Followership

I am starting to think about the subject and behavior of followership. A workshop is scheduled for the end of the month and I like to engage in significant free-thought prior to researching and gathering the work of others. Warren Bennis has done a great deal of work as have other thoughtful people so I certainly cannot take credit for the concept. Perhaps the current thinkers cannot take full credit either as the disciples focused on being good followers over 2000 years ago and Attila the Hun inspired great followers as well.

The first layer of thinking comes in the form of skills or behaviors consistent with adhering to the voice or intent of the leader. One assumes at this point that there has been a voluntary choice to follow a particular person, dogma, method and so forth. The non-voluntary type of follower enters into a dialogue of survival and that is for a later reflection. A few skills associated with voluntary follower-ship are; rigor, critical thinking, curiosity, inquiry, research capacity and community membership.

Rigor is required as a means of being true to the particular theory or personal intent. A certain accuracy or strictness to the thought, belief or person being followed is required in order to do good for what is being practiced. The rigor I suggest is not the sort of mindless rigor associated with a cult. The strictness is enveloped in a field of mindfulness (a practice added to good followers).

Critical thinking is a required skill developed by great followers. Likenleaders, followers come in all stages of development. A weak follower not practiced in the skill of critical thinking serves not the good outcome but serves to create problems never before thought of.

Curiosity, inquiry and research capacity are separate and intertwined skills that serve the follower to do good in ways not specifically imagined by the leader.

Community membership is required in order to perform the tasks of followership. In order to do good one must not exist in a vacuum.

The second level of followership is to understand the personal power of a Leading. The Quakers speak of this as a powerful force that can not be turned away from. This level of followership requires additional sets of skills.

Facilitated Leader

Voice is the key in todays and yesterdays world. The concept of facilitation is as old as the stars and modern as web2.0. For a more detailed rendering of the concept I offer "The Facilitated Leader" for your enjoyment.


And a famous friend of mine constructed The Support Circle as a process that can be used in your living room or in your cloud.

Economics more than dollar counting

When I was young “men” stood round and bragged about how heavy their cars where. It wasn’t until the VW Bug came to our town that weight as the measurement of the best became not such an important measure. Some still argued about how heavy their car was but those brands, and people, soon where silenced by other more complex realities.
As we enter the gubernatorial season I hear the ghosts of those weight braggers arguing about how heavy their budgets are or are not. Half of us line up on the mine is lighter side and half of us line up on the mine is heavier side. The only thing that gets accomplished is nothing, which works well for both sides of the well-to-do bragging aisle.
So, what to do. It is time to stop measuring our actions worthiness and direction based solely on dollar weight. The bottom line as measured only by the dollar amount is not sustainable and does not give us happiness, spiritual growth, health, sound ecologies and so forth. An economy based on a respectful mathematical formula that accounts for the entire commonwealth is what we need (and is used in many parts of the world).
The good elected servants and the honorable ones running for office know how to create policy that measures the health and welfare and profitability of the commonwealth. I call on them to act with moral intent not individualistic self-preservation. We the people have worshiped the golden calf well past the time we can afford it. In order to understand this from a practical approach I will purchase, Right Relationship By Peter B. Brown and Geoffrey Garver, for any of my elected officials who call me and request a copy. Perhaps others will do the same.
In Good Health,

Thomas J. Neuville: Rules For Radicals 4 - A Workshop Process

Thomas J. Neuville: Rules For Radicals 4 - A Workshop Process

Rules For Radicals 4 - A Workshop Process

Creating a Community Action Session

Creating an interactive and high-energy session makes social change agents of all participants. The session title; Rules For Radicals; Waging Peace For Full Inclusion builds expectation even as potential participants consider their roles. The facilitator’s role is to develop and evolve a significant, citizen-centered innovation relating directly to full inclusion. The session format is based on the triangulation of three critical components (Alinsky’s tactics, Guidelines of inclusion and peaceful resolution) with a nucleus of participant affinity and need.

Purpose and Structure

1) The interweaving of guidelines for full inclusion and peaceful resolution with Alinsky’s tactics.

2) The connection of the session calls for action from participant experience, in order to create post-conference activity.

Agenda and Process

The history of equity, diversity, social justice and inclusion is replete with stories and example centered on people taking action that is within their experience. The session; Rules For Radicals; Waging Peace For Full Inclusion triangulates the methods of the pragmatic radical Saul Alinsky, guidelines for full inclusion, and elements of peace with the capacities of the workshop participants. The information is applied to those most at risk of exclusion, and people most vulnerable to segregation and isolation due to social devaluation. The tactics are founded on the principles of adult education / participatory action which result in high degrees of collaboration, shared learning and the creation of new knowledge. The narrative disseminated and generated throughout the event is targeted at creating post workshop participant action that breaks down institutional barriers to inclusion.

How the issue is presented and discussed

The interactive and participatory learning environment created by this workshop results in participants clarifying their own connection with inclusion and designing local action for change. The agenda and processes are:

1) Presentation and discussion of Alinsky’s 13 tactics. (15% of total time)

2) Presentation and discussion of Inclusion guidelines as they interact with

Alinsky’s work. (15% of total time)

3) Discovery process of group experience, local needs and participant definitions

of material presented. (35% of total time)

4) Creation of 2 or 3 individual actions to be taken at home. ( 35% of total time)

“The citizens concerned with quality learning and inclusive environments are numb, bewildered, and scared into silence. They don’t know what – if anything, they can do. This is a job for today’s radical – to fan the embers of hopelessness into the flame to fight.” (Alinsky p.194).

The workshop is designed for people who are concerned about the segregation and isolation of large groups of people within our society, and who want to take new and effective actions that place people who are most at risk on a trajectory of community, contribution and wholeness.

Facilitation

Facilitation is the sustaining of opportunities, resources, encouragement and support for the group to succeed in achieving its objectives through enabling the group to take control and responsibility. The facilitating leader is a facilitator with a vision. The use of facilitation finally answers the question of how to motivate people. The answer is not about motivation, but is rather about inspiration. To produce or arouse a strong feeling is the only direct path to quality, effectiveness, health, profitability and personal well-being.

General Facilitation Guidelines

Beegle, Gwen & Neuville, Thomas 2005.

1) Open with participant comments, input and questions. This clears the emotional way and opens up.

2) Lead specific assessment discussions with “what did you think? This starts from the spot the participants are at.

3) Publicly list responses. This allows for participants to develop to the next level of knowing by letting go. It also generates material for further analysis.

4) Set up seating for participant interaction and relationship building (e.g. circle). Among other advantages this form leaves spaces for the facilitator to enter.

5) Adopt a friendly and professionally familiar affect. This invites trust.

6) Make use of small groups.

a. Everyone will have an opportunity to teach and learn.

b. Productivity and work output increases.

c. Gives participants varied opportunities for hand-on experience with tools.

d. Guards against drift.

7) Create and re-create context, foundation, purpose and focus (this is a particularly

critical skill and pays attention to the moving target of developmental learning).

8) The facilitators must distribute themselves equitably about physically. Moving about with complete coverage allows relationship building and works best in u shapes or circles.

9) Make use of self-reflection relevant to the content as a public or private activity. This develops the ability to analyze, discover common ground and build steps toward practical generalization.

10) Refocus and restate with respect to participant language in order to build knowledge on focus area as well as enhance depth and meaning. Taking a persons statements and sometimes ramble and repeating it back in clear concise content specific terms builds individual and group understanding and offers to the person what they know.

Conclusion

The move towards inclusion and peace is blocked by false vision. The intent of the processes of inclusion, peace, and Alinsky’s tactics is to get a glimpse of what is most valuable about inclusive communities. With an increase in sight may come a positive institutional bias toward community, reformation and, perhaps, revolution evolves while creating space for citizens to gather and put together the steps they need for inclusion and peace. Whether systems change, people gain in belonging, or we simply get to know each other, the action of coming together is worthy.

References

Alinsky, Saul (1971). Rules For Radicals. Vintage Books, New York, NY.

Covey, Stephen (1989). 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.

Henderson, William (2005). Personal communication. Patrick O’Hearn School, Boston, MA

Neuville, Thomas (2000). What are the Main Concerns Related to Students With Disabilities as They Transition From Secondary Schools to Adult Life? UMI Ann Arbor, MI.

Peterson, Michael & Hittie, Mishael Marie (2003). Inclusive Teaching; Creating Effective Schools For All Learners. Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA.

Rogers, Will (2005). http://www.willrogers.org/

Samuel, Bill (2005). Friends (Quakers) and Peace http://www.quakerinfo.com/quak_pce.shtml

Henderson, William (2005). Personal communication. Patrick O’Hearn School, Boston, MA.

Rules For Radicals 3

Tactics from Rules For Radicals

“Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul…”

Thomas Paine

As quoted in Alinsky 1971

Saul Alinsky wrote the book Rules For Radicals (Alinsky, Saul, 1971). The time is right to remember and implement his tactics for social change. The dominant ideological strategy employed today for students who are most at risk of exclusion is a higher order and more complex system of exclusion than has ever existed before. This paper promotes the use of Saul Alinsky’s 13 tactics for success in implementing inclusion for vulnerable people in everyday life. Understanding and using Alinsky’s 13 rules with a view toward action and high-energy systemic change will cause positive change.

TACTICS

Rules For Radicals, Saul Alinsky

We will either find a way or make one. --Hannibal

1) Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks your have.

2) The second rule is: Never go out side the experience of your people.

3) The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.

4) The forth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

5) The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

6) The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

7) The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

8) The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on.

9) The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

10) The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

11) The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.

12) The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

13) The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Rules For Radicals 2

The Ingredients of Peace

The clarity of the emerging inclusive movement has primitive theological roots. The actions call for clarity and must literally give testimony to non-violence and peace. Peace is a required ingredient here due to the need for radical tactics. Those who are convinced about the moral correctness of inclusion (convinced inclusionists) may start by making a declaration that notes that exclusion and harmful conflict proceeds from the passionate and overmastering desire to apply segregating scientific methods to a perceived need to cure (professional lust). In this context, professional lust refers not particularly to sexual desires, but more broadly to covetousness and greed. Greed is a subtle unconscious collection of power and control. A person steeped in professional lust may come to see that they themselves are future fodder for the “curemasters” of elder care. In this sense, (s)he that lives by professional lust, shall perish by professional lust. A convinced inclusionist will cause individual and institutional inclusivity not by might, nor power, but by peaceful and community spirit.

The fact that people who act toward inclusion are peaceful (pacifists) does not mean they are passive. The gentle battles for institutions of inclusion are battles fought with the spirit of pervading thoughts of welcome, not weapons of secular science. Led by the spirit of gentle battles for inclusion, all schools would be transformed (Samuel, Bill 2005)

The Ingredients of Peace

1) Hospitality:

“We must be ever vigilant that our egocentrism, our strong adherence to how things are properly done, and our clannish need to protect our group does not interfere with our obligation to love another as ourselves” (Fennell, Nancy 2005. Hospitality in The Manner of Friends. Friends Journal, October 2005).

a. When a guest walks through the door, some reflection or revelation of spirit has arrived in the midst. A gift has been sent.

b. Offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become fellow human beings (Nouwen, Henri. Reaching Out).

c. Start by making an honest appraisal of what is being done about hospitality. Hospitality involves action, it is doing three actions;

i. Preparation

ii. Sharing

iii. Serving

2) Justice

a. The quality of being just.

b. Equitableness that is characterized by the quality of being fair or impartial.

c. The moral principle determining just conduct and conformity to this principle as manifested in conduct, just conduct and treatment.

3) Equality

a. The state or quality that tends to result in privilege being dispensed in like quantity, degree and value.

4) Institutional structures that expect and develop:

a. Peace Builders

A Peace Builder is one who "does good things" on a small everyday level to make the world more peaceful (e.g., the child who returns a lost wallet to its owners or befriends a new student.)

b. Peacekeepers

A Peacekeeper is one who protects the rights of others by peacefully enforcing the laws and rules we live by; e.g., the teacher on recess duty, the corner police officer, the umpire in a baseball game, even a comic book hero.

c. Social Activist

A Social Activist is one who takes a stand against social injustice in an organized way to bring about a more just and peaceful world.

d. Visionary

A Visionary is one who inspires others with his/her vision for a more peaceful future; e.g., certain writers, artists, musicians and religious leaders, such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.

5)Non-Violence

“Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have seen and ask yourself if the next step you contemplate is going to be of any use to that person.” M.K.Gandhi

a. Nonviolent action is a technique by which people that reject passivity and submission, and who see struggle as essential, can wage their conflict without violence. Nonviolent action is not an attempt to avoid or ignore conflict. It is one response to the problem of how to act effectively in politics, especially how to wield power effectively. (Sharp, 1973, p. 64)