Community - Vignesh Prasad

## Highlights First and foremost, he asserts that community is built by focusing on people’s gifts rather than their deficiencies. In the world of community and volunteerism, deficiencies have no market value; gifts are the point. — location: 323 ^ref-46323 --- In the professional world of service providers, whole industries have been built on people’s deficiencies. Social service and most of medicine, therapy, and psychology are organized around what is missing or broken in people. — location: 325 ^ref-4738 --- The alternative to a “system” is what John calls “associational life”: groups of people voluntarily coming together to do some good. — location: 341 ^ref-18415 --- The third insight for community building is John’s faith in citizens to identify and solve problems for themselves. He finds that most sustainable improvements in community occur when citizens discover their own power to act. — location: 346 ^ref-4268 --- John McKnight and his partner, Jody Kretzmann: Communities are built from the assets and gifts of their citizens, not from the citizens’ needs or deficiencies. Organized, professionalized systems are capable of delivering services, but only associational life is capable of delivering care. Sustainable transformation is constructed in those places where citizens choose to come together to produce a desired future. — location: 351 ^ref-25251 --- He believes that a shift in speaking and listening is the essence of transformation. If we have any desire to create an alternative future, it is only going to happen through a shift in our language. If we want a change in culture, for example, the work is to change the conversation—or, more precisely, to have a conversation that we have not had before, one that has the power to create something new in the world. — location: 361 ^ref-7338 --- Nothing in our doing or the way we go through life will shift until we can question, and then choose once again, the basic set of beliefs—some call it mental models; we’re calling it context here—that lie behind our actions. — location: 367 ^ref-59528 --- Community well-being simply had to do with the quality of the relationships, the cohesion that exists among its citizens. He calls this social capital. — location: 409 ^ref-27951 --- They go on to distinguish between “bonding” and “bridging” social capital. Bonding social capital are networks that are inward looking, composed of people of like mind. Other social networks “encompass different types of people and tend to be outward looking—bridging social capital.” It is primarily the bridging social capital that we are interested in here. As Putnam and Feldstein put it: “A society that has only bonding social capital will . . . be segregated into mutually hostile camps. So a pluralistic democracy requires lots of bridging social capital, not just the bonding variety.” — location: 415 ^ref-61221 --- One insight that informs our exploration of communal transformation is Peter’s understanding of how we can come to terms with the paradoxical nature of human affairs. He values ambiguity and anxiety as the natural condition of being human. — location: 458 ^ref-50485 --- As a philosopher and consultant, Peter has always given voice to how profound the right question can be. It is the willingness to reframe, turn, and even invert a question that creates the depth and opening for authentic change. — location: 462 ^ref-6633 --- freedom being the choice to be a creator of our own experience and accept the unbearable responsibility that goes with that. Out of this insight grows the idea that perhaps the real task of leadership is to confront people with their freedom. This may be the ultimate act of love that is called for from those who hold power over others. Choosing our freedom is also the source of our willingness to choose to be accountable. The insight is that freedom is what creates accountability. Freedom is not an escape from accountability, as the popular culture so often misunderstands. — location: 467 ^ref-6835 --- The essential insight is that people will be accountable and committed to what they have a hand in creating. — location: 520 ^ref-45492 --- If you reflect on the stories of the successful leaders who Bornstein documents, you realize that these entrepreneurs were committed enough and patient enough to give their projects time to evolve and find their own way of operating. There were years spent simply learning what structures, agreements, leadership, and types of people were required to be successful. — location: 552 ^ref-30173 --- We are a community of possibilities, not a community of problems. • Community exists for the sake of belonging and takes its identity from the gifts, generosity, and accountability of its citizens. It is not defined by its fears, its isolation, or its penchant for retribution. — location: 609 ^ref-12769 --- A shift in the thinking and actions of citizens is more vital than a shift in the thinking and action of institutions and formal leaders. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional beliefs that better leadership, more programs, new funding, new regulations, and more oversight are the path to a better future. At times all of these are necessary, but they do not have the power to create a fundamental shift. — location: 628 ^ref-33814 --- All transformation is linguistic, which means that we can think of community as essentially a conversation. — location: 636 ^ref-35428 --- The small group is the unit of transformation. It is in the structure of how small groups gather that an alternative future will be created. — location: 631 ^ref-44777 --- Transformation can be thought of as a fundamental shift in context, whether the shift is about my own life, my institution, or our community. — location: 640 ^ref-23103 --- Many of the strongest advocates for change would lose their sense of identity if the change they desired ever occurred. — location: 664 ^ref-13381 --- In addition to marketing fear, the stuck community markets fault. When there is a human tragedy, most of the energy goes into finding who was to blame. There is a retributive search for responsibility and a corresponding defense from the players claiming their innocence. Fault marketing rests on the belief that if we can assign blame and find cause, it is useful to society and somehow reassures us that it won’t happen again — location: 750 ^ref-27113 --- What limits us and undermines our quest for authentic community is the belief that fault finding, legislation, and enforcement can give us the security we seek. But this thinking is just too simplistic and reductionist. It is more a response to our need to take action and look like problem solvers, rather than finding a durable answer to a complex civic issue. — location: 769 ^ref-41655 --- My favorite quote on this is “Research causes cancer in rats.” It is reasonable to understand that the act of oversight may in fact increase the very thing that is being watched with the intent of reducing it. — location: 773 ^ref-65008 --- We speak endlessly, both in the public conversation and privately, about the rise and fall of leaders. The agenda this sustains is that leaders are cause and all others are effect. That all that counts is what leaders do. That leaders are the leverage point for building a better community. That they are foreground while citizens, followers, players, and anyone else not in a leadership position is background. This is a deeply patriarchal agenda, and it is this love of leaders that limits our capacity to create an alternative future. It proposes that the only real accountability in the world is at the top. They are the only ones worth talking about. — location: 784 ^ref-40198 --- The attention on the leader makes good copy, it gives us someone to blame and thereby declares our innocence, but it does not contribute to building community. In its own way, it reinforces individualism, putting us in the stance of waiting for the cream to rise, wishing for a great individual to bring light where there was darkness. — location: 790 ^ref-40214 --- possibility is not a prediction, or a goal; it is a choice to bring a certain quality into our lives. Optimism, which is a prediction about the future, has no power. Pessimism is equally irrelevant. — location: 817 ^ref-31820 --- We name social service and institutions that serve the public good “not for profits.” — location: 837 ^ref-2085 --- Associations are under constant pressure to be more corporate: to merge, become more efficient, submit to external oversight, measure harder, and submit to greater accountability. — location: 842 ^ref-28442 --- This means the real importance of the media is not in the typical debate over the quality, balance, or even accuracy of what is reported. These vary with the channel, the network, the newspaper, the Web site. They vary with having the resources to get the whole story, the market segment it is aiming at, and its editorial agenda. What is most important, and the power that is most defining, is the power of the media to decide what is worth talking about. As British newspaper pioneer Lord Northcliffe once said, “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” — location: 880 ^ref-55683 --- The essence of restorative community building is not economic prosperity or the political discourse or the capacity of leadership; it is citizens’ willingness to own up to their contribution, to be humble, to choose accountability, and to have faith in their own capacity to make authentic promises to create the alternative future. — location: 909 ^ref-63224 --- One exercise was for individuals to complete a questionnaire about their strengths as part of a program on positive psychology. The members noted that this was the first time in their lives they had ever taken a test and gotten good news from the results. — location: 964 ^ref-39615 --- Every community has its buildings, leaders, schools, landscape, but for the moment let us say that these are not what make a community unique or define its identity. Instead it is useful to declare that the aspect of a community that gives it a new possibility is simply the conversation it chooses to have with itself. — location: 991 ^ref-46497 --- From seeing the corporation and systems as central to seeing associational life as central — location: 1014 ^ref-27407 --- Culture is a set of shared values that emerges from the history of experience and the story that is produced out of that. It is the past that gives us our identity and corrals our behavior in order to preserve that identity. Context is the way we see the world. See the world, not remember the world. — location: 1043 ^ref-56774 --- If the fear-retribution cycle is a matter of choice and not an inevitable result of culture, then we have to face the fact that the choice to inhale it must mean it offers us payoffs. — location: 1058 ^ref-45616 --- We displace or assign to others certain qualities that have more to do with us than with them. This is called projection, an idea most of us are quite familiar with. — location: 1062 ^ref-44074 --- Projection denies the fact that my view of the “other” is my creation, and this is especially true with how we view our communities and the people in them. Most simply, how I view the other is an extension or template of how I view myself. This insight is the essence of being accountable. To be accountable is to act as an owner and creator of what exists in the world, including the light and dark corners of my own existence. — location: 1068 ^ref-9976 --- Take poverty, for example. When we see low-income people, we focus on their needs and deficiencies, and that is all we see. We think their poverty is central to who they are, and that is all they are. We believe that the poor have created that condition for themselves. We view them with charity or pity and wring our hands at their plight. At this moment we are projecting our own vulnerability onto the poor. It is a defense against not only my own vulnerability, but also my complicity in creating poverty. — location: 1074 ^ref-61111 --- To continue, as a community, to focus on the needs and deficiencies of the most vulnerable is not an act of hospitality. It substitutes labeling for welcoming. — location: 1092 ^ref-40848 --- Despite our care for them, we do not welcome them into our midst, we service them. They become objects. This may be why it is easier to raise money for suffering in distant places or to celebrate the history of slavery’s end than it is to raise money for our neighbors on the margin who are six blocks away. — location: 1094 ^ref-14918 --- For example, we limit our future when we frame conversations in the following ways: • Young people on the corner or out of school become “youth at risk.” • People who served their time in jail become “ex-offenders.” • People who live on the street become “homeless” or “vagrants.” • Those with physical or mental challenges become “handicapped” and “bipolar.” • Immigrants become “illegals.” — location: 1101 ^ref-50090 --- This means we stop labeling others for their deficiencies and focus on their gifts. — location: 1119 ^ref-64980 --- Elementz takes the very things that bother many adults—the music, the dancing, the graffiti—and treats them as gifts. This is not a recreation center; it is a learning space where youth have to attend programs in order to be in the building. — location: 1123 ^ref-17016 --- The goal of Elementz is not specifically to provide careers in these entertainment fields—that would be making a promise that is unreal. The goal is to give to youth an experience of what they can create, a sense of the value they have inside of them. The ultimate goal is to offer them a new possibility for their lives. — location: 1128 ^ref-54757 --- The transformation we seek occurs when these two conditions are created: when we produce deeper relatedness across boundaries, and when we create new conversations that focus on the gifts and capacities of others. — location: 1132 ^ref-51375 --- Citizenship is not about voting, or even about having a vote. To construe the essence of citizenship primarily as the right to vote reduces its power—as if voting ensures a democracy. — location: 1162 ^ref-28346 --- When we think of citizens as just voters, we reduce them to being consumers of elected officials and leaders. We see this most vividly at election time, when candidates become products, issues become the message, and the campaign is a marketing and distribution system for the selling of the candidate. — location: 1165 ^ref-3853 --- Citizenship is a state of being. It is a choice for activism and care. A citizen is one who is willing to do the following: • Hold oneself accountable for the well-being of the larger collective of which we are a part. • Choose to own and exercise power rather than defer or delegate it to others. • Enter into a collective possibility that gives hospitable and restorative community its own sense of being. • Acknowledge that community grows out of the possibility of citizens. Community is built not by specialized expertise, or great leadership, or improved services; it is built by great citizens. • Attend to the gifts and capacities of all others, and act to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center. — location: 1179 ^ref-20773 --- The audience creates the performance. Implications: Redesign the audience experience. Stop putting so much energy in the talent and message of those on stage. Limit PowerPoint presentations to four slides. Peter Brook immersed the stage in the center of the audience; John Cage held concerts where the rumbling, coughing sounds of the audience were the show.When we meet, make it possible for the audience to be engaged with one another. — location: 1213 ^ref-40472 --- Inversion: The student creates the teacher and the learning. Implications: Education would be designed more for learning than for teaching. (This already occurs in many places under the heading of individualized learning. Montessori education has forever operated along these lines.) The social contract in the classroom would be renegotiated toward a partnership between teacher and student. Students would set goals for themselves and be responsible for the learning of other students. Simple ideas, powerful ideas, still rare in practice. — location: 1238 ^ref-1165 --- We will never eliminate our need for great leaders and people on the stage; we just cannot afford to put all our experience and future in their hands. — location: 1256 ^ref-11226 --- The weakness in the dominant view of accountability is that it thinks people can be held accountable. That we can force people to be accountable. Despite the fact that it sells easily, it is an illusion to believe that retribution, incentives, legislation, new standards, and tough consequences will cause accountability. — location: 1279 ^ref-41118 --- leaders are held to three tasks: to shift the context within which people gather, name the debate through powerful questions, and listen rather than advocate, defend, or provide answers. — location: 1314 ^ref-3779 --- When we demand more speed and scale, we are making a coded argument against anything important being any different. — location: 1331 ^ref-64051 --- The primary questions for community transformation are “How do we choose to be together?” and “What do we want to create together?” — location: 1348 ^ref-18029 --- Once again, problem solving makes things better, but it cannot change the nature of things. This insight is at the center of all the thinking about complex adaptive systems, emergent design, and the organic and self-regulating nature of the universe. — location: 1390 ^ref-38406 --- We cannot problem-solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation, or community. To state it one more way: This is not an argument against problem solving; it is an assertion that the primary work is to shift the context and language and thinking about possibility within which problem solving takes place. — location: 1428 ^ref-37214 --- Relatedness, learning, requests, and offers of gifts are outcomes as valuable as agreements and next steps. It is not that we are gathering just for the sake of gathering. Or gathering to get to know each other. We come together for an exchange of value and to experience how relatedness, gifts, learning, and generosity are valuable to community. — location: 1446 ^ref-7415 --- Leadership is convening. The small group is the unit of transformation. Questions are more transforming than answers. Six conversations materialize belonging. Hospitality, the welcoming of strangers, is central. Physical and social space support belonging. — location: 1467 ^ref-51656 --- We use the term gathering, because the word has different associations from what we think of when we say “meeting.” Most people do not even like meetings, and for good reason. They are frequently designed to explain, defend, express opinions, persuade, set more goals, and define steps—the result of which is to produce more of what currently exists. — location: 1502 ^ref-43641 --- It is leadership that creates accountability as it confronts people with their freedom. — location: 1540 ^ref-35815 --- Shortly into the effort, the Hoxseys and Sparoughs realized that to make any difference in the young men’s lives, the adults had to try to understand who these young people were. So they threw out the curriculum and decided to simply hang out with the youths. They listened two nights a week for eight months. The listening was hard, the language was hard, the stories were heartbreaking. At first it seemed the young men were unreachable, and any attempt to “help” would be futile. Then, at some point the adults’ listening made a difference. The adults and the young people began to trust one another. As one young man put it, “The reason I respect you so much is because you may be the only people who really listen. Everyone wanted to tell us to ‘pull up our pants’ and tell us how to live.” Something valuable was built, and in the end the “things” the adults wanted to teach about relationships were taught by simply changing the nature of the conversation. — location: 1547 ^ref-54156 --- Conventional measures would miss the essence of the humanity and restraint that led to transformation in the form of a group of young African-Americans finding four white people, in positions of leadership, whom they could trust. — location: 1566 ^ref-8640 --- One of the challenges facing relational approaches such as this is that they do not measure well. — location: 1561 ^ref-22728 --- The other role of local government is to build the social fabric of the community. They are in a key position to engage citizens in the well-being of the city. — location: 1592 ^ref-56772 --- One conventional structure for meeting is described in Robert’s Rules of Order. It is good at efficiency and containing conflict; it is also good at dampening energy. Even when Robert’s Rules do not apply, which is most of the time, our meetings typically pay primary attention to explanation, persuasion, and problem solving, rather than engagement, and in this way they also drain our aliveness. For community building, we want to give as much or more attention to that which creates energy as we give to the content, which usually exhausts energy. — location: 1621 ^ref-44162 --- Therefore, like it or not, the way we design our gatherings is the only way we can bring into existence the possibility of the community we want to inhabit. Everything that occurs outside the room we are in at the moment is an abstraction and leads us into conversations of complaint and wishful thinking. — location: 1631 ^ref-21942 --- It is in groups of 3 to 12 that intimacy is created. This intimate conversation makes the process personal. — location: 1635 ^ref-50406 --- The best path in nearly every situation is to put our faith in citizens to identify and name what is occurring. Simply request people to form small groups of three or four and ask them to discuss what is going on and report back in ten minutes. This request need not be sophisticated. Simply say, “Form small groups of four and talk about how this meeting is going and to what extent we are getting what we came for.” — location: 1646 ^ref-64761 --- These are the questions the world is constantly asking. It is understandable that we ask them, but they carry no power; and in the asking, each of these questions is an obstacle to addressing what has given rise to the question in the first place: How do we get people to show up and be committed? How do we get others to be more responsible? How do we get people to come on board and to do the right thing? How do we hold those people accountable? How do we get others to buy in to our vision? — location: 1767 ^ref-46973 --- Questions that are designed to change other people are the wrong questions. Wrong, not because they don’t matter or are based on ill intent, but wrong because they reinforce the problem-solving model. — location: 1784 ^ref-5061 --- Achieving accountability and commitment entails the use of questions through which, in the act of answering them, we become cocreators of the world. It does not matter what our answers to the questions are. The questions have an impact even if the response is to refuse to answer them. To state it more dramatically: Powerful questions are the ones that cause you to become an actor as soon as you answer them. You no longer have the luxury of being a spectator of whatever it is you are concerned about. Regardless of how you answer these questions, you are guilty. Guilty of having created this world. — location: 1793 ^ref-51808 --- A great question has three qualities: It is ambiguous. There is no attempt to try to precisely define what is meant by the question. This requires each person to bring their own, personal meaning into the room. It is personal. All passion, commitment, and connection grow out of what is most personal. We need to create space for the personal. It evokes anxiety. All that matters makes us anxious. It is our wish to escape from anxiety that steals our aliveness. If there is no edge to the question, there is no power. — location: 1801 ^ref-6997 --- Here are some questions that have the capacity to open the space for a different future: What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this room? What is the price you or others pay for being here today? How valuable do you plan for this effort to be? What is the crossroads you face at this stage of the game? What is the story you keep telling about the problems of this community? What are the gifts you hold that have not been brought fully into the world? What is your contribution to the very thing you complain about? What is it about you or your team, group, or neighborhood that no one knows? — location: 1807 ^ref-31731 --- There are four elements to the setup: • Name the distinctions. • Give permission for unpopular answers. • Avoid advice and replace it with curiosity. • Precisely name the question. — location: 1824 ^ref-45830 --- For example, if we want to confront people’s willingness to join us as owners of this gathering, we ask, “How valuable an experience do you plan to have in this event?” This is distinguished from the question “How valuable an experience do you want to have?” or “How valuable an experience do you think it will be?” The distinction between “plan” and “want” or “think” is the difference between choice and wishful thinking or prediction. Wanting to have a good experience does not mean we choose it. We can make a prediction about how valuable the experience will be, but this puts us in the position of waiting to see what the world will provide us. There is no power in wanting or predicting; the power is in deciding. — location: 1829 ^ref-24435 --- ownership is more important than results. — location: 1836 ^ref-32998 --- We need to tell people not to be helpful. Trying to be helpful and giving advice are really ways to control others. Advice is a conversation stopper. — location: 1850 ^ref-63141 --- Urge citizens to ask one another instead, “Why does that mean so much to you?” When they answer, ask the same question again, “And why does that mean so much to you?” The goal is to replace advice with curiosity. The future hinges on this issue. — location: 1856 ^ref-31311 --- One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness. — location: 1860 ^ref-57477 --- The conversations of ownership, commitment, and gifts are high risk and require greater trust to have meaning. — location: 1865 ^ref-56850 --- The conversation for invitation is the decision to engage other citizens to be part of the possibility that we are committed to. The invitation is in itself an act of generosity, and the mere act of inviting may have more meaning than anything that happens in the gathering. An invitation is more than just a request to attend; it is a call to create an alternative future, to join in the possibility we have declared. — location: 1925 ^ref-7745 --- David Bornstein’s research describes how real transformation occurs only through choice. It cannot be sold or mandated. This is particularly true with transformation in community. — location: 1936 ^ref-44695 --- The freedom of choice without consequences is also its source of power, for when people do freely decide to show up, it means something more. — location: 1943 ^ref-33243 --- Genuine invitation changes our relationship with others, for we come to them as an equal. I must be willing to take no for an answer, without resorting to various forms of persuasion. To sell or induce is not operating by invitation. It is using the language of invitation as a subtle form of control. — location: 1974 ^ref-15581 --- Real change, however, is a self-inflicted wound. People need to self-enroll in order to experience their freedom and commitment. Let this begin in the decision to attend, knowing there is a price to be paid far beyond the cost of time and perhaps money. — location: 1996 ^ref-54679 --- The elements of invitation are the following: • Declare the possibility of the gathering • Frame the choice • Name the hurdle • Reinforce the request • Decide on the most personal form possible — location: 2015 ^ref-37686 --- for an invitation to be authentic, refusal has to be perfectly acceptable. The invitation must allow room for a no. If no is not an option, then it is not an invitation. — location: 2031 ^ref-38449 --- common hurdles that should be part of the invitation are: plan to engage with “others,” put your interests aside for the moment, commit to the time, and be willing to postpone quick action. — location: 2037 ^ref-46513 --- Naming the hurdle in the invitation gives us traction in the meeting. When people start to complain, sit in the back of the room, act as if they do not want to be here, and do all the small but noticeable things that hold the action back, we can stand on the fact that they knew what the deal was and still showed up. This gives us the right to ask them what they are doing here. — location: 2050 ^ref-41867 --- The questions for the gift conversations are: “What is the gift you still hold in exile, what is it about you that no one knows, what gratitude has gone unexpressed, and what have others in this room done that has touched you?” — location: 2097 ^ref-61040 --- we traditionally start with problem solving and talk about goals, targets, resources, and how to persuade others. Even the creation of a vision is part of the problem-solving mentality. A vision is something we must wait for to realize and is most often followed by an effort to make it concrete and practical. Even a vision, which is a more imaginative form of problem solving, needs to be postponed and replaced with possibility. The future is created through a declaration of what is the possibility we stand for. — location: 2113 ^ref-56046 --- The best opening question for possibility is What is the crossroads where you find yourself at this stage of your life or work or in the project around which we are assembled? Later, the more direct individual question for possibility will be What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you? There are two overarching questions that point to the future but cannot be asked directly: What do we want to create together that would make the difference? What can we create together that we cannot create alone? — location: 2133 ^ref-61916 --- People best create that which they own, and cocreation is the bedrock of accountability. The ownership conversation most directly deals with the belief that each of us, perhaps even from the moment of birth, is cause, not effect. The leadership task is to find a way to use this conversation to confront people with their freedom. — location: 2153 ^ref-29003 --- How valuable an experience (or project, or community) do you plan for this to be? How much risk are you willing to take? How participative do you plan to be? To what extent are you invested in the well-being of the whole? These are the four questions to ask early in any gathering. People answer them individually, then share their answers in a small group. — location: 2174 ^ref-16926 --- At some later point, the essential question upon which accountability hinges needs to be asked: What have I done to contribute to the very thing I complain about or want to change? This question, higher risk than most others, requires a great deal of trust. — location: 2181 ^ref-40576 --- The sequence he has put together, which I have adapted, goes like this: What is the story about this community or organization that you hear yourself most often telling? The one that you are wedded to and maybe even take your identity from? Then ask: What are the payoffs you receive from holding on to this story? The payoffs are usually in the neighborhood of being right, being in control, being safe. Or not being wrong, controlled, or at risk. And finally: What is your attachment to this story costing you? The cost, most often, is our sense of aliveness. — location: 2188 ^ref-15812 --- It honors the Bohr maxim that for every great idea, the opposite idea is also true. — location: 2200 ^ref-8497 --- Each of us takes many walks in the desert, and in some ways our faith is measured by the extent of our doubts. Without doubt, our faith has no meaning, no substance; it is purchased at too small a price to give it value. — location: 2202 ^ref-34321 --- You are either with us or against us. This is a corruption of hospitality and friendship. Hospitality is the welcoming not only of strangers, but also of the strange ideas and beliefs they bring with them. — location: 2205 ^ref-18093 --- What is critical, and hard to live with, is that leaders do not have to respond to each person’s doubts. None of us do. Authentic dissent is complete simply in its expression. — location: 2208 ^ref-1893 --- As long as police take responsibility for safety, they are going to stay in a defensive stance, which moves nothing forward. Police are responsible for enforcing the law, apprehending criminals, and mediating or stopping violence. Police are not suppliers of safety to a passive citizenry. Safety is not a product purchased from the police — location: 2217 ^ref-2244 --- Listening is the action step that replaces defending ourselves. Listening, understanding at a deeper level than is being expressed, is the action that creates a restorative community. — location: 2221 ^ref-52606 --- The dissent conversation begins by allowing people the space to say no. It rests on the belief that if we cannot say no, then our yes has no meaning. — location: 2230 ^ref-60429 --- The fear is that we will make people more negative by making room for refusal. The mental model of the ostrich. If people say no, it does not create their dissent, it only expresses it. It also does not mean they will get their way. Restorative community is that place where saying no doesn’t cost us our membership in the meeting or in the community. Encourage those who say no to stay—we need their voice. — location: 2234 ^ref-54004 --- Rebellion is most often not a call for transformation or a new context, but simply a complaint that others control the monarchy and not us. This is why most revolutions fail—because nothing changes, only the name of the monarch. — location: 2259 ^ref-3609 --- The community form of rebellion is protest. It is noble in tradition but still often keeps us in perpetual reaction to the stances of others. There is safety in building an identity on what we do not want. The extremists on both sides of any issue are more wedded to their positions than to creating a new possibility. — location: 2261 ^ref-57929 --- Authentic dissent is recognizable by the absence of blame, the absence of resignation. Blame, denial, rebellion, and resignation have no power to create. A simple nobegins a larger conversation, or at least creates the space for one. — location: 2273 ^ref-49121 --- To circumvent denial, don’t ask people whether they think there is a problem. Or even ask them to define the problem. Do not ask people what they are going to do, or to list the ten characteristics of anything. The way to avoid rebellion is to stop trying to sell or control the world. When faced with rebellion, all we can do is recognize it, not argue. — location: 2278 ^ref-36254 --- Some questions for the expression of dissent: What doubts and reservations do you have? What is the no, or refusal, that you keep postponing? What have you said yes to, that you no longer really mean? What is a commitment or decision that you have changed your mind about? What forgiveness are you withholding? What resentment do you hold that no one knows about? These are in ascending order of difficulty. The final two are very difficult and should be used with discretion. — location: 2281 ^ref-13137 --- Commitment is a promise made with no expectation of return. It is the willingness to make a promise independent of either approval or reciprocity from other people. This takes barter out of the conversation. Our promise is not contingent on the actions of others. The economist is replaced by the artist. — location: 2296 ^ref-44035 --- Nothing kills democracy or transformation faster than lip service. The future does not die from opposition; it disappears in the face of lip service. — location: 2305 ^ref-50310 --- Depending on our taste and intuition, here is a menu of questions for this conversation: What promises am I willing to make? What measures have meaning to me? What price am I willing to pay? What is the cost to others for me to keep my commitments, or to fail in my commitments? What is the promise I’m willing to make that constitutes a risk or major shift for me? What is the promise I am postponing? What is the promise or commitment I am unwilling to make? — location: 2326 ^ref-25944 --- The focus on gifts confronts people with their essential core, that which has the potential to make the difference and change lives for good. This resolves the unnatural separation between work and life. Who we are at work is our life. Who we are in life is our work. The leadership task—indeed the task of every citizen—is to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center. — location: 2349 ^ref-50392 --- The gifts conversation boils down to our willingness to stop telling people about what they need to improve what didn’t go well how they should do it differently next time Instead, confront them with their gifts. Talk to others about the gifts you’ve received from them the unique strength that you see in them the capacities they have that bring something unique and needed in the world what they did in the last ten minutes that made a difference — location: 2365 ^ref-52829 --- This question needs to be asked of the community: What gift have you received from another in this room? Tell the person in specific terms. We focus on gifts because what we focus on, we strengthen. The gifts-of-this-gathering question can be asked this way: What has someone in your small group done today that has touched you or moved you or been of value to you? or In what way did a particular person engage you in a way that had meaning? — location: 2372 ^ref-17903 --- The questions to ask are the following: What is the gift you currently hold in exile? What is it about you that no one knows about? What are you grateful for that has gone unspoken? What is the positive feedback you receive that still surprises you? What is the gift you have that you do not fully acknowledge? — location: 2396 ^ref-59414 --- Here is a summary of the core questions associated with each conversation: To what extent are you here by choice? (Invitation) How much risk do you plan to take and how participative do you plan to be in this gathering or project? (Ownership) What are the crossroads you/we are at appropriate to the purpose of the gathering? (Possibilities) What declarations are you prepared to make about the possibilities for the future? (Possibilities) To what extent do you see yourself as cause of the problem you are trying to fix? (Ownership) What is the story you hold about this community or this issue, and what are the payoffs and cost of this story? (Ownership) What are your doubts and reservations? (Dissent) What is the yes you no longer mean? (Dissent) What promises are you willing to make to your peers? (Commitment) What gifts have you received from each other? (Gifts) — location: 2406 ^ref-715 --- Greet people at the door; welcome them personally and help them get seated. People enter in isolation. Reduce the isolation they came with; let them know they came to the right place and are not alone. — location: 2439 ^ref-52265 --- After the welcome, begin with a statement of why you are there. Declare the possibility that led to the invitation. Use everyday language and speak from the heart, without PowerPoint presentations, slides, video, and so on. — location: 2447 ^ref-35348 --- Before diving into the agenda, citizens need to be connected to one another. Whenever we enter a room, it is with doubt and a vague feeling of isolation. Connecting citizens to each other is not intended to be just an icebreaker, which is fun yet does little to break the isolation or create community. Icebreakers will achieve contact but not connection. — location: 2451 ^ref-14568 --- Some examples of connection questions: What led you to accept the invitation? What would it take for you to be fully present in this room? What is the price others paid for you to be here? If you could invite someone you respect to sit beside you and support you in making this meeting successful, whom would that be? — location: 2454 ^ref-8634 --- One structural sequence for creating community is to start with the individuals reflecting on the question, and then have them talk in trios, next in groups of six, and then to the whole community. Shorthand is 1-3-6-all. — location: 2463 ^ref-60846 --- Someone always comes late, especially in community work. This does not mean we do not start on time, but the fact that a person showed up needs to be acknowledged. Welcome them without humiliation and connect them to the group. — location: 2465 ^ref-65122 --- Here is a way to handle early departures that reflects that spirit: Ask in the beginning for people to give notice of leaving. Ask them to leave in public, not to sneak out in the dark of night or in silence or during a break. Acknowledge their leaving in a deliberate way. Have them announce to the group that they are leaving and where they are going. This will create some discomfort, but that is the nature of separation. Have three people from the group say, “Here’s what you’ve given us . . .” This is a moment for the gifts conversation. Ask the soon-to-be-departed, “What are you taking with you? What shifted for you, became clearer? What value have you received as a result of being here? Is there anything else you’d like to say to the community?” Thank them for coming. — location: 2474 ^ref-34429 --- In creating the conversation and social space that support community, another dimension of welcome is what has traditionally defined culture: food. It brings the sacred into the room. — location: 2484 ^ref-12895 --- Every room we occupy serves as a metaphor for the larger community that we want to create. This is true socially and also physically. The room is the visible expression of today’s version of the future. The room we are in, and how we choose to occupy it, is what we have to work with in the present moment. If the future we desire does not exist in this room, today, then it will never occur tomorrow. This is what is meant by “Change the room, change the culture.” — location: 2514 ^ref-14572 --- Classrooms are mostly designed for instruction. The usual layout says there will be one expert who knows, 10 to 300 students who are there to absorb what the expert knows. Structured for teaching, not learning. This arrangement gives little recognition to the importance of peer-to-peer learning. — location: 2526 ^ref-16252 --- The circle is the geometric symbol for community, and therefore for arranging the room. No tables if possible. If tables are a given, then choose round ones (the shape of communion), which are better than rectangles (the shape of negotiation), or classroom-style tables (the shape of instruction). If tables are a given, find the smallest ones you can. — location: 2545 ^ref-3426 --- The ideal seating for a small group is a circle of chairs with no table. Put the chairs as close together as possible, which forces people to lean in to one another. — location: 2548 ^ref-1146 --- I met a conservation commissioner in Colorado who was constantly arbitrating disputes between ranchers, farmers, environmentalists, loggers, and all who care about our open spaces. He decided to buy a van and amplification equipment so that wherever in the state he went, he could mike the room. All could speak without walking up to a podium, and all could be heard equally. He said that as soon as he made this investment, the tone of the conversations shifted. — location: 2561 ^ref-18147 --- There can be no transformation without art. Art in the form of theater, poetry, music, dance, literature, painting, and sculpture. Communities by and large know this and invest heavily in the arts. Those who want to heal the wounds of a fragmented community initiate hundreds of art projects for those living on the margin. Art brings these voices into the mainstream. Most communities are proud of their arts tradition and rightly so. — location: 2588 ^ref-633 --- Every group of 20 people has someone who would be willing to sing a song, recite a poem, or tell a story. All we need to do is make the request at the beginning of the gathering, and as people come to trust each other, someone will offer their gift of song, poem, or story to the community. When this happens, the tone in the room shifts and the place becomes a little more sacred. — location: 2598 ^ref-7496 --- A final comment on space: The argument against great design is always cost and speed. The discussion about cost and speed is not really about cost and speed. It is an agenda that declares that human experience is a low priority. — location: 2690 ^ref-42538 --- We still call citizens who seek help “cases.” People who serve them are called “case workers.” What does it means when someone is labeled a “case”? Lawyers, social workers, human service workers in general dehumanize those they are committed to serve by naming them cases. — location: 2814 ^ref-52924 --- Right now we have only crude positive labels: high school graduate, economic status, size of family, job experience. Suppose we named people in categories, such as: a connector, knows everyone in the neighborhood, street-level entrepreneur, fashion plate, compassion for those in need, lights up a room when they enter, creative speech, practical intelligence, risk taker. — location: 2818 ^ref-58863 --- She got interested in something called Appreciative Inquiry, which is a way of helping institutions to build a future on what is positive about their past and present. — location: 2825 ^ref-38749 --- What have I done to contribute to the very thing I complain about or want to change? — location: 2995 ^ref-31653 --- They are a living demonstration that, more than pedagogy, instructional design, or curriculum, it is the humanity and love of the teacher that opens a new world for the possibilities of the child. — location: 3412 ^ref-14127 -----