Archive for Partnership

Towards a theory of thralldom (from Carman de Voer)

October 4, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,

I love Sundays! Thank you for the references to Solzhenitsyn. It’s interesting that thralldom figures prominently in his text: “The whole raison d’etre of serfdom and the Archipelago is one and the same: these are the social structures for the ruthless enforced utilization of the free-of-cost work of millions of slaves” (Chapter 5). I’ve been bridging concepts we’ve discussed over the months and believe I see sufficient patterns to construct a comprehensive Theory of Thralldom.

Patterson describes the slave as dehumanized being who lives only through and for the master:

SLAVE

“The slave was a dominated thing, an animated instrument, a body with natural movements, but without its own reason, an existence entirely absorbed in another.”

MASTER

“The proprietor of this thing, the mover of this instrument, the soul and the reason of this body, the source of this life, was the master. The master was everything for him: his father and his god, which is to say, his authority and his duty…Thus, god, fatherland, family, existence, are all for the slave, identified with the same being; there was nothing which made for the social person, nothing which made for the moral person, that was not the same as his personality and his individuality”(Henri Wallon on the meaning of slavery in ancient Greece, Cited in Patterson).

Though Friere does not use the word “thrall” or “slave” in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he does use almost identical language to describe “the oppressed”: “For the oppressors, ‘human beings’ refers only to themselves; other people are “things” (p.39). Friere says that the “oppressor consciousness” tends to reduce everything-including people-to “objects at its disposal” (p.40) Science and technology, says Freire, “are used to reduced the oppressed to the status of things” (p.114). The educational system is their “enemy” (p.16) and management is an “arm of domination (p.50).

Patterson’s decription of slavery also illuminates Freire’s statements, such as “adhesion to the oppressor,” the “boss within,” subjects-objects, and Friere’s discussion of the difference between animals and humans (thank you for your reference to dogs!). I could never quite understand why he devoted so much analysis to the distinction. Animals, for example are “ahistorical,” “beings in themselves,” “cannot commit themselves,” are “not challenged by the configuration that confronts them,” and so on (pp.78-79). Obviously, animals and thralls are subhuman, objects, things. Now I see why Freire spoke about the “ontological vocation to be more fully human-“fully human” versus “anatomical fragments” and “automata” (things).

Middle class educators reading this blog might bristle at my suggestion that we humans exist within a web of thralldom. Freire predicted such reaction when he spoke about the middle class’s “fear of freedom” which “leads them to erect defense mechanisms and rationalizations which conceal the fundamental (i.e., the conditions of oppression) emphasize the fortuitous (i.e., let’s be “positive”) and deny concrete reality” (the misery of the oppressed) p.85. (parentheses mine). Freire was clear that praxis meant reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.

Freire’s indictment of global educational systems is understandable now given that the “educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is a better fit for the world” (p.57). It now makes sense to me why Freire saw the need to develop a completely different “pedagogy”-a pedagogy of the oppressed, whose organs of sense perception have been switched off so long that they need educators’ help to reactivate those. I can now understand why Freire’s text appears in many graduate programs (I met “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” while enrolled in Athabasca University’s MDE Program).

I appreciate your allusion to perception Lisa. Patterson (quoting Weber) notes that slavery is built upon a power relation which has 3 facets: social, psychological and cultural. Perception, I believe, falls under the second category:

1) The use or threat of violence in the control of one person by another (Social)

2) The capacity to persuade another person to change the way he perceives his interests and his circumstances. (Psychological)

3) Authority: the means of transforming force into right, and obedience into duty (Cultural)

But how is slavery distinctive as a relation of domination? Perhaps we could discuss that later on.

Bye for now,

Carman

I would call my posts ‘messays’ because they represent mental chaos searching for coherence. Thank you for the ‘mutual flourishing’ you promote Lisa.

References:

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, 1982

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2007.

Category: All Posts, Culture, Education, Organization, Partnership, Power, Psychology, Science, Values /

Self Actualization vs. Dehumanization

October 3, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, Thank you for your note! I appreciation this whole process of deconstruction and reconstruction of ideas. It takes courage to relinquish our certainty enough to open our minds to new connections and possibilities. There is a period of chaos before new structures coalesce, which can be uncomfortable, to the say the least, but the insights we gain by allowing and processing this chaos or change can be enormously rewarding. Therefore, I appreciate Rosemarie Anderson’s term for that period, “auspcisous bewilderment”(1). One of the benefits of Partnership systems is that they are safe enough to allow the uncertainty inherent in the creative process.

As you requested, I moved our earlier conversation in the comments area of “Freedom vs. Slavery” http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/09/23/freedom-is-slavery/ to the main blog to make it easier to read.

Your quote from Freire aptly contasts the difference between the experience and concept of work as self-actualization in the context of community and work as dehumanization or exploitation. These are two different paradigms of leadership and organization (social relationship), and of ways of being in the world.

The Partnership paradigm reflects an ethic of mutual flourishing. Conversely, a dominator paradigm reflects a “dog eat dog” or “dog oppress dog” 😉 ethic. Both are part of our historical inheritance, but the ethic of domination goes deep. What is our reaction when we are crossed? And then, what response do we choose…

In considering Friere’s comment, I am also reminded of philosopher Jacques Derrida’s reminder that there is freedom and power throughout the system. Even in situations of extreme oppression, such as former Soviet labor camps, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago demonstrated that the human being could choose a perspective of self-actualization. So we have these mulitple frontiers, the social and the psychological, for moving towards more creative, adpative and fulfilling systems..

It’s a pleasure to read and post your insightful and creative essays, as always!

Lisa

1. Rosemarie Anderson, “Intuitive Inquiry,” Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human Experience,” eds. William Broud and Rosemarie Anderson.

Anderson includes a quote from the mystic Jelaluddin Rumi in the opening to her chapter, which speaks to this place of auspicious bewilderment and creativity: “Today like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Power, Psychology, Values /

Dehumanization of Work

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

10/1/09  Hi Lisa,

Thank you so much for your gracious comments. It’s wonderful that our minds can interplay notwithstanding our constraints and commitments-you within an intellectual orchard, and me within a psychological sarcophagus.

 Lisa, you ask if I would like to see the discussion move up a little. I believe I would find it easier on the eye, if you don’t mind. I keep trying to post directly but the site simply won’t let me in. I will attempt again on the weekend. I also have a new e-mail address I’ll forward to you when time permits.

I’ve been doing a lot of demolition and re-construction on my Mythology of Organization. The wrecking ball has been my so-called ‘theory of thralldom.’

In closing, I thought you might enjoy a quote from Freire:

“People are fulfilled only to the extent they create their world, and create it with their transforming labor. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure and totally threatened-if their work does not belong to them-the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.126).

Bye for now,

Carman

Category: All Posts, Design, Partnership /

(Reply) Bullying & Dominator Systems

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

Carman, I apologize for the delay in responding (I’m still writing on a deadline). I appreciate your exquisite thought process. Yes, understanding a problem more deeply can create a perspective from which we can see possible solutions. Personally, I suspect that because the problem is systemic, solutions must be multi-level and multidimensional. When the time comes, I am very interested to hear your ideas with respect to “bridges.”Bullying is a good example of dominator behavior. And we do (unfortunately but not unexpectedly) see this kind of behavior in the workplace.

I really like your fishing metaphor, “big ideational fish”!

Does this thread work for you as a locus for our conversation? If you should like to see some of this discussion move up a level, just let me know. You are, of course, always welcome to post there directly, if that seems appropriate.

Best wishes,
Lisa
P.S. I always enjoy your description of the local sounds and surroundings. Having lived on a boat for several years, in Monterey and Moss Landing, California, I remember seeing seals sleeping on sunny sea walls… We really enjoyed that lifestyle.

Category: Culture, Partnership, Power /

Bullying in Dominator Systems

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,  I am happy to hear that you have experienced Partnership relationships where thralldom was not an active force. I would like to include myself in that relationship. Succinctly, I would say that “partnership” is more probable where one is not subject to the will of another. Even slaves experienced a kind of partnership, according to Patterson, in that they ‘had strong social ties among themselves though their relationships not recognized as legitimate or binding.’

However, as you observe, it is not enough to highlight elements of domination in our existing models of organization; it is also incumbent upon us to ‘explore some psycho-social-spiritual bridges to Partnership ways of being.’

I think I may have located one such a “bridge.” However, rather than rush to ‘prescription,’ I would like to devote more time to ‘description.’ Using raw materials from Patterson’s analysis of slavery, and incorporating the straight-edge of your critique, I would like to continue constructing a Theory of Organizational Thralldom that can speak to some of the more trenchant and troubling issues of organizational behavior. I want to demonstrate that asymmetrical power relations, characterized by domination and submission, activate the principle and practice of thralldom.

Let’s illustrate one such issue: psychological abuse, colloquially called “bullying.” To bully is to intimidate through blustering, domineering, or threatening behavior: workers who were bullied into accepting a poor contract (http://www.thefreedictionary.com). Bullied Persons are routinely forced into submission through fear. Now, most texts I’ve consulted approach this ubiquitous phenomenon through the perspective of the powerless. They typically treat the abused worker to psychology-How to understand the abuser, What are the characteristics of the abuser? How to personally cope, and so on. Because the systemic relationship remains untouched-and unchallenged-power continues to be weighted in favor of the abuser.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) website observes: “On June 1, 2004, Quebec became the first North American jurisdiction to include protection against psychological harassment of employees in its Act respecting Labour Standards.

Bullying, known as psychological harassment is defined as:

“Any vexatious behaviour in the form of repeated and hostile or unwanted conduct, verbal comments, actions or gestures, that affect an employee’s dignity or psychological integrity and that results in a harmful work environment for the employee. A single serious incidence of such behaviour that has a lasting harmful effect on an employee may also constitute psychological harassment” (http://www.cupe.bc.ca/stopbullying).

Two things stand out in the above:

1) Quebec is the first “North American” jurisdiction to legislate against the practice, and

2) “Protection.” There’s that word again.

In his discussion of injustice Patterson quotes an American ex-slave who recounts: “the most barbarous thing I saw with these eyes-I lay on my bed and study about it now-I had a sister, my older sister, she was fooling with the clock and broke it, and my old master taken her and tied a rope around her neck-just enough to keep it from choking her-and tied her up in the back yard and whipped her I don’t know how long. There stood mother, there stood father, and there stood all the children and none could come to her rescue.”

I have personally witnessed the verbal equivalent of such physical abuse as colleagues stood by and did nothing to stop a psychological assault. Patterson rightly asks, How could persons be made to accept such natural injustice? Not simply the victim but more particularly, “those who stood by and accepted it.”

Patterson isolates two dimensions: 1) denying the slave’s humanity, his independent social existence 2) the master’s authority was derived from his control over symbolic instruments, which effectively persuaded both slave and others that the master was the only mediator between the living community to which he belonged and the living death that his slave experienced.

Perhaps we can expand on the above dimensions later? I trust that as we cast our mental seine wide we will capture some really big ideational fish.

Bye for now,

Carman

I love listening to the University of Wyoming classical station in the morning. Saturday mornings are especially exquisite. I wonder how many seals I’ll see on the seawall today. Hey, that alliteration sounds a lot like ‘the big black bug bled blue blood.’

Reference:

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, 1982

Category: All Posts, Culture, Partnership, Power, Trust, Values /

(Reply) Freedom is Slavery

October 3, 2009 / / No comments

9/23/09 

Carman, Hello,
I apologize for the delay in posting and responding. I’ve been on a writing vacation for the past two weeks (continuing this week).

You’ve begun a powerful analysis of the dominator paradigm, and I am looking forward to reading how you further develop your tree of knowledge! It’s useful, I think, to expand our awareness of underlying structures and assumptions. (Even to the psycho-spiritual level).

You assert that thralldom “is the active force underlying virtually all relationships.” This is true by definition in dominator systems. On the other hand, I have experienced Partnership relationships where this is not the case. (And of course, my purpose in this blog is to both highlight elements of domination in our existing models of organization and to explore and describe some psycho-social-spiritual bridges to Partnership ways of being).

Thank you for sharing here!

Warm regards,
Lisa
P.S. We have a beautiful day here in Southern California on the cusp of Summer and Fall…

Category: All Posts, Partnership /

Creating healthy organizations

August 20, 2009 / / 2 comments

Carman,
In re-reading your post, http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/06/22/our-house-from-carman-de-voer/ I continue to notice new levels of richness and meaning.

Freire describes some of the core insights of Partnership: “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.66).

Yes, as Freire describes, domination is system of relations, including our relation to self. We are divided beings in as much as we internalize the voice(s) of dominant, controlling others. As young children, we tend to absorb parental and cultural moods, attitudes, and perspectives. It is, therefore, so often true that children of dominating parents (or of a hostile culture) struggle with self-criticism and self-doubt. In the Dominator paradigm, this is the position of feeling “less than” others. In this psychological literature, this is sometimes called “shame.”

Psychology also describes “projection” as a psychological defense mechanism. One way of copying with our “disowned […] feeling, wishes, needs and drives […] is to attribute them to others” (Bradsahw, 109). We may also gain some temporary relief from the pain of internalized oppression through identification with the oppressor (Bradshaw 106). When we identify with dominator (our externalized notions of power, prestige), we may experience ourselves as feeling “better than.” In this state, we may project undesireable characteristics onto others and “do unto others as has been done unto us.” It is, therefore, a truism that, in the absence of healing, people who have been abused, often become abusers themselves.

In a dominator system (such as is predominant in our culture), there is a tendency to either feel less than or greater than others, and whether one feels inferior or inferior can vary depending on time and circumstance.

Judgement appears to be the mechanism by which this occurs. Therefore, it is not surprising that it is common to fear the judgement of others — particularly those we perceive to have some level of power over our lives.

One dynamic for maintaining the “upper hand” in a dominator relationship is silencing, in which one does not permit others the privilege of speaking their truths. This dynamic may be internalized as self-silencing.

Codependency has been defined in a variety of ways. One pertinent definition is, “A pattern of coping which develops because of prolonged exposure to and practice of dysfunctional family rules that make difficult the open expression of thought” (http://www.winning-teams.com/codependent.html).

This same dynamic has been described in organizations. In the 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Stephen R. Covey describes the dynamics of codependency in organizations and how its negative effect on organizational effectiveness (17). For an excerpt, see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XM8lWue6vQUC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=leadership+codependency&source=bl&ots=9i5CVzn618&sig=YVd9e402EUHfsY4Vbi7GjwRLxzY&hl=en&ei=vO2JSrycEoPusQOj1ajPDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=leadership%20codependency&f=false

Author John Gardner writes, “Most ailing organizations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, but because they cannot see their problems.” The perspective of each individuals and organization (which is ultimately shaped by its members) seems natural and normal; therefore, real alternatives may not be readily seen, or when seen, may seem counter-intuitive. Seeing alternatives, including personal and organizational health, is an imaginative act.

If we can label a core problem of contemporary organizations to be co-dependence, then, what might the literature of psychology and recovery have to teach us with respect to creating healthier, more flexible, collaborative, and creative environments?

Also, what is the relationship between a Partnership relationship and perspective (based on mutual thriving), coaching and the psychological-social paradigm of recovery?

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Leadership, Learning, Organization, Partnership, Psychology, Values / Tags: , , ,

Leadership vs. Control by Guilt and Fear

August 14, 2009 / / 3 comments

In a recent post, Carman de Voer noted the distinction between leadership and management. These two different functions often converge within a particular role, but tend to draw upon different kinds of power. Management is associated with control, which is a highly reputable value and principle in most organizations. The process of management itself has been described as a feedback loop: managers “plan, organize and control” the work of the organization.

We have come to learn that the only relatively simple systems are subject to control in this sense; the interactions between the elements of more complex systems result in unpredictable outcomes. For this reason, particularly where the intelligence, creativity and committed contributions of organizational members are important to organizational outcomes, we have seen a shift from an emphasis on management to an emphasis on leadership.

Whereas management tends to rely on external rewards and punishments, leadership, particularly transformative leadership, seeks to align the self-actualization of organizational members with the self-actualization of the organization (the achievement of the organization’s mission and vision).

However, because leaders and managers, are still accountable for the contributions of their people, and their own jobs and careers are at stake, they usually feel some urgency around results.

The word “urgency” points to both importance and fear or anxiety. Another common term, which is used in conjunction with urgency is “edge.” (It might be useful to notice that intense focus and forward motion driven by vision and purpose, absent fear, has a very different tone).

Leaders then, very often experience some level of fear or anxiety — conscious or unacknowledged — and, the most common reaction to fear is to try to control others.

It’s useful to pause for a moment to consider: how do we, ourselves, attempt to exert control? What are the options? I once attended a workshop on power dynamics in which participants paired up on either side of a line. Each side was given the instruction that to win, they needed to get the other person to come over to their side of the line. Participants utilized a variety of strategies — including pleading, promising, guilting and dragging each other across.

In Spiritual Selling, sales and marketing expert, Joe Nunziata, describes the often unconscious strategies that people use to control others, and how these strategies are often employed in the workplace:

“Guilt [and shame] is the weapon of choice used by parents to control their children. […] In most cases, parents are not using guilt on a conscious level. They have absorbed guilt […] for generations and passed it on to their children. Innately parents know they can use this guilt to manipulate and control their children. Once the power of guilt is realized, it is then used in all areas of life. People begin to recognize the power of guilt in other situations. It can be applied to relationships, employees, coworkers, friends, and family. […]

“The desire to control and manipulate is driven by fear. The ego believes it will be safe if it can control people and the environment. This is why so-called control freaks are always micromanaging all aspects of work and the people involved with a project. There is an inherent fear that losing complete control of the situation will have disastrous results. […]”

“These same guilt and manipulation techniques are used in the business world. A sales manager may use the exact same process to motivate his or her people. Making salespeople feel they are not doing a good job can trigger similar feelings of guilt and shame. The intent is that they will start to feel bad and then have the desire to work harder. [Those who have read this blog for some time will recognize this dynamic as “The Wheel of Fear.”] The effectiveness of this approach depends on the makeup of the indiviudal. If similar techniques were used effectively by our parents they will transfer into the business world as well. You will be susceptible to the feelings of guilt you experienced as a child. […] Guilt and fear have long been viewed as the only way to motivate performance. Although the world has changed and some organizations are embracing more postiive techniques, a large majority are still trapped in this model. It is important to realize how powerful these unconscious traits are and how difficult they are to break…” (46-49).

Of course, external rewards, such as salary increases, bonuses, promotion, political capital, etc. are the “carrot” of this “carrot-and-stick” approach.

Hence, the organization tends to take on the characteristics of the family — too often, a dysfunctional one.

Transformational leadership, on the other hand, taps into a substantially different power dynamic in which the leader speaks to team members’ intrinsic motivations, to align the self-actualization of each team member with the self-actualization of the team or organization. In my opinion, coaching is a key component of transformational leadership. It cultivates the intelligent, creative energy of team members towards the achievement of overarching, meaningful goals. While recognizing distinctions in roles, it respects all organizational members, and builds the health and capability of the system…

What is the difference between healthy and unhealthy organizations?
How can we cultivate ever more healthy organizations?

References
Christie, L. “Getting Off Your Wheel of Fear” http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/30/getting-off-your-wheel-fear/

Ibid. “Leaping Off the Hampster Wheel of Fear” http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/06/15/leaping-off-the-hamster-wheel-of-fear/

De Voer, C. “Promethius and Transformative Leadership.”
http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/08/09/promethius-and-transformative-leadership/

Nunziata, J. Spiritual Selling. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley, 2007.

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Collaboration, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Psychology, Rewards, Spirituality, Teams /

Love and leadership

July 25, 2009 / / One comment

“Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, without having their hearts in it. The best kept secret of successful leaders is staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services.”  — Barry Z. Posner and Jim Kouzes

Posner and Kouzes speak of love and leadership, love and business.  How often do we hear those words used together? Most of us have been introduced to a concept of business in which business is a domain unto itself, in which the primary driver is economic profit: the business of business is to make money for the shareholders.  When I earned my MBA, two of my professors presented the relationship between ethics and business as a pragmatic one: if you are in the public eye and you violate the public’s ethical preferences, you can experience negative consequences; for this reason it is necessary to manage this dimension of your business.  The premise is that your competitor will be doing everything possible to maximize profits, so if you give more consideration to other stakeholders  than is required by government regulation and the market (for labor, capital, etc.) then, you increase risk and reduce shareholder returns.  As  a relatively recent example, Costco has come under fire for giving employees better benefits than Sam’s Club does.

For many years, the world of business was a man’s world, shaped according to the stereotypically masculine values of rationality unencumbered by human feeling and by competition — both external and internal.  The “gamesman” contributes competently to the team, but retains a savvy emotional disconnection from the organization, customers, etc. 

To be taken seriously — to be successful — women needed to learn the language and the terrain.  Using terms like “love,” “desire,”  “care,” etc., according to one professor, whom I like personally but tend to disagree with on a variety of subjects was, “writing like a girl.” 

Therefore, it is particularly striking that Posner and Kouzes, luminaries in the subject area of leadership, speak of loving:

  • leading
  • the people who do the work
  • the company’s products and services
  • the customers served

Gamesmanship is not about love, but leadership is.  True, the ethic of many organizations does not, in fact, reward love or personal commitment. Yet, the transformative leadership that is needed now, to create highly adaptable and creative organizations, expresses a very different paradigm — of vision, commitment, caring. This paradigm presently often co-exists with the classical paradigm in which human values are generally extraneous — “softer,” “feminine,” inappropriate to the business environment. ( The exception, in the classical paradigm, is that human values are employed instrumentally to manipulate stakeholders towards “rational” economic ends — that is, ends that benefit shareholders  as purely economic beings).

Having spent the first part of my career in corporations — substantial intact systems — I now have the opportunity as a small business owner, to choose my market, the clients and customers we serve, and our products and services. And I am finding that the business “clicks” — is the most successful — in that intersection between core capabilities, market needs, and passion.  I am finding that when we love the clients we serve, our internal and external business partners, and our products and services, we find the greatest success.  Mission, human connection, and ethics are at the forefront of the business.  In the old paradigm, we might contrast selfishness with selflessness, with the former being a winning  position, and the latter a losing position — the first stereotypically equated with masculinity and the second sterotypically equated with a subordinate femininity. In the new paradigm, leadership is about “both-and,” with the “and” serving as a creative dimension in which new possibilities for mutual sustainability arise, and the rewards are diverse and many.

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Partnership, Rewards /

Our House

June 22, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, Thank you, as always, for your post. Your contributions really enrich this forum. The dynamics you describe resonate with what Riane Eisler would call Dominator dynamics, which describe theory x organizations. In a Dominator culture, one is either one up or one down from others. It also invokes the dual-nature you describe (“Who is addressing me?”)

I am also reminded of the psychological dynamics in which people who are abused in some way, often abuse certain others, as a way of regaining their sense of personal power. You shared Freire’s quote, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence.” I think we are so accustomed to these more subtle forms of violence (as compared to physical violence) that they tend to be relatively invisible to us. I think it’s helpful for us to broaden our understanding of violence and coercion.

Eisler identifies the fundamental model of human relationships as the family, and that resonates with me. From that perspective, our organizations are, in a sense, the family or community model writ large.

I enjoy hearing about your walks and life. Have a terrific week!

Lisa

“We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.”

Hello Lisa,

Thank you for your discussion of consciousness in the context of organizational transformation. The sunshine of such examination shining through the tears of my lived experience has generated a rainbow of emotions and ideas. I will attempt to integrate some of these from your spectrum.

I especially enjoy the reference to Socrates who seemed to equate quality of life with self-examination. Freire put it this way, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.66).

Your post includes references to “supports,” “connections,” and “foundations.” The image of the house or “dwelling that shapes us” comes to mind. Freire likewise speaks about “the structure of thought” in the context of oppression. Speaking about the oppressed, Freire says, “their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors” (p.27). He suggests that employees actually “house” the boss and that this habitation both determines their identity as men and women, and dictates their actions towards one another. Freire describes this process as “hosting” the oppressor (p.30).

Elsewhere he says that the “boss” is “inside them” (p. 46). The consequence is “adhesion” to the employer (p.27) within a colonized consciousness which renders us dual beings, “they are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized” (p30). In this state we might ‘strike out at our comrades [or loved ones] for the pettiest reasons’ (p.44).

“It is a rare peasant who, once “promoted” to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself” (p.28) “Their ideal is to be men [sic]; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity” (p.27). According to this logic, we invariably take our work home with us because we house the “boss” within us. We are dual beings.

While I do concede that Freire is speaking about “peasants,” I also believe that the principles are applicable across a range of organizational experience. I am not suggesting that all employers are “oppressors.” Freire is primarily thinking about those who dehumanize others by treating them as “objects,” “things,” “inferiors,” “possessions.” Periodically, when a ‘comrade’ speaks about the work they are doing, or what “needs to be done” I want to ask, “Who is addressing me?” “Who is speaking to me?” because I sense that I am addressing a dual being. I confess that it’s difficult at times to know whose “voice” I am hearing—or what voice I am using. Many of us will, in fact, say “we” when speaking about our organization and its policies.

At times when I witness emotional fissures and interpersonal frictions I wonder to what extent we are expressing the duality dynamic Freire addresses. I also wonder to what extent sickness and stress are expressions of a conscious or subconscious inner battle between the individual and the employer?

Freire says, “The task of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of the fact that as dual beings, “housing” the oppressors within themselves, they cannot be truly human” (p.70). He says that “liberation” is a childbirth, and a painful one (p.31). I am grateful to have a “midwife” like you Lisa to assist with such delivery.

Bye for now!

p.s. “we” are going for a seawall walk now.

Carman

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2007.

Category: All Posts, Communication, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Psychology /
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