Speaking From (vs talking about)
I started with these words: "Let's have an agreement that we can go and get coffee, a sandwich or a sweet treat at any time, even if it feels like we're in the middle of something." I didn't plan on saying these words, but they proved to be a useful and tangible example of what I mean when I propose, at the beginning of meetings, that we have some agreements about how we choose to be with each other. Agreements are an explicit articulation of how we choose to behave—even when it comes to coffee and sweet treats. Agreements are a commitment to be responsible for the quality of our relationships.
I spent two days with this group of fifty people exploring controversial topics in their city: where to provide social services and housing that includes social support, like emergency shelters, transitional housing, and supportive housing. As they embarked on a multi-year project to create a new land use bylaw for their city, two city planners convened citizens, social service providers, funders for social service organizations, landlords, housing developers and a few researchers. (Note: Some of these folks have used social services, and my clients also spent time with people who use or have used social services and housing with social supports to gain their perspective.)
“My city planner colleagues recognized that it is not their job to dictate the rules but rather help their community discern the outcomes they’d like for themselves.”
My city planner clients recognized that it is not their job to dictate the rules but rather to help their community discern the outcomes they'd like for themselves. With the outcomes known, planners can use their technical skills to write rules to help the community achieve what it wants. The purpose of the gathering was for the community to begin articulating what the community wanted to achieve.
Three big questions were in the room:
How do we define the ways we use land and buildings for social uses? For example, what is a shelter, drop-in centre, resource centre, supervised consumption site, soup kitchen, group home, or supportive housing? What are these uses of land exactly?
What do we choose to regulate and not regulate? For example, what does it mean to regulate the impacts of a use instead of regulating people?
Where do we choose to locate social uses? For example, does it make sense to locate social services where the people who need them are--or where they want to be? Do social uses belong in one area of the city, or should they be distributed throughout the city?
“With the outcomes known, planners can use their technical skills to write rules to help the community achieve what it wants.”
For decades, I have witnessed communities grappling with proposed new developments and services in their neighbourhoods. We rarely explore these big questions because community members get caught up in their resistance to a proposal. For example, I hear:
"We have more than our share of services here."
"This will bring our property values down."
"This is dangerous for our kids."
"It makes more sense to put this where the people who need these services already are."
"It makes more sense to put this kind of thing all over the city, not here."
Whatever the "this" is, "somewhere else" often makes more sense. Most people are more comfortable talking about the real and perceived impacts on "me" and offering opinions about how to avoid those impacts. It's an either/or discussion. We don't entertain solutions that could work for us and those who need social support at a moment in time or for their whole lives. Instead, as we grapple with questions about creating communities that serve citizens well, we often talk about the people who need support and whether we want "those people" near where we live and work.
Over those two days, when we agreed to help ourselves to coffee and snacks, we began stepping out of resistance and contemplating who they were as a city. As we found our way into our exploration, I offered a few more agreements about how we'd spend time together:
All stories shared are confidential
Ask for what you need from the group
Offer what you can (when asked)
Expect something vital, novel and important to happen at any time
With agreements explicit, we began our work together.
Speaking from
We started with a silent check-in, with no expectation to share with others:
Think about a time when you, or someone dear to you, struggled with housing. Perhaps there needed to be more money to pay rent. Or you lost your home due to flood or fire. Or social services played a critical role in your life…
With that circumstance in mind, participants were invited into a spoken check-in, noticing for themselves and others what is—or was—helpful. Instead of talking about the topic, the check-in served as an opportunity for people to connect to their lived experience, or if not their lived experience, a connection to someone who has or has had this experience.
The check-in was a fill-in-the-blank sentence: I notice that ______ is helpful.
Speaking from their experience, they identified qualities of helpfulness: kindness, people who made connections to needed services and resources, and dignity. It was an invitation for those who needed support to recognize what support felt like. Those who did not need support pondered what they noticed was helpful for others.
I noticed that some could speak from their experience (or near experience) while others talked about their opinion. Perhaps people with opinions didn't have the experience or didn't know anyone with the experience of needing social support. Perhaps they have had the experience and are uncomfortable thinking about it. Perhaps they have a well-worn habit of talking about what they know as a means of distancing themselves from making room in their lives for people with different needs than they do—and having to change. It doesn't matter why. They gently found ways for the experience of others to emerge.
Disagreement
While there was massive goodwill among those who gathered to reach for ways to support people struggling in their city, there was also a good amount of disagreement about what support means, how to provide support, and where. When people were exploring ideas in small groups, I felt some emotional heat rising in a corner of the room.
I watched three people struggle to share ideas and hear each other. One was doing all the right things—making space for others, sharing her feelings, gently offering a different perspective, yet the heat kept rising. I inserted myself and asked, "What happens if you don't have to agree?" They relaxed. I asked, "Is there more than one idea to explore here? If there is, feel free to work side-by-side on separate ideas." They relaxed again. Two of the three grabbed a fresh piece of paper and markers and fleshed out their idea at another table. The third person worked on theirs.
Two additional agreements became explicit:
We do not need to agree
No one needs to change their mind or anyone else's mind
The strong opinions relaxed. By not trying so hard to defend their positions, they could flesh out their thinking and identify what was important—not just what they thought was important. Their sense of importance began to expand from the scale of self to the city as they also heard what was important to others. As they released their grip on what was important to "me," they gently tuned into what was important to "us."
“When there’s no pressure to convince others, or be convinced, we can start listening to each other in ways that surprise us.”
When there's no pressure to convince others or be convinced ourselves, we can start listening to each other in ways that surprise us. For a moment in time, people spoke about their experience, too, rather than talk about what they know or their opinions. They made room for others' experiences and perspectives and even for honesty about their own experience. They didn't have to agree to disagree and stop talking. It's a subtle distinction that makes a difference—they agreed to not have to agree, and the goodwill grew.
Making room for a bigger world
Coupled with an agreement to not have to agree, the invitation to speak from experience rather than what they know created the conditions for people to listen to each other in ways that surprised them. It's tempting to talk about what we know to be true—and dangerous. When we "talk about," we close ourselves off from new information and other ways of living in our world. We consider what we believe to be true and, by extension, what others believe to be untrue. Talking about gets in the way of creating connection with each other.
When we speak from our experience, we invite others to do the same. We make room for honesty within ourselves and with others. Instead of dehumanizing each other, we humanize ourselves. We make room for more than one truth and start the work of learning to live with more than one experience of our world.
Here's the hard part: Talking about what we know feels good. It feels good to tell others what to do. Heck, having others tell us what to do can feel good. It can feel good to fight and argue when we know our position is correct and someone else's is wrong. It does not feel good, necessarily, to feel our experience, let alone speak from our experience.
When we speak from what we are experiencing, we tune into the magic of how our lives interconnect. When we talk about what we know, we shut ourselves off from this magic and reinforce our opinions and positions. The quality of how we relate to each other—how we feel about each other—is profoundly different when we speak from.
Can you feel the energetic difference even in the words?
When I talk about (I keep my distance from you).
When I speak from (I reveal myself to myself and you).
What better way to talk about bylaws, the rules that articulate how we choose to live together in our organizations, neighbourhoods, and cities, than from our experience?
Here are the agreements we use in the City Makers community:
Reflection
About what subjects do you “talk about” what you know rather than “speak from” your experience?
Under what circumstances do you take center stage—and what reward do you get for taking center stage?
Where do you have space in your life to explore ideas and experiences without pressure to agree?
Where would you like to have space in your life to explore ideas and experiences without pressure to agree?
What might emerge for you with such a space?
What small step can you take to make such a space in your life?
