turning to one another, Meg Wheatley

“I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again. Simple, honest, human conversation. Not meditation, negotiation, problem-solving, debate, or public meetings. Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well.”

It’s clear that being a community builder is not easy. We need support, we need ideas, and we need limitless stocks of energy and time! In all that busyness, though, it’s easy to lose time to read and reflect, and yet doing so can be so helpful, so rejuvenating for our “everyday” work. The flip-side of that equation is that there are lots of books to read and few of them make it to the “must-read” short list. My hope with these book recommendations is to take the time to separate the wheat from the chaff and inspire you to pick up a book or two that just might help your work.

It’s also clear that community builders play many different and varied roles. Not every book is going to be applicable to each situation. But what we do all share – I hope! – is the centrality of building personal relationships with other members of our communities through conversation. We’ve all got to talk to people, and there are better and worse ways of going about this.

Margaret Wheatley – who also wrote Leadership and the New Science (2006) – has been a life-long community builder, with opportunities to practice in many situations and cultures, giving her an awesome breadth of experience. And out of all that wisdom she has come to a point of clarity about what it takes to practice effective community building: “simple, honest, human conversation.” She rightly acknowledges the progress that has been made with the varied dialogue methods (World Cafe, Open Space, public deliberation, etc.) but says that simpler, more effective tools may be lying at our feet.

turning to one another: simple conversations to restore hope for the future (2009) clearly and brilliantly lays out the vision and the practice of using conversation as the central method to building relationships, building community, and creating positive change in the world. Wheatley claims that informal, personal conversations have been overlooked and wrongly so. Conversation is a mighty tool of many uses.

The why’s

all major change begins with simple conversation

“[A]ll change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about. Simple conversations held at kitchen tables, or seated on the ground, or leaning against doorways are powerful means to start influencing and changing our world.”

deep conversation is the best way to discover what people really care about

The kind of change that Wheatley says begins “when a few people start talking” depends on the quality of that conversation. Conversations that initiate change must be based in our deepest values, in what we really care about – and those are conversations to start precisely because we’ve been taught to avoid them.  We’ve been taught to play a role, to appear strong and self-assured, to avoid anything that smacks of sentimentalism or confusion. But there’s hope.

“I find it takes just one person to have the courage to begin a conversation. It only take one because everyone else is eager for the chance to talk. They’re just waiting for someone else to begin. They are quite as brave as you.”

conversation is a path toward growth and enlightenment

“As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally—our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today.”

These kinds of conversations, Wheatley suggests, are also very useful in revealing our own preconceptions, the particularities of our own subject position. And by making those visibleand being fully open to the truth of those we talk to we are confronted with the possibility that our view of the world is incomplete.

“It is very difficult to give up our certainties—our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways.”

conversation and listening build trust and openness

“But the greatest benefit of all is that listening moves us closer. When we listen with less judgment, we always develop better relationships with each other. It’s not differences that divide us. It’s our judgments about each other that do. Curiosity and good listening bring us back together.”

She lays bare the fact that deep, personal conversation is a very intimate form of interaction, one in which we choose to share our purest self and accept others as they come. This exchange is possibly the most powerful way to build trust and openness between people. People learn who the other really is, discover the future they envision, complement their viewpoint, build the basis for working together.

The how’s

Wheatley not only presents a strong case for why we should engage in such deep, personal conversation, she also reminds us what that entails. In the process of our enculturation she suggests that many of us have forgotten how, and the how is very important. The book is divided into three sections. The first outlines the reasons for conversation and gives some general guidelines on how to conduct them. The middle section has quotes and images as a way to “pause and reflect” on the power of conversation and how we might bring it back into our lives. And finally, the third section lays out twelve “conversation starters” that Wheatley says are tested ways of delving into such deep, meaningful conversation. Thus the “how’s” of conversation are found both in the first and last sections of the book, and I strongly encourage community builders to look at those twelve conversation starters to imagine which ones might be best suited to their own work. But the principles of conversation she boils down to these:

• “we acknowledge one another as equals”
• “we try to stay curious about each other”
• “we recognize that we need each other’s help to become better listeners”
• “we slow down so we have time to think and reflect”
• “we remember that conversation is the natural way humans think together”
• “we expect it to be messy at times”

Read these quickly and they seem simple. They even seem self-evident. But they are also revolutionary. How often do we actually follow these principles? My guess is not very often. The question is, what would happen if we did?

The final word

There aren’t many books I would put on the “must read” list for all community builders, but this one definitely makes it. turning to one another gets almost everything right. It’s beautifully written in clear and precise language. The book itself, the images, the poems, the typography are all wonderful. The arguments for conversation and the tools to implement are thorough and strong. And Wheatley’s spirit and intention jumps off the page inspiring the reader to go out and practice what she preaches.

Simple, honest, human conversation is not a simplistic solution, it is an elegant one. “If we reflect on our experience” Wheatley writes, “we notice that good solutions are always simple. Much simpler than we thought they would be.” But we most often reach that simplicity only through much trial and confusion. So, “I think we need to give ourselves credit for our struggles with complexity. We can laugh at our realization only because we’re on the other side of complexity.”

turning to one another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future. Margaret J. Wheatley, 2009. Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Fransisco. 182 pp.