BecomingGolden

Written by Advocate Brownie Ebal

There is a popular belief that if you want to hide something from an African person, write a book. However, I believe, the current, African landscape has learnt the trick and the generation is more knowledge seeking.

I am a firm believer that what we experience in this world is not new. If anyone wants to get a head in life, they need to read the wisdom of others which is often hidden in books.

I was struggling with working with people and Ameso Angela (The Co-Founder Kitabu- Buk Project: an NGO that donates used and new textbooks in Uganda), recommended the book: Collaborating with the Enemy by Adam Kahane.

I  must admit, the title captivated me thou I thought “enemy” was a bit much. In addition, the author worked to reconcile drug lords in Colombia, so who would not  want such advice? I immediately dived into the book. 

These are the 10 key takeaways from this book on how to
to build a collaborative team through stretch and conventional collaboration

1.   Stretch collaboration: This is more than making a deal or an agreement, this kind of collaboration involves planning. It is an ongoing, emergent process in which action is more important than agreement. As in gardening, we can only create some of the conditions for a collective effort to flourish. We cannot direct it to do so. In this scenario, we normally start with a plan and the difficulty is in ensuring that members stick to the plan. Usually, in Stretch collaboration, participants take the plan that is modest, short term and low risk since they may not like or trust one another.

2.   In order to ensure this works out, one should take one step at a time and learn as you go. As the leader, create conditions under which participants can act freely and creatively, creating a path towards success so they can overcome obstacles and take the next step. Remember, no gardener tries to convince a plant to grow. If the seed does not have the potential to grow, there is nothing anyone can do to induce it. In this regard, people find their way forward, not necessarily because they have a good map or plan, but rather because they begin to act and thus generate tangible outcomes in some context. For
example, “a young Lieutenant in a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a reconnaissance unit into the icy wilderness. It began to snow immediately, persevering for two days so that the unit could not return. The lieutenant suffered, fearing that he had dispatched his people to death. On the third day,
the unit came back. Where had they been? How did they make their way back? They said they had considered themselves lost and were waiting for the end when one of them found a map in his pocket that calmed them down. They pitched camp, lasted out the snowstorm, and then with the map they discovered their bearings.
The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map and had a good look at it. He discovered to his astonishment that it was not a map of the Alps, but of the
Pyrenees.” This shows that once you create a conducive environment for members to flourish and seek ideas on their own, whatever obstacle they come across, they will overcome it. Here the leader must believe in their team for changes to happen.

3.   In Stretch collaboration, members should feel that they are co-creators. This will enable the team work together to achieve a goal as they feel valued and are contributing as individuals to something.

4.Talk to members in the group through creating better communication channels for example better through Creating dialogue eg. In my experience, Debating eg. In my opinion.

5.   Conventional collaboration: This focuses on trying to change what other people are doing. These might be fellow collaborators or even people outside our collaboration who are targets of our
collective activities. This involves the creative process which is a process of finding not of projecting something already seen and known in one’s mind. The needed inner gestures here are fearlessness in letting go of what isn’t working, and boldness in proposing new solutions.

6.   It is useless for one to focus on what one’s enemies should be doing. Focus on what you should be doing differently to deal effectively with the challenges you are facing.

7.   Blaming others is a common and lazy way to avoid doing one’s own work and Philosopher Rene Girard says that we create enemies as a way to avoid dealing with the conflict within our communities or within ourselves. Philosopher Martin Buber adds, “ this perspective in which a man sees himself only as an individual contrasted with other individuals and not as a person whose transformation helps towards the transformation of the world contains a fundamental error. The essential thing is to begin with oneself and at this moment a man has nothing in the world to care about than the beginning. Any other attitude would distract him from what he is about to begin, weaken his initiative and thus frustrate the entire bold undertaking.”

8.     We tend to feel better when we commit to a given task rather than lazily blaming others for our failures. People we think of as our enemies can surprisingly play a helpful role.

9.     If we want to get things done, we must collaborate in a complex, conflictual and uncontrolled context. To do so, we must stretch. The primary obstacle in learning to stretch is overcoming the familiarity and comfort of our habitual way of doing things. We must move away from a declarative (It must be this way) toward a subjunctive (It could be this way).

10.  We must loosen our attachment to our opinions, positions and identities: to sacrifice our smaller, constricted selves to our larger, freer one.

Finally, the above stretches are both frightening and liberating. The only way to collaborate with the enemy is to be more open to different views and keep learning.

This book opens your eyes to how trivial some of our issues can be that result in us not working together for a common goal. The author worked with drug lords and rebels to bridge peace in various countries through some of these methods. Therefore, if these methods can work for war lords, us as individuals, friends, family, co-workers, should work with others and have  a growth mindset as working with people is part of life.

For more information kindly buy the book: “COLLABORATING
WITH THE ENEMY: HOW TO WORK WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T AGREE WITH OR LIKE OR TRUST BY ADAM KAHANE”

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Written by Advocate Brownie Ebal