Standing in the Fire

Leading High-Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage

Larry Dressler

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781605097725
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: R&D
• Index: Business

Many experienced facilitators, OD consultants, coaches, and organizational leaders increasingly find themselves standing in the fire - working in situations where group and community members are polarized, angry, fearful, and confused. Facilitator Larry Dressler has come to believe that simply picking up yet another method or technique wont help in situations like these. What has a truly transformational impact is what he calls the "facilitators presence". Cultivating an ability to access a compassionate presence that people experience as open, authentic, and clear in intention during the most difficult situations moves facilitators from being competent professionals to being on a path toward self-mastery.

I
THE FIRE

The language of fire and heat has long been part of our way of describing social interaction. For example, we say, The sparks were really flying! The exchange got quite heated. She made an inflammatory comment. He burnt his bridges when he left. She was in the hot seat. When we bring people together to talk about what matters to them, fire is a given. Where there is passion, conviction, and diversity, you can bet there will be heat.

This section of the book describes the destructive and creative potential of group fire, the many forms that fire takes in social interactions, and the ways in which a facilitator or convener can get swept away in the heat of the moment. We will also explore who we need to be in order to help groups use their emotional energy productively to come through the inevitable periods of conflict, confusion, and despair.

It seems that meetings are becoming more and more combustible—emotionally intense, polarized, or complicated. In my experience, emotional intensity is more likely to occur under the following conditions:

The outcome of the process is highly uncertain.

The issue is complex and not fully understood.

The group has a history of suffering and loss.

Discussion of the issue has been suppressed in the past.

Expression of emotion about the issue has also been suppressed.

The stakes are high.

Big power differentials exist among those who have a stake.

The people involved are highly diverse (in personality, culture, etc.).

People have strong positions and resist seeing alternative points of view.

The group is physically, mentally, or emotionally fatigued.

People have hidden agendas and use manipulative tactics.

If you look at this list and think, “More and more of my meetings are held under these conditions,” take that as confirmation that you are working in a highly combustible human landscape. It’s imperative that you understand this landscape and your role in it.

1 FIRE FOR BETTER OR WORSE

It was a familiar feeling—tightness in my chest and the back of my neck. This told me it was time to breathe, trust, let go of attachment to outcome, listen deeply to what was going on, and test things that might or might not go well.

—Gibran Rivera
Senior Associate,
Interaction Institute for Social Change

GROUP FIRE IS THE STATE IN WHICH a situation feels uncomfortable, emotionally heated, intense, and perhaps quite personal. Fire is as pervasive in human interactions as it is in nature—and just as necessary. In this chapter we will learn to recognize different forms of group fire, appreciating both the productive or destructive qualities of high-heat meetings. We’ll also examine the ways in which our habits of thinking, emotional hot buttons, and egos make us vulnerable to unwise thoughts and actions when we are standing in the heat of human interaction.

We see fire in the halls of government and in the hallways of our elementary schools. It shows up when the leaders of our churches, synagogues, and mosques gather. We feel the fire at town council meetings and industry conferences. When historic adversaries, diverse ethnic groups, and world leaders come together, we expect and usually get fire. When industry leaders, elected officials, scholars, social activists, and citizens come together to deliberate pressing issues like hunger, climate change, and national security, we witness the fire.

Though it may vary in its form, group fire seems not to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, education, economic class, or culture. In a wonderful documentary film titled Dalai Lama Renaissance, forty of the West’s most innovative and enlightened thinkers were invited to the home of His Holiness in northern India. The guests included religious scholars, writers, at least two quantum physicists, and a psychiatrist. When they arrived, they were asked by the Dalai Lama to work together to come up with a “solution to some of the world’s problems” and to identify “the transitions we must make if we’re going to survive.” What transpires over the course of several days is a portrait of group fire. The esteemed guests could not agree on a format for their discussions, let alone on any solutions. Bickering, interrupting, showboating, or simply getting lost in wishful thinking, they struggled to collaborate. In the midst of the arguing one participant pleaded, “I’d like to feel a little compassion here.” One leaves this film with a simultaneous sense of hopelessness (“If these folks can’t get it right, how are the rest of us supposed to learn to work together skillfully?”) and relief (“Now I don’t feel so bad about all of my lousy meetings”).

Conflict and emotional intensity are everywhere, and they are often a source of suffering. But high-heat moments are as natural and as necessary to human progress as they are in nature. We need fire in our families, teams, organizations, and communities as much as our prairies and forests need a cyclical blaze to stay healthy. Nothing interesting or innovative has ever really happened in groups without the heat of passion, disagreement, fear, or confusion. In fact, fire is often the best indicator that people care about the issue with which they are struggling. The absence of heat almost always means apathy, suppression, or nonengagement.

GROUP FIRE CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE

As in nature, fire has both creative and destructive potential in meetings. The destructive aspects of group fire are the more familiar to most of us. Here are some of the less pleasant outcomes of group fires when they are not properly tended:

Suffering. When things heat up, people often become fearful and aggressive. With a single spark, dialogue can degrade into aggressive debate, unreasoned argument, and personal attack. Such interactions often result in winners and losers and can cause emotional pain for those on both sides.

Proliferation. Under the right conditions, a single high-heat conversation gone wrong can escalate and spread throughout an organization or community. For several years my wife and I lived in a condominium managed by a homeowners’ association. At an annual meeting of the HOA, one member directed some personal and insulting remarks toward the president. For the following year, interactions within the entire community of neighbors—even those not present at the meeting—felt uncomfortable as people tried to figure out which “side” they were on or how to reconcile the rift. Two years after that meeting, trust had still not been fully restored.

Destruction. In a fire, groups often become overwhelmed and stuck in long-established patterns of defensiveness. Energy and goodwill get used up as people talk past one another. Money is invested and reinvested to “deal with” the consequences of false starts and reactive decisions. People burn out and relationships are destroyed.

GROUP FIRE CAN BE CREATIVE

What is the creative potential of fire in groups? How do emotional intensity, messiness, and disagreement serve us? Why on earth would we want to welcome it into our meetings?

Energy. We’ve known this lesson since the earliest days of humanity. The more difficult an issue, the more energy we need to tackle it. People bring the heat of their convictions and passions into a room, and this very same heat is often the source of discord. But the dissension is nothing more than an affirmation that people are alive and in pursuit of what matters to them.

Illumination. The fire of group adversity or breakdown is often exactly what people need to see an old problem in a completely new light. Conflict and bewilderment are often the necessary precursors to new ways of viewing the current reality and future possibilities. In the fire, people’s gifts and limitations are also illuminated for all to see. In this sense fire is a teacher. In Washington State I worked with a governor-appointed task force made up of police investigators, district attorneys, policymakers, and health care and social service professionals. They came together to formulate statewide guidelines on how to investigate the sexual abuse of children in institutions. At moments during the deliberation, strong disagreements and thinly veiled finger-pointing set off some pretty intense debates. During those very uncomfortable conversations the group discovered that each organizational entity had significantly different, sometimes conflicting priorities when it came to investigating this kind of crime. They realized that each agency, in its own way, often undermined the success of an investigation. It was through this realization that the task force established a breakthrough road map for statewide interagency coordination.

Cleansing. Without the heat behind strong advocacy and direct confrontation, issues can accumulate just under the surface, eventually exploding into a more destructive social dynamic. When people are allowed to fully express their emotions and opinions, and when those are acknowledged, that clearing of the air feels like a fresh start.

Regeneration. In forests and other ecosystems, fires enable seeds to germinate and nutrients to be released into the soil. Likewise, groups who learn to use fire productively see it as an important “nutritional” source of learning and development. In coming through the fires of disagreement and confusion, groups learn some of their most important lessons, and the seeds of innovation are sown.

Transformation. About 3,500 years ago a glassblower figured out how to apply heat to a bucket of silica sand mixed with tree ash in order to transform those simple materials into a beautiful vessel. In the same way, organizations, groups, and individuals can come through the intensity of conflict having created new paradigms, reinvented strategies, restructured organizations, and forged never-before-imagined alliances.

As we sat on his back porch one afternoon, the Abraham Path founder William Ury and I recounted such a transformational meeting. He had been in Bethlehem, in the West Bank, hoping to gain local support for the Abraham Path, a hiking route that extends through and connects Middle Eastern countries that have been at war. The purpose of the Abraham Path is to provide a place of connection for people of all faiths and cultures, inviting them to remember their common origins. Ury described what happened in the meeting.

Immediately they started to ask us, “Are you with the CIA? Is this part of a Zionist plot? Why are there no Palestinians on your board?” Then they started making demands. You could feel the distrust in the air. There was so much at stake, and I was concerned that this might be the burial of the Abraham Path project. I’d spent three years of my life, my money, and my credibility to arrive at this moment. I kept thinking to myself, “Let go. Abraham’s story is about letting go of control and trusting that a wisdom will emerge.” I managed to listen and resisted the urge to defend the project. We stuck with the conversation, letting the Palestinian leaders know that there was no way the Abraham Path would succeed unless it served the needs of their people.

Though no one who hears this story would have predicted it, today Bethlehem is one of the towns where the Abraham Path has the most support from local leaders! A willingness to stand in the fire with people who initially viewed him as the enemy resulted in a remarkable alliance and an innovative vehicle for peace building and reconciliation in a troubled part of the world.

The Anatomy of Group Fire

For those of us who choose to spend our time in groups that are experiencing both the destructive and creative impacts of group fire, it is useful to have a way of understanding and recognizing the different forms such fire can take.

The most common indications of fire are the visible expressions of fear, anger, aggression, and dissent. They are easy to recognize and can often feel overwhelming. In the very first strategic planning process I ever facilitated, the two company owners, brothers who had grown up on the streets of Brooklyn, stood up simultaneously, leaned across the conference table, and began hurling profanities and waving their cigars at each other. I could see team members retreating to the refreshment table and ducki...