AOC: No Prisoners (more on ‘contracting’)

03Mar07

Only free men (and women) can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
- Nelson Mandela

We examined in Session I how our work as change agents always takes place within a context of power relationships. These differences in power have profound implications for the nature of our workand for the process of contracting. Let’s begin by quickly reviewing some of the major external factors that impact our power relationships:

1. Positional Power:
Where one party has actual power of institutional position (e.g. the power to demote or fire, or deny funding or other resources)

* Even if those with more power have no intention of using this power, it remains a potent influence in the relationship.

* We also bring a lifetime of experiences with people with more power, and we carry these into relationships in the present.

* When people look at someone with more positional power, they project a lifetime of dealing with authority figures: parents, teachers, other bosses.

* Those of us who have positional power are often awkward in these roles, often creating even more unclarity and confusion.

Power related to Social Identity:
Where there are relationships between members of social groups that have historically been oppressed and members of relatively privileged groups.

* All of us have been impacted by having grown-up and living in a white- dominated, heterosexual and patriarchal society.

* When we meet across these lines of privileged and less-advantaged social identities, its not just about you and I as individuals, but that collective history lives with us in the room and affects the dynamics of helping relationship

* Social identity dynamics may also interact with positional power dynamics:
e.g. an older white male supervising a young woman of color

3. Power related to institutional dynamics: examples:

* you have been hired by the Board or ED to work with the organization. You are ultimately accountable to that person with positional power. In the eyes of staff, you may been viewed as an agent of those with power.

* you are facilitating a coalition meeting. You are the representative of the most powerful organization in the coalition, the one whose support can make or break any decision. Your attempts to help may be experienced through that
lens by less powerful members.

Those with more positional power tend to be less aware of these dynamics at play. Those with less power rarely forget. It is therefore incumbent upon those with more power to stay conscious and alert in navigating these dynamics.

Today’s Assignment:
Re-look and reflect on your inquiries into your contracts and contracting over the previous days of our practice. How might issues of power be impacting each of these contracts and agreement fields?

Are you engaged in contracts with those with more positional power where this
power differential is having a undesirable impact on the agreement field?

Are you engaged in contracts with those with less power, where the power
differential may be having an undesirable impact on the agreement field?

Practice Variation for today:
Add the above lens of power to your continued field research into the state of your contracting.

Practice #5: For each significant work context and work relationship with which you engage today, ask yourself the following 5 questions:

1. What is the nature of our contract, stated or implied?

2. How clear are our expectations of each other?

3. Have there been insecurities, frustrations, mis-steps, inefficiencies, or breakdowns, or due to differing expectations?

4. How comfortable am I with the current nature of our agreement field?

5. Are there areas I might like to clear up or renegotiate?

But now add the following inquiry:

6. How might dynamics related to differences in power be impacting our agreement field?

In order to really engage with this intriguing (and possibly unsettling) practice:

* write these questions down where you can easily see them over the course of
the day

* use whatever kinds of reminders (sticky notes, etc.) seem to help you stay
focused on practice

* jot some notes over the course of the daytheres a lot to be tracking and
integrating here

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