Respecting each other’s beliefs and values

During every workshop, there will be differences of opinion and sensitive issues around the content when it conflicts with peoples’ beliefs and values. It is important to acknowledge this so that we can move ahead without creating resistance.

We can either escalate conflict or encourage safe discussion by our choice of words and tone. It is important to honour everyone’s voice regardless of biases they may express or may feel about the content. Presenters need to be aware of their own biases and reactions to the participants and the content of the workshop.

One of the principal ways facilitators can hold the “space” within which growth, change, and learning can occur is to project calmness and a sense of confidence to the participants. As presenters, we increase our credibility with participants when we feel confident about our material and have self-awareness of how we are perceived. We can improve our confidence through advance planning, developing a rich tool box of activities and exercises, and practicing our craft.

We can further develop our self-awareness through knowing and understanding our own triggers, having ways to manage our own well-being, and developing comfort with conflict and ambiguity so that we can access our own creativity in moments of disagreement.

• ensure everyone knows who is in the room and the role they are playing (do some form of introduction that is inclusive and sets the context). • make it comfortable to be there and dispel unease; housekeeping, times for breaks. • make it a safe space for all to share honestly and openly; hold people accountable to the ground rules. • get people talking and interacting early on; engage them with their peers.

A leader is a person who has an unusual degree of power to project on other people his or her shadow or his or her light. A leader is a person who has an unusual degree of power to create the conditions under which other people must live and move and have their being, conditions that can either be as illuminating as heaven or as shadowy as hell. A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside himself or herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

The problem is that people rise to leadership in our society by a tendency towards extroversion, which means a tendency to ignore what is going on inside themselves. Leaders rise to power in our society by operating very competently and effectively in the external world, sometimes at the cost of internal awareness.

I’ve looked at some training programs for leaders. I’m discouraged by how often they focus on the development of skills to manipulate the external world rather than the skills necessary to go inward and make the inner journey. —Parker Palmer, author, educator, and activist

The elders say that the biggest journey you can take in life is from your head to your heart. The elders also say that if you seek to lead people, you must take the return journey from your heart to your head. —Phil Land, Ojibwa leader