Empowerment and other matters (Short!!)Update on the 2.5 day Open Space with the Katzie First Nation

Fr Brian S Bainbridge briansb at mira.net
Tue Feb 18 16:39:45 PST 2003


For Chris Corrigan and other friends:
I have two - or so - insights to add, perhaps.
1.  Warren Bennis once talked to me about empowerment as "a licence to kill"
- which I found shattering a couple of years ago.  But I don't find it so
now, because I have seen that very impact sometimes, especially when it is
translated as action without responsibility.  At an Open Space yesterday
evening, the view of a person (trained in South Africa) holding others
responsible, holding that they are empowered and thus act without
responsibility was very different from what the Australians in the group
saw, coupled with a seeming inability to go beyond that to see that people
can and do act with passion AND responsibility.  His learning and reading
and MBA training have done him a huge disservice, on the face of things.
But he was interested to engage and has been reading Harrison's "The Spirit
of Leadership".  It will be interesting to see how he changes when he reads
"The Practice of Peace".
2.    I love the notion "decolonization".  A major Open Space in New Zealand
seemed to result in not a lot of outcomes, but it did permit the Maori
participants to confess privately that the program process (Open Space) was
marvellous in that it allowed them to work in the way their tradition always
used to before the imposition and intimidation and controlling foisted on
them by the Pakeha (whites).  The only other significant comment they made
was to ask us not to convey this comment to the whites who (they believed)
would be utterly incensed by such heresy.  I know the very same responses
are present here in Australia among our indigenous people.
An extra two-penny-worth, maybe.
Cheers and blessings,   BRIAN.


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