 ‘A riot is the language of the unheard.’ (Martin Luther King) The recent street protests in the UK, some of which were accompanied by violent disorder, raise urgent and important questions about what lies beneath. A convenient political and media narrative is to blame the ‘far right’; a fairly nebulous and elusive phenomenon since, unlike in some other European countries, the UK doesn’t have anything like France’s National Rally or Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. There are, however, individual and group influencers with populist, nationalist and, at times, racist agendas. They contributed significantly to fanning the flames of unrest via social media; offering a rationale and focus for anger, resentment and frustration. Yet, I don’t imagine that everyone that took part in protests, whether demonstrators or counter-demonstrators, had a unified or conscious agenda. People and groups can become swept away by intense waves of emotion – a craziness, of sorts, fuelled by excitement, anxiety or other powerful feelings. Some might have sobered-up the next day with a guilty hangover. A key question is what the far right tapped into: what already lay simmering below the surface that they ignited so explosively on our cities’ streets. It’s a question about the conditions in which any extremist ideology and narrative will appear convincing and compelling to those who buy into them. I see a dynamic, concerning interplay of at least three factors at work. Firstly, when people feel alienated and marginalised in a society, extremist groups may offer a sense of identity and belonging: ‘They don’t understand you, but we do.’ Secondly, when people feel confused or anxious in the world, extremist ideas may appear to provide simplicity and certainty: ‘We have the answer to your hopes and fears.’ Thirdly, when people’s lives feel meaningless and, furthermore, they feel powerless to influence or control things that matter to them, extremist stances may provide a sense of purpose and agency: ‘We will change things.’ These three combined: a powder keg.
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 ‘We don’t need to be rich to help the poor, needy and hungry. We need to have a heart.’ (Kevin D’Cruz) I felt humbled and inspired last week when a teacher in the Philippines, who earns just 9000 pesos (£150) per month, gave her entire salary to a poor student. The student’s brother had become seriously ill with pneumonia and is too poor to pay for medication. The teacher, who lives with her daughter at subsistence level, gave without hesitation, even though it would leave her with just 60 pesos to pay for her own food and expenses until the end of the month. I was astonished. She told me to have faith and not to overthink: ‘Do it for love of Jesus.’ This week, the teacher opened her own home to 4 of the poorest students in her class who can’t afford to pay any rent. ‘It’s a way to help them continue with their education. If they had to work to earn rent, they would have to drop out of university and their studies.’ Curious, I find myself wondering if her generosity risks creating an unhealthy dependency in these young people. Yet she assigns practical tasks in their spare time so they feel like they’re contributing and retain their self-respect. I'm impressed. This is love in action. We can be hope.  ‘In Africa there is a concept known as 'ubuntu' - the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievement of others.’ (Nelson Mandela) I ran a professional development seminar for ALA-trained and ILM-recognised Action Learning (AL) facilitators last week. Participants work for an international NGO and are from, and based in, Rwanda, South Africa and the UK. One dimension to our conversation was to explore the potential meaning, value and adaptation-application of AL in different cultural contexts. A South African participant reflected on the value of AL against the backdrop of that country’s history, particularly where black people and communities were often deprived of opportunity to exert influence over their own lives and society. AL’s focus on developing personal-group agency would align with the NGO’s philosophy and approach to empowerment in that context. A Rwandan participant, working at a refugee camp with people who speak Congolese and Burundian languages, found it tricky initially to explain AL in her cultural context; firstly because participants were more familiar with traditional didactic training, and secondly because some of the concepts and language used in classic AL were quite difficult to translate directly. A UK participant offered the African cultural concept or ubuntu, one familiar in many African contexts, as a potential model to convey the spirit of AL. The South African and Rwandan participants agreed. Ubuntu views the individual in the context of a wider group and network of interdependent relationships: ‘My life, wellbeing and success are intertwined with yours.’  ‘It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks.’ (Dina Nayeri) Reading Gill Martin’s insightful book, ‘Borders and Boundaries – Community Mental Health Work with Refugees and Asylum-Seekers’ has been an illuminating experience. It resonates well with some of the issues and dynamics I have witnessed too, albeit outside of the therapeutic arena. I remember when, after a long and agonising wait, a Kurdish-Iranian friend in the UK was granted refugee status. It meant that, finally, he could bring his wife over to join him and he could get a job to fulfil his passion and potential as a gifted architect. His pent-up talents had opportunity for release and he’s now making an outstanding contribution at an architects’ firm. Gill comments on the need, at times, to cross (not violate) what may be regarded as fixed professional boundaries, to meet refugees and asylum seekers at their point of need. She draws attention to the therapeutic meaning, significance and value of being-with, of being-alongside, in authentic human relationship. Much of our sense of identity is founded on e.g. our country and culture of origin; the groups and communities of which we are a part; our shared experiences; the work and roles we fulfil. When forced to leave all we associate with home to flee to a starkly different culture and environment, it can feel isolating relationally and dislocating existentially. Gill observes that talking therapies have their place but aren’t always what refugees and asylum seekers want or need. Sometimes, it’s because they come from cultural backgrounds that hold very different beliefs about health and wellbeing, including what influences, nurtures, sustains or harms it; or, perhaps, cultural taboos that would deem seeking and receiving help of this kind to be shameful. Sometimes, interventions akin to social prescribing, involving people in activities that they experience as worthwhile and life-giving, can be beneficial. Health and healing often emerge through enabling powerless people to regain a sense of agency over their own lives. (Further reading: Working with Asylum Seekers and Refugees: What to Do, What Not to Do, and How to Help; Counselling and Psychotherapy with Refugees; A Practical Guide to Therapeutic Work with Asylum Seekers and Refugees; Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System; Strangers in our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Integration)  ‘The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.’ (Confucius) The idea of owning a motorbike was, in effect, a subcultural non-negotiable in my family. My Dad was a fanatical motorcyclist and his passion rubbed off onto his sons. When I was 15, my top priority was to, somehow, earn enough money to buy a bike for my 16th birthday. I already had morning and evening newspaper rounds but that wasn’t going to be enough to generate the sum I needed. I bought a cash box and determined to save every penny I could get. First, I cycled from local farm to farm, asking if they could offer me work. I’d never worked on a farm before but I was still at school and hoped for weekend work. They all said 'No'. Then, 5 miles along a windy dual-carriageway on an old push bike with no gears, I stumbled across a plant nursery. To my delight, they said ‘Yes’ and offered me 8 hours’ work on a Saturday, digging and clearing out horse stables for just £1 per day. I said ‘Yes’ – without hesitation. The way I looked at it, each £1 took me £1 closer to my goal. Over the weeks that followed, I gained invaluable experience. Then I discovered a different plant nursery, closer to home and along quiet country lanes. I told them what I’d been doing and they offered me 2 x 8hr days’ work per week, at weekends, for £5 total. Excellent. That was good progress. That job included landscape gardening, thereby increasing my knowledge, skill and experience further. Yet, I still would fall short of my financial deadline. So, I posted a card in a local shop window, offering my gardening services to private customers. I invested in some simple garden tools, at discount, from the nursery and found they’d offer me plants at discount for my private clients too. Someone contacted me and offered £0.50 per hour. They were impressed by my work ethic and recommended me to neighbours. Another person offered me £1 per hour. By now, still a student, I was doing morning and evening paper rounds 6 days a week (plus 1 round on Sundays); working 2 hours per evening, 3 evenings per week on my own gardening business; and 8 hours per day on Saturdays and Sundays at the plant nursery. On my 16th birthday, I bought my first new motorcycle for cash, along with a motorcycle helmet, jacket, gloves, tax and insurance. It was a formative life lesson in entrepreneurship and agency.  ‘We serve the client best by breaking out of the medical model we have come to expect. We are not an organisational doctor who describes their symptoms, who looks them over, prescribes a solution and sends them on their way. Better to define our task as a process of dialogue and discovery.’ (Peter Block) I first encountered this approach when I read Edgar Schein’s now-classic text, Process Consultation. It frames the consultant role as a co-actor alongside the client and the consultancy itself as a co-creative process. The consultant holds a metaphorical mirror up to the client, or to the client team or organisation, and thereby creates opportunity for them to notice what they had not noticed or make fresh sense of what they are seeing. In the language of coaching and supervision, it enables critical reflexivity and critical reflective practice. To do this well, to support a client’s willingness to look at themselves and a wider system and culture through critically-constructive eyes, the consultant must work from the outset to build relationship, dialogue and trust. After all, if trust is low, an unexpected or deeply-challenging revelation could evoke a defensive response and, thereby, close down possibilities for learning and change. Often, the consultant’s role may call for trust-building across a wider team, group or organisation too. The key lays in doing-with, not doing-for or doing-to.  ‘The power to question is the basis of all human progress.’ (Indira Gandhi) In a small group, Action Learning offers a semi-structured opportunity to address a challenge that is real and important to an individual. With the support of a facilitator, the group (known in Action Learning as a ‘set’) offers questions to that person in three distinct and sequential phases: 1. Questions for clarification; 2. Questions for exploration; 3. Questions for action. I’ll say a bit more about each stage below, including their respective focus’, forms and purposes. Picture this. An individual (known in Action Learning as a ‘presenter’) has shared the crux of a challenge that they are facing and would like to think through in order, if possible, to find or create a solution. The Questions for clarification stage enables peers to ask brief questions: usually simple points of information or something they hadn’t quite understood, e.g. ‘What does that acronym stand for?’, or ‘The person you mentioned – is that your boss, a peer, an other..?’ The answers to such questions are for the peers’ own benefit: to fill an information gap in their own knowledge or understanding. The transition to the subsequent Questions for exploration stage, however, marks a fundamental shift in depth and orientation, where peers ask questions for the presenter’s benefit – to enable the presenter to think more deeply or broadly in relation to the challenge. They aim to stimulate critical reflection rather than, say, to elicit an answer. Whereas Questions for exploration open out and expand the presenter’s insight and awareness, the final stage of Questions for action shifts from divergence to convergence, supporting and challenging the presenter to ground any fresh insights in practical action steps to take things forward. We may see a reframing of language from, say, ‘What could you do?’ (exploration) to, ‘What will you do?’ (action). The presenter leaves with enhanced insight, agency and traction.  ‘Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences and failing to achieve anything useful.’ (Margaret J. Wheatley) Pause, breathe. Slow down to speed up. Make better decisions faster. It feels paradoxical. Take time out of the quick fire, the cut and thrust norms of work. ‘I don’t have time’, you might say, ‘I’m too busy.’ True. Unless it's an emergency: if you’re ‘too busy’, you are too busy. Crisis mode is fit for crises. Like driving over the red line, it’s unsustainable for prolonged periods. Risks and consequences: impaired thinking, delayed responses, poor decision-making, stress, burnout, crash. Is there a solution..? Coaching and action learning enter the stage. What’s that about? Optimal space for optimal pace. Like taking energy drinks while running, like refuelling in mid-flight. Take a moment, an impactful question, a critical reflection: dust settles and you see more clearly. You think more deeply and more broadly. You notice who and what you’re not-noticing. You enhance your resilience and your resourcefulness. You grow in insight. You fulfil your potential. You achieve your goals. Curious to discover how I can help you? Get in touch!  ‘The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is not in the event itself but in how you think about it and what you do after it.’ (Michael Josephson) I was coaching an inspiring business entrepreneur in Southeast Asia last week. She’s avidly developing a social enterprise to benefit the poorest people in her local community by providing them with affordable nutritious food and invaluable employment opportunities. I’m impressed by her compassion for those who are vulnerable and her vision to bring hope. She’s a follower of Jesus and sees this as her distinctive calling. It’s not an easy environment in which to make headway and there are lots of barriers on route. Three months into this venture, she’s reached a point where the question that now faces her is how to scale-up to reach and benefit more people. It’s a tricky challenge to navigate. We looked at different options with their relative pros and cons alongside them. The dilemma lays in how to generate sufficient resources to create the investments needed to make the leap, along with the associated financial risks if things don’t work out as planned. And that with very little to fall back on apart from her faith in God. She settled on the idea of a stepping stone: a fridge-freezer that would enable her to save unsold stock and broaden the range of items available. Having bought it, however, an envious neighbour immediately and anonymously notified the health department that she was cooking in her own home. Officials visited the very next day and insisted she make expensive changes to her kitchen before she may continue. The stepping stone became a stumbling block. So now – how turn a setback into a step forward..? The test here is less one of situational circumstances per se and more one of resourcefulness and resilience. I’m reminded of Michael Jordan’s words, ‘Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, dig under it, go through it or work around it.’ This young woman studied psychology, has fire in her spirit and won’t give up easily. She prays hard, thinks creatively and is absolutely determined to find or innovate a way through this. She will succeed.  ‘Leadership is influence.’ (John C. Maxwell) It’s one thing to have insight. It’s another thing to exert influence on the basis of that insight. This is often a dilemma for leaders and professionals when seeking to influence change across dynamic, complex systems and relationships. After all, what if I can see something important, something that could make a significant difference, yet I can’t gain access to key decision-makers? Or what if, even if I can get access, they’re not willing to listen? What if people are so preoccupied by other issues that my message is drowned out by louder voices and I can’t achieve cut-through? Early in my career, I worked as OD lead in an international non-governmental organisation that was about to embark on radical change. I’d studied OD at university on a masters’ degree course and, based on that experience, could foresee critical risks in what the leadership was planning to do. I tried hard to get access to raise the red flags but, by the time I met with the leaders, it was too late. They had already fired the starting gun on their chosen programme. My concerns turned out to be well-founded, and the changes almost wrecked the organisation. I agonised for some time over why I’d been so ineffective at influencing their decisions. I learned some valuable lessons. Firstly, the view I held of my role – the contribution I could bring – was different to that of the leaders. I viewed myself as consultant whereas they viewed me as service provider. Secondly, the leaders had become so emotionally-invested in the change they had designed that they reacted defensively if challenged. They saw my well-meaning red flags as resistance rather than as a genuine desire to help. I would need to change my approach. Since then, I have practised building human-professional relationships with leaders and other stakeholders from the earliest opportunity. These relationships are built on two critical factors: firstly, respect for e.g. the studies, training, expertise and lived experience they bring to the table; and, secondly, empathy for e.g. the responsibilities, hopes, demands and expectations they face – both inside and outside of work. Against this backdrop, I’m able to pray, share my own insights and, where needed, advocate a change from an intention and base of support. |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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