Category Archives: culture

Holding Strengths

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What’s already good? How can we protect and strengthen that?
What could be better? How will we make it so?

I centered NaBloPoMo 2023 on these questions and set all 30 prompts/topics in advance. The idea was to take an Appreciative Inquiry approach to habit change at both the personal and collective levels. I wanted to shift focus from threats, failures, deficiencies, and shadow to people, places, and practices that thrive, uplift, and inspire. How could this mindset help us all in our current state?

From the Center for Appreciative Inquiry:

WHAT IS APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY?
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an energizing and inclusive process that fosters creativity through the art of positive inquiry. It builds new skills in individuals and groups, develops new leaders, encourages a culture of inquiry, and helps create shared vision and purpose by building on an organization’s core values and strengths. Perhaps, most importantly, are the outcomes that emerge during the process which provoke action, inspire commitment, and lead to results.

WHY APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY WORKS
Building upon the framework of positive psychology and human sciences, Appreciative Inquiry builds self-awareness and emotional intelligence to shift our focus, attention, and energy into exploration into opportunities and possibilities. AI does not focus on changing people, rather it invites individuals to engage in building a future they want to live in.

Appreciative Inquiry’s assumption is simple: Every human system has something that works right–things that give it life when it is vital, effective, and successful.

What I like about this approach to problem solving is the concreteness. Asking what already works, what’s not wrong or broken, requires practical, operational answers. It forces us to think and talk objectively about what is, rather than cogitate, theorize, and catastrophize about what could be. It starts from a place of strength and looks to build; it’s about what we’re for more than and before what we are against, so we can dream and design what could be instead.

At first I imagine applying this method to policy and systems collaboration. That would be great, but I don’t see it happening; people are still too negative, polarized, and adversarial for that, at least on large scales. I bet there are small organizations and groups where this strengths based approach to change actually already happens. I’d love to see more of them highlighted in the media.

For now, I think some of us may be ready and willing to apply appreciative inquiry to our existing relationships. I imagine a Blue friend and a Red friend, both wishing to connect across their differences and get closer. Both harbor curiosity about the other, even if it’s repressed. Each senses an intuitive possibility for deeper connection, and also feels stymied at how to achieve it. What if they started by considering the strengths of their relationship? Maybe those include honesty, non-judgment, good humor, and shared experiences. What if they imagined and envisioned together what an even stronger friendship would look, sound, and feel like? I get goosebumps envisioning those conversations.

What other domains of relationship would benefit from this approach to disagreement, challenge, conflict, and growth? I can think of at least a few in my life–she writes sheepishly–hello, walk the talk much? How fascinating! And here I thought this post would be boring and bland–HA!

I Hold Strengths for Us tonight, my friends: Strengths in relationship, in connection, in bond and union. Our relationships save us. I am convicted to this assertion, and I firmly believe it’s our strong relationships, especially across difference and disagreement, that will save our republic.

Holding Courage

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“There is no courage without vulnerability. Vulnerability is not weakness. It’s the ability to show up and be seen. It’s the ability to be brave when you cannot control the outcome.”
–Brené Brown

What was the last thing you did that really required courage? What was at stake? What risk were you taking? What was the outcome? Would you do it again? What would you do differently, if anything? What did you learn?

How does that experience inform your future?

At this moment in history, it is up to us citizens to model courage in connection for our elected leaders. Are we up to the task?

Maybe we don’t see it as courageous to engage with people who voted the other way. Maybe we see it as futile, a waste of time, even beneath us.

I submit that we are afraid. We are afraid to be wrong, even a little. And now I’m thinking about more than just election debate. I think about any cause I champion that provokes resistance or opposition. What if that opposition is valid, even a little? What if my ardent zealousness masks a flaw in my reasoning, a potential unintended consequence of harm in my focused crusade for an intended benefit? When fear blinds us to the nuances of a problem, when we deny the inherent and inevitable complexities of modern human systems, we get rigid. We oversimplify and dig in, and our thinking narrows. Openness, curiosity, and creativity evaporate; flexibility and collaboration soon follow. Overcoming this fear takes courage.

It takes courage to recognize that we may not have the whole story, that we may not see or understand all relevant perspectives of an issue. The fear of being wrong, the shame of it keeps our minds closed. Then when all we do is yell at and dehumanize one another in ad hominem soundbites, we reciprocally destroy any incentive for anyone to admit they have anything to gain or learn from us–we burn bridges from both ends.

“Everybody’s right, and only partially.” What if we hold this mantra at least sometimes? When I remember it, my shoulders relax. I loosen my grip on ideological swords; I lift the visor on my suit of armor and look around, my view extending from the tip of my nose as far as the horizon. Acknowledging the partial validity of an opposing position does not negate mine, though it may feel that way. That expanse of unknown perspective threatens my certainty. What if my position does not actually uphold my values? What if I learn something ugly about myself? What will I do then?

If there is no courage without vulnerability, then how can we foster vulnerability?
Defined by Oxford Languages, vulnerability means “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.” Intentionally seeking opposing views, opening our own views to challenge and criticism, is vulnerable. It feels deeply uncomfortable and goes against all our natural instincts of survival in the face of threat. But when else do we choose this state freely and willingly? When do we put ourselves out in the world without hesitation?

We do it when it’s safe. Or, safe enough. It’s that simple. We need to make our interactions safe for us all to put down the weapons, take off the armor, and see one another’s soft parts. Simple does not mean easy–not by a long shot. And it can be done. We can question and challenge our least generous assumptions, then modify them. We can look for shared values and goals and start our conversations there. We can ask open and honest questions at least three to five times more than we make statements.

Presence, openness, curiosity, humility, kindness, non-judgment, generosity–showing up with these qualities in front makes us vulnerable to attack. Ironically, when we come ‘armed’ like this, we make it safe for others to be vulnerable with us. This is when true healing connection occurs; this is how we heal our world.

Who will go first?
Who do you see doing this already?
They are the leaders we need to follow.

I Hold Courage for Us, my friends. We all have it within us–in spades. Let us all uncover and bring it out in one another, shall we?

Holding the Questions

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“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Franz Xaver Kappus, July 1903, from Letters to a Young Poet translated by MD Herter Norton, 1934

“Live the questions now.”

How would life be if we could tolerate uncertainty and lack of control much better than we do? If we could embrace the present moment of unknowing? If we could find peace in the way things are? What if we could ground in patience, confident that we can meet whatever lies ahead with all the experience, resourcefulness, and creativity we can muster?

And what if we actually ask better questions? Instead of stopping at “I don’t understand,” what if we get honest, curious, and deep? Finding out what we didn’t know we didn’t know is a special kind of epiphany. How often does this happen to us? If we ask a lot of open and honest questions to people of all different backgrounds and experiences, it can be a common occurrence.

What question(s) recur for you lately? Why? How do they feel as they occupy you? Light or heavy? Agitating? Stimulating? …Fascinating?

It’s late and I procrastinated again tonight, thinking I would write about something else. Funny how that pattern emerges, three weeks into this 30 day project this time. So instead of offering much more of my own analysis, I’ll share resources that help me to live the questions peacefully, joyfully, and in a perpetual state of fascination.

If you do not already follow Maria Popova’s blog The Marginalian, I highly recommend it. On the topic of living the question, she highlights Jacqueline Novogratz’s 2012 commencement address at Gettysburg College, in which she quotes Rilke and admonishes graduates, “We’ve become a society seeking instant gratification. We want simple answers, clear pathways to success… Life does not work that way. And instead of looking for answers all the time, my wish for you is that you get comfortable living the questions… Focus on being interested, not on being interesting.”

In her post “How Ignorance Fuels Science and the Evolution of Knowledge,” Popova introduces readers to Stuart Firestein’s book Ignorance: How It Drives Science, which is now in my audiobook queue. Science is driven by curiosity, which starts with the awareness of ignorance (see also Ian Leslie’s book Curious). She quotes Firestein:

“There are a lot of facts to be known in order to be a professional anything — lawyer, doctor, engineer, accountant, teacher. But with science there is one important difference. The facts serve mainly to access the ignorance… Scientists don’t concentrate on what they know, which is considerable but minuscule, but rather on what they don’t know…. Science traffics in ignorance, cultivates it, and is driven by it. Mucking about in the unknown is an adventure; doing it for a living is something most scientists consider a privilege. […] Working scientists don’t get bogged down in the factual swamp because they don’t care all that much for facts. It’s not that they discount or ignore them, but rather that they don’t see them as an end in themselves. They don’t stop at the facts; they begin there, right beyond the facts, where the facts run out. Facts are selected, by a process that is a kind of controlled neglect, for the questions they create, for the ignorance they point to.”

In this season of severe political polarization and tenuous relationships, I lean heavily on my strong question asking skills–they are tested and trained. I reference this skill often on this blog, and it still bears repeating. What do we not know? What assumptions do we make and how do they keep us from true understanding and connection? See below for the text of the tip sheet I keep bookmarked and share often. May we practice and strengthen this skill starting now, for all our sakes.

I Hold the Questions for Us because life is uncertain and we must still act. The more we can embrace and live the most meaningful, stimulating, and fascinating questions, the more likely we are to discover and cultivate true connection and healing.

—–

Asking Open & Honest Questions
by Jeanne Strong

Learning to respond to others with honest, open questions instead of counsel, corrections, advice, etc. can be a life-altering practice. With such questions, as Parker Palmer says, we help “hear each other into deeper speech”—a speech that might reveal a turning point in a life, an intuition about one’s health, or an insight into life’s purpose. For ourselves, the practice frees us from having to know “the answer” or solve “the problem.” It allows us to relax into our own humanity and the pleasure that comes from being connected to another.

But what is an open and honest question? The best definition is that the asker could not possibly anticipate the answer to it. So give it a try in your circles, in your marriage, with your friends and family and comment below on what you’ve discovered.

(Adapted from the Center for Courage and Renewal – www.couragerenewal.org)

10 tips for asking open and honest questions

  1. Ask yourself what assumptions you are making.
  2. The best questions are simple questions.
  3. Avoid questions with right/wrong, yes/no answers.
  4. Ask questions aimed at opening doors for the other person rather than satisfying your own curiosity.
  5. Ask questions that go to the person as well as the problem – questions about feelings as well as facts.
  6. Questions that invite imagery or metaphor are often helpful.
  7. Trust your intuition in asking questions, even if your instinct seems off the wall.
  8. If you aren’t sure about the question, be quiet, wait, and if it keeps surfacing, ask it.
  9. Watch the pacing of your questions. Questions coming too fast can feel aggressive.
  10. Avoid any storytelling, or behaviors that call attention to yourself.