2024-12-30

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the “EA Hotel” in Blackpool. I found the atmosphere strangely and delightfully familiar, even though I knew only one person there … … in my youth I was sometimes in places where there was a high degree of intellectual – what shall I say – “repartee”? Young people with interesting projects, interests, concerns. I was there to visit my colleague friend Elisa who I got to know (online) working with Life Itself.

I was lucky enough to come by when they had a session of seven-minute lightning talks after their (very pleasant) evening meal, and I was graciously invited to take my turn, at the end, after a fascinating array of talks from residents, ranging from the highly abstract and theoretical to the intensely personal. For me, this was another fruitful instance of coming up with something under time pressure, with not enough time for my usual self-doubt and self-criticism to kick in. Nice! Following on from stimulating dinner-table conversation, and highly relevant to the connection with Life Itself, I chose the title:

Under the title, I drew a stick figure in the centre, representing the focus of personal growth/development, and a few stick figures surrounding the central figure, representing the wider cultural dimension. And then, under the creative influence of time pressure, I surrounded the stick figures with words representing to me a plausible sequence of factors that may contribute to the growth/development on both fronts. I'll go through this first forwards – what leads to what – and then in reverse – what is based on what. This is elaborated from what I was actually able to say at the time.

In a culture, often called “inclusive”, where different perspectives are all acknowledged and valued in various ways, people come to see that their own perspective is not going to be dismissed or ridiculed. They feel safe to open up and share what the really believe, even if that starts with the more public areas of life. That can gradually progress to the more personal areas.

When people feel safe to share their authentic perspectives and opinions, they can find others who share aspects of these, and connect around those shared parts. We start to feel connected, rather than alone and isolated.

As a sense of connection and mutual understanding grows, so, I expect, will a sense of trust in the others surrounding. The topic of trust comes up so often as a key feature of a productive group.

I see trust naturally developing into an attitude of care. One thing I have mentioned often, and came up in conversation here as well, was my observation around what goes on when people talk about someone in their absence — often referred to as “behind their back”. In a culture that lacks trust and care, there seems to be a default assumption that people gossip, or worse, about others when they are out of earshot. I ask, what if you experienced a culture in which people did talk about others in their absence, but did so respectfully and out of care? Something might be bothering me about someone else, perhaps giving rise to annoyance, frustration, anger or perhaps fear. Do I complain about how awful that other person is to me, how they “make me angry“, or something like that? Or, having done NVC ‘101’, when I observe that person doing or saying whatever, I feel something because my needs are/aren't being met?

NVC is all very well for one-to-one issues; but what if there is a collective wisdom in the group, such that the other group members can help me see how much of it is just me, or alternatively how if the other person changed their ways it would help the whole group? Maybe I want to talk about my feelings, where they come from, and how to change my ways. Or, maybe I want to understand the other person better, and learn from others how best to approach them in a restorative way.

My sense is that once I see people embodying this collective care for others in their absence, I can develop more trust that when people are talking about me “behind my back”, it is from a position of care and concern, aimed at my benefit as well as the benefit of the whole group.

When I experience constructive feedback from several people independently, even if it looks on the surface as criticism – constructive criticism – if I trust that the others are acting out of care, concern, or love if you like, then that is very effective.

There are various practices around caring feedback. Set in the context of business, Otto Scharmer's Theory U has a “Case Clinic” process where a group support an individual through various kinds of reflection. Marcel Martin uses more directly religious language in her Faithfulness Groups.

These process mentioned above can raise constructive, generative questions in me, for sure. But the practice that impresses me most of all, which I have read about extensively but not fully experienced, is an even gentler approach: it is what Parker Palmer in this video calls the “Circle of Trust” process. Following his pattern, a focus person explains his or her situation, and the surrounding circle strictly limits themselves to “honest, open questions”. In his experience, this is a powerful way to help people find their “inner teacher”.

There are also many other wise writings about questions, and focusing on questions is something that I would like to promote in many contexts.

The culture of care and loving concern; the feedback; the careful questioning, all seem to me to add up to just the kind of support that one needs to meet the challenges of the complexity of life and living in this ever-more-complex world.

It's a short step from here to seeing a rich potential for personal growth and development — whether that is “inner development” or development of some outward characteristics, knowledge, skills, attitudes, competences, or whatever.

And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back, to quote T.S. Eliot. Of course, every person who experiences this personal growth and development is then able to co-constitute the culture that enables that for other individuals.

Growth rests on a culture of support: need I elaborate? Lack of support can be overwhelming. Lack of challenge leads nowhere. Some people are lucky enough to have someone supportive consistently close to them. But to me, support would be most effective as a cultural attitude. We are here to support each other. There's a strong connection here with my theme of collective ikigai.

I see a supportive culture in several guises. One could be where people have learned not to lead with solutions or unsolicited advice, but to skillfully use questions, as in Parker Palmer's processes. Another could be where NVC is part of the culture, and people refrain from blame in favour of expressing feedback in terms of their own feelings and needs — and then working together in mutual care towards solutions that meet everyone's basic needs as far as possible. And no doubt there are many other helpful approaches to support, that do not rely on fixed answers or central authority.

To create that culture of trust, there needs to be careful watching that power dynamics don't evolve into a kind of cult, where the collective enforces norms, and what is sometimes called “groupthink” dismisses challenges to whatever hierarchy is in force.

A culture of trust seems also to me to be based on a strong network of connections, and free and open communication that supports those connections. Each person can avoid being “gaslighted” by sharing and checking their experience with others. This needs a culture that avoids hub-and-spoke patterns of communication, and encourages private conversations between everyone interested.

A culture that supports private dialogue needs to be one not only where these conversations are encouraged, but also where there is a sense of safety all around. I have come across situations where that sense of safety appears to have been lost between certain people. I would say this needs to be tackled both by encouraging clear boundary-setting, and by looking at projections from one onto another person that may be getting in the way of open dialogue. In my experience, a purely laissez-faire culture is insufficient for this. I am not clear in my own mind how to grow this culture, where people neither simply rest on silent acquiescence to whatever happens, nor impose their own sense of right and wrong on other people.

I'd love to participate in trying it, more and more. Perhaps one possible way does indeed lie in the positive cultivation of diverse perspectives on many matters. One feature that I see recurrently coming up is the attitude of curiosity towards beliefs and actions that are not our own choices, or our own cultural inheritance.

And here I start to see the breakdown of the linearity of the story I have spun. It's not even an unquestioning acceptance of everyone's perspective, attitude, opinion. There are some cultural norms (you could call them “evil”) that I would love to see us collectively opposing and trying to avoid.

And this makes complete sense to me. An individual's journey can often be seen as a linear story – can often be retold as a linear story, even if that is a rather creative approach to truth – but I really don't see cultural development as a linear process. Some 20 years ago Structuration theory was brought to my attention, and this interplay and interdependence between the individual agent and the social structures immediately seemed to be a realistic appreciation of some of the complexity of human society and life. To come back to some of the other conversation at the EA Hotel, technology plays a part, for sure, often by selectively controlling or prioritising the flow of information between people; but culture does not flow deterministically from that. People also have agency in the technology they choose to use, or buy, or support, as well as the social and cultural structures they willingly participate in.

I see the CEEALAR, and the Life Itself organisation, as potential contributors both to individual and cultural growth and development. I'm looking forward to future conversations with Elisa and others around how to take the best from these and other initiatives, and nurturing, encouraging, facilitating, supporting this whole ecosystem.