Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: The Power of Cultivating Collaborative Leadership

by Miki Kashtan

Nick (not his real name), CEO of a privately owned company, identified listening to others as one key area of learning for him. As we explored this challenge, we soon realized that truly opening to hearing others would require overcoming a habit of distancing and separating himself from people whom he perceived to be different. I offered him one of my personal practices: looking for 3-5 things I have in common with someone I experience as different and separate from me. Nick immediately thought of Dick Cheney as an exception, someone with whom he really didn’t have anything in common. I challenged him on this belief, and he succeeded in identifying several qualities they shared, the last of which was this statement: “We both like power.” What did power mean to Nick? Without any hesitation he said: “When you have power you rarely hear ‘no.’”

“Yes” as a Resource for Power

I define power simply as the capacity to mobilize resources to meet needs. One of the resources that people in power have is other people’s reluctance to say “no.” That’s where my perspective intersects with Nick’s. If someone is the boss, there is every reason for others to say “yes,” ranging from fear of consequences to genuine interest in supporting the boss’s vision. Hearing mostly “yes” provides enormous ease for those in power. I can see the appeal of being able to make things happen.

The Cost of Too Much “Yes”

Despite the appeal, in my own small sphere of influence I have been cultivating the practice of questioning people’s “yes” and encouraging others to say “no” to me. I have been recommending this practice to anyone in a position of power.

Considering the ease and apparent efficiency of people’s willingness to go along with the choices of the person in power, why would I recommend the often arduous practice of challenging the “yes?” What gets lost when the option of “no” is less accessible to people? In particular, is there any way in which the effectiveness of the person on top gets compromised? What is the significance of encouraging “no” for the functioning of the whole?

A work culture that operates on the assumption of “yes” compromises the deeper power of people at the top. Here’s why. Leaders need some amount of dissent for creativity and fresh thinking. Without hearing the truth about the true human cost of a path of action leaders lack critical feedback for making informed choices. Agreements based on fear of consequences are less authentic. When people don’t feel free to say “no” they are less likely to give of themselves fully and take ownership of the work they do.

Challenging the “Yes” Supports Organizations

When we recognize that we lose something when someone does something just because we have power, we can create a radically different work environment. As managers, when we honor people’s limits and let them know we care about their wellbeing, we unleash a level of goodwill that permeates all relationships within the group. When we express interest in people’s perspectives and experience, we contribute to creative relationships in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When we include others’ concerns about decision we want to make, we increase ownership of the whole and responsibility for a shared outcome. When we are open to changing our mind in order to integrate feedback from others, we send a message that everyone is significant for the whole, and thereby contribute to much deeper buy-in. The result is not only more satisfaction. Empowering people leads to more distributed innovation, scalability, and – even if it may be surprising – more productivity.     

Steps toward a Collaborative Form of Leadership

What does leadership mean within such an environment? What do these principles look like in practice? What can you do today to open the door for new possibilities in your relationships with those you lead? Instead of following the impulse to control and direct everything, focus on providing the vision, the inspiration, and the creative edge that galvanize people’s capacity to contribute. You can encourage everyone to continually learn and adapt to changing conditions. You can guide the decision-making process to increase synergy and maximize everyone’s contribution. You can support people in finding their true potential and taking risks knowing they will be supported. Ultimately, collaborative leadership, at its best, is a way to restore meaning and humanity to our work life, for leaders as well as for everyone else.

If you work in or with an organization, and you want to learn more about collaborative leadership, you may want to explore the MCR full yearlong program starting this coming May, and the MCR conference in March. If you are curious, you can get answers to all your questions in one of the informational calls we have lined up (the next one is January 18^th).

Tests of Courage

by Miki Kashtan

Until I read Michael Nagler’s The Search for a Nonviolent Future, I had no idea that some efforts to respond to Hitler nonviolently did take place, let alone that by and large such efforts were successful. The most notable of them is partially known to many: the successful effort on the part of Danes to save virtually all their Jews and smuggle them to Sweden. What is usually less known is the progressive and widespread nonviolent resistance to German occupation that Danes mounted as the war dragged on.

Denmark Rising: A Novel

Author Barry Clemson used these facts of history as the foundation for a literary project the likes of which I had never seen: a what-if novel about a full-on nonviolent resistance on the part of Danes right from the first moment of occupation. Barry didn’t veer significantly from the historical record. Almost all the characters in the novel are real-life people albeit with some embellishment and added circumstances. In addition, many of the specific acts described in the book took place, sometimes by fewer people than described, sometimes in more circumscribed circumstances or later dates than appear in the novel. The fundamental difference lies in the premise: whereas real-life Danish resistance started from the bottom up and built over time, the novel’s context is an already established upfront plan of action designed from the top and encompassing the overwhelming majority of the population.

The result is Denmark Rising, a document that defines an entirely different flavor of heroism from the popular image of the person who kills the “bad guys.” The people populating this novel, from Danish King Christian to the workers in a factory who risk flogging to delay and prevent the construction of a submarine for use by the German navy, all exhibit the double courage that defines the passage into nonviolence: the courage to overcome internal habits of reaction, and the courage to face the potential consequences that arise from standing up to those in power, especially when they are fully committed to subjugation of the resisters.

I read this book, and I recommend others read it, not because of its literary value. I wasn’t, in fact, particularly enamored by the writing style. I still found it hard to put the book down, because the story and the characters were so compelling, and the effect so profoundly inspiring. I had already seen and read enough prior to reading Denmark Rising to know that ordinary citizens rise up to extraordinary circumstances. What this book provides, in addition, is a level of detail that makes the vision of massive nonviolent resistance utterly believable. I couldn’t help wishing that it were even more true than it is, and hoping that, somewhere, someone with enough influence will read this, become inspired, and mount such a principled and comprehensive program. My own intuitive conviction that even war can be met with nonviolence now has a vivid story to back it up.

Police Adjective: A Movie  

At the other end of the spectrum of studies in courage I found a movie that I saw last night. Written, directed, and produced by Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, this movie has a very simple plot: a police officer following a teenager who is accused of selling drugs, and facing a major moral dilemma along the way.

I think of this movie as a rare masterpiece, a profound and subtle exploration of core aspects of what it means to be human. The movie moves slowly in time, and contains very little action except at the very end. Because of the moral compunction that the main character has about his assignment, he is being presented with an incredibly difficult choice that might have life-changing consequences. Will he follow his conscience and stand up to power, or will he succumb to fear and give up?

How far would any of us go in following our own moral intuition? How much and how often and how far do we each give up on what we know is true for us in order to maintain food on the table, social acceptability, or any other kind of basic comfort? I don’t know of short or easy answers to these questions. I do have a deep sense that in some way our future depends on our growing ability to keep reflecting on these questions, and on our collective ability to learn how to move towards deep moral and personal integrity. I want to keep growing in these areas and inspire others to do the same. I want to keep wrestling with my own complicity when it’s there. I want to find, accept, and then stretch my limits so I can take bolder and bolder actions in the face of fear. I want to become ever better at encouraging others to do the same, because I want us to have a future we can look forward to and participate in wholeheartedly.

Note: The movie is available for instant watching on Netflix. You can also read an interview with Corneliu Porumboiu.

Why I Don't Make New Year's Resolutions

by Miki Kashtan

 

It’s Friday, January 07, 2011. I am flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to London and Israel where I am scheduled to be through the end of the month. This piece was going to happen last Friday. I had thought of it a few days earlier. It was going to be my piece for New Year’s Eve. Instead of which last Friday and for several days afterwards I thought my sister had a recurrence of ovarian cancer (which for now we think she hasn’t) and life took an entirely different direction. And by the time the medical scene cleared itself up I was already in high gear for this trip. Which is just one particularly glaring instance of the radical and irreducible unpredictability of life. Which is one reason why I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. 

Relating to the Future

One of the deepest forms of learning and integration for me has been micro-practices, especially those that hinge on a turn of phrase. My first one was catching myself when I said I “had to” do something, and reclaiming my choice by expressing what I wanted that led me to make the choice I was making. Nowadays this practice is so integrated that I hardly ever even catch myself thinking it.

Some time ago I added a new practice: whenever I remember to do so, I replace language about the future with language about what I know in the present. As with so many of my other practices, the first thing I learned is the pervasiveness of our habit of predicting the future. Even a simple and innocuous line such as “I will call you back in 20 minutes” is a prediction which isn’t always borne out. Since taking on this practice I have become so aware of the many times that I say I will do something and then don’t. I don’t think of myself as particularly unreliable. In fact, ask anyone who knows me and you will discover (at least so I believe…) that I have a reputation for a high degree of follow-through. Nonetheless, once I started noticing, I saw just how often unforeseen, even unforeseeable circumstances, intervene in all of our lives. And so I don’t say “I will call you back in 20 minutes.” Instead I might say “I just wrote myself a note to call you back in 20 minutes.”     

If I can’t predict, let alone control, what will happen in 20 minutes, I find the idea of predicting a whole year hard to imagine. How can I, on the first day of the year, know enough to make a New Year’s resolution? I worry that I set myself up in this way, which brings me to my next concern: what happens when (more often than if) I don’t keep my resolutions?

Relating to Myself

My relationship with myself is of supreme importance to me, and especially the aspect of it that has to do with self-acceptance. Whenever I act in some way that’s not in line with my wishes, decisions, or values, I am presented with the challenge of relating to this gap. The template of how to address such a gap that’s been given to us in many of our cultures has been to judge ourselves. Someone asks for critical support and we say no – we are “selfish.” We take a cookie when we’ve decided to lose weight – we are “weak-willed.” The examples abound to a degree that makes them part of the landscape in which we live.

However prevalent such ways of relating to ourselves continue to be, I want to increase and increase my capacity to meet the gap between my actions and my values with self-acceptance. This is also what I have been teaching others. The basic premise is simple: any action that I take, no matter how much it aligns with my values, is an attempt to meet some basic human needs. If I can identify and connect with those needs, I increase my self-acceptance. With self-acceptance comes the possibility of learning and growth, which don’t tend to happen within the context of self-judgment. As I understand and connect with all my needs, I more and more learn to include in my choices both the values I have and the many other needs that might interfere. I love the creativity that arises from that kind of exploration.

To nourish this kind of openness, one of the earliest practices I took on was replacing “should” with language that connects to choice and to what I want. I have noticed that grounding my choices in my needs leads to more felt freedom than attributing them to external forces. This simple practice radically transforms my inner experience. I find more energy and willingness in me to do what I want, and more knowledge of who I am and what I value.

A New Year’s Resolution has the potential of turning into a major “should” and of leading to less self-acceptance. If, instead, I speak to myself about what I want for the coming year, I am more likely to re-ground myself in my original choice and find renewed energy to attend to those needs that led me to aim in this new way.

Not Anything Goes

One of the reasons, I imagine, that we choose to use New Year’s Resolutions, is because we want to take our intentions seriously. It’s as though the external validation that comes from using the language of resolution leads us to believe we are more likely to do what we say we want to do. I sense that letting go of this structure appears like giving up on making commitments, creating change in our life, or setting a direction. What’s the needs-based alternative?

For me the fact that we can’t predict or control the future and that our own needs and perspectives continually change over time doesn’t by necessity lead to internal deregulation. Instead, I see the process of reclaiming and understanding the needs that lead me to whatever direction I want to go in as providing fuel for creating the kind of change I want to see in my life. I see a long arc of those needs being balanced with the small arc of the multitude of needs-in-the-moment that arise as the future becomes the new present. I just don’t have to fight with myself about it. In the absence of rebelling against my own decisions, I can lean, in each moment, into my core values and the immediate needs of the moment, the original choice I had made and the conditions I face now. And then I choose again, informed more and more deeply by all I know about what I and life are.

From a Jew on Christmas Eve

by Miki Kashtan

At the last Tikkun gathering that I attended back in February one of the speakers talked about how Jews and Christians are united in their discomfort about the fact that Jesus was Jewish. So I laughed with everyone else, and have shared this insight with many others since, and still see that I personally love it that he was Jewish, because I feel a sense of connection with him that is rendered more meaningful this way. Which almost begs the question: how would a Jewish woman born and raised in Israel develop a sense of connection with Jesus?

Loving No Matter What

The year was 1991. I was having a fight with a friend during and after a back-packing trip. We were lying on my bed, facing each other, talking, and trying to get to the bottom of what was going on. We weren’t getting very far, though we were getting friendlier than before. Then my friend expressed an entirely new piece I hadn’t heard before: she was upset with me for not protecting myself at all. It drove her crazy, she said, that all through the trip I continued to reach out to her, extended my love and friendship, and tried to connect. I was distraught, to the core. I started crying, I just couldn’t contain my helplessness. I couldn’t fathom how someone could be upset with me for loving, for reaching out. In my agony I cried out that I didn’t want to learn to protect myself. I knew even then, before discovering Nonviolent Communication, that I didn’t want to learn to protect myself. And right there, in the midst of crying, I suddenly sat up, agitated and excited. I understood, intuitively, from the inside out, from within the despair, what Jesus was trying to do: he was trying to love no matter what. I felt an enormous sense of kinship with him. Not because I was anywhere near where I sensed he got to. That didn’t matter. I was on the same path, and I was not the only one. In that moment, without knowing hardly anything about him, I found peace and inspiration in this way of understanding his life.

The Revolutionary Defiance of Turning the Left Cheek

My second interface with Jesus came years later, when I read Walter Wink’s The Powers That Be. Page by page Jesus was being transformed back into what I believe he was: a revolutionary Jew claiming the power of love to transform the world he lived in, and willing to risk everything for truth. I understood the courageous wisdom provided in the Sermon on the Mount, where turning the other cheek thrusts one’s full dignity on an anonymous oppressor who would aim to demean by a common practice in Roman times: delivering a back-handed slap on the right cheek. If you want to hit me, says the man who turns the left cheek, hit me as an equal. There is no way I can do justice to the depth of analytic wisdom and historical scholarship that Wink calls upon to bring to light the message of full empowerment that had been masked as passivity for centuries.

On the Path of Nonviolence

In 1996, some years before reading The Powers That Be, I embraced the path of vulnerability which I have been on ever since. I didn’t know when I started that unprotecting myself would become a path of nonviolence. I only knew I wanted to reclaim every last bit of my vulnerability, just exactly the way I had it as a child. I started doing it for myself only: I wanted to feel more at home on this planet, more alive, without opposition to what I was experiencing, and with more trust of others and of life.

Little did I know that I was stumbling on a path that would call into question every small way that I responded to my surroundings. I would have been surprised. Now I am not. I am deeply aware how protection was completely woven into the fabric of my being. I have unprotected myself sufficiently to see the pull of protection and with it the contraction that limits the truly nonviolent options. My practice is strong. By day I find heart and inner sustenance enough to soften the contractions, to expose my heart, to find presence, to reach for connection. At night, however, when I fall asleep and my conscious practice is no longer present, the deep structure of protection takes center stage again, and my sleep is disrupted, vigilant, light. I have yet to make full contact with the deepest vulnerability hidden within the protection. I have yet to experience tenderness toward the act of protecting. I have yet to find understanding and peace about choosing to protect in the first place.

If I am to love no matter what, this means loving this fierce unbending protection in me, too. If I am to sink into the fullest of vulnerability, I will find the deepest place of love in me. When I can touch or imagine that love, I feel, again, kinship with Jesus.

In the name of his love untold numbers of people were killed, many of them my people. Not only in the 20^th century. The Jews of Europe were outcast, castigated, attacked, and killed in large numbers repeatedly over the two millennia of Christianity. Speaking of love alone is not enough to prevent violence. We need courage in addition, the courage to face consequences, whether physical or emotional, so we can love fearlessly and remain soft and open enough to respond nonviolently to what we don’t like. This is how we can transform the legacy of separation, scarcity, and war we have been given into a future of love, generosity, connectedness, and the possibility of human co-existence with each other and the planet that so lovingly provides for our needs.

Receiving Feedback as Spiritual Practice

by Miki Kashtan

This week I finished teaching a 5-session phone class called Feedback without Criticism. The first 4 sessions were about giving feedback, and last night’s session was about receiving feedback. After last night’s session I have so much compassion for the untold millions who are regularly on the receiving end of both formal and unsolicited feedback which is so hard for them to receive. As a continuation to earlier posts on the topic of feedback, today I want to take a closer look at the role of self-acceptance in receiving feedback, as well as offer a few more tips to those who routinely provide feedback.

Conditional Self-Acceptance

In preparation for the class, I asked participants to read Overcoming Defensiveness, my earlier blog piece about the challenges of receiving feedback, which highlights the role of self-acceptance in being able to receive feedback effectively. With self-acceptance we are stronger, because our own view of ourselves is less dependent on what other people think or perceive about us. So it came as no surprise that people named the experience of someone catching them unprepared to give them critical feedback as being particularly painful. The deeper issue, as we learned together, is that very often our self-acceptance is conditional on being a very certain way. It’s as if we are telling ourselves: “I will accept myself for as long as I am always impeccable in how I do my work, or for as long as I always care about other people and the effect of my actions on the rest of the team members,” or whatever else you can insert there for yourself.

What would it mean to accept ourselves unconditionally, exactly the way we are? Imagine the freedom that can come from complete self-acceptance, without conditions, without having to be any particular way, without the pressure to be perfect. Imagine how much stronger we would become in facing whatever people say when we are not scrambling to hide the truth about ourselves. Working on accepting that which we don’t like in ourselves can reduce and ultimately eliminate the exhausting endless inner war in which so many of us live. With honest self-acceptance we come more fully into our place in the human fabric, alongside everyone else who’s also human, also glorious, also imperfect, also capable of making mistakes. We become less separate, and by extension more able to accept others, too.

How do we get there? By applying the core principle that whatever we do is an attempt to meet common human needs shared by all. Even malicious intent, however painful to acknowledge, results from some basic human need. Malicious intent arises when anyone is so caught in a desperate struggle to meet needs that they simply don’t see or experience any other way to proceed. Maybe it’s an expression of wanting to assert one’s existence in a situation of extreme powerlessness; maybe it’s an attempt to create justice (as violence expert James Gilligan demonstrates in his book on the topic); or maybe it’s an attempt to have one’s own pain understood in full. However unconscious these motivations may be, we can all understand them in others and in ourselves. The practice of self-acceptance is about identifying and connecting with the underlying needs that lead to any of our actions we are unhappy about, both at work and anywhere else. Doing this practice increases our self-acceptance and by extension our ability to make free and conscious choices about how to act.

Tips on Feedback Giving

Although harsh or critical feedback could potentially provide the gift of spiritual practice to the other person, providing feedback can be much more effective if we can provide it in a way that doesn’t require so much inner strength from the other person. I plan on writing a fuller piece about feedback giving in the future. For now, I wanted to share two specific and relevant tips. One is to ask, and mean it, whether our chosen time works for the other person instead of assuming that because we have something to say the other person is ready to hear it. The other is to do enough inner work before sharing feedback with another that we can truly imagine how much effort it would take of the other person to hear us. Then we can choose to express the feedback with complete honesty and yet with full care for the other person.

If you want to learn more about the art of providing feedback, you can still register retroactively to the 5-session Feedback without Criticism course I finished last week. If you want to learn more generally about using Nonviolent Communication in the workplace, you can get an MP3 of a class I taught on the topic a couple of years ago. Looking ahead, you may want to explore the MCR full yearlong program starting this coming May, and the MCR conference in March. If you are curious, you can get answers to all your questions in one of the informational calls coming up starting in January 2011.

Business Not as Usual

by Miki Kashtan

A week ago I wrote about facilitating a simulated City Council Meeting. That same day I participated in a real meeting that was very enjoyable and productive for those of us who were part of it. Sometimes I think that some people don’t even have an idea of how simple and easy it could be to function differently, and I want to offer, perhaps, some way of envisioning. I have a deep faith in the value of vision, especially practical vision.

This meeting took place as part of the Consciousness Transformation Community that I created last February. From the start, this community has been an experiment in doing things differently. I created a list of 17 commitments that together comprise my understanding of what living the consciousness of deep nonviolence means, such as “Assumption of Innocence,” “Openness to the Full Emotional Range,” “Risking My Significance,” “Generosity,” and 13 others. I invited people to join me in living these commitments and forming a community of learning and mutual. We have people in the group from North and South America, Europe, and Israel. I set up structures of support and decided for myself what I was happy to offer within the community. I created a gift economy structure, so that people who join are invited to contribute and are not in any way “required” or even subtly “expected” to contribute, either financially or otherwise. I had a very large vision for what we could create over time, and I was ecstatic to see the initial response.

Although vision comes easy to me, sometimes staying patient during implementation doesn’t. I confess to getting discouraged rather easily at times, which I am sad about because of the toll it takes on others around me. And here, too, as the first few months unfolded and I didn’t see the self-organizing happening, I became overwhelmed and worried that unless I did everything (which I was clear I wouldn’t do), the community just wouldn’t happen. As part of my own path of living these commitments I chose to share, in full, with the community what my experience was. I was deeply moved and amazed by how I was received. This initial reception turned into a structure that is now more aligned with my original vision than the one I initially created. Not only do I love the outcome, I also have been amazed at the process by which it came to be. In addition to my own coming forth, other people stepped forward and empowered themselves to make requests, offer themselves to the community, and express their longings, dreams, and concerns about the initial design. The new structure emerged from our collective engagement with all that was put on the table.

One of the elements of the structure we came up with was the establishment of monthly, open meetings for attending to community business. Anyone who is holding any responsibility for anything in the community (whether offering groups, or doing administrative support, or welcoming new members, or any other function, all of which are voluntary) is welcome to participate. In fact, anyone, even if not holding responsibility, is welcome to participate or submit agenda items. Our intention has been to have these meetings, themselves, be conducted in accordance with the commitments we have all embraced.

Last Sunday’s meeting had a number of agenda items. The one that engaged us for most of our time was the process for accepting new members to the community. I want to describe the unfolding of this discussion without getting into the details of the conversation, which would take many more words than I imagine people would want to read. At one point all but one of us were comfortable with the process as it has been so far. For a moment there seemed to be an impasse, because this person wanted something I was very much non-negotiable about. One of the commitments was primary in guiding our conversation: “Openness to Dialogue”. We engaged fully with attempting to understand the needs behind what this one person wanted. I was in awe at the care, the openness, and the presence. One by one the needs and their related strategies became known, until everything was heard. The result was a deeper understanding on all of our parts which led to a process of accepting new members that all of us liked better than what we have had. Along the way we discovered that one member was challenged at an earlier moment in the conversation and had lost trust, and we turned our attention to her. From this bit of conversation emerged more clarity about our process for deliberation and decision-making.

I am sitting here, writing this, and suddenly feeling almost inept at finding a way to describe how radical and hopeful this one meeting appears to me. I have been advocating that connection and effectiveness can go hand in hand and that full collaboration and inclusion do not necessarily mean loss of efficiency. Here, in this meeting, I experienced it in full.

Granted, we are not producing anything on which anyone’s life depends. And yet experiments like this can pave the way and show what’s possible. I am very hopeful and passionate about offering the building blocks of collaboration to organizations of all sizes that do have products and services on which others rely in a timely manner. Last May I co-led the first Making Collaboration Real (MCR) program, and wrote about it on this blog. The effects of that retreat were so powerful that we decided to make more offerings. We are launching an MCR full yearlong program starting this coming May, and an MCR conference in March. If you are curious, you can get answers to all your questions in one of our informational calls coming up starting in January 2011.

Simulated City Council Meeting

by Miki Kashtan

A couple of weeks ago I had the unusual honor of facilitating a city council meeting. The main item on the agenda was a proposal to build affordable housing right at the center of town. As you can imagine, the topic brought a lot of charge for many of those present, and people were polarized on the issue. At the end of the meeting we had a list of criteria for the proposal to address, and sent it back to the committee to re-work. No one got angry. Many shared they experienced much more hope than at the beginning of the meeting that a solution could be found that would address all or most of the criteria. I was, needless to say, overjoyed.

The only problem, though, was that this was a simulated exercise, not the real meeting with the real players. It took place during an advanced training for trainers in Nonviolent Communication that I led a couple of weeks ago. During a session on group facilitation skills, I wanted to demonstrate group decision-making, and asked for an example from the group. The affordable housing proposal was a real issue for the town where one participant was living. She presented the context for us, and then I asked each person in the group to pick a position on the issue that they could identify with. From then on, although this was simulated, people expressed a lot of passion about their position and it felt real as life.

Here are some of the facilitation guidelines that I used during that “meeting,” and my reasons for using them:

• Reflect back everything that everyone says. This provides several benefits. First, it allows each person to have an experience of being heard (assuming that the facilitator has listening skills…), which contributes to a sense of inclusion, as well as to peace and calm, very useful resources when facilitating a group. In addition, this provides information for the facilitator about what’s important to different people, which is essential for creating a solution that works for everyone or close to that. Lastly, reflection also slows down the conversation and makes it more mindful.
• Identify and record the core essence underlying what people say. This begins the process of de-polarizing. For example, one of the participants who was opposed to the proposal raised the issue of loss of property value. What we identified as the essential core of this concern was a wish for security for homeowners. Everyone in the room could line up around wanting security for homeowners, even though some people didn’t resonate with preserving property values. Recording each item also deepens the sense of being heard.
• Create a shared ownership of the criteria for the proposal. Although this may seem small, I have found that having only one list of what’s important to people in terms of criteria/qualities/needs for the proposal makes a huge difference. If two lists are maintained, the polarity gets reinforced. With one list everyone is invited into a space of shared responsibility for the well-being of all.
• Consciously invite people to only say what hasn’t been said before. Everyone needs to be heard. Not everyone needs to speak. Once a particular position has been heard in full, there is no need for anyone else to say it again. One of the reasons for recording all the needs. As facilitator, I make a point of asking specifically for only new pieces to add to the puzzle. From a certain moment on, when I already have confidence that the shared ownership is taking place, it no longer matters who has which position, and there isn’t even a need to ask for position. People grasp the concept easily, and can add directly to the list of needs/criteria.
• Tracking and respectful transitions. To increase everyone’s trust that their voice and presence matter, it’s vitally important to track who has something they haven’t yet said, and also to explicitly acknowledge and get agreement from people before moving to speak with another person. This could look like: “I know you have more to say, and I would love to hear it. At this point I am worried about staying with you because so-and-so hasn’t spoken yet at all and wants to. Are you comfortable with me switching to so-and-so and coming back to you later?” Or, in a different context, “I see that your hand is up. Are you OK waiting another couple of minutes until I finish hearing from so-and-so?”
• Transcend either/or proposals. Although sometimes the group may not have a say in the matter, whenever possible leave room for taking things back to the drawing board for re-doing a proposal. The more criteria and needs we want to include, the more flexible and creative the solution. Such flexibility usually transcends a yes or no to a fixed proposal.

At the end of the meeting we had the following list of criteria that everyone agreed were important in order to achieve a solution that’s workable:

• Providing access to affordable housing
• Ease of traffic (the proposed site would likely affect traffic patterns)
• Security for homeowners
• Fiscal soundness
• Care for endangered species (the proposed site was habitat for some species)
• Culture of peace in town
• Creative use of resources
• Creative reuse of resources
• Consideration of town's infrastructure
• Providing people directly affected by decisions a real choice in their future

The woman who brought the issue expressed astonishment and immense hope at what had happened, and was planning to meet with the mayor and propose some ideas to him. The overall feeling in the room at the end was one of elation and curiosity, with an opening to the possibility that this could be the way towns conduct business.