The date is Tuesday 22nd February 2011 and the time 12.51pm, and the City of Christchurch, New Zealand is about to be changed forever. It took a 6.2 scale earthquake, 10 seconds to liquefy the soil and destroy much of the city and surrounds. 185 people lost their lives and large tracks of land have now been deemed uninhabitable.
 
While it is not uncommon for people to come together in a crisis, something quite remarkable has emerged from the rubble … a community-led vision for both the short and long-term rebuilding of the physical and social infrastructure of the city.
 
Vacant land, where buildings once stood and are still waiting to be rebuilt, has been turned into parklets and playgrounds. Some have even been turned into paid parking, where the funds are quarantined for other community development activities.
 
There has been thought given to active transport (cycling, walking, e-scooters) to reduce the pollution from cars, work done to initiate urban farming that delivers a paddock to plate supply chain within the CBD and even returns the waste back to the paddock for composting. This is a self-sustaining commercial venture that demonstrates sustainable ways to reduce food miles.
 
By all accounts the people of Christchurch have grabbed the opportunity to review and regather with both hands. It’s not perfect, and I am sure there are still plenty of issues, more healing and rebuilding to be done … but the start that they have made is inspiring.
 
However, there could be a deeper lesson for engagement and facilitation practitioners to consider here – the way in which physical structures lock in a certain way of relating and being with each other.
 
Many of us face ingrained systems and thinking that serve as a speed bump or even a dead end on the road to change. But the example of Christchurch could be showing us two things:

1. That institutions and people can change ingrained systems and ways of working.
2. That what locks people in is not just the structure of institutions but the physical structures we create.

What is intriguing in the Christchurch example is that the walls of these institutions came crumbling down before the institutions and systems changed. On some level it makes perfect sense. If the people and systems building the buildings are locked into a certain way of living, then those buildings will be created to support the system that is there.

Think about the hallowed institution of government and the protocol that surrounds how elected officials interact and what it does for the quality of decision making. There is something about Humans that seems to be hard-wired to maintain and even defend the status quo. It is not until people seem to be quite literally broken that our humility kicks in and we become willing to work in a different way.

But could we consider if this level of change can be achieved without the need for tragedy?
 
In a world where everything counts, change may need to be considered on a deeper level than just the mental desire to do something different. Step out from the safety of those meeting room tables, turn off those power points and look across the room, sit in circles so you can see each other and you could even look at the photos on the walls and the messages they are sending.
 
If we want people to free up how they and/or others think then it seems incumbent on us all to explore the subtle changes we can all be making to help people move together differently, rather than doing the same thing and expecting something different.
 
If people respond with discomfort then maybe, that is the start of a change you are looking for … What habitual structures do you have for working with groups that may be a rut?
 

My truth, your truth, our truth, THE truth … in this post truth era of ‘alternative facts’ it would seem that the most needed commodity on the planet at the moment is the hardest to find.
 
People and societies are asking for a clear way through the many complex and challenging issues we face. Climate change, the rate of family violence, depression, dementia, obesity, slavery (aka. human trafficking), the degree of trust in governments and religious institutions, the ongoing intolerance and discrimination that occurs due to race, religion or gender, corporate greed, abuse of the elderly, to name but a few.
 
The list of issues and the many more not listed, suggests that we need a different approach or maybe we need a very, very old approach.
 
When the suggestion is made that a different approach is needed, it is easy to get general head nodding and agreement, but then the need to actual look at what we personally believe or the need to change what we personally do and the age-old battle between power and truth plays out … Here are two short examples, a few hundred years apart, to set the scene for the next part of this exploration.
 
Dr Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor who lived in the mid 1800s. He was concerned about the deaths of women who gave birth in the hospitals where he worked. He discovered that the hospitals where autopsy were also conducted had higher rates of death. Even though they did not know much about bacterial infection at the time, he implemented a regime of hand and equipment cleaning that led to the reduction in mortality rates of these women.
 
Today we take this understanding for granted and would scoff at any suggestion that this was anything but good practice, but the medical profession of the day did not take kindly to the suggestion that they may be somehow responsible for the death of their patients.

Power trumped truth and Dr Semmelweis was run out of town. In that moment where lives were on the line, those who had taken an oath to protect our well-being chose power over truth.
 
We might write this off as an issue from centuries ago but the reality is, the same thing happens today – the politicisation of climate change, the lobbying by the food industry against any changes to the levels of sugar in foods, the protection of sensationalistic journalism over reporting of facts and balance.
 
There are many more examples in modern times where evidence is dismissed, manipulated or simply vilified to avoid admitting an seemingly uncomfortable but simple truth … 'we got it wrong'. In many regards it’s no big deal, people make mistakes all the time; the adult option is to learn and move on, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
 
Who hasn’t been involved in some kind of project where the ‘powers that be’ determine that something should be a certain way, yet all the evidence suggests that this is the wrong direction?
 
As a society we have placed more value in appeasing the power base than we have in building collective understanding. It is an approach that is exemplified by the adversarial models of the Westminster system, the legal system, and even the academic realms focus more on the rigorous defence/prosecution of an idea rather than collective understanding.
 
The basic premise makes sense: test your idea rigorously and the best ideas will survive. But when power and the need to be right get in the way, it becomes okay to bend the truth, to ignore or make up facts, to incite outrage and to stack the deck. One side takes I step away from truth and the other takes two. We justify it by saying that, if we don’t, the other side will, and in doing so give another crank to the flywheel that keeps things ticking along as they always have.
 
We glorify this adversarial approach in TV shows and continue to reward fear-based campaigns and media articles with our reactions and indignation. However, the community has become tired of being manipulated like this; but rather than change the systems that support this way of operating, the community is  beginning to use the same strategies against the decision makers.
 
Organisation complain of less civility and genuine interest in understanding at public consultations. The public have gotten better at inciting and threatening those in power and the bullied have become the bullies. It makes community leadership a fraught position where it is fatal to have made a mistake in the past or show any glimpse of fallibility or uncertainty. Community leaders are pressed into the relentless demand for quick solutions that relieve and appease. Everyone wants an answer but no one wants to do the hard work that it takes to keep communities and organisations strong.
 
But humility, vulnerability and uncertainty are the hard work that makes communities strong. We need places for people to explore what they don’t know, we need places of humility where it is okay to start a conversation with ‘we’ve got it wrong’, rather than ‘this is why I am right’.
 
 “The descent into right and wrong, is simply a sign of the absence of truth.”    Liane Mandalis
  
The reality is, there is no magic bullet. No three step program that will bridge the divide. The principles that have underpinned quality conversation are not new, just not always followed; so here is a simple memory jogger:

1. NO BLAME/NO FAULT: We all have thinking errors, biases and our own ‘power’ structures that we unconsciously protect. Truth is a humility this lies beyond those structures. There is such a thing as a unified truth and understanding that groups can arrive at, but only if arriving at that place is desired more than being right.
2. LIVED EXPERIENCE IS EVIDENCE: Science is one form of evidence and has an important role to play, but our own lives and experiences are also evidence. What is felt is also evidence or at least a starting point for another way of understanding. If we only rely on scientific evidence and do not explore our lived experience, nothing new is tried and we end up in an intellectual battle, limiting our exploration of what is needed and what is possible.
3. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE: In any system we all have a role to play. Pointing fingers is the easy part, taking responsibility for our part is the doorway to understanding others and allows for others to explore their own role. 
4. GO TO THE BIG PICTURE: While there are many who stoke the fire of individuality, humans are social beings and do better as a collective. This means there is something to learn from each other in every problem or issue. We ignore this because it feels too big, but we don’t need to change the world before looking at the learning, we just need to look at the collective learning and apply #3 (personal responsibility) – we only change the world when we change our world.

 
Of course, there is more to say on all of these and more to explore … but at least we are having the conversation.

Having a bird’s eye view across sectors, regions, disciplines and levels of management in my work is amazing. Over the years I have grown to appreciate the passion, commitment and dedication that people show regardless of which sector they work in. It turns out that no sector has a monopoly on passion or commitment. It is also evident that no sector has managed to crack the ever-elusive goal of work life balance. In fact, it is becoming clear that despite all this passion, people’s energy reserves are running at an all-time low. As such and without being an alarmist, this blog is diverting from the accepted approach of talking about what we do and is going to look at how we do it.
 
Regardless of the dedication and our ability to work ‘smarter’, without looking more deeply at how we look after ourselves, we end up running on a wet marble floor, it looks fancy at the start but eventually you’ll slip and fall.
 
But how do we grab hold of something that can be so personally confronting and a minefield of strict regimes, New Year resolutions and battles of will? It makes little sense that self care can be turned into a battle or dogma, after all its self-care. Yet for some reason we can replace beating ourselves up with work, with beating ourselves up about our diet or lifestyle choices. 

Self care, isn't a chore, it's a daily choice, NOT making the choice to self care is what turns life into a chore.  It becomes a leak in the boat, that make it run slower and less able to move through the water. If we can see we have a hole in our boat, we have choices, fix it, patch over it or buy a bigger bilge pump and wonder why we are wasting so much fuel and money on pumps.

For some reason, most of us do the last two. In fact we have gotten so good at patching over things or spending money on 'bilge pumps' our view of what is normal has shifted over time.
 
For example, it is now ‘normal’ to have work emails ping into the home through smart phones, to the point that we never really turn off. It is now ‘normal’ to walk around with a take away coffee cup, in fact not only normal, it is a social ritual. This was not the norm 10 years ago so how does it become normal?
 
The reason these things become ‘normal’ is that we are very clever at finding ways to cope with the next level of stress/distress being presented. We are incredibly skilled at offsetting stress and pressure with supplementary fuels like sugar, alcohol, caffeine, over or under exercising, getting lost in movies/books/TV/ computers or creating energy through emotional drama. 

This approach is the equivalent of patching over the issue or buying a bigger bilge pump. We ending up spending lots of time and money on these things but they never actually plug the whole. In fact, sometimes they add more holes to the bottom of the boat.

What gets tricky is working out if what we are doing if supporting us or masking the issue. Try this exercise, choose one of the supplements you use and imagine if you only used that one all of the time, in fact what if you increased the ‘dose’ to make up for not using the others. How long before your body said ‘something’s not working here’? Would your body still say having that supplement is a good thing?

We seem to have an innate ability to know how much of each supplement to use so as to not trigger a response from our body that might suggest that chosen supplement is not the best for us.  Indeed we are resilient and smart we are able to hide a deeper question  -

“Is how I live/work really normal or is it just something we have gotten used to?”
 
The simplest cross chek we use, is to look around and see how others are doing. If most people have an energy drop in the afternoon, it must be normal, if most people use supplementary fuels, it must be normal. But by using this approach, we can all incrementally keep dropping our vitality and increasing our suppliments.
 
What is societies current sense of normal achieving in terms of vitality and well-being?
 
Since 1980, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of people with diabetes[1]. In fact lifestyle diseases are now the number one cause of death globally[2]. When the number one cause of death gloabbly are preventable lifestyle choices, surely the question needs to be asked, how has this become normal?
 
It seems that we are becoming so good at ‘coping’ that we are masking a broader decline in our well-being.
 
Maybe we need to reset the benchmark for vitality?

• Is it possible to consider getting everything done in a day/week and not rely on caffeine, alcohol or refined sugars etc.? Is it possible to get to the end of the day/week and not want to hide away in a book, screen, bottle of wine or sporting contest?
• Is there a normal level of vitality that we had as children but have long forgotten?

This is not about suggesting a life of abstinence, but rather an honesty about why and how we choose to do what we do. Because without this honesty we progressively and ever so incrementally spiral down into 'new normals' without really clocking the overall change. We can then find ourselves justifying, defending or being critical of any suggestion that life was anything but normal.
 
In recent years, there has been a wonderful mental health campaign called R U Ok day, where people are encouraged to show they care enough to ask people they know if they are okay.

So for this month, take a moment and ask yourself,

• Is your current vitality ‘normal’ or something you have gotten used to?
• Are you  ‘solutions’ and something makes you feel better or do they contribute to a self sustianing vitality?

​If you feel better ask yourself “better compared to what?”


[1]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-07/australia-urged-to-consider-sugar-tax-amid-grim-diabetes-stats/7305804
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-28/lifestyle-diseases-the-worlds-biggest-killer/2695712

I have been fortunate enough to recently make another trip to the UN in Bangkok. As with my previous trip it is amazing to see people from around the world, working towards cracking some of the tough issues we all face as a global community.
                    
I also noted with interest that the challenges people working with the UN face are no different to others I work with. From organisations to countries the same dynamic is at play … what defines us, divides us.
 
Day to day in all sectors you can see ‘talks breaking down’, not because there is anything overly wrong with the content but because of a ‘personality’ issue. It is endemic that people become invested in a role, job or title and begin to see any change as a threat to that investment … it seems what defines, us divides us.
 
Interestingly enough, this is also seen on a community, national and international level, where people become overly invested in a certain national or cultural identity and the result is either a willingness to ‘tolerate’ others, a desire to change them or an outright protectionist approach… again what defines us, divides us.
 
Throw in a crisis or natural disaster and for the most part, these constructed barriers get dropped and some truly amazing things get achieved. But give us time and space to ‘think’ about it and how we look becomes more important that what we achieve.
 
Looking at this, it seems that the biggest barrier to ‘changing the world’ is changing the mind set of the people. As an engagement practitioner, this phenomenon is intriguing to explore. As a member of the human race, it’s a bit more frightening!

Try this activity… think about how you introduce yourself to others.
 
Now delete any part of that introduction that refers to your social standing, profession, job title, family of origin, marital or family status, culture, hobbies etc … is there anything left?
 
If we allow ourselves to drop the external things we use to define us, it is possible to appreciate the qualities people bring to any situation, regardless of their job, hobby, family role or cultural persuasion.
 
There are people who can bring detail to life, people who can lifting things out of the detail, the fact is both are needed. People who know how to bring truth to a situation and people who can deliver that truth in a way that doesn’t hit others over the head.
 
To get past the barriers created by an externally shaped identity starts with appreciating the quality you and others bring.  It makes sense that you would feel defensive if something you have worked years to achieve is being challenged. Yet if we are appreciating your quality it is somehow less threatening.

For example, if two people are talk about a project and one says “the CEO is not going to like this”.  There is a reasonable chance that they are going to become defensive. Instead, what if the conversation went something like - “You have an amazing ability with detail and I can see the time this have taken, for the CEO sign off on what you're suggesting, we need to put it into language they will understand. Let’s work with Bob, who is great at converting detail into CEO speak.”
 
When people are appreciated for their quality it becomes less threatening to collaborate, as each contribution has a value…and the majority of times, contribution does have a value.
 
The key though is that we can’t expect others to make the first move or expect it to be there when you need it. Appreciation is something we live and also need to apply to ourselves. It is much harder if not impossible to see and appreciate these qualities in others.
 
So what do you appreciate about what you bring?
 

To name the ‘elephant in the room’ is to point out a topic that is obvious to many, but one that people find scary or unwilling to confront.

We are told that robust debate is what helps new ideas to emerge.  The debate approach is encouraged where each side need only point out the flaws in the other side’s arguments. Certainly this is the message our parliamentary system and media model. This approach suggests that it is more important to be clever with words and have a sharp mind and a sharp tongue, and less important to have something valuable to contribute. After all, it takes pressure and friction to make diamonds right!
 
There seems to be a contradiction between the need to debate, argue and ‘win the day’ and the honesty, and at times vulnerability required for deeper insights. We forget that messengers are sensitive; in fact, we rely on their sensitivity to spot the issues that need to be named.
 
The debate approach is laced with the implicit threat that if you want to name the elephant in the room, then ‘prepared to do battle’. Just because the elephant is big, we forget that it is sensitive too.
 
Leaders who encourage the debate approach risk being trapped in the rarefied air where people around you are less willing to be honest.  The result is that many leaders are like the emperor with new clothes, protected by only seeing and hearing the things they want to see and hear, yet blinded by the reality they choose not to see. Dare we suggest that leaders are sensitive too?
 
This prompts the question – with all this sensitivity, why do we promote and perpetuate conversations that shut down the deeper honesty required for meaningful exchange and change?
 
There seems to be a crazy disconnect from knowing we are all imperfect and a defensiveness that seeks to ignore this same fact. If we accept that the way we learn is from people showing us our blind spots, then the fact that someone can see and name an ‘elephant’ should be celebrated and greeted with great inquiry, rather than met with derision or challenge.
 
Could it be that pride has a deeper hold on us than we would care to admit?
 
This is something to ponder on if you have ever felt the urge to shoot, deflect or reject the messenger. The next time you feel this urge, ask yourself “what am I protecting?”
 
But responsibility is not just with the receiver. The reality is as much as we want the emperor to change first, the reality is that change often starts with the person delivering the message. 

The debate paradigm leaves everyone ‘braced for the fight’ and at times messengers lace good ideas with a tone or energy that is designed to get a defensive reaction. When someone hears you say “I’ve got an idea” but they also feel “you’re not going to like this” in your delivery, most of the time they will react to what is felt before they consider the words. 
 
I hear some of you saying, “are we all just delicate flowers and don’t we need to toughen up?”, but I would go the other way and say we ignore people’s sensitivity at our own peril, as it is a window to true insight. The problem is we have misunderstood sensitivity for niceness.
 
Being nice is actually avoiding honesty, being aware of people’s sensitivity not holding back what needs be be said but saying it with care and respect to the person inside. In fact, if we say we care about a person, a project or issue, then holding back  and being nice can be just as abusive as the person who is dismissive of new (or different) ideas.
 
Think about an insight you would like to deliver to someone …
 
1) What if you shared that insight with ZERO attachment to the other person/people liking it, accepting it or even listening? Are you clear about what you are protecting or projecting onto the other person?
 
2) What if you considered if the gap you are asking them to jump is too wide? The steps that are obvious to you, may not be so for the other person. Does it need to be broken down?
 
3) What if you then added a tone that reflected your interest in their wellbeing? (Wellbeing not comfort)
 
How have the message and/or tone changed? Its good, but of course it is not a guarantee of people agreeing with you. People have free will and some are more invested in the world being the way it is. (See #1)
 
Any reaction is essentially saying that the environment is not safe enough for the person you are talking to.  Some of it will come from the receivers’ own life experience, some of it you can control by checking your own level of defensiveness. (See #1)
 
But if you get stuck, then the brave and those who truly care, have found the REAL elephant in the room. It’s not the topic but the change/learning people are scared of. Dare go there and name that, or do we have a vested interest in NOT getting too honest? It’s a crazy concept that we can get too honest.
 
This is not about everyone becoming a psychotherapist but about fostering a greater willingness to learn from each other.
 
Doing battle and debating with our intellect might be stimulating but speaking, sharing and exploring in consideration of each other’s sensitivity can change someone’s life.