions as possible based on who's impacted
- coordinate through concentric circles with local accountability
- use sortition (random) for complex problems
- use multi-stakeholders circles for low-trust contexts (moral authority of a diverse board)
- rely on facilitation to support integration: flat back democracy
Find the political will to implement the knowledge and skills that are already here.
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