In many ways, title of this approach bears feeling of oxymoron/paradox. At the first instance, liberating from any structure demands escape velocity. So you can imagine, how far the initiative to start discussion regarding it is challenging. It is a quest of learning in various problem situations of life. How to define problems, how to contextualize them and how to arrive at consensus to start working on it to move towards solution.
It is our common experience
that “We are not good at designing conversations or interactions.” In a
meaningful conversation, time slows down, doubts are cleared and we feel at
home as far as expressing our confusions, problems are concerned. Essentially,
in a group what we are trying to do is, to arrive at the same level of
understanding (without feeling negating cognitive dissonance about it). So,
small details of how interactions are designed—matter.
Abraham Lincoln, when he was on
filed-tour during war of Northern and Southern states of USA, met soldiers on
one of the front lines. One soldier when taken aback because of Lincoln’s height,
asked him, how tall are you? He replied, “My son, my feets are tall enough to
reach ground.” So, what this story indicates is—how shedding baggage of power
and authority is crucial, if we wish to create connections to listen to each
other. There are always lots of parallel conversations happening around. So
drawing from the seeds spread around those conversations will help us not only
to relate to us, but also learn from those. In liberal conversations, we should
always take care to observe what kinds of spaces are created. People,
audiences, consumers are comfortable in articulating in safer spaces. These
safer spaces are designed in a way to promote and motivate active
listening—willingness to listen.
It is because of these patient,
other centered interactions one is able to realize how perception of same thing
is similar/dissimilar. How commonalities are reinforced? How different patterns
emerging, are observed? In many interactions, “One nature of expression is
different than that of other colleague`s nature of expression.” Because of the
interactions, which are organized in a way different than traditional, tendency
to hold on to our own idea is challenged and gets shattered. We learn to enjoy
to add, share and collaborate. We start innovating combination of thoughts and
experimenting with adaptations to external ideas, thoughts.
Traditionally we are hard wired
for patterns. We are poor at analyzing because we connect better to emotional
self and emotional social. So it is always necessary to be compassionate
towards self and towards other, while expressing and listening to others. This
gives an emotional/humanistic orientation to dialogue with self and others. So,
there always need to have effect to be always present: across activities,
across groups, across levels and across functions in listening mode, in
observation mode, in learning mode.
It is after all, struggle of
data vs patterns. In many ways, stories are beautiful form of data. Whenever we
meet, interact, converse: we need to encourage each other to tell the stories.
Stories give us authentic first person and multifaceted perspective about the
personality, life and times. Stories expand and inspire our imagination and
also allow us to develop emotional connect.
Different ways through which
‘conversations’ are done liberates participation for everyone. Then, after we
invite people to repeat their stories, our understanding about reality deepens.
Always make sure to invite, appeal others to contribute to stories. Listening,
sharing and adding emphasize power of loose connections. We are bound by
‘Occupational Psychosis’. Our mental abilities, skills, vision are constrained
by cognitive patterns evolved due to kind of life we lived, nature of struggle
of survival we are in and type of work we do for living. For example, “For
hammer everything is a nail.” ‘Interjectional structures are ubiquitous’, only
thing is that we don’t make use of that. Our worldview about ‘interaction’ can
be summarized out of our vision about education. “We never really attain
students, we teach them.”
Managed discussions are
dangerous for creativity. Conventional structures stifle inclusion and
engagement. Meetings, discussions, classrooms are full of disengaged,
dysfunctional groups and wasted ideas. Innovative interventions in
conversations may introduce novelty and freshness in ideas; make the process of
engaging with stakeholders more reflective and exploratory to scout for new
possibilities. Traditional presentations
and conversations need to go beyond ‘over-controlled’, ‘too-uniform’, ‘engaging
only few in a group’ and ‘targeted only at formal event’ stereotypes. They need
to be more process driven rather than rigid understanding about ‘output’ in a
material sense. Open discussions involve, accommodate ‘under-controlled’, are
flexible with unstable relationships, provide freedom to enter conversation at
any point of time, give liberty to take any direction of thought.
In many ways, approach towards
‘liberating structures’ is shaped in a distributed control through diverse yet
interdependent relationships. Here, direction of conversation is shaped by
participants themselves. This empowers and enables ordinary people to express
what they have found better (or even extraordinary) solutions to existing
problems—against all odds—without access to any extra resources. This process
also thus respects and adheres to ‘Collective Wisdom’ to solve problems. It delivers
better outcomes by recognizing outliers. Thus emerges ‘positive deviance’,
perfected over a time though accumulation of small-incremental outlier acts.
Example: COffice Hours-- Students can guide each other at open
session organized by teachers at cafeteria-canteen. They maintain cohort
relationships—that is a major resource. They also recruit each other. They
reciprocate each other. Thus, creating conditions to connect through informal
venues crucial by talking to people you don’t know.
So, creating conditions for
help is important. This is new kind of empathetic-sympathetic-compassionate
culture. Traditionally, we are not good at asking for help and also not good at
helping each others. Thus, these kinds of interactions also induce
transformations into self. This gives comfort-belief that yes; there is
somebody to help. Communication is mostly non-verbal. It helps us to know what
we perceive to be a problem, is not exactly that felt by us. It also makes it
easier to live by knowing that we are not only one who has problems. Usually
problems are never what they seemed to be. In this kind of interaction, an
individual goes through 'listener-clarifier-adviser' mode giving ‘value addition
of being stranger’ to a person seeking help. What is newly being suggested is
practical, easy to follow and with absolutely least cost with certain empathy.
Tolerance with some genuine urge to help coming out with responsibility—which is
founding principle of this relationship. In short, whatever the problem—there
is always a better, alternate solution dispersed in prospective conversations,
we normally fail to explore. What we need, just to look around—see, listen,
ask, interact, discuss—in a way different than we use to do, different than
traditionally rigid way.
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