Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities - Adam Kahane

Nota: 5/5

 

Resenha: Um livro sobre união, diálogo e resolução de problemas sociais complexos que trabalha a partir do papel do indivíduo no grupo. Excelente leitura. 

 

Introduction: The Problem with Tough Problems

> Page 1

"They either don’t get solved at all — they get stuck — or they get solved by force .

(...)

Either the people involved in a problem can’t agree on what the solution is , or the people with power — authority , money , guns — impose their solution on everyone else ." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"The people involved can talk and listen to each other and thereby work through a solution peacefully ." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"I want talking and listening to become a reliable default option. Problems are tough because they are complex in three ways. They are dynamically complex , which means that cause and effect are far apart in space and time, and so are hard to grasp from firsthand experience. They are generatively complex , which means that they are unfolding in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways. And they are socially complex, which means that the people involved see things very differently, and so the problems become polarized and stuck." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 2

"Our most common way of talking is telling: asserting the truth about the way things are and must be, not allowing that there might be other truths and possibilities. And our most common way of listening is not listening: listening only to our own talking, not to others." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"a complex problem can only be solved peacefully if the people who are part of the problem work together creatively to understand their situation and to improve it." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 4

"I have learned that the more open I am — the more attentive I am to the way things are and could be, around me and inside me; the less attached I am to the way things ought to be — the more effective I am in helping to bring forth new realities. (...) the more I work in this way, the more present and alive I feel. As I have learned to lower my defenses and open myself up, I have become increasingly able to help better futures be born." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"The way we talk and listen expresses our relationship with the world. When we fall into the trap of telling and of not listening, we close ourselves off from being changed by the world and we limit ourselves to being able to change the world only by force. But when we talk and listen with an open mind and an open heart and an open spirit, we bring forth our better selves and a better world." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

Part I: Tough Problems

> Page 7

"We understood that there is only one right answer."

> Page 11

"I assumed that the people at the top were smarter and more informed than the rest of us."

> Page 12

"I went to some of their meetings in the enormous, oak — paneled boardroom on the top floor. Here, conversations were polite, reasoned, and completely under control."

"The world did not work the way my one - right - answer textbooks said it did."

> Page 15

"I now knew that every trend had a countertrend, every argument had a rebuttal, and every solution produced a new problem. I knew that there was no longer one right answer." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 20

"Trevor Manuel, head of the ANC’s Economics Department, introduced me to the group as “ a representative of International Capital. ” I could see that this scenario meeting was not going to be like the Shell ones I was used to. We were not working on an ordinary problem of organizational strategy but on an extraordinary national transformation."

> Page 21

"I asked them to use the Shell convention and to talk not about what they or their party wanted to happen — their usual way of talking about the future — but simply about what might happen, regardless of what they wanted."

Describes what I call a Guided Brainstorming - Maybe the author would say it's a scenario creation activity

> Page 21

"The listeners in the plenary were not permitted to shout down the story with “ That couldn’t happen ” or “ I don’t want that to happen . ” They could only ask “ Why would that happen? ” or “ What would happen next? ” The team found this scenario game to be fabulously liberating. They told stories of left - wing revolution, right - wing revolts, and free market utopias." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 22

"The first brainstorming exercise produced thirty stories. The team combined these and narrowed them down to nine for further work, and set up four subteams to flesh out the scenarios along social, political, economic, and international dimensions."

"They first addressed the nine scenarios in more depth and then narrowed the field to four that they thought , given the current situation in the country , were the most plausible and important"

> Page 23

"there was one bright vision of a future to work towards: Flight of the Flamingoes, in which the transition is successful because all the key building blocks are put in place, with everyone in the society rising slowly and together."

"Malatsi was showing his colleagues both an unfamiliar and undesirable economic scenario for South Africa and the role that their own policies and actions would play in such a scenario. His presentation produced a long, intense, self - critical discussion among the PAC leaders. Soon after this meeting, the PAC changed their economic policies and then decided to abandon their armed struggle and join the constitutional negotiations." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 26

"I was delighted and fascinated by all of these impacts of the Mont Fleur team’s work . This was the first time that I had descended from observing complex problems from above and outside as a researcher and corporate planner, to engaging right up close with a group of people who were in the middle of working through solutions."

"The essence of the Mont Fleur process, I saw, was that a small group of deeply committed leaders, representing a cross - section of a society that the whole world considered irretrievably stuck, had sat down together to talk broadly and profoundly about what was going on and what should be done. More than that, they had not talked about what other people — some faceless authorities or decision makers — should do to advance some parochial agenda, but what they and their colleagues and their fellow citizens had to do in order to create a better future for everybody." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 26 and 27

"The Mont Fleur team’s fundamental orientation — and the primary message they gave to the leadership groups they engaged with — was that more than one future was possible and that the actions they and others took would determine which future would unfold. The team did not believe they had to wait passively for events to occur. They believed they could actively shape their future. They understood that one reason the future cannot be predicted is that it can be influenced." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 27

"One of the most important roles we can play individually and collectively is to create an opening, or to “ listen ” to the implicate order unfolding, and then to create dreams, visions, and stories that we sense at our center want to happen … ." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"Using scenarios in this way can be an extraordinarily powerful process — helping" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"At Mont Fleur the team was not only doing something essentially different from anything I had ever seen, but they were doing it with an oddly different spirit. They were working on big, serious issues over which they had been engaged in life - and - death struggles for decades. But they were doing this openly, creatively, and lightheartedly, having fun with their ideas and with each other."

> Page 28

"The more I worked with the team, the more impressed I became with them, and as I opened up, this inspired reciprocal opening by them. One team member later said to me, “ When we first met you, we couldn’t believe that anyone could be so ignorant. We were sure that you were trying to manipulate us. But when we realized that you really didn’t know anything, we decided to trust you. ”" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 30

"These actors participated in the forums because they believed they were facing problems that none of them could solve alone through ordinary, established processes."

"The dramatic overall political and constitutional settlements that South Africans achieved in 1994 rested on the relationships they built through these many dialogic processes."

"A popular joke at the time said that, faced with the country’s daunting challenges, South Africans had two options: a practical option and a miraculous option. The practical option was that we would all get down on our knees and pray for a band of angels to come down from heaven and fix things for us. The miraculous option was that we would continue to talk with each other until we found a way forward together. In the end, South Africans, contrary to everybody’s predictions, succeeded in implementing the miraculous option." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 30 and 31

"I knew that problems are tough because they are complex, and that there are three types of complexity: dynamic, generative, and social.

A problem has low dynamic complexity if cause and effect are close together in space and time. In a car engine, for example, causes produce effects that are nearby, immediate, and obvious; and so, why an engine doesn’t run can usually be understood and solved by testing and fixing one piece at a time. By contrast, a problem has high dynamic complexity if cause and effect are far apart in space and time." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 31

"A problem has low generative complexity if its future is familiar and predictable. In a traditional village, for example, the future simply replays the past, and so solutions and rules from the past will work in the future. A problem has high generative complexity if its future is unfamiliar and unpredictable." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"A problem has low social complexity if the people who are part of the problem have common assumptions, values, rationales, and objectives. In a well - functioning team, for example, members look at things similarly, and so a boss or an expert can easily propose a solution that everyone agrees with. A problem has high social complexity if the people involved look at things very differently." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 32

"Why was the Mont Fleur work unusual and important? Simple problems, with low complexity, can be solved perfectly well — efficiently and effectively — using processes that are piecemeal, backward looking, and authoritarian. By contrast, highly complex problems can only be solved using processes that are systemic, emergent, and participatory. The Mont Fleur approach was important and unusual because it was exceptionally well suited to solving highly complex problems — to enacting profound social innovations. Our process was systemic, building scenarios for South Africa as a whole, taking account of social, political, economic, and international dynamics. It was emergent, because it recognized that precedents and grand plans would be of limited use, and instead used creative teamwork to identify and influence the country’s critical current choices. And it was participatory, involving leaders from most of the key national constituencies. The mother of this South African invention was the necessity of its transitional vacuum: a highly complex system, in a fundamentally new context, in which no single authority had the wisdom or legitimacy to enforce solutions. With the practical option of intervention from “ above ” unavailable, South Africans had no choice but to rely on the miraculous option of working together." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"Afrikaans word apartheid means “apartness ” — and command and control. Because the people at the bottom resist these commands, the system either becomes stuck, or ends up becoming unstuck by force. This apartheid syndrome occurs in all kinds of social systems, all over the world: in families, organizations, communities, and countries." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

Part II: Talking

> Page 37

"How can we solve tough problems peacefully? (...) by opening up our talking and listening." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 38

"“How does one learn good judgment? Experience. And how does one gain experience? Bad judgment.”" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"this simple opening - up turned out to be far more subtle and challenging than I would ever have imagined."

> Page 39

"As one local peace researcher explained to me, “ A conflict that does not move positively, moves negatively.”" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 41 and 42

"Nelson Mandela once said, “One effect of sustained conflict is to narrow our vision of what is possible. Time and again, conflicts are resolved through shifts that were unimaginable at the start. ” This pattern of not talking and not listening is a symptom of being stuck. Whether or not the actors are on speaking terms, they are not on listening terms. Like the Basque parliamentarians (and many parliamentarians elsewhere), they have made up their minds before their opponents speak. Even if they are silent and pretending to listen, they are really only “ reloading , ” rehearsing their rebuttals. They are in fact listening only to themselves, to the tapes they play over and over in their heads about why they are right and others are wrong. My partner Otto Scharmer calls the kind of talking that takes place in these situations “ downloading ” because the speaker is reproducing an old file without alteration." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 42, 43 and 44

"they are stunted, unable to express who they are in new ways and unable to take in what others are telling them. If they can change this pattern and start to talk and listen, they blossom. 

Not talking and not listening are common; they are not limited to troubled nations. As I drafted this chapter, my twenty - seven - year - old daughter Pulane and I were enacting this same pattern. She was home for the holidays and had stayed out all night without telling Dorothy and me where she would be. So we fought about her “ irresponsibility ” and my “ interference , ” downloading an argument we had had on and off for years. Each of us knew with certainty that we were right and the other was wrong. “ If she won’t listen to me telling her that she is wrong, ” I thought , “ then why should I bother to talk to her? And if she is going to continue to talk nonsense about my being wrong, why should I bother to listen to her? ” Sometimes we yelled, and sometimes we politely avoided the subject. In our own way, we were as stuck as the Basques. There are two ways to try to unstick a stuck problem. The first is for one side to act unilaterally — to try imposing a solution by force or violence. (...) The second way to unstick a problem is for the actors to start to talk and listen in order to find a way forward together." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 44

"Dialogue cannot be forced, and so peacemakers must wait patiently for an opening." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 45

"IN ORDER TO UNSTICK a stuck problem peacefully, the people involved in the problem have to talk with and listen to one another. But there is more than one way of talking and listening, and some ways hardly help at all. I observed such hardly helpful communication in the problem — ridden context of Paraguay. Paraguayans seem to enjoy telling awful and bizarre stories about their country" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 46

"“An optimist in Paraguay , ” someone quipped , “ is someone who says , ‘ Things are good ! We are better off today than we will be tomorrow ! ’ ”" 

> Page 47

"In a dictatorship, the dictator does not listen, and the people are afraid to talk. The results are pessimism and cynicism; lack of self - confidence and self - management; hesitation to speak up and stand up; and painfully slow innovation." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"The root of not listening is knowing. If I already know the truth, why do I need to listen to you? Perhaps out of politeness or guile I should pretend to listen, but what I really need to do is to tell you what I know, and if you don’t listen, to tell you again, more forcefully. All authoritarian systems rest on the assumption that the boss can and does know the one right answer.

I had never noticed the parallel between political dictatorship and organizational authoritarianism because authoritarianism was the water I had always swum in. When I joined Pacific Gas and Electric, it never occurred to me to question the strict reporting lines. Until I attended the Management Committee’s retreat, I had assumed that the bosses at the top were smarter and so rightfully at the top. Furthermore, I had always had elite jobs, close to the bosses, and the degenerative consequences of authoritarianism are hard to see from the top. It was only later, when as a consultant I interviewed both bosses and their employees, that I realized how much more oppressive these systems look and feel from below. Another reason I had not seen the parallel between dictatorship and authoritarianism is that I had always assumed that dictators had to brutalize people in order to shut them up." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 48

"Dictatorship did not just coerce Chileans; it also corrupted them."

"Organizational authoritarianism also produces silence and subservience, through coercion, seduction, and corruption. I once worked on an innovation project with the management team of a successful Fortune 100 communications company. Its founder and CEO was a brilliant man, and a bully. His very highly paid senior managers admired and feared him. They spent a lot of their time looking over their shoulders, worrying about how to keep him happy and panicking when they heard that he wasn’t. They would second - guess themselves, skirting areas where they knew he had strong views, start down one path, and then suddenly change course if he frowned on it. This is the corporate version of the apartheid syndrome: management of a complex system by force and fear. Business writer Harriet Rubin once said to me that it surprised her that people were willing to accept being free citizens on the street but serfs at work."

> Page 49

"I have noticed that many of the people in many of the systems I have worked with — including the presidents, CEOs, and generals — say these same words: “ The people above me won’t let me do anything. ” This is a symptom of the pervasiveness and internalization of authoritarianism." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 50

"Unfortunately, the authoritarian approach, with its severe limitations, is the foundation of practically all private and public sector strategic planning. Strategists direct, and others follow. Kees van der Heijden, my former boss at Shell, noted that most of the literature on strategic planning falls into “ the rationalist school, ” which codifies thought and action separately. The tacit underlying assumption is that there is one best solution, and the job of the strategist is to get as close to this as possible, within the limited resources available. The strategist thinks on behalf of the entire organization, and works out an optimal strategy as a process of searching for maximum utility among a number of options. Having decided the optimal way forward, the question of action (known as the “ implementation issue”) is addressed . … The (somewhat unlikely ?) assumptions underlying the rationalist school are: predictability, no interference from outside; clear intentions; implementation follows formulation (thought independent of action); full understanding throughout the organization; and reasonable people will do reasonable things." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 52

"My job as a PG & E planner was to come up with the optimal strategy for the company, convince my boss and the Management Committee to approve it, and then somebody else would implement it.

The authoritarian pattern of talking is that bosses and experts talk down — dictating and telling — and everyone else talks cautiously. This is the closed way. To solve complex problems, we have to find a more open way." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 56

"Politeness is a way of not talking. When we are being polite, we say what we think we should say: “ How are you ? ” “ I’m fine . ” We do not say what we are really thinking because we are afraid of a social rupture: “ How are you ? ” “ I’m terrible . ” When we talk politely, we are following the party line, trying to fit in and so keep the social system whole and unchanged, (...) Talking only about concepts is one way of being polite." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"Unconsciously we therefore kept our conversation safe, conceptual, and polite. The conclusions we agreed on were dispassionate and neutral: we did not take a stand for anything but prudence. Our fear and politeness ended up smothering change."

> Page 57

"The young Quebecker stood out because he did not follow these rules. He spoke personally, not conceptually; he was passionate; he took a stand for what he believed in.

(...)

When somebody speaks personally, passionately, and from the heart, the conversation deepens. When a team develops a habit of speaking openly, then the problem they are working on begins to shift. By contrast, a habit of speaking overly cautiously obscures the problem and keeps it stuck. The Canadian team had a hard time agreeing on conclusions because our conversations did not go deep enough for us to find the ground that we truly had in common, and from which we could construct a way forward that we all believed in.

These polite dynamics also play out in ordinary family settings. When my brothers and I go home to see our parents, we all talk politely, staying away from sensitive subjects (or talking about certain subjects only with certain people), keeping things under control. Sometimes I am afraid that if I say what I am really thinking, others will be hurt and upset. I am afraid that I will rupture the family whole — which anyway isn’t so bad. So we all say what we always say, replaying the same conversations and the same family reality, over and over. Politeness maintains the status quo." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 58

"As long as the status quo is working, we can afford to remain polite. But when we see that the status quo is no longer working, we must speak up." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 60 and 61

"When people walked by the speakerphones, they gave them a wide berth, afraid to get too close. Some of the participants were frightened of retribution for what they might say to the guerrillas. When I mentioned this fear, one of the guerrillas replied, “ Mr. Kahane, why are you surprised that people in the room are frightened? The whole country is frightened. ” Then the guerrillas promised they would not kill anyone for anything said in the meetings. Once the threat of force had been removed, the team was able to agree to a set of ground rules for their conversations. They agreed to “call things by their name”; to express their differences without irony; to assume the good faith of others; to be tolerant, disciplined, and punctual; to be concrete and concise; and to keep confidences. They were proud of these ground rules because they knew that in the midst of much lawlessness and violence, it was essential to construct a safe space for talking and listening." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 63 and 64

"The first step along an open way — the first step out of the apartheid syndrome — is for the actors in the system to speak up. Often this is extremely difficult. People hesitate to say what they are thinking for many reasons, not only extraordinary but also ordinary: fear of being killed or jailed or fired, or fear of being disliked or considered impolite or stupid or not a team player. Around the time I was working in Colombia, I was taking a part - time master’s degree in applied behavioral sciences at Bastyr University in Seattle. I thought that I had gone as far as I could go as a facilitator with an education only in physics and economics, and that I needed some professional training in leadership. I quickly found out that learning to lead means learning how I as a leader function — including my own fear of speaking up. The core learning process of the program was a kind of awareness training based on the Training Group, or “ T Group , ” pioneered at the National Training Laboratories in the 1960s. In this process, six of us sat in a circle and talked for twenty minutes or so, observed by the teacher and the rest of the class. The only rule was that we could only talk about the “ here and now ”: what we were thinking, feeling, sensing, or wanting at that very moment, in response to what somebody else had just said or to something that was arising within us.

This process produced conversations that were utterly banal: “I am feeling flushed and angry after your remark about Mary’s tone of voice.” At the same time the experience was extremely rich, because in this safe classroom space, we got feedback from our classmates that was immediate and straightforward. I learned a lot from these T Group sessions about my own patterns of behavior. At the beginning, I tended to hang back, observing and making smart comments. I was told I came across as distant, closed, and condescending — not at all what I wanted. I realized that I was stuck in a personal version of the apartheid syndrome. I hesitated to speak openly because I was afraid that if I said what I was really thinking, the others would be angry and would distance themselves from me, there would be a conflict, and the group would spin out of control and split apart. But I discovered, to my enormous surprise, that the opposite was true: the more open I was, the closer others felt towards me and the closer our group became.

I also learned how my patterns of behavior had their roots in the dynamics of relationships in my family. As a child, I had learned to distance myself from conflict as a way of protecting myself from arguments between my parents.

Extra-ordinary circumstances turn ordinary people into heroes."

> Page 66

"if we want to change the status quo. We must speak up." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"TALKING OPENLY (as I observed in Colombia) is better than talking guardedly (Paraguay) or politely (Canada) or not at all (Basque Country), in that it allows us to see more of the problem and understand it from multiple perspectives. But by itself, talking about a problem does not change anything. Something more is required." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 68

"Most conventional approaches to solving problems emphasize talking, especially the authoritarian, boss or expert, way of talking: telling .

"The additional element that is required to create something new, and that is ignored in most conventional approaches, is listening." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 70

"Tough problems can only be solved if people talk openly, and in many situations this takes real courage. But this is not enough. The next step, listening openly, is even harder." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

Part III: Listening

> Page 73

"IF TALKING OPENLY means being willing to expose to others what is inside of us, then listening openly means being willing to expose ourselves to something new from others." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

"They were afraid that a more diverse group would be both more awkward to work with and unnecessary. Businesspeople had previously figured out amongst themselves what was best for the city, and they could continue to do so."

> Page 79

( “I am not my ideas, and so you and I can reject them without rejecting me”).

> Page 84

"creating the reality that was unfolding in the group."

> Page 86

"If we want to change the systems we are part of - our countries, our communities, organizations, and families - we must also see and change ourselves." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

Part IV: Creating New Realities

> Page 96

""The crisis in our country is so severe," one of them, Santiago Gallichio, said to me, "that people are willing to try to do things in a different way. We are in an open moment.""

""The options for Argentina are violence or dialogue. You can wait for someone to impose a solution from on high, or you can sit together and work through a solution yourselves."

> Page 101

"Rather than watch and wait and pray for a new president or boss or benefactor who would create a better future for them, they chose to start the work themselves." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 102

"When people choose to tell a personal story in such a group, they are revealing something of themselves. They are sharing what matters to them about this problem. Furthermore, because (in Carl Rogers' paradoxical phrase) "what is most personal is most universal," these stories also illuminate the source of the group's shared commitment."

> Page 103

"In order to solve tough problems, we need more than shared new ideas. We also need shared commitment. We need a sense of the whole and what it demands of us." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 104

"When we talk about "solving a problem," we imply that we stand apart from the problem and can study it objectively and control it mechanically, with cause producing effect, as we would with a broken-down car. (...) There is not "a" problem out there that we can react to and fix. There is a "problem situation" of which each of us is a part, the way an organ is part of a body. We can't see the situation objectively: we can just appreciate it subjectively. We affect the situation and it affects us." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 107

"THE WAY TO LISTEN is to stop talking. One reason we cannot hear what others are saying is that their voices are drowned out by our own internal voices. We keep reacting and projecting, judging and prejudging, anticipating and expecting, reloading and drifting off. The biggest challenge of listening is quieting down our internal chatter. When we succeed in doing so, we see the world anew." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 109

"Our biggest impediment to hearing is our impulse to talk rather than to listen, to make a judgment rather than an observation." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 112

"But we can't solve tough problems through listening alone - just as we can't solve them through talking alone. If we want to create new realities, we need to listen and be, but we also need to talk and act. Open listening and open talking are yin and yang, two parts of the same whole, two movements in the same generative dance." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 114

"One of these rebuilding initiatives was Vísion Guatemala. It was inspired in Mount Fleur and intended to support the implementation of the Peace Accords. Its members were academics, business and nongovernmental organization leaders, former guerillas and military officers, government officials, human rights activists, journalists, national and local politicians, clergy, trade unionists, and young people. I was awestruck by this team's talking and listening and by what, over the years that followed, they produced."

"I was worried that we would be so polite that the real issues would never emerge."

> Page 115

"Even a simple listening exercise - "After lunch, go for a one-hour walk outside with someone you haven't spoken with yet" - produced excitement and revelation." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 115

"We are unaware of the great richness in others. We do not see it. There is a lot, quite a lot, to learn from people who, frankly speaking, one would never have considered as possible sources of learning." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> Page 122

"The first way is downloading: saying what we always say and not listening to all. This is what Elena Diez Pinto was worried about when she saw each group sitting separately and thought, "They're not going to talk with each other. In Guatemala ... we say "yes" but we mean "no"."

The second way of listening is debating: listening fairly and objectively. This is what Guatemalan team member was doing when he tried to "actually listen, not to be thinking mentally of how I am going to respond." Listening openly goes along with talking openly, as when "the young man called us "old pessimists""

The third way is talking and listening with empathy, subjectively, from the heart: reflective dialogue. Raquel Zelaya demonstrated this when she listened and then said to General Julio Balconi, "I know that nobody enrolls in the military academy in order to learn how to massacre women and children."

The fourth way, generative dialogue, was the listening that surrounded Ochaeta's talking - like John Milton's open left hand cupping his loosely clenched right fist. The team sensed that something important and special happened during the storytelling. One story seemed to flow into another, as if the tellers were all telling parts of the same larger story. Time seemed to slow down: I wasn't sure how long the "five minutes" of silence actually lasted.

The normal separation between people seemed to lessen: the team shifted from listening to each other's individual perspectives to being, for a while, a whole collective "I"." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 123

"When the team had listened to Ochaeta, we were not listening with empathy towards him as an individual. He was, in fact, a peripheral member of the team. The story was not about him and he told it with little emotion. Several other people in the room could have told similar stories from their own experiences. Instead, Ochaeta's talking was a vehicle on which that critically important story entered the room and was heard by the whole team." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 124

"Quantum physicist David Bohm once said that the universe is whole but we mistakenly see it as fragmented, as if we are looking in a cracked mirror. In that moment of generative dialogue, the Visión Guatemala team saw the whole." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

Recommends the book: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future - Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer.

"We've come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one's preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control...

Ultimately, we came to see all aspects of presence as leading to a state of "letting come," of consciously participating in a larger field of change." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 125

""We did not put our ideas together. We put our purposes together. And we agreed, and then we decided."" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 129 and 130

"How can you get started? Here are ten suggestions:

1. Pay attention to your state of being and to how you are talking and listening. Notice your own assumptions, reactions, contractions, anxieties, prejudices, and projections.
2. Speak up. Notice and say what you are thinking, feeling, and wanting.
3. Remember that you don't know the truth about anything. When you think that you are absolutely certain about the way things are, add "in my opinion" to your sentence. Don't take yourself too seriously.
4. Engage with and listen to others who have a stake in the system. Seek out people who have different, even opposing, perspectives from yours. Stretch beyond your comfort zone.
5. Reflect on your own role in the system. Examine how what you are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way they are.
6. Listen with empathy. Look at the system through the eyes of the other. Imagine yourself in the shoes of the other.
7. Listen to what is being said not just by yourself and others but through all of you. Listen to what is emerging in the system as a whole. Listen with your heart. Speak from your heart.
8. Stop talking. Camp out beside the questions and let answers come to you.
9. Relax and be fully present. Open up your mind and heart and will. Open yourself up to being touched and transformed.
10. Try out these suggestions and notice what happens. Sense what shifts in your relationship with others, with yourself, and with the world. Keep on practicing." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 131

"nearly every group I have worked with has articulated one scenario in which vested interests replay the status quo over and over, in a downward spiral, and another scenario in which a broad, dialogic coalition creates a better reality for all." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 132

"In 1998, a journalist asked Czech president Vaclav Havel if he was optimistic or pessimistic about the war in Bosnia. "I am not optimistic," Havel replied, "because I do not believe that everything will turn out well. And I am not pessimistic, because I do not believe that everything will turn out badly. I have hope. Hope is as important as life itself. Without hope we will never reach our dreams."" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)

> P. 137

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