As the Gregorian year transitioned and we witnessed the riots at the Capitol, we all had a range of emotions.  Some of us were really feeling light and hope, others were feeling fear and despair; some were orienting to the positive changes, others were acutely aware of the systemic violence and underlying dynamics that remain unchanged; and most of us felt some complicated mix of all this and more.

Working with organizations whose members were all experiencing this from their various positionalities, I noticed one key feature of teams that made the difference between moving toward co-creativity and collapsing into conflict and pain:  the ability to hold complexity and to honor and learn from everyone’s process.

The light is real, and so is the darkness.  The hope is justified, and so is the despair. Possibilities are opening up, and blockages remain. We have new opportunities to create the world our hearts now is possible, and we are still facing systemic violence and ecological disaster.  

Each of us is more attuned so some dimensions of this reality. Some people I’ve been working with have the belief  that this difference is solely a function of privilege.  This story is essentially that people with privilege are overemphasizing the positive, because they do not feel the negative.  I’ve heard this perspective be voiced by people of all identities. When it happens, I’ve noticed that people with lots of privilege often feel guilt, people with less privilege feel anger and resentment, and we start to feel divided and less powerful

In myself, I notice that when I orient to the positive, I sometimes feel like I am committing a betrayal.  As if focusing on hope, light, and positivity is somehow ignoring the reality of violence and abandoning the people who are acutely affected by it in ways that I am not.  But I have been learning that leaning into hope is not a betrayal of pain; but that over focusing on pain is actually a betrayal of hope.  And this betrayal of hope actually collapses my ability to show up in a way that tends to pain and transforms the systems that inflict it.

I’ve also noticed that the belief that feeling hope and seeing light is a function of privilege is actually fairly condescending to people who do not have lots of privilege.  Not only does it ignore the fact that plenty of people who hold less privileged identities are feeling and celebrating the hope, it also assumes that orienting to hope is not a choice some people have the capacity to make.  As if one’s identity defines and limits the way we orient to our world.  Of course it is harder for some of us to embody different orientations, and we all are carrying different weights and pressures, but assuming that this removes our power to choose how we balance the light and the darkness within our awareness is not acknowledging the power of the human spirit, particularly the spirit that resides in bodies oppressed by our dominant social structures.

The teams I have seen move through this moment powerfully and cohesively are the ones that value the wisdom in everyone’s perspective.  They are the ones that understand that no one member’s perspective is complete, and that if they each bring their own perspective powerfully then the group as a whole develops a more robust sense of what is really going on.  These teams learn as much from the people who speak of the darkness as they do those who speak of the light, and they do not fall into needless opposition with or judgment of one another.

As I myself navigate this space, I am reminded of the age-old truism that “what you focus on grows.”  And from this, I learn two contradictory lessons.  On the one hand, it encourages me to focus on the way things are changing for the better, the way new possibilities are opening up, and the way the new world is really taking shape, right here, right now, in the shell of the old.  On the other hand, I remember that there are many forces in the world that are focusing on creating and maintaining systems of scarcity and violence.  They are focusing on it, so it will grow.  It is no service to anyone to ignore that fact.  This guides me to pay close attention to that portion of reality, but from a specific vantage point.  

I do not look at the darkness through the gaze of despair, I look at it with a commitment to find the cracks where light can enter and change may happen.  This takes the resolve to look squarely into darkness and violence without being swallowed by it. It’s a resolve I’ve mostly learned from the traditions of Judaism, Black liberation, and feminism.

I’m still finding my way to dance with dynamics like bypassing, naivete, the bizarre self-satisfaction and importance I feel by feeling like I have am more attuned to systems of violence than others, and more as I seek an orientation that will actually help support the transformation that I truly see is not only possible, but already happening.

I certainly don’t have the answer or the truth. But I do want to offer some questions:  “How do you choose to orient what is happening in our world? Why do you choose that orientation? What possibilities does your orientation create? What limits does it create? How can you get more in touch with your power to develop a perspective that truly serves?”

My prayer is that we all can find a posture that works for us; that feels true, healthy, and of service given the various identities, positionalities, and histories we carry in our bodies; that we can learn from each other; honor each other’s journeys; and build a more cohesive and powerful movement.

Crafting a statement about diversity, equity, and inclusion can be a transformative process for an organization. It can be an opportunity to deepen everyone’s understanding of the dynamics that are playing out in both society and the organization; it can be an opportunity to build trust and open lines of communication that will keep the organization resilient in the face of all sorts of challenges; it can be an opportunity to cast a vision to guide the organization’s evolution; and it can be an opportunity for everyone in the organization to come together and become stronger, more aligned, and more connected.

It can, of course, also be an opportunity for a few people to sit behind closed doors and write a few paragraphs that look really nice on a website but end up being mere words on paper that are fairly disconnected from the lived reality of the organization.

One key thing that really makes a difference as to whether your DEI statement is a meaningful step toward actually making your values real is the process that you use to create it. There are a whole range of different processes that can be used depending on the scale, structure, and investment of an organization.

The basic point is simple: The process of creating the DEI statement is one of learning, growth, confrontation, and commitment. If you only include a small group of people in this process, then the rest of your organization will at best miss out on an opportunity to grow and at worst feel excluded, marginalized, not-represented, and distrustful.

The best process is one where people genuinely engage in challenging questions, develop shared understandings, listen deeply to each other, and become truly invested in creating a workplace that welcomes, supports, and recognizes all people. The actual statement is then a written record and reminder of an embodied process that people went through together. The embodied process will have at least (if not more) of an impact on your organization than the statement itself.

Drafting statements is a perfect excuse to engage your organization in a process like this. Getting folks invested in the kind of conversations and learning that create the soil for culture change can be hard. Having the collective goal of generating a statement brings a sense of substance, grounding, and directionality to the process. It helps people realize that this isn’t just a diversity workshop where people learn a few things, feel nice, then go back to business as usual; it’s the runway to a long term commitment that everyone is making together.

When you begin design your process, it will help for you to consider the following five elements: Crafting Team, Frame and Grounding Resources, Input, Community Building, and Implementation Accountability.

Crafting Team

The Crafting Team is the group of people that will lead the process and synthesize feedback and learning from throughout the organization to create the actual language of the statement.

This group of people should be representative of the diverse identities and perspectives of the organization. Everyone on it should be authentically invested in a crafting a meaningful statement, and there must be strong representation of people who both hold marginalized identities and are willing and able to do the intellectual and emotional labor associated with this kind of work. At the same time, it should not be composed of people that all agree with each other.

If you think there are strong divergent viewpoints inside your organization, those divergences should be represented on your crafting team. These divergences may fall along any type of lines from identity, to ideological, to role in the organization. Whatever it is, folks who are want to earnestly and openly engage the complexities of these different viewpoints should be included on the crafting team. This way, you can be more confident that whatever process and product you create is more likely to enroll people who hold those divergent perspectives throughout the organization.

Here’s one set of questions that can help you discern who should be on the team: Is there a person that, if they were not invited to the team would be deeply upset and/or possibly derail the process later? What perspectives are so common in the organization that if they are not addressed in the statement, could lead to the statement being rejected or rendered impotent? What individuals both carry those perspectives and are authentically open to learning and growth?

One of the crafting team’s first tasks is to set the frame and identify grounding resources.

Frame and Grounding Resources

The way we begin a conversation shapes the way that conversation goes. There are so many different directions the conversation about DEI can go that it is essential to be intentional about what language and frameworks we use to introduce the subject.

The very first thing to notice is that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is itself an attempt to frame a larger network of issues concerning the way different people are treated. This frame helps us get into some conversations, but also muddies the water of others. For example, when many groups start talking about “diversity” they end up talking about diversity of beliefs, skillsets, and worldviews instead of diversity of races, genders, and class.

I have been in a room filled with white-bodied class-privileged people who emphasize all of the various diversities between them. Those diversities are all very real, but focusing on those diversities starts to steer the conversation away from the dimensions of race and class that are present. Focusing on those types of diversity can be relevant and important, but it also misses the connection between diversity and justice, which is central to why organizations started prioritizing diversity to begin with.

Imagine how different it would be if you spoke about “desegregation” instead of “diversity.” Suddenly it becomes clear that we are talking about historical patterns of separating people based on certain defined characteristics. It sharpens a certain dimension of the conversation into focus.

Speaking very practically here:

Your crafting team should think about the language that you will be using to frame these issues to people; they should be thinking about what points are really relevant to explore and include in your statement; they should be thinking deeply about what the DEI statement is truly trying to address and coming up with ways of communicating that to the people who are in the organization.

Then they should be communicating using language that invites people to consider the dynamics the crafting team thinks are most relevant. There should be enough direction and context to begin the conversation from a grounded space, and also enough spaciousness so that people can bring their own wisdom and catch any gaps the crafting team’s framing left.

One good place to start with this process is by assembling some key resources. These could be books, articles, songs, podcasts, videos, poems, or anything that helps bring the things that matter to your team into focus. It’s not that everyone needs to agree with the perspective of every resource; it’s that the resources start to make visible the layers of the topic that you find relevant.

Having your crafting group go through a process of assembling and reflecting on resources before they initiate a process through your wider organization can be really helpful to create more coherence and alignment.

And, for what it’s worth, my own personal preference is to not frame things in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion; but instead to frame things in terms of  power, belonging, and justice; and to reframe "diversity" as "desegregation."

More on that in a future blog post, but here’s the quick reason:

“Desegregation” helps us focus on the connection between representation, access, and historical marginalization. It does a better job of keeping race, class, gender, etc. at the center of the conversation. Teams need lots of types of diversity (e.g. skills, perspectives, work styles) in order to function well; but that’s a different conversation from the one about social identity, marginalization, and oppression.

I find that conversations about “equity” can be a little abstract and hard to ground; and that the related language of “fairness” and “impartiality” doesn’t carry the same specificity and weight as language of “power.” When we talk about power we are talking about who has the ability to influence different actions of the organization, and how that is shaped by organizational structure, culture, and the various dynamics of oppression/marginalization/privilege that we all inherited. “Power” gets us thinking about who shapes the things that matter to them, who shapes the things that impact who, and how they gained the ability to have that impact.

To my mind “belonging” helps us orient to an embodied experience that we are trying to cultivate. It’s one thing to be included on an invitation to a meeting, it’s another to feel like you belong there. To feel like you are valued, respected, and safe to express difference or challenge without it threatening your standing or membership in the group. Spaces of belonging radically shift our experience of ourselves and each other, and they open up new possibilities for creativity and leadership.

The best frame for your organization will depend on the people inside your organization. The key is to find something that meets people where they are, and points the way to a deeper understanding of what it means to be good to each other.

Input

Your process should include multiple moments and methods for people to give input into the statement that you draft; and it should be designed so that you can meaningfully incorporate the input.

Some people do better giving input on to a blank page, and others do better giving input on something that is already fairly well constructed. It’s best to give people in your organization opportunities to do both. That can look like soliciting initial comments on broad themes early in the process, and then having a round of feedback on a draft statement.

What is as essential as giving people an opportunity to give input, is responding to that input authentically and transparently. This doesn’t mean necessarily including all perspectives in your draft. Some input isn’t good, and your Crafting Team will have to use their discernment about how they should respond to various ideas. If they decide to not incorporate a piece of input, it can be very helpful to openly explain why. Not only does this communicate to the person who gave the input that it was seriously considered, but it also helps everyone better understand the decisions that are being made.

Different people also like to give input in different ways. Some do best in writing, some do best verbally, some do best anonymously, some do best in one-on-one conversations. The more options you give people for how to engage the more inclusive your engagement will be.

At the very least, there should be an option to give input anonymously through writing, and an option to have a one-on-one conversation with a member of the crafting team.

Community Building

Community building is about getting the people in the organization to deeply engage each other about the themes of the DEI statement. This is different from just giving input. Giving input is about directly shaping the product, community building is about developing understanding and strengthening relationships.

There are, of course, ways to do both input and community building at the same time. For example, you can host a session where people learn, discuss themes, and then offer input at the end of the session.

You can also separate community building and input. For example, you can form small affinity groups to read and discuss articles or to open up about their personal experiences.

Implementation Accountability

Your DEI statement is meaningless unless you actually do things to align your organization’s activities with it. Part of crafting your statement should also be outlining the basic ways that you will implement the values. This does not mean creating a detailed roadmap, goals, or metrics right off the bat. It might be something as simple as establishing a quarterly meeting where staff can give feedback to the executives and management regarding alignment with the statement; or it could be identifying a working group or a specific person that will lead the organization in its process of finding alignment.

The most important part of defining your implementation accountability is that it is blatantly obvious whether it is happening or not. If your accountability is “all people in the organization commit to these values” there is no way to tell whether its happening. If your accountability is, “we formed an internal team that will conduct a yearly audit, host bi-annual town halls with all staff, have quarterly meetings to update board and executives about priorities, and report to all staff the steps board and executives take to meet those priorities;” it becomes very obvious whether those things are happening.

Of course, those accountabilities don’t take your organization all the way toward actualizing your values; but they do start to create a scaffolding that your organization can build upon.

Conclusion

Process. Process. Process.

How you craft your statement is at least as important as the statement you craft.  It's an opportunity to unite and align your staff, deepen your organization's understanding, and create a statement that carries the kind of weight and legitimacy that will let it support the direction of your organization moving forward.

There’s a long line of familiar criticisms of hierarchical governance and management: it produces and perpetuates inequity, generates inefficient bottlenecks, inhibits creative collaboration, limits emerging leadership potential, promotes conflict avoidance, and creates nefarious power dynamics that leave folks in all positions feeling unsafe to be authentic, honest, and bring their full selves and potential to work.

When we place this criticism of hierarchical organizational structures in historical context, and combine it with the awareness that folks sitting a top these hierarchies are disproportionately white, male, able-bodied, economically advantaged, institutionally educated, and cis-gendered we start to see these how these hierarchies operate to rationalize and stabilize forms of structural oppression that pervade our society.

In response to these criticisms and more, many folks have sought to create non-hierarchical organizations. Generally speaking, the goals of this movement are to establish more just and equitable organizations, empower more people to contribute fully and creatively to the work, invite more honesty and connection, and accomplish collective goals more effectively. But when practitioners operate with an over-simplified understanding of hierarchy, we end up creating systems that don’t actually work.

We reject hierarchy and end up with the tyranny of structurelessness: lack of clarity, lack of accountability, lack of direction, and the new and equally problematic power dynamics that arise in the absence of clear structure.

In my experience helping organizations align their organizational structure, operations, and strategy with their values, I’ve come to understand that hierarchy is actually an essential component of an effective organization. I’ve also come to know that this stance is completely compatible with the awareness that the organizational hierarchies that pervade many nonprofit and for-profit organizations are deeply problematic both morally and tactically. The key is to understand hierarchy in a much more nuanced and complex way.

By hierarchy, I mean a system in which certain members or components of an organization defer to the authority of other members/components.

In the hierarchies that many of us antagonize, certain people are made to defer to others on all issues, deference is enforced via systems of reward and punishment, and those with authority are paid more. This results in some pretty troublesome realities. But these patterns and outcomes are not essential features of hierarchy itself, they are features that have accrued around hierarchy as it has been implemented in a certain cultural context by people with certain values, goals, and histories. Specifically, they are largely functions of the fact there is one hierarchy, and everyone’s relationship to each other (i.e. below or above) is static.

We want to change the dynamics we inherited, but we don’t need to throw away useful tools just because they have been used to build things that are now hurting us.

I want to redeem hierarchy. Not the bureaucratic coercive notion of hierarchy, but hierarchy as a process of deference that enables coordination, alignment, and unity. Hierarchy, or deference, is essentially the ability for one part of an organization to follow a decision, direction, or will of another part of the organization. It is an incredibly useful design feature when we wield it wisely.

My favorite place to witness beautiful, clear, interdependant hierarchy is in small jazz ensembles. Different parts of the group defer to each other about different things, and this deference creates the space for expression and co-creation. Everyone defers to the drums and bass for the sense of time, to the piano for harmonic progression, to the saxophone for melodic narrative, and to the song itself for the basic texture and structure. The deference persists even as they challenge and interweave with one another, and occasionally the whole thing will flip and suddenly the bass is carrying the melody. The fact the saxophone defers to the drums for time and the piano for harmony does not limit the saxophones autonomy, it creates the possibility for it.

It’s not that the ensemble has eliminated hierarchy. It’s that they have created a rich network of interlocking hierarchies that enables them to coordinate equitably and creatively.

We can bring the same principle into our organizations. We do not need to eliminate hierarchy and essentially say that no-one should defer to anyone else. Instead we say that we should defer to different people about different things at different times, we should be clear and transparent about how we are doing it, and the entire things should be consensual.

To get practical about this, we can work with four different types of formal hierarchies that exist in organizations. These different hierarchies are analogous to the jazz ensembles hierarchies regarding time, harmony, and melody. In our organizations there are four formal hierarchies. (1) Tactical, (2) Strategic, (3) Policy, and (4) Livelihood.

I say “formal hierarchies” to emphasize that these are arrangements that can be intentionally designed and tend to be officially and transparently adopted as part of organizational structure. I also mean to differentiate them from the numerous informal hierarchies based on things like, status, gender, access to information, expertise, race, class, etc. that influence how organizations function. There is also usually a cultural hierarchy that presents an archetype(s) of the “right” way to be in the world. Those informal hierarchies are essential to tend to, but they are beyond our scope here.

Before explaining these hierarchies and how to use them to create intentional organizations, I want to share the true story that provided the initial seed for this framework:

On the floor of a cooperatively owned and operated bakery, during the lunch rush, someone tipped over a cart full of muffins and batter. Suddenly the team needed to both come up with more muffins to fill the order that a customer was expecting to pick up imminently and clean up the mess all while they were already operating at full capacity. The shift lead quickly gathered the crew, assigned tasks, and instructed everyone to get to work. In that moment, a baker said they didn’t like his use of hierarchical power, questioned why he was the shift-lead to begin with, and noted some dynamics of race and gender at play.

It may sound a bit trivial, but this story reveals a lot about hierarchy. The baker’s concerns were real and valid. The organization was trying to work on those intersectional dynamics, that’s why I was involved to begin with. At the same time, if the whole team had paused to process that, maybe even if they had paused to try to mindfully make a collective decision about how to redistribute their labor, they would have fallen farther behind on their mission, disappointing muffin lovers everywhere.

The organization wanted to uphold equity, justice, and empowerment; and they wanted to get that floor clean and those muffins baked fast. One person tried to use hierarchy to coordinate the activity, another resisted hierarchy. The coordination was needed, the resistance revealed valid concerns. In a way the organization needed to both use hierarchy and critique hierarchy at the same time.

When we see formal hierarchy not as a monolithic thing to be dismantled, but rather a system that enables coordination across the four dimensions of tactics, strategy, policy, and livelihood, we access the precision and discernment needed to dismantle oppressive hierarchies while creating liberating hierarchies.

What follows is a description of these four forms of hierarchies, and some practical advice on how to use them intentionally in your organizations.

Tactical Hierarchy

Tactical hierarchy is a system whereby some parties defer to another’s direction about who will complete which tasks in order to accomplish a shared and already defined goal.

This is the kind of hierarchy the shift-lead was trying to use during the muffin crises.

It’s primary benefits are clarity and quickness. It becomes clear who is doing what, and if it is not clear, it is at least clear who to ask to get clarity. This helps people understand what they need to do in order to get the job done. The fact that a single person can make the decisions enables the group to avoid all the time that would be spent negotiating or waiting for volunteers.

The potential pitfalls of tactical hierarchy include overwhelm, disempowering delegation, and sub-optimal decisions. The person who’s given the authority might end up with too many things to keep track of and become overwhelmed by what they have to manage. They might assign people to tasks that aren’t properly matched with their capacities and interests, and that might leave people unseen, without opportunities for growth, or even feeling demeaned. And all the decisions they make will not be fully informed by the wisdom of the group, which could result in unforeseen collateral consequences.

Strategic Hierarchy

Strategic hierarchy is a system whereby some parties defer to another’s direction about the group’s shared mission and goals, the general initiatives that will be undertaken, and the specific intended outcomes of those initiatives.

This is the hierarchy that aligned everyone around the goal of selling muffins to customers. The goal was set by folks well before the muffins spilled, it was set by a group of people different than the bakers (though in this case some bakers participated in that strategic conversation, more on that later), and everyone at work deferred to the body that made the decision and agreed to pursue the goal.

The primary benefits of strategic hierarchy are direction, cohesion, and stability. Deference to a strategy enables the group to orient to shared goals and build structures and processes that enable them to organize themselves to accomplish the goals. The continued deference to that strategy enables folks to invest in their work without fear that priorities and activities will shift rapidly. Without a strategic hierarchy, half the bakers might start making cookies while the marketing team decided to pivot to pizza.

The potential pitfalls of strategic hierarchy are dis-investment of collaborators, sub-optimal strategy, and rigidity. If decisions about goals and priorities are made by people other than those who will actually be doing the work to achieve those goals, the worker might feel less personally invested in the work, less likely to bring their inspired creativity, and more likely to feel unappreciated and disconnected. Similarly, if the process of setting the strategy does not incorporate the right types of diversity and expertise (especially wisdom of frontline communities and expertise developed through lived experience), it can lead to activities that fail to maximize their impact or even cause harm by perpetuating oppressive dynamics. When strategy becomes inflexible whether because it is either too ingrained in the organization’s operations or the person/people at top of the strategy hierarchy are overly attached to their decisions, the organization can be locked into misaligned activities. This often happens when the feedback of people who are either charged with implementing strategy or directly impacted by decisions is not incorporated at the top of the strategic hierarchy.

Policy Hierarchy

Policy hierarchy is a system whereby some parties defer to another’s direction about the rules that apply to members of the organization and the processes for internal operations.

This was the hierarchy that established the position of the shift-lead, set the standards by which the shift lead was selected, and created the norms for how the shift lead would fill the role. In this circumstance,the organization’s policy was that the shift-lead be the focal point of a tactical hierarchy during the shift. It was set by a collective process led by a management team.

When the baker resisted the shift-lead, part of what they were resisting was the policy hierarchy. They were saying that they did not want to defer to the rules about how the workers would organize during the shift. They were also critiquing the way the shift lead inhabited his position in the tactical hierarchy.

The primary benefits of policy hierarchy include shared agreements, and transparent mechanisms for change, and clear places of appeal. If we want to have policies and rules about how we will work together, we need to all be on the same page about which rules we defer too. We might defer to the rules set by a single person, or a specific group, but if it’s not clear where authority lives, then people will all follow different rules and creating shared agreements will be really hard. When it is clear where authority lies, then it becomes easier to understand how to change policies or appeal issues that arises. Without that, members of the organization stumble in the darkness unsure of how to change broken systems, and rely exclusively on interpersonal skillfulness to resolve conflict.

The potential pitfalls of policy hierarchy are coercion, disempowerment, and inequity. If an exclusive group has the authority to set policies, they can intentionally or unintentionally establish policies that coerce people outside of that group and establish . The people who are made to follow policies they have little ability to influence can feel disempowered, and be unable to make changes that actually improve the whole system.

Livelihood Hierarchy

Livelihood hierarchy is a system whereby some parties defer to others about decisions that directly impact one’s ability to earn a livelihood now or in the future. This includes things like hiring/firing, compensation, promotion, and professional development opportunities. In some cases it is intimately related to tactical hierarchy because being able to take on new challenges and types of work helps people grow and command more compensation throughout their careers.

This was the hierarchy that decided the shift lead would be the specific person it was at that time. It also decided who was being paid what.

The primary benefit of livelihood hierarchy is clarity. Questions about livelihood issues generally need definite answers and to have a definite answer we need to know where authority to give that answer lives.

The potential pitfalls of livelihood hierarchy is self-service, inequity, and oppression. People atop these hierarchies can make decisions that benefit themselves (think about managers decided that managers should be paid more than program staff). Complex dynamics about who is seen, valued, and supported and how all of this relates to things like race, gender, and ability play inevitable roles in most decisions, and they can show up particularly saliently with respect to issues of livelihood.

The Primary Insight

All of these hierarchies are helpful; maybe even necessary to keep organizations functioning. The truly destructive thing is when these four hierarchies are collapsed into one. And that is the case in a lot of the organization models that we have inherited.

For example, someone might have a boss that sets the strategy, delegates the tasks, has the final word about organizational policy, and also determines what people are paid. This stagnant situation in which one person always has multiple forms of power over another, and the roles are never reversed sets us up for all kinds of problems.

As just a brief example: it becomes really hard for anyone to self-advocate or challenge the boss on anything. They may want to push back against a strategy decision, but they know they run the risk of then getting worse assignments and being denied promotions. This harms people emotionally, and makes it harder for the organization to harness the collective wisdom and leadership of all members.

But imagine if there was one person who had final say on pay, another on strategy, and another about task assignment. We would still have the clarity and alignment created by hierarchy, but we would be in an entirely different relational space. Everyone would be deferring to each other’s authority about different things. And the fact everyone both gives and recieves deference encourages them to learn how to hold their authority well. There is no one who is always in a position of power-over the others. The organization starts to work like a flock of geese, different people temporarily inhabiting the position atop various hierarchies, always knowing that their position is temporary and contextual.

Where Does Authority Live?

There are four locations where hierarchical authority can reside: person, role, team, or whole.

When it resides in a person it means that the group defers to a specific individual. For example, “Jose sets the strategy.” This type of authority is actually fairly rare. It usually shows up with founders or people with long tenure at organizations, particularly when those organizations do not have clear structure.

Authority more often resides in roles. For example “The executive director sets the strategy.” There is a particular role in the structure, and whoever is in that role has the authority. In some organizational models we think of each person as having only one role and a person really only leaves their role if they lose their job or are promoted. But that doesn’t need to be the case.

In our bakery example, that shift lead was in the role of shift lead a few times a week, sometimes he was in the role of baker, and sometimes he was in the role of supplies purchaser. So even though he was temporarily a top a tactical hierarchy, the next day he might be in a role where he is following the authority of another shift lead, and the next day he might be executing tasks assigned by someone else entirely. Playing with roles creates space for lots of different dynamics, all while preserving the useful elements of the hierarchy.

We can also locate authority in teams. For example “The strategic planning team sets the strategy.” This opens up even more possibilities because we can be intentional about who is on the team and how the team makes decisions. So we can create a system where five people with different identities, from different locations in the organizations, design and implement a collective process to create a strategy that the whole group then defers to. There’s tons of participation and tons of opportunity to build intentional relationships, but there is still a hierarchy because everyone has agreed to defer to the authority of that team on that matter.

When we locate authority in the whole, we are saying that we will only defer to a decision if it obtains the consensus of the entire group. Even when we do this we are still employing a hierarchy because we are locating authority in a specific place and allowing it to inform everything else. That’s an important point, even whole group consensus creates hierarchy because it calls upon individuals to defer to a decision making body outside themselves.

Hierarchy is about deference and power. Power needs to be somewhere, and we need to defer to something. If each person defers only to their own personal sense in the moment, with no reference to prior agreements, intentions, and directions, it becomes incredibly difficult to coordinate. The clearer who/what we are all listening to and deferring to the better we can coordinate. The more we are transparent about deference, the more we can ground it in consent. The more we avoid it the more we open up the possibility for unconscious and potentially harmful dynamics of power and enforced deference.

Getting Practical

Your organization has these four hierarchies. Chances are it will always have these four hierarchies; and if you try really hard to dissolve them completely you will likely end up with a convoluted soup that accomplishes very little.

As you think about how your particular organization wants to work, think about how you want to employ tactical, strategy, policy, and livelihood hierarchies. When is it best to have a person be the point of authority? When is it best for it to be a role, a team, or a group? If you put an individual atop a hierarchy, would you prefer them to be there for a long time or rotate often? Does your answer change depending on which type of hierarchy it is? How can you make space for everyone to be at the top of some hierarchy in the organization and for everyone to sometimes not be?

Hierarchy isn’t the enemy. Hierarchy is a really useful tool. We can use it to build clear communication, alignment, power sharing, mutual accountability, and personal growth. Or we could use it to create coercion, extraction, and dehumanization. It can really go either way. But what I’ve really noticed in my time co-creating liberating organizations, is that an allergy to hierarchy or a rejection of hierarchy in principle serves no-one. It actually gets us overly fixated on a particular type of “equality” that prevents clear thinking about how we want to organize ourselves.

Let’s dismantle The Hierarchy, and replace it with many hierarchies. We all will lead. We all will follow. We all will transition in and out of these roles fluidly, forming an organic an ever-evolving system.

We will play jazz. In rhythm together; embracing the harmonies even as we challenge them. Taking turns with our solos; each building on another as we discover the new riches of co-creation; and if we do it right, we won’t be able to help but dance. Which couldn’t be more important because “if I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” -Emma Goldman

We are being initiated into a new level of adaptability in so many dimensions. How do we create personal well-being? How do we maintain good relationships? How do we continue collaborating in teams? How do we weave or work together to create an economy and politics that enables people and planet to thrive?

These questions aren’t new, but they are thrown into stark relief by this moment that seems as unprecedented as it does familiar; where so much is up in the air even as familiar political forces and human instincts compete for terrain.

This list of resources is intended to help us find a generative orientation to what is happening and how we can respond. It is curated to be specifically supportive for folks affiliated with organizations or other movement formations. There are sources to help us (1) orient to the macro-context, (2) find our roles within it, (3)reflect on how to lead, (4) develop skills for maintaining operations within social distancing and (5) learn from inspiring interventions around the globe.

Orient to the Macro-Context:

What Time is It On the Clock of the World: From Pandemic to Power Building a panel conversation with the Center for Economic Democracy.

This panel conversation helps situate the pandemic in the context of long-term movements for collective liberation. It’s diverse panelists articulate the ways different communities are being impacted, frankly discuss risk and possibility, and leave the viewer with specific calls to action.

Interview with Richard Wolff: A Marxist Analysis of the Crisis

This interview does a great job of explaining how an extractive economic systems left us especially vulnerable to the impacts of COVID and how that system is ill-suited to help us recover.

What Will the World Look Like After Coronavirus: Four Possible Futures by Simon Mair

This article takes a fairly objective look at four different directions our response might take us, ranging from totalitarianism to distributed mutual care.

Coronavirus and Agribusiness an interview with Rob Wallace

Author of the book "Big Farms Make Big Flu" discuss how agribusiness and deforestation increase the likelihood of epidemics like the one we are experiencing now.

Finding Our Roles

Mapping [Individual’s] Social Change Roles in Times Of Crises by Deepa Iyer

This short blog can help individuals understand how their unique gifts intertwine with other’s to create a holistic movement landscape

The Movement Cycle by Movement Net Labs

This model helps us see how trigger events such as COVID bring more energy into movement spaces and how that energy shifts and dissipates over time. It’s a great model to help think about how we use the energy of this moment to build long terms solutions.

Movement Ecology by the Ayni Institute

This model maps three different basic theories of change, and explores how they intertwine to create a robust movement.

How to Create an Ecology of Change: An Interview with Mark and Paul Engler

This big picture view of social change helps us see how different tactics intertwine, and prompts us to think about how we can better collaborate across issue areas, theories of change, and tactic preferences.

Leadership Mindsets and Context

COVID-19 A Time for Spiritual Fortitude by the NDN Collective

A call to stay grounded and connected from people who know a lot about resilience.

Stanford Social Impact Review Guide to Resilient Leadership During the CoVid-19 Crisis

A list of nine articles ranging from how to navigate crises mentality, to how to build trust, to how use design thinking.

Challenges Facing Nonprofits hosted by Nonprofit Quarterly

A podcast where three leaders “share their fears about how hits to their fundraising programs and government funding could affect their work. They explain how their vulnerable constituents are more at risk from COVID-19, and what this says about economic justice and inequity across the country. They also express optimism that, amidst this crisis, philanthropy is finding ways to step up.”

Leading Your Business Through Coronavirus by Martin Reeves, Nikolaus Land, and Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak

This article provides high-level mindsets to maintain an organization’s operations and cultural health.

Philanthropy’s Response to CoVid hosted by Nonprofit Quarterly

Four presenters explore the following: “What is the right response from foundations? How are they balancing multiple factors: their commitments to existing grantees, their contributions to wider COVID-19 responses, and the impact of the economic slowdown on their asset levels? What strategies do foundation leaders see working so far? What do they hope their peers will do more of—and less of? And what is their guidance to grant-seekers in these uncharted waters?”

Maintaining Management and Operations

Tips for Virtual Workplaces by Work Shouldn’t Suck

A list of articles about how to create virtual workplaces written by a team that was working on this long before social distancing began.

Working From Home Tips by Emily Cronkleton

Some tips for how to maintain physical and emotional wellbeing while working from home.

Our Responses to COVID-19 Must Center Disability Justice by Katie Tastrom

Frameworks and insights to help organizations think about how to implement inclusive responses.

Alternatives to Zoom

A short list of video conferencing software options.

10 Tips for Staying Human on Video Calls by Simon Mont

For folks wanting more presence, connection, and effective collaboration on calls.

5 Decentralized Organizing Tips for a New CoVid Project by Richard Bartlett

For folks who are participating rapidly emerging projects.

Inspiring Examples

Rethinking Social Change in the Face of CoVid-19 published by Stanford Social Impact Review

Specific examples of ways organizations and governments are innovating and responding.

Mutual Aid Groups Respond to Double Threat of Coronavirus and Climate Change by Anna Kusmer

Puts mutual aid efforts in a political context.

Wishing us all the best. May our futures not be confined to the limits of our present.

Nowadays, most of us are spending a lot more time on video calls than we ever have before. Video calls are a great way for us to connect, communicate, and collaborate across distances. They are also a great way for us to continuously stare at a computer all day as we multiply the effects of meeting fatigue, screen fatigue, and social isolation.
If we are careless, video calls can cause us to feel like computer zombies that struggle to feel the connection, belonging, and togetherness that we need to sustain ourselves and work effectively together. But if we are intentional, we canavoid some of the pitfalls of the medium, and work with it to benefit our mental health and our team cohesion. Here are ten simple things we can do to make video calls more enjoyable and effective.

1.Take a Transition Moment

Right before a video call we are often doing some other task on our computer. If we don’t take a moment to mindfully transition out of that task and into our video call, we will carry whatever emotional and mental posture we assumed to complete the previous task into our call. It’s the same as when we connect with someone in person. If we are in the middle of calculating spreadsheets and balancing budgets when our friend walks in the room, our interaction will have a different starting point than if we had put away our computer, walked out of our office, took a few moments to breathe, and met that friend in a park.

The trap with video calls is that its possible to transition from our previous task (which may involve no human connection) immediately into a meeting that requires us to relate to a person; and that person appears to us in the exact same place on our computer screen as the non-human things we were working with before. It a perfect recipe for us to relate to each other the same way we were relating to whatever tab just had open. Needless to say, it isn’t the most pleasant experience for anyone involved.

One way to address this is to take a few minutes of quiet time, away from screens, before getting on a video call. Just taking a few breaths, feeling our bodies, and orienting our emotions to the people that we will be interacting with can make a world of difference. Not only does this help us release whatever we were experiencing and meet the new interaction with more freshness, it also signals to our nervous systems that we are engaging with people, not screens, which enables us to feel more connected to the people we are talking to. This connectivity supports our well-being and our ability to collaborate effectively in teams.

2.Check in as Humans

It always takes us a moment to fully arrive somewhere new. As we start our video call and begin to bring our attention to the people and tasks at hand, we often notice all sorts of thoughts and feelings arise, some related to the moment we are in, some related to the past, and some related to the future.. When we express these things, we often feel more fully present; when we hear little snippets of each other’s lives we often feel more connected; and when we are transparent about what external things are impacting how we show up in a meeting we often engender more compassion.

If you are going to have a video call about a specific topic, try taking a moment before diving into that topic to have everyone share a bit about themselves. Everyone could respond to a specific prompt, or just share whatever will help them feel more fully present in the space. This gives everyone a chance to arrive, feel more connected, and orient to the fact that they are engaging with a group of people with vulnerabilities, feelings, and lives and not just a bunch of floating heads on a screen.

3. Prepare Your Windows

We all know how annoying it is when the person we are trying to have a conversation with keeps looking away to check their phone. Well, when we are on a video call, we don’t even need to look away to be distracted by a screen. When we have another window open during a video call, it’s almost as if we are holding our phone up right beside the other person’s head just begging to be distracted. Even though all of us have been known to surf the internet or do other work during a video call, we all also know how obvious it is when some one is doing it and how much it disrupts the flow of the calls and leaves us feeling personally disconnected.

Try closing or minimizing all windows on your screen except for the video call and any documents you need for the call. If the documents you need are on a web browser, open a fresh window that only has what you need. It’s a little ritual that can help bring our attention to the meeting, and it make it just a little less tempting to get distracted.

4. Adjust Your Screen Positioning

Your distance from your screen can have a big impact on you and the people you are on the call with. For yourself, you will have a different experience if your screen is occupying most of your field of vision as opposed to being able to see both the screen and the non-screen world. Your fellow callers will experience you differently if your image is filling up most the little box they see on there screen, you are off in the distance, or you are just a head resting at the bottom of the screen with a bunch of empty space above you.

Try playing with you distance from the screen, the way you are framed by the camera, and even the angle you sit in relation to the screen. It can have a big impact on how connected we feel to ourselves and each other.

5. Hide Your Self View

Can you imagine having a conversation with someone while also looking in a mirror that was reflecting your every move? Would you feel more natural or more self-conscious? Would you feel more or less connected to them?

When we have our little self-views up on video calls that’s pretty much what we are doing. The self-view is great to make sure we are well positioned in front of the camera but leaving it on throughout the call can have quite a bit impact on our attention and our sense of connection with one another. Obviously, there’s no right or wrong way to do anything, but its definitely worth experimenting with the impact of having your self-view up and getting curious about why make the choice that you do.

6. Disrupt Your Computer Gaze

There is a certain way that we often look at our computer, or any external object for that matter. That gaze often leaves us feeling disconnected and stuck in our heads, but its not too hard to shift it to become more present and available. The trick is to switch between (1) using eyes to reach out and search, and using eyes to receive and (2) making sight the primary sense and making hearing and feeling the primary senses.

You can try it right now. Pick and object and look at it as if it is something outside of you. Feel how far it is from you, how separate. Imagine that there were little tendrils that went out from your eyes to reach and scan the thing out there. If you want to exaggerate it, look as if it were some confusing and unfamiliar puzzle to be solved. Notice what happens to the sensations in your body, heart, and mind while you do that. How does it feel familiar or different from the way you usually look at things, specifically at your computer?

Now close your eyes or soften your gaze, and place your attention on your hearing. Notice all the sounds that arise. Notice how you are effortlessly receiving those sounds, almost as if they are occurring within you. Don’t try to figure out where spaciously the sounds are coming from, just notice that you can do absolutely nothing and still receive the internal experience of the sound. Notice what the impact on your body, mind, and emotions. What is different between this way of hearing, and the way of seeing you just experienced.

As you open your eyes, allow your vision to be as receptive as your hearing. Staying centered in yourself, you effortlessly receive the light as something arising in your visual field, instead of as separate objects. It can help to refrain from fully focusing the eyes. As you do this, continue being aware of the sounds you are hearing and the feelings in your body.

When we are in this new posture, we are not only more able to feel calm and resourced in our bodies, but also more connected to each other. We can rest in ourselves and more fully receive and connect to the gestures, facial expressions, and sounds of each other. This is especially helpful on video calls when we may need a little extra mindfulness to get the experience of human connection that comes more naturally when our bodies are in the same room together.

7. Feel Your Body and Surroundings

It is really easy to get sucked into the computer zone and start experiencing ourselves as floating heads strapped into an electronic machine. This can often leave us feeling frenetic, cloudy, disoriented and just generally weird. The gravity in that direction is even higher when we aren’t even stepping away from screens to talk to each other.

Everyone has their own practices for staying more balanced in their body and emotions, here are a few that might be particularly useful in the context of video calls. (1) Try keeping a hand on your belly feeling the movement of your breath for the whole call. When you lose it, just come back to the noticing the place your hand meets your belly; (2) Try keeping some of your attention on where your body is making contact with something below it. Might be your bum on the seat or your feet on the ground; and (3) Make the space behind and around your computer beautiful and centering. Periodically look up from your screen and take in that pleasant sight.

8. Give Permission to Move

It is not natural for us to sit for an hour in one position staring straight forward; and it’s not natural for us to have an entire conversation looking directly at each other; but there is an unspoken norm that when we are on a video call (especially a work call) we are supposed to remain sitting at attention the entire time. No wonder we can feel distracted and depleted after too much time in that position, it’s out of harmony with the way we are built to function.

It can be really helpful to explicitly name that people are welcome to do whatever they need in order to stay present and engaged in the call. This could mean getting up, moving around, looking away from the screen, stretch or whatever else. We can just trust that if someone does something with their body that breaks the norm of “showing you are present by staying seated looking ahead” that they aren’t being rude, in fact they are being polite by doing what they truly need in order to stay healthy and engaged instead of being half present possibly surfing the internet.

9. Listen with Your Heart

When we communicate, we are sharing much more than just the words we are saying. We are expressing feelings, desires, and innumerable other subtleties. In work settings we are often encouraged to disregard or not engage those levels of experience, and instead focus only on the “job we are doing.” This often leaves people feeling unseen, unappreciated, or unsafe. Which harms individuals and detracts from the creative potential of the group.

On video calls, it can sometimes be even more tempting to over-focus of the topic of the meeting or the problem to be solved, and pay too little attention to the people that are gathered to work together. We can balance this out by being even more intentional about listening with our hearts.

Listening with our hearts is not a metaphor, it is a very literal experience. When we listen with our minds, we are mostly attending to the impact the person’s expression has on the way we are thinking, i.e. the words, ideas, and stories that exist in our mind. When we listen with our hearts, we attend to the impact that a person’s expression has on the sensations in the core of our bodies. These sensations carry great wisdom and enable us to create a sense of connection, resonance, and compassion

This keeps our humanity and our sense of connection with each other front and center. It’s amazing how much we can feel each other and establish a sense of being with each other even across the video call medium.

10. Reflect and Acknowledge

We all know how it feels when someone isn’t actually listening to us, but instead waiting for their turn to talk. We all know how it feels when we offer something important but it gets disregarded, or even accredited to someone else. These phenomena aren’t unique to video calls, but they can be exacerbated when we aren’t physically present to feel that we are received, share a side glance with someone else who also noticed that what we shared was not met with the reception it deserved, or rest into the felt sense of being a part of the group that can come from simply sitting together.

But we can take active steps to make sure we are really honoring each other and weaving each other’s contributions together. One of the simplest ways to do this is to just reference what the last person said before sharing what you yourself have to say. It can be as simple as “I heard Juan say X, that makes me think Y.” This allows us to signal to each other that we are really listening and caring, and it starts to weave participants together while exploring how their perspectives relate to one another.

We can go a step farther and, when we disagree with each other, we can begin by reflecting the legitimacy of each other’s perspectives. It can be as simple as saying “Sally recommended X, I see that is valid because of Y, but I actually think we should do Z because of W.”

When what we share is received, we tend to feel included, respected, and connected. Not only does it cultivate the emotional health of individuals, it also supports the cohesion and creativity of the group. When we allow all ideas to enter the space, build off one another, and be valued as contributions to a co-creative process, we tend to feel like a powerful team as opposed to individual competitors in a race to the solution.

None of these things are silver bullets, and nothing will really replace being in the room together, but they can help us be more connected, healthy, and effective amidst the moment we find ourselves in. And, there’s an added bit of beauty in this moment: Right now, many of us are finding a new appreciation for human connection and becoming more intentional with how we cultivate it. Many of the skills we learn for how to create connection over the internet will also help us create more connection and togetherness when we can gather together in person again. So, in some ways, this is an opportunity for us all to up level our ability to foster belonging, inclusion and interconnectedness.

What exactly do I do?

I help us shed the skin of broken systems; and step into new ways of being, leading, and working together.

We carry the vision of liberated world in our hearts. We already see the outline of it emerging. We have everything we need to make it real.

Yet, as we cultivate the world we deserve, our lives, our leadership, and our organizations are limited by habits and structures that we have learned from the very system that we long to transcend.

The systems that have created ecological devastation, enlisted us in a never-ending physical, economic, and spiritual war against one another, and severed us from connection to the deepest layers of our interconnected humanity are also the very systems that have taught us how to treat ourselves, relate to each other, lead, hold power, and create organizations.

We’ve learned about business strategy from armies. We’ve learned management techniques from slave holders. We’ve learned about our human worth from marketplaces. We’ve learned about our identities from advertisers. We’ve learned how to hold power from dominators. We’ve learned how to lead from those desperate for control. We’ve learned about tenderness from a society that has viewed it as weakness.

Too often we compete for power over each other, instead of stepping to power with each other.

We leave ourselves and each other feeling unseen, unappreciated, and undervalued instead of celebrating our presence and our unique gifts.

We put ourselves and each other in boxes, instead of creating space for our authentic leadership.

We struggle to make space for the wisdom of our hearts, intuitions, and bodies, leaving the depth of our inspired creativity behind in the process.

We replicate patterns like racism, sexism, and colonization inside the very organizations we create to transform them.

We come into conflict with the very people we long to build new worlds with.

We have visionary and spiritual insights, then struggle to integrate them into the daily rhythms of our work and lives.

This is no mistake.

It is the natural outcome of political, economic, and cultural systems that were built to objectify people and planet in service of extraction and consolidation of wealth, power, and energy

It is no one’s fault.

Even though there are identifiable agents that have intentionally created, reinforced, and benefited materially from these systems, the wisdom of our hearts knows that even these beings are just acting out the delusions of superiority, separateness, and fear that they inherited from the complicated and traumatizing story of human history

Here we are.

In the process of transcending the scarcity, violence, and trauma of the past in order to create the abundant peaceful, whole present that is our birthright.

Needing to learn new ways of being, leading, and working together.

Ways of understanding and holding our identities that honor our differences, our connections, and our inter-being.

Ways of building, navigating, and sharing power that call on all of us to step into the fullest version of ourselves.

Ways of seeing each other’s truths and tending to each other’s hearts that make us shine in each other’s light.

Ways of collaborating that care for and cultivate our humanity. Ways that give us space to bring our deepest and most transformative gifts.

Ways of making decisions that foster the strength, resiliency, and the cohesion of groups.

Ways of aligning around visions that make our communities, our children, and our ancestors proud.

Ways of working together than make our visions real right now.

So that as Harsha Walia says, our journey toward liberation can be liberating.

Here we are, together. And I want to do this with you.

I want to bring my experience, my learnings, my skills, my presence, and my creativity to help you or your organization shed the skin of broken systems to step into new ways of being, leading, and working together.

I bring more than a decade of facilitation experience, a law degree, and extensive involvement in grassroots movements and collective living. I’ve trained and consulted with well over a hundred next-generation organizations since I began this work in 2016, and since 2017 I’ve been training deep psychology, trauma repair, and subtle energy healing to bring a deeper awareness and intimacy to my practice.

For individuals looking for support navigating the relationship between their purpose, identity, spiritual and personal development, activism, trauma, and leadership I offer accompaniment, coaching, and healing reflection.

For small groups looking deepening their engagement with justice and liberation, I offer facilitation, conflict support, and group coaching.

For organizations hosting board/staff/ or leadership retreats, creating strategic plans, developing their internal operations, creating inclusive cultures, weaving trauma-awareness and wholeness, or navigating with conflict (especially conflict related to power and diversity) I offer facilitation, consulting, and coaching.

I believe in us.

I am watching us rediscover who we are and what we are capable of. I am watching the world our hearts know is possible emerge into the present. I am feeling the tectonic shifts of our times; riding the earthquake with the faith that it will create great mountains overlooking lush landscapes.

Hineni. Here I am. At our service.

Looking forward to creating something beautiful with you.

There is no such thing as leadership. There is only following. And there is only one question: What are you following?

When we are in positions of so-called “leadership” we experience all kinds of inputs, intuitions, and impulses. Some come from outside of us, some arise from within us, and many are so subtle that we don’t even register where they come from at all. When we look inside ourselves, we feel a constant arising of ten-thousand rivers, each taking us in a different direction, our choice is just which river to ride.

You can notice it right now: Does part of you want to keep reading, does another part want to stop? Is part of you focused here, is another part coaxing you to turn to something it considers more important? What’s underneath those impulses? There is so much going on inside you right now, so many rivers, which one will you follow? Is there any path that you could take that isn’t following something that’s happening in or around you? Do you have any choice other than which of these impulses to follow? And if you are feeling determined to say that there is a way for you to self-generate a path, where did that feeling come from? Isn’t that just another impulse arising that you could choose to follow?

It’s just part of being human, and it’s an essential observation if we are going to find pathways through the challenges of our times.

Leaders are really following. It’s especially easy to see in those moments when the leader is not conscious of what they are following, but the other folks in the group are all too aware. Just imagine the last time you watched someone dominate a meeting just to hear themselves talk. In that moment they were following an impulse to take up space and be seen. We’ve all witnessed a manager that seems to be more concerned with their own promotion than the team’s success; or a teammate that is more concerned with being right or being superior than on actually arriving at the best plan. In these cases, the person is following something within them without being aware of what they are following.

Even when folks aren’t following the impulses that rise from shadows of their awareness, they are still following something. It could be a desire to serve, a vision they had, a need they sense in the world, an intuition they have about what the group they lead is longing to see. Even our most visionary leaders, no, especially our most visionary leaders, are really following things that arise within and around them.

In every moment, we are experiencing uncountable stimuli encouraging us to do everything from buy a new car, design a product, rejoice in prayer, take a nap, call our beloved, lead a protest, make art, or whatever else. Each of these impulses to behave in a certain way is connected to a deeper process occurring inside ourselves: a process of meeting our needs, navigating our fears, dancing with our traumas, actualizing ourselves, manifesting our values, and becoming who truly are. Our puzzle here on Earth is just to decide which ones we will follow. Some will lead us to suffering, others will lead us to freedom.

This decision isn’t easy, and we aren’t always clear on exactly what we are following. We may take a prestigious job thinking that we are following our calling, only to later realize that we were following our need to validate our sense of worth through the admiration of others; we may advocate for a policy thinking we are following the needs of the people, only to later realize we were following our desire to feel right and in control.

Discernment gets even harder when we notice the influences of the social and economic systems in which we are embedded. We may start a business in order to follow a vision of a product to make people more healthy, but quickly find ourselves actually following the will of investors, our ego’s need to feel successful, or the whims of the marketplace. We may start a non-profit in order to cultivate a more liberated world, but find ourselves actually following our fear of running out of money, the pressures of funders, or a belief that growing budgets means growing impacts. No matter what we create, we may start following one of the nearly infinite internal voices that is constantly trying to get us to act in order to serve the desires hidden in the more shadowy places of our consciousness.

And, odds are, we won’t be fully aware of what we are following. And the more we are convinced we are leading, the more likely we are following a pattern of our egos, and the less likely we actually clear on what we are creating.

People who are in positions of leadership aren’t self-authoring individuals. To view leaders as separate individuals is to deny the deep interconnectedness of inherent in being human. Even the people who seem like they are generating visions and paths aren’t really creating. They are following the impulses, intuitions, and energies that arrive in their personal consciousness via the ineffable interconnection of the world. If you have any doubt about that, just pause right now. Notice your thoughts. Where are they coming from? Are they coming from you? What is “you” any way? And if you think “you” is the sum total of your beliefs and the stories you tell about yourself, where did that you come from? Imagine you had a tremendous insight right now that changed the direction of your life? Would that be something you created? Or something you saw and followed?

We are all just these rivers, deciding which ones to follow. Deciding which ones will speak and live through us. This isn’t just some esoteric musing (though I do love those): it’s a call for us to get honest about what’s really happening, and what we really need to do if we are going to create the world that our hearts know is possible.

If we imagine ourselves to be leading, then we will never be able to get clear about what we are following; which will be a bummer, because what we follow determines the world that is created through us. If we follow our need to feel better than each other, the pressures of capitalism, our fear of scarcity, or any of multitude of impulses running through ourselves, then we will continuously recreate the systems that we long to transcend. And we need to be cautious, because a lot of what passes for “leadership” nowadays is really just skillful following of things that should not be followed.

Someone might create a business, generate profits and innovations, and be praised as a leader, while really just following the dictates of an extractive economy that creates ecological devastation and human suffering in its wake. Another person might create an influential charity that feeds many hungry people, while really following their own need to feel important and special resulting in a structure that actually recreates the disempowerment and exclusion that caused the hunger to begin with.

We can also see that organizations themselves are set up to follow certain things. One organization maybe set up to follow the impulse of a single leader, another may be set up to follow the needs of particular consumers, another may be responsive to a defined group of stakeholders. The values of the organization and the way its structure allocates decision making power will influence what that organization responds to; what it follows.

There are so many streams we could follow. Even as we unconsciously follow some of these shadowy forces, we often create things that appear (or are) beneficial or beautiful. But even though we do good, we get caught in the loop of following the river that was created by the very systems and wounds we long to transcend. Our ability to be agents of transformation is limited by the extent to which we follow the very things we seek to transform.

So I want to invite you deeper into the question: What are we following?

Right now, as I write this, am I following an impulse to appear smart in order to get validation and escape a lingering sense of worthlessness that has been with me since childhood? Am I following a desire to offer value because I have learned that I am only worthy of love and belonging if I provide value to others? Am I following a desire to appear as “thought leader” in order to attract more clients to my coaching and consulting practice? Am I following a whisper that arose from the holy silence of my heart to teach me that this is how I can love you? Am I following the life-force brewing my belly that longs for nothing but the creation of more freedom and life? Am I following a small still voice, echoing from the unknown in a language unknown to ears, that let’s my soul know that this is the way?

Honestly, it’s some combination of all that and more.

But the point is that the still small voice exists. The knowledge of the heart exists. The wisdom of the body exists. There is an impulse, a force, a river that is leading us to love, liberation, and wholeness. It’s the force that teaches the flower to grow toward the sun, the force that impels the salmon to swim upstream, the force that gives the caterpillar the courage to go into the cocoon. It’s the force that cracks our hearts open, the force that enables forgiveness, the force that lets us grow out of old patterns, the force that heals our bodies and our psyches.

It’s not something we can understand with our minds. The attempt to put it into words just reduces the power of the mystery to the size of our intellects. But despite the shortcomings of every way I’m trying to point to it right now, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have felt it inside of you. You know what it’s like to follow it, and you know what it’s like to ignore it. And if you are anything like me, you are often scared to follow it because it is leading us to somewhere completely and utterly unknown.

That nameless something is the source of the leadership that we need. It is what tunes us in to what is needed to support the blossoming of more life, love, and justice. Call it “emergence,” “evolutionary impulse,” “spirit,” or “God;” it doesn’t matter. The point is that we can choose to follow it, or we can choose to follow something else. And when we reside in the presence of it, it is painfully clear that when fetishize our own leadership we are most definitely following the something else.

From where I’m sitting, all of this seems to suggest that there is something we really need to support each other with: discernment.

We all want to follow the thing that can’t be named, and we are all apt to miss the mark, to follow our own shadow and not even realize that we have fallen off the path. We are all subject to so many forces within and around us that at times it feels nearly impossible to even hear the evolutionary call, not to even mention actually follow it. We need to be able to get honest with ourselves and each other, to reflect to each other when we are on it, and when we aren’t (because all of us know). We need to build practices and systems inside our organizations that help individuals and groups reflect deeply on exactly what they are following. And we all need to deepen our own personal practices of listening, so that we can get quiet enough to hear that still small voice echoing through time, calling us forward, igniting our hearts with a flame that lights the path as we walk it.

Either that, or we can keep following our learned behaviors, the needs of our egos, the patterns of our traumas, and the pressures of colonial capitalism. The choice is ours.

What are you following?

Every day more organizations are reimagining how they work together. People feel the pains, inefficiencies, and contradictions of the rigidly hierarchical systems that pervaded 20th-century organizations, and they sense that there is a way to bring more passion, humanity, creativity, and fulfillment into our work. These folks are rolling out plans based on ideas like “self-management,” “flattened hierarchies,” “distributed leadership,” and the like, all of which promise to make their dreams of a utopian workplace come true.

And every day, the people implementing these ideas confront struggles. The struggles often beget frustration, and disappointment that the reality of these systems seems to fall so short of the wholeness, community, innovation, and effectiveness that they promise. It’s not uncommon for these experiences to even lead folks to disavow the idea of self-management completely.

But we don’t need to interpret the struggles of self-managed organizations as evidence that self-management is ineffective; it makes much more sense to interpret them as evidence that self-management is hard.

And this difficulty should be expected. Self-management isn’t just a new approach to business management; its a new approach to being humans in groups. We aren’t just solving for productivity and efficiency, we are solving for the fact that past ways of organizing ourselves only solved for productivity and efficiency. We are stepping into the challenge of genuinely tending to human dignity, personal fulfillment, and well-being. We are trying to work together in ways that let us support each other to achieve common purposes while providing fulfilling personal experiences. This isn’t a small shift. It’s a fundamental re-evaluation of many of the systems, practices, and assumptions that have structured how humans have worked together for as long as there have been such things as “businesses,” “corporations,” and “nonprofits.”

If we approach this task with the mindset that we just need to implement the theory in a book, we will fail. If we think that there is a predetermined structure that will bring the outcomes we want, we will fail. If we confine our thinking to the limits of management and business thinking, we will fail. The reason is simple: reliance on theories, predetermined structures, and the history of business/management thinking are precisely the things self-management is trying to transcend. So while self-management may appear to be another theory, its not. Self-management (or non-hierarchy, democratic workplaces, etc.) is vision that another way is possible, it conveyed in words that remind us of potential that already lives inside all of our hearts, and it shared along with practices that point the way to path each organization will have to uncover for themselves.

It’s not surprising that many folks who think they understand self-management are disappointed by the results when they try to implement it. There is a long distance between understanding self management and embodying it. When we try to understand it, we often see it as a set of rules, structures, and processes that are designed to create certain outputs. But when we actually start to live it, we confront the fact that many of the ways we think, feel, and behave are not resonant with the way that we truly want to be engaging with each other. And skillfully navigating this reality is not something many of us have been trained to do.

For example: We may understand the idea of a system where every member is empowered to contribute their unique talents, but trying to live it brings us into an amount of complexity that no book or article can fully capture: We quickly realize that we each need different types of support in order to fully show up, and some of this has to do with personal history and systemic oppression; we constantly project our conditioned beliefs about what each other are capable of, and we are impacted by each others projections; we often feel threatened by folks with similar skills; we have been trained to value different skills differently; we’ve even been trained to see some people as more worthy of human dignity than others. All of these currents (and more) influence whether people will actually bring their skills in practice. Until we learn how to navigate this cultural and relational terrain, promises like “everyone will utilize their unique talents” will remain unfulfilled.

We could say self-management doesn’t work, throw it out, and revert to hierarchy. Or we could stay committed to a vision that creating a better system is possible and proceed to navigate this terrain with unprecedented creativity.

Converting to self-management is like taking the training wheels off a bike. Suddenly we have to consciously and responsively balance all sorts of factors; factors that we hadn’t even realized were previously being taken care of by an apparatus that was as limiting as it was supportive.

As we wobble along, trying to make our visions real, there are a few common mistakes that folks are making. Hopefully by naming them, we can come to understand them not as reasons to reject self-management, but rather as the terrain of the emerging frontier in self-management practice. And hopefully by embracing the opportunities for growth they represent, we can help each other navigate them more skillfully.

Power is complicated. It doesn’t just reside in the people with formal roles and titles. So eliminating formal power hierarchies doesn’t actually eliminate the other forms of hierarchies that can exclude, coerce, or dominate your organization.

You might get rid of the role of CEO, but then witness a small group of people build an alliance as subvert the activities of someone they view as a threat. Or you might invite everyone to participate in the projects they feel called to, but they watch as some folks do not join projects because the people currently in the project create an unwelcoming environment.

In many circumstances, these dynamics of power and exclusion will mirror the larger social trends in our societies. This can result in folks with privileges such as wealth, formal education, maleness, able-bodiedness, and whiteness etc. wielding unwarranted power in the organization. In other circumstances, the hierarchies might occur along other lines such as social like-ability, charisma, or access to information. More often than not, it will be a combination of the two.

There is an irony that formal hierarchy, while often sanctioning and normalizing expressions of identity-based exclusion in the name of meritocracy, does provide the service of making power structures more visible so that we can at least critique and advocate. When we remove these roles, the hierarchies can continue to express in more subtle ways that call for more subtle interventions. We can’t just say “screw the boss,” we have to get a keener insight into how power and exclusion actually work so that we can create new realities. Replacing formal hierarchy with self-management doesn’t fully transform dynamics of hierarchy and exclusion, it just creates more opportunities for the transformation of these dynamics. It takes more than a new org chart to make the transformation real.

The basic thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t plan for the power relationships that you want, you will unconsciously reproduce the power relationships of the culture you inherited. One article criticizing a struggling self-managing organization characterized the issue perfectly:

“There is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company,” […] which made it feel “a lot like high school”. [It became a] neo-feudal workplace culture of powerful barons who ruthlessly exercise their whims over temporary favourites, then turn on them during the next “head count reduction” exercise.”

This group tried to create an equal playing field, but people acted exactly the way their previous social environments trained them to. Those of us socialized in the United States (and elsewhere) are exposed to lots of pressure to use dominance, coercion, and competition as our pathways to material security and personal worth. In absence of structure that encourages us to act to the contrary, we will continue to play out these patterns.

People don’t show up to the self-management adventure as blank slates. We show up with the beliefs, assumptions, identities, behaviors, communication, bodies, and cultures that we inherited from our previous experience. This previous experience trained us to exist within the very systems we are now trying to transcend. It’s not surprising that we recreate feudal dynamics, the assumptions of feudalism are still deeply embedded in our culture. It’s not surprising we act according to the developmental level of adolescents, our education system is designed to make us effective workers, not mature, holistic, self-aware adults.

The solution is to design systems that transform existing exclusionary hierarchies. This isn’t the same as designing a system that has no hierarchy in theory. The system needs to be responsive to the cultural and social hierarchies that will naturally emerge. It needs to increase participants awareness of these personal and interpersonal dynamics and how we all are liable to reproduce them. It needs to intentionally and transparently distribute power in ways that account for these human tendencies. It needs to help us hold each other genuinely accountable to living in a new way with each other. This isn’t easy, we don’t have models for how to fully relate to each other as equals.

Transitioning to self-management is like taking the training wheels off of a bike. Those training wheels were really offering some support and stability, so taking them off will create some needs. We can’t just take off the training wheels, make no other adjustments, and expect to stay upright.

Its the same with organizations. When we take away old systems, we need create new systems that meet needs served by old systems, but meet them in ways that support the growth of people and the organization.

Bosses and hierarchies aren’t all bad. They were designed to support things like direction, coordination, and accountability, and often they do. The hang up is that boss-subordinate relationship also comes with a bunch of coercive dynamics that can stifle the subordinates creativity and leadership, subject the subordinate to inappropriate interpersonal behavior of the boss, and place the subordinates’ job security at the whim of someone who is not accountable to maintaining an authentic and dignified human relationship.

When we take away bosses, we are taking away a potentially coercive relationship, but we are also taking away the system that helped a lot of people orient to what they should be doing with their day and how they should be defining their success.

Some people will immediately thrive in this environment. They will be liberated by the invitation to move beyond specific tasks and begin to engage more deeply with the vision, strategy, and systems of the organization. Proponents of self-management often assume that everyone will thrive in this environment. That’s probably because most early adopters of self-management are themselves people who would thrive. But the reality is that plenty of folks don’t immediately love this new work arrangement.

There’s plenty of reasons this happens: It could be that the person would prefer to spend their time doing specific tasks assigned by someone else; it could be that the person doesn’t have the information they need in order to self-direct their work plan; it could be that there are dynamics in the workplace and culture that subtly discouraging or reprimanding that person but not others; it could be that the person hasn’t had the opportunity to develop some skills yet.

None of these things point to deficiencies in the people. Nor do they indicate that flattened hierarchies don’t work because people need bosses. They point to the basic truth that different people have different styles, needs, strengths, and preferences. We each thrive differently in different environments, and we need different kinds of supports in order to stretch and grow our capacities.

When I began working at a self-managed organization I loved the freedom to innovate and ideate. I loved the sense of empowerment and the room for creativity. But as some point I realized that I was often spinning my wheels, struggling to commit to priorities and execute, and I kept procrastinating on important but boring tasks. Underneath it all was an assumption that I should be operating mostly in a creative/visionary space and someone else should be tending to the nuts and bolts.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the assumption of what work I should be doing was intimately tied to the messages I’d received throughout my life, particularly the messages a formally-educated white man gets. This socialization fundamentally impacted how I showed up in the community. And the way it played off the socialization, personalities, and skills of others shaped who did what work. In a different structure, a boss may have made those work allocation decisions, they may have been biased or they may have intentionally created equitable leadership pathways, but without the boss we were all free to play out our internal conditioning.

And as it was all happening, I continued to not really contribute to the full extent of my capacity for the simple reason that I needed someone to help me stay focused and accountable. For me, there’s nothing like a deadline and a person I have to explain myself to in order get me to actually show up. I want that support to come in mutual peer relationship, but I need it in order to succeed.

One of the dynamics that amuses me the most is that many of the folks that feel like they thrive in these environments aren’t aware of the ways they are floundering, lacking direction, and needing support. It usually happens when there aren’t clear points of accountability, or when the person doesn’t realize how they could benefit from receiving coaching from a more experienced colleague. My millennial brethren and I find ourselves in this place often.

Some folks love the invitation to bring there full creavity to their organization. And, as we’ve seen, those folks need different types of support to make that happen in a good way. At the same time, there are plenty of folks who aren’t as interested in the invitation to co-create their organization in this way. Some days I find myself wishing that someone would just come give me a set of things to do so that I could just do the tasks, go home, and use my creative energy for my personal projects. There’s plenty of folks who view their jobs in exactly this way. So we need to design our systems to welcome them too.

The key thing to remember is that “everyone is a leader, responsible for their own work plan, and empowered to find where they want to contribute” is not actually inviting people into freedom. It is inviting people into a very particular work culture, a culture laden with assumptions that will resonate with some and not others, it will support and challenge each of us in different ways, it will make some things easy and it will make some things hard.

So if you want to remove the blockages to people self-directed leadership by removing bosses, also recognize that, in many cases, the bosses were also the source of clear measurable goals, support with work flow and prioritization, feedback on performance, and coaching. And lots of us, I would say most of us, need those things in order to thrive.

Removing these structures and saying “go figure it out” isn’t really setting people up for success. In order to create a system that unlocks the full participation of all people we need to listen closely to what people need. We need to design systems that meet needs such as coaching, encouragement, accountability, and thought partnership that don’t bring along the nefarious power dynamics associated with bosses.