I just couldn't stay in the meeting anymore. Why? I was asking myself. I feel hurt if my ego comes in between the process. (What a sentence!! Who is hurt? Isn't that ego itself?)
It was an internal meeting. This is an action research and has an iterative process. Plan -> Implement -> Reflect -> Improve -> Plan!! Period? There is no period. It can go on and on as long as you have patience/ resources/ willingness to carry out what you are doing.
So we, the community facilitators (CFs) and the coordinators of the process were sitting together to reflect upon the process that has been happening over last 2 weeks. We were supposed to go out to the ward, meet people, tell them that PB (I hope, by now you know what PB is!! It's Participatory Budgeting.) exists. If they already know it, understand the process as they see it, tell them what we propose alternatively at least in 5 wards which will take it closer to a better PB process. If they are the decision makers like the Corporators or Ward Officer, we also have to take their consent and assurance to implement the way we are proposing it. We are at the same time planning the next year. To meet the financial needs, the long term planning seems important.
It is all very overwhelming. It looks like a herculean task to me. It is tough to break out of the comforts of the chair. There were days when I used to move about forests and grasslands and streams and rivers and beaches. I met them so easily, with hardly any planning. But meeting people, it takes so much of planning!! I never knew that it would un-stabilize me so much. I used to think and had debated over this with friends that how much I am prepared to have uncertainty in life. How much I am a 'Ghus India' person!! Now, that the uncertainty of meeting new people arrive I know how much I was not prepared for it. Meeting new people as a by product and as the main task are two absolutely different processes.
Coming to why I was unable to sit in the meeting...
When we were learning the Inquiry Based Approach our facilitator took us through a process of deciding the rules of the game. it seemed so interesting. When the team gets built, the team also decides the rules by which they would like to deliberate, facilitate the process within the group and outside the group. I really liked one rule among many 'All ideas are valid.' Looking down upon someone for telling an idea which doesn't exactly fit into the social norm doesn't really makes the process inclusive. When you have so many stake holders on your inquiry team, they are going to see the problem from various perspectives. In fact that's the purpose of having all the stakeholders on board. The solution according to everyone is bound to be different. What is important is everyone listens to all ideas and be tolerant to them and slowly evolve something which resolves the problem for everyone and not for just few. Then if you don't have the rule of 'All ideas are valid', it would be disastrous, harmful to the process of consensus.
This is exactly was happening to me, incidentally. For some reasons, the coordinator overlooked my ideas too many times in a series. I agree, not every idea turns out to be practical but at the same time its very encouraging for the team and trust building that we listen to each other's ideas patiently, without ridiculing them. I reached my tipping point too early, may be owing to my low mood (for whatever reasons). With multiple abortions, my mind wasn't ready to conceive any more ideas. I was finding myself more of a disturbance in the process than a contributor. Another thought was, we are going to be the facilitators in the community which is going to be heterogeneous, much less tolerant to each other's needs. If we can't be democratic in such a small group of more cohesive people, how do we think we would be better off facilitating the community?
I had to walk out to keep myself sane, to think about what was happening to me and to drop the ego if there was any and to be part of the process as soon as possible. He realized pretty soon and came to call me but I took much longer than I had thought. I was really hurt. My process of visualizing the future was hurt. Even then both of us knew that its not personal. We just needed the time to convey it to each other. We couldn't take it personally, we couldn't afford to. Soon after the meeting was over (which I did join in a short while though with a lower profile like a wounded bird) we could and did convey that how sorry we were for the incidence, for not letting the idea flow and aborting them and for not getting any new after that.
The process was more reassuring and realized that the primary function of every human being is to connect and reconnect, we find various ways around it to do it differently in every case. Thanks to the Team which behaved just normally even for an abnormal/ unexpected incidence!
It was an internal meeting. This is an action research and has an iterative process. Plan -> Implement -> Reflect -> Improve -> Plan!! Period? There is no period. It can go on and on as long as you have patience/ resources/ willingness to carry out what you are doing.
So we, the community facilitators (CFs) and the coordinators of the process were sitting together to reflect upon the process that has been happening over last 2 weeks. We were supposed to go out to the ward, meet people, tell them that PB (I hope, by now you know what PB is!! It's Participatory Budgeting.) exists. If they already know it, understand the process as they see it, tell them what we propose alternatively at least in 5 wards which will take it closer to a better PB process. If they are the decision makers like the Corporators or Ward Officer, we also have to take their consent and assurance to implement the way we are proposing it. We are at the same time planning the next year. To meet the financial needs, the long term planning seems important.
It is all very overwhelming. It looks like a herculean task to me. It is tough to break out of the comforts of the chair. There were days when I used to move about forests and grasslands and streams and rivers and beaches. I met them so easily, with hardly any planning. But meeting people, it takes so much of planning!! I never knew that it would un-stabilize me so much. I used to think and had debated over this with friends that how much I am prepared to have uncertainty in life. How much I am a 'Ghus India' person!! Now, that the uncertainty of meeting new people arrive I know how much I was not prepared for it. Meeting new people as a by product and as the main task are two absolutely different processes.
Coming to why I was unable to sit in the meeting...
When we were learning the Inquiry Based Approach our facilitator took us through a process of deciding the rules of the game. it seemed so interesting. When the team gets built, the team also decides the rules by which they would like to deliberate, facilitate the process within the group and outside the group. I really liked one rule among many 'All ideas are valid.' Looking down upon someone for telling an idea which doesn't exactly fit into the social norm doesn't really makes the process inclusive. When you have so many stake holders on your inquiry team, they are going to see the problem from various perspectives. In fact that's the purpose of having all the stakeholders on board. The solution according to everyone is bound to be different. What is important is everyone listens to all ideas and be tolerant to them and slowly evolve something which resolves the problem for everyone and not for just few. Then if you don't have the rule of 'All ideas are valid', it would be disastrous, harmful to the process of consensus.
This is exactly was happening to me, incidentally. For some reasons, the coordinator overlooked my ideas too many times in a series. I agree, not every idea turns out to be practical but at the same time its very encouraging for the team and trust building that we listen to each other's ideas patiently, without ridiculing them. I reached my tipping point too early, may be owing to my low mood (for whatever reasons). With multiple abortions, my mind wasn't ready to conceive any more ideas. I was finding myself more of a disturbance in the process than a contributor. Another thought was, we are going to be the facilitators in the community which is going to be heterogeneous, much less tolerant to each other's needs. If we can't be democratic in such a small group of more cohesive people, how do we think we would be better off facilitating the community?
I had to walk out to keep myself sane, to think about what was happening to me and to drop the ego if there was any and to be part of the process as soon as possible. He realized pretty soon and came to call me but I took much longer than I had thought. I was really hurt. My process of visualizing the future was hurt. Even then both of us knew that its not personal. We just needed the time to convey it to each other. We couldn't take it personally, we couldn't afford to. Soon after the meeting was over (which I did join in a short while though with a lower profile like a wounded bird) we could and did convey that how sorry we were for the incidence, for not letting the idea flow and aborting them and for not getting any new after that.
The process was more reassuring and realized that the primary function of every human being is to connect and reconnect, we find various ways around it to do it differently in every case. Thanks to the Team which behaved just normally even for an abnormal/ unexpected incidence!
No comments:
Post a Comment