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 A free e-newsletter spotlighting systemic thinking and innovations in leadership, management, and organizational development. Please forward to your colleagues. 
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FACE
TO FACE From Shouting Heads to Shared Concerns: An Interview with Laura Chasin |
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PEGASUS
CONFERENCE UPDATE |
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LEARNING
LINKS Partnership Coaching |
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FACE
TO FACE
LP: Tell us how the Public Conversations Project got started. What were the issues that drew you into the public realm? LC: It was not a particular issue that galvanized me but a more general concern about a kind of “climate change” I had been noticing in the public square. My graduate studies in American politics and democracy had taught me that the political structures and processes of democracy require an underpinning of what Robert Putnam has since called “social capital.” That is, the existence of rich networks of formal and informal ties both within and across different groups, as well as norms of civility and constructive debate. I was concerned about what I perceived as the subtle erosion of that underpinning. Also, I had recently become a grandmother, a shift that had sort of thickened my sense of the distant future. I really was afraid that if the trend I perceived continued, my grandchildren’s generation would not get to live in the kind of democratic society I had known. The idea that became PCP was actually triggered by watching a televised debate about abortion sponsored by the Better World Society on PBS. I expected a constructive debate, but what I saw instead was shouting heads. And for some serendipitous reason, during that debate, I suddenly switched into watching with my clinical eyes. I got the idea that if this conversation were happening in my office, I would know how to interrupt it – as the poor facilitator did not. I assembled some family therapy colleagues, and showed the tape to them. And I asked them to think about what they would do if a conversation like this was taking place in their offices. Together we entertained a galvanizing question: could some of the approaches and methods we used with families in polarized, stuck conflict be adapted to disputes among bigger systems in the public square? This was our founding question, and it wasn’t rhetorical; it was a real question. We decided to answer it with a modest experiment: we would see if we could facilitate a one evening session between partisans on either side of a divisive issue. We chose the abortion issue for two reasons. A very pragmatic one was that we had access to people on both sides of the issue. And secondly, we had some familiarity with the substance of the issue. So, we began an action research project in which we videotaped almost twenty groups of four to eight people over the course of a year and a half. We had the advantage of not knowing what we were doing; we didn’t know which interventions and which ways of thinking would transfer. And so, we developed the practice of asking, of adopting a stance that has been an earmark of our work ever since. We don’t position ourselves as experts. We position ourselves as learners who elicit what the participants know and take our cues from them about how we can build on their resources and complement them with ours. Suggested
further resources: |
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PEGASUS
CONFERENCE UPDATE Low summer rates extended! Register before July 31 to secure your place and save $400 off the standard conference price!
Rhyming
for a Reason
Buses will be provided from the Westin Waltham-Boston Hotel to Cambridge and back. The separate $50 entry fee will help support the Berkana Institute. |
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LEARNING
LINKS Effective coaching is one of the highest leverage activities available to leaders for improving individual and group learning and performance. Developing partnerships with those we coach builds trust and respect and increases creativity and rigor in our collaborative thinking. Partnership coaching offers an alternative to managing and teaching. Its purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results. How? Managers (1) ask open-ended questions that focus the learner’s attention on relevant details, (2) create an environment that reduces interference, or negative self-talk by the learner, and (3) make feedback “edible”; easier for the learner to hear and use. How
to Give “Edible” Feedback “Pat, I observed your meeting/conversation/presentation/etc. I have some feedback that you might find useful . . . is now a good time? Before I give you my thoughts, I’m interested in your perceptions, specifically:
The coach is
now in a position to confirm the perceptions of the learner or add
a different perspective. Read the complete article or see The Systems Thinker, V9N4 (May 1998). Subscribe to The Systems Thinker. |
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| Copyright 2006 Pegasus Communications. Leverage Points® can be freely forwarded by e-mail in its entirety. To obtain rights to distribute paper copies of, reproduce, or excerpt any part of Leverage Points, please contact permissions@pegasuscom.com. | |||||||||||||
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Social
worker and family therapist Laura Chasin
founded the Public Conversation Project (PCP) in 1989 to explore
the potential of adapting methods used with families in conflict
to disputes in the public arena. Since then she and her colleagues
have facilitated a number of important dialogues with larger systems,
including the inspiring one between Boston area Pro-choice and Pro-life
leaders. After recently handing over the reins to incoming executive
director Cherry Muse, Laura shared some memories, hopes, and plans
with Leverage Points editor Vicky Schubert.
16th
Annual Pegasus Conference
One
option for wrapping up the first full day of the conference is a
spirited evening of original poetry and live music celebrating the
power of the arts to create social change. Meg Wheatley, Tim Merry,
and other performers will lead the festivities held in the glorious
José Mateo's Ballet Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.