'Arguing men'. photo by Little Po
‘People don’t hate change, they hate how you’re trying to change them’ (ChangeThis Manifesto)
Recently, I had an inspiring conversation with a friend. The topic came on sustainability – more specifically strategic sustainability – and the challenges that lie before us to mainstream sustainability principles into organizations and daily life. As usually happens in a good conversation, he challenged my assumptions.
Get to know your enemy
It is common sense that humans get along well with people who have similar belief systems, values and world-views. Those are the people you tend to agree with, or with whom you can have a fair and open dialogue. Similarly, it reduces what is called ‘cognitive dissonance’, the uneasy feeling of a mismatch between your way of reasoning and the reality you face. With peers, you’re ‘on a level playing field’. As a highly educated young man it’s harder to get in touch with lower educated people because they might have different opinions about learning and intellectual development. As a member of a left wing political party you tend to avoid contact with right wing minded people, unless you are in an official political debate. A representative of the tobacco industry will feel uneasy entering the room of a lung cancer clinic. An airplane company CEO is unlikely to show up at the annual UN climate negotiations. You can try hard, but it somehow goes against our reasoning to bump up with people that have totally different mindsets, values and belief systems.
Yet, that is maybe the most important skill or characteristic needed for future leaders: for people to dare and go out of their comfort zone, and go into an open and fair dialogue with people with opposing belief systems and values.
Wicked problems
In many (western) European democracies, politics has lost its way. Citizens no longer seem to identify with the ideologies and promises of politicians; there is an increasing distrust in everything political leaders tell us, and politics is becoming more and more ‘mediatized’. Lastly, political ideologies and the leaders they embody are getting more radical, probably as a consequence of increasing anxiety about globalizing forces, an increasing velocity of migration, economic and environmental disruption (‘a double meltdown’), increasing societal complexity, structural uncertainties about future events like climate change, and the abstractness of many of modernity’s manifestations.
More and more, we have to cope with so-called ‘wicked problems’ such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, food security and sustainability, migration, obesity, energy, etc.
So how we as humans learn to cope with these highly complex, contested and often controversial and wicked problems? Will we ever agree on how to cope with them? Or can we only get to ‘clumsy solutions‘ as the ultimate response?
More and more often, we realize the importance of collaboration, how essential it is to challenge our assumptions and beliefs in front of, or together with, our peers.
A few interesting initiatives are emerging recently; among them the concept of ‘megacommunity’, a multi-sector dynamic partnership that uses the collective intelligence and creativity from the three sectors (government, business and civil society) to tackle complex societal problems, while at the same time being more open and dynamic than the currently dominant public-private partnerships.
The value of forming group conversations and collaboration (from open space and world café to transdisciplinary research in the sciences and humanities, or simply in lab meetings) is increasingly accepted in both the academic sphere, in civil society, government and business.
The art of dialogues
In order to be the heretic, the game-changer who challenges status quo business or governing models, we will need to reach beyond our comfort zones and our intellectual borders and reach out to our peers with opposing worldviews and value systems, and start the dialogue. Maybe the most important lessons are to be learnt with the people we least agree with. And yet, the biggest need for change might be at the places hardest to change, with a very influential elite who wants to keep the status quo and business-as-usual.
Learning is key in order to move out of our current ‘unsustainability’. And when it comes to sustainability, the need for a dialogue instead of a discussion or ‘preaching’ is more urgent than ever. Arguing for your point at your peer immediately closes down the dialogue opportunity and decreases the trust he has in you.
Ask. Be curious. Ask people about their motivation and drive to make a certain choice, their assumptions, and their reason to have a certain perception. Ask people how they would take a certain decision if they would be in the seat of the politician or the CEO. Advice is an extremely powerful way to involve people and to spell out their assumptions. According to Karl Henrik Robèrt, a renowned Swedish cancer scientist who established The Natural Step, in a good dialogue, you should never say ‘no’, and never say ‘no, but’. Instead, say ‘yes, and…’
Abraham Lincoln can teach us a wise lesson for sustainability dialogues: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
Further reading:
Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt: Communicating with Naysayers
Putting the Future Back in the Room
Meetings and group genius in science
Wicked Problems and Social Complexity (pdf)
Why game-changers will win out
Book review: Why We Disagree About Climate Change
Thanks for inspiring me: Freek v.d. Pluijm, Michaëla Hogenboom, and Pieter Ploeg
