OST and decolonization

Sat Feb 15 08:04:32 PST 2003

Harrison:

I use that line about disempowerment all the time.  The empowerment
thing is a funny one, but over the years, working with Open Space I have
learned that it is really only possible to disempower somebody, not to
empower them.  People empower themselves, people only disempower others.

The kind of power we're talking about of course is the power of spirit,
and that which enables us to move and make movement.  Most of us spend
our lives having this power whittled away by different people and
institutions, be they political, educational, social, economic or what
have you.  Occasionally people find their power again.  Sometimes they
fully reclaim it.  How else does one explain Mahatma Gandhi, Rigoberta
Menchu, Nelson Mandela, Aun Sung Suu Kyi and many other men and women
who, at some point during their lives have seemed to have more power
than all of their contemporaries and most of their oppressors?  Nobody
empowered these people.  No one said "now you have the ability to do
your work."  I think all of these people chose their work and embarked
upon it, and in so doing became engaged with spirit.  Spirit is what got
them going and kept them moving.

So I'm increasingly thinking that there is no such thing as empowerment.
I just don't see it being possible to empower others.  This is an old
learning from Open Space, indeed it stick out of the old green user's
guide as a pull quote somewhere.  To say "I empower others" is to shut
down space totally.

I was recently discussing the two questions that lie at the heart of OST
facilitation practice ("What do you really want to do?  Fine, why don't
you take care of it?") with a participant in Open Space.  She was saying
that at first blush, those questions could feel very disempowering.  I
replied that this probably had more to do with the scale of the initial
expectations.  For example, she really wanted to make something akin to
world peace.  When I asked "why don't you take care of it?" she gave a
litany of reasons, including just how much time it would take.  So I
asked her the questions again.  The next answer was "make more time - do
that by re prioritizing her work."  If world peace was truly what she
wanted to make, all she needed to do was make it the most important
thing in her life.  Gandhi had the same 24 hours in a day as the rest of
us.

The point is that one's power begins to be reclaimed as the scale of the
work becomes more and more human.  Who knows how one makes world peace,
really?  One thing we know for sure is that it takes commitment and
time, and those are things that people CAN do.  And then when the law of
two feet kicks in and people start doing things like learning and
contributing, suddenly "empowerment" breaks out all over the place.

Coming out of Open Space meetings with clients I often talk about the
changes in an organization being undertaken by those who can do them.
In one story of mine, with a government department that was becoming an
agency, a major issue was the employment status of the employees.  Would
they lose their sonority, benefits and pensions?  It was a big question,
important to everyone and the answer was unknown.  A receptionist in the
department indicated that everything else about the change was peanuts
compared to this for her, but it was frustrating in that she couldn't do
anything about it.

To the credit of the senior management, they committed to meeting on a
conference call and discussing this issue the week after our OST meeting
with the intention of ensuring the job security that was important to
their employees.  Collectively they could influence the right people and
agencies in the right way.  It was simply a question of what to do,
rather than "How in the world.?"

And the receptionist, upon hearing the senior management personally
commit to the conference call, declared proudly that she would gladly
set up the call.  She certainly could have chosen to express her wishes
through her union or another confrontational venue, but it was enough
for her to speak from her heart and then do what she could to facilitate
the outcome she wanted.  And in then end, the job security issue was
resolved satisfactorily.

What I love about this whole way of thinking about empowerment is that
it is the dynamic of invitation that is at work in the empowering
moment.  It is the invitation that Spirit drops in front of us which
says "pssssst..walk this way." that begins our journey to finding the
freedom to do our own work.

Harrison, you ask what we may do with all of this, and all I can do is
agree with you - do it more.  As a consultant, people invite me into
their communities and organizations to help them do work, and they are
sometimes more than a little surprised when I show up only with the
intent to open space.  I can't "help" anyone really, but I can maybe
draw attention to the constant invitation from Spirit that swirls around
us, and use my role as a facilitator to simply let people find that for
themselves.  In fact since I have acquired my Tibetan bells, I have had
several people say to me that they think that the bells do this all on
their own.  When they ring to begin the meeting, suddenly there is a
different awareness in the room.  Something is about to be different.
This is not like any other meeting.

And in fact it is like every other meeting in that the same people are
there, the same issues lie in the heart of each person, and folks may
even be sitting in the same circle that they always sit in.  What is
different is simply the fact there is no agenda, and there is this guy
we've never met who is pointing out four universal principles and one
universal law that we forgotten about.  And somehow out of all that,
people find their power and start lighting up like fire flies.

I believe that we can do no more or less than Open Space.  If there is a
better way to do this, then I'm certainly open to it, but I think this
may be one case where we may already be there.

Chris

---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Bowen Island, BC, Canada
 <http://www.chriscorrigan.com> http://www.chriscorrigan.com
chris at chriscorrigan.com
-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of
Harrison Owen
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2003 4:02 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: OST and decolonization

At 04:58 PM 2/14/2003 -0800, CHRIS CORRIGAN wrote:

He said that at the end of the day he realized that this kind of
expectation is what cultural assimilation is all about; that we expect
others to set the agenda and tell us what our work is supposed to be.
He concluded that Open Space works well because it invites us to do our
own work.  In that fundamental and simple act, OST begins to unlock a
lot of years of conditioned thinking, and reveals the possibility of
truly decolonized communities: communities where we do our own work.

Marvelous, Chris! The experience recounted matches that of groups with
which I have worked, and many more facilitated by the likes of Elwin
Guild, Mikk Sarv, and John Engle. In a word, the experience is not
unique, but the statement is -- at least in terms of its simplicity and
directness. I am not quite sure what we do with all this except  -- more
of the same.  But I do think it is very worth while to closely consider
what is going on here and how we might better assist the progress. This
is a tricky one, for our role clearly must be both supportive AND
invisible. I find it to be true that every time I do something for
somebody, to some extent I dis-empower them.

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
<http://www.openspaceworld.com/>
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
<http://www.openspaceworld.org/>
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm

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