 ‘For every fixed idea there is an absent idea: by interpreting experience in a particular way we inadvertently exclude alternative renditions.’ (Peter Senge) It’s tricky being human. We are so easily trapped by our assumptions. Imagine this scenario (mirroring Chris Argyris and Peter Senge’s Ladder of Inference): You arrange a meeting with a colleague from whom you need input and you race back from another appointment to ensure you arrive on time. To your frustration and dismay, the other person doesn’t turn up. You call them but there’s no answer. What sort of thing goes through your mind? It could be:
That reminds me of Stephen Covey’s observation that, often, ‘We judge others by their actions but ourselves by our intentions.’ If this happens, you’re likely to feel devalued and disrespected – and that will have a negative impact on your relationship. Yet how to challenge yourself to create a shift in perspective and, thereby, to open up fresh possibilities for moving things forward? Jean Latting and V. Jean Ramsey offer a useful ‘3 Hypotheses Technique’: The first step is to notice and take note of what you assume the person’s action or behaviour means – that is, if you like, your starting hypothesis. The second step is to assume the person has a positive intention – which would be, in this case, the reverse of your initial hypothesis. The third step is to assume the person is, for instance, being driven by external circumstances that are beyond their control – that is, to imagine or create an alternative explanation. Playing with hypotheses like this can help us loosen the grip that hidden, subconscious assumptions can hold over our thinking, how we feel and how we respond. It helps us recognise when we may be jumping to conclusions without realising it – especially when we’re feeling anxious, pressured or stressed – and it can evoke a constructive and healthy state of curiosity, allowing us to navigate situations and relationships with greater freedom, flexibility and truth.
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 ‘The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who ‘disappeared’.’ (Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International) Human Rights Day 2024 saw the tearing wide open of the doors of the infamous Saydnaya Prison in Damascus following the unexpected fall of the brutal Assad regime. It couldn’t have been more poignant. As militia, family and friends of people held there searched frantically for their loved ones, the men, women and children who have survived limped, walked or ran into the awaiting daylight stunned with hope, joy and relief. It was a breathtaking moment and a graphic reminder of the critical importance of protecting and safeguarding human rights. It reminded me: my first foray into human rights work was in the early 1980s during the horrific atrocities and abuses taking place in El Salvador. It was a very testing time personally and a desperately harrowing time for the people of Central America. Inspired by Archbishop Oscar Romero and, later, by Baptist primary school teacher and community activist María Cristina Gómez – both of whom were murdered for their stance for the poor – I was determined to use my own small voice to advocate for change. (I do wish my efforts had been more effective). I’ve seen a shift since in attitudes towards human rights. Back then, values that were often regarded as self-evident – in principle, if not in practice – were fairly widely-held in liberal democratic societies. Now, the notion of rights has become embroiled in heated, polarised debates over issues such as: transgender rights vs feminist rights; abortion rights vs unborn child right to life rights; asylum rights vs state border protection rights. Along with an erosion of confidence in international institutions including the UN, rights no longer command a consensus. Perhaps this is all a natural consequence of a postmodern, globalised, multipolar world with contrasting, competing and conflicting beliefs, values and priorities, all jostling for space and supremacy in the same human-geopolitical arena. Perhaps, too, it’s why Human Rights Day 2024 passed by largely unnoticed by mainstream media, like some ethereal concept with little felt-sense of relevance or tangibility. I hope the shocking images, sounds and stories of what happened in Saydnaya will serve as a wake-up call. Human rights are hard-won yet easily-lost.  ‘It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.’ (Aung San Suu Kyi) I ran a 3-day workshop in the Philippines for students who were about to graduate from a university for the poor. As we talked about their role and career aspirations for the future, I invited them to do role-plays that would, I thought, enable them to prepare for interviews and increase their chances of success. They smiled, albeit kindly, at my naivety. In role play after role play, with typical Filipino creativity and playfulness, the students depicted scenarios in which getting a job had nothing to do with personal merit and everything to do with whom the applicant knows or is connected to, and what level of contribution for expenses (bribe) the applicant is willing and able to pay to those conducting the interviews and making the appointment decisions. I felt astonished and depressed. Endemic corruption saps the life and energy out of people and societies and deprives them of so much talent and potential. I was intrigued to explore this further so asked the students how much money they would need to pay to get a job. They responded that such forms of corruption are culturally-coded euphemistically so that, in effect, everyone knows what game is being played without anyone explicitly admitting it. For instance, if a student were to be invited to an interview at 2.00pm, it means they will need to pay 20k pesos. If at 4.00pm, then 40k pesos. If they don’t turn up with the required cash, or are not connected to a suitable sponsor, they will be offered a post-rationalisation (excuse) for their apparent failure. This encounter was certainly an eye-opener for me. We moved on to look at other ways in which corruption manifests itself in societies around the world; e.g. in payment of financial incentives (backhanders) to secure specific political policies, judicial outcomes or commercial contracts. Media manipulation, attacks on press freedom, silencing of political opponents, undermining of democratic structures and civil society, monopolisation of markets: all undermine social and economic accountability and opportunity. The biggest challenge when corruption becomes thoroughly pervasive is where and to whom to go to address it. Speaking truth to ourselves can be hard enough to endure. Speaking truth to power can lead to alienation…or to a bullet.  ‘Action Learning aims to shake you out of the cage of your current thinking.’ (Pedler & Boutall) Action Learning: a method by which someone receives stretching, coaching-type questions from a small group of peers. The aim is to resolve a pressing challenge, a real-life/work issue that has left the person perplexed or stuck. The idea is to leave with actions, practical steps that will help to move things forward. Yet what gets a person stuck in the first place? If it’s a complex challenge, such as that of navigating the intricacies of diverse human relationships, we may become inadvertently caged by our own assumptions. Gareth Morgan commented that ‘people have a knack for getting trapped in webs of their own creation.’ If we don’t know what assumptions we’re making, everything may seem self-evident to us. This is where Action Learning and coaching really can help. If we can engender a spirit of curiosity within ourselves and invite challenging questions from different others, we may discover a door emerging in our previously-unseen cage, experience the agency to push it wide open and step outside to embrace fresh possibilities. It could just change...everything. ‘Truth is the first casualty of war, they say. In fact, it’s more often freedom and reason.’ (Brendan O’Neill) I was wrong. I didn’t imagine that Russia would actually launch a full-scale assault on Ukraine. I felt sick, shocked and dismayed as the news unfolded this week. I can only imagine how it must feel for Ukrainians to find their country under attack and for Russians to discover their country has started a war. I felt near-despair too as I listened to rhetoric in the UK Parliament and media in the immediate wake of the invasion, denouncing neo-fascist Russian nationalism and imperialism whilst, at the same time, silencing any voices of dissent here with words like ‘appeasement’ and ‘treason’. There are insights from various psychological fields that can help us, yet we know from arenas such as cognitive and human givens therapies that our receptivity and ability to reason is impacted profoundly when overwhelmed by feeling. Emotions like anger, resentment and fear are running high at the moment; and understandably so because this crisis and all that it could mean are very real and being experienced by real people, families and communities here-and-now – and that makes it hard to think clearly. Yet we must think, and pray, and act with wisdom, and quickly. I can only guess what’s in Putin’s mind. The geopolitical dimensions to this conflict are complex and well beyond my ability to know or understand. I can, however, speak as a citizen or the West. I spent many years working closely with an anti-Nazi activist in Germany. I learned that we need to pay very careful attention to the conditions in which otherwise insane decisions will appear and feel rational. Hitler and the Nazis were supported and elected in Germany by many with great enthusiasm against a specific contextual backdrop: in Gestalt psychology, the ‘ground’ that gives rise to a ‘figure’. The ’ground’ out of which the current crisis has developed is very complex indeed. It includes: a long cultural history in Russia of autocratic leadership; the brutal and devastating Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union from (geographically) the West; a loss of Russian power and self-esteem following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the subsequent expansion of the NATO military alliance eastwards towards Russia’s borders; the expansion of the EU economic block eastwards to (potentially) incorporate Ukraine; a corresponding and growing sense of vulnerability and resentment in Russia. Does this suggest that the West has somehow caused the war in Ukraine? No. Correlation of these factors does not mean causation. Putin has made his own decisions. Does it suggest that the West has contributed to creating the conditions under which Putin’s decision became more likely? That’s a question I believe, in the midst of our justifiable outrage at Russia’s unjustifiable actions, we would do well to consider with prayer, humility and critical reflexivity. We stand at the edge of a dangerous precipice and, to move forward, we need very different thinking to that which brought us here. The brutal murder of Samuel Paty, a teacher in France on Friday, spun freedom of expression back into the media spotlight. Freedom of speech is, after all, a bedrock of Western democracy – not only the safeguarding of the expression of thoughts, feelings, and opinions but also, critically, the right and opportunity to be exposed to those of other people and groups too. The same principle applies in liberal education: learning, development, creativity and innovation emerge from the interaction of diverse insights, experiences and ideas; sometimes awkwardly or angrily if they clash, yet vital for healthy growth. Emmanuel Macron has described the current Kairos moment as an existential crisis: a fundamental conflict between secular, liberal European values and those of radical Islamism. A broader cultural backdrop is, however, a struggle between freedom of speech and freedom from harm, where the latter includes freedom from offence. Brendan O’Neill commented last weekend that, in France, “cancel culture turned murderous…the (teacher’s) beheading was a militarised expression of (it).” The silencing of a voice, the no-platforming of a dissenting view, can lead to dire unintended consequences. Coming from a very different place politically to O’Neill, Douglas Murray struck a strikingly similar chord in, ‘The Madness of Crowds’ (2019/20): “We are going through a great…derangement”. Cultural and technological upheavals are driving humanity at breakneck speed into uncharted territories where many hitherto beliefs, values and assumptions are being stress-tested to their limits. Grasping at simplistic and polarising stances – no matter how irrational – is one way to feel safer and more purposeful in the world. So, question: What do these feverish times call for from us, as leaders, coaches, trainers and OD? |
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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