This experience in Presevo has been really challenging and difficult – physically and emotionally but also in confronting some of my values and beliefs about leadership and systems development. At times, I feel like a total failure as someone who fancies himself to be a systems thinker, a change agent and a practitioner of collaborative leadership. It feels like all attempts at creating a self-organizing and self-governing volunteer system have failed miserably. The current system that I returned to after my five day break seems terribly dysfunctional and at the point of falling apart. Most of the volunteer have left. There is an ongoing conflict between self-proclaimed anarchists and others who believe in command and control. Things feel polarized and I feel overwhelmed and powerless to change the dynamic despite many people expressing an unrealistic expectation that my return will change things.
My desire has been for us to develop a coordinated volunteer system in which all of the participants had a voice and a sense of ownership in decisions. I believed that the system could self-organize to be able to respond flexibly and wisely to the needs of the people we are here to serve. This didn’t happen and I wonder why. What can I learn from this experience and what learnings might there be for the field of practitioners in participatory leadership? As is so often the case, I don’t feel like I can easily identify the learnings from this experience but I do have some observations and questions to explore.
A persistent problem that we have encountered is the culture clash between authoritarian and anarchical styles. Many of the young volunteer are very strong in their identification with anarchy. Whether this is true anarchy or not, I’m not sure; several people have claimed that it is not anarchy but just anti-authoritarianism. At any rate, these young people seem to resist all attempts to coordinate activities, refusing to sign up for specific times to work and avoiding any scheduled meetings. This is not to suggest that they are not committed to serving people. In fact many of them are very deeply dedicated to the work. But they insist upon doing it on their own terms.
Early on, volunteers were not welcomed by the police and by aid workers and we had to work hard to build relationships. One strategy that we used was to establish a strict protocol and criteria for identifying and expediting “extremely vulnerable refugees”. We trained all of the volunteers within our volunteer system in these procedures and experienced greatly improved relationships with the police and agencies as a result. However, well-meaning (self-proclaimed) anarchist would see a family that they felt needed special attention and would advocate unilaterally with the police which often reduced the goodwill we had been building. When I experienced this, I found myself getting angry and resorting to attempts to control the situation by restricting the work to trained volunteers. Of course, this was interpreted (probably rightfully) as being authoritarian and it led to more rebellious behavior. My learning from this experience is to be more vigilant about my own reactions and to use this as an opportunity for conversation and genuine curiosity rather than to jump to judgmental interpretations of the behaviors.
On the other extreme were the local Youth Center authorities who were the sponsors of the volunteer system. These were Albanian locals who had relationships with police and other local authorities and who felt that they would be held responsible for the actions of the volunteers. This seemed like a very real issue and one that I thought should be recognized and respected by all of the volunteers. In fact, I considered it to be a primary principle that, as volunteers, we should not do anything that was not approved by the Youth Center. Not surprisingly, the anarchists did not agree with this principle. They interpreted it as another means of exerting power and control. One of the requirements of Serbian law is that all non-residents must register with the local police. The Youth Center handled this registration as a service for volunteers. When some of the anarchists chose not to register, the Youth Center staff felt the need to enforce the regulations rather than allowing the natural consequences to occur with the police enforcement and this led to escalating authoritarian actions and anti-authoritarian reactions. And lots of energy was wasted as the two parties became increasingly polarized. In retrospect, what I see is that there was never a forum or an opportunity for conversation about the issue, only demands and refusals, threats and passive aggressive reactions.
I wonder how it might have been possible to host a conversation about this issue. Would anyone have been willing to participate? I wish that I had been less reactive myself and more present to call for a conversation. What I noticed, though, is that I was triggered by the conflicts and was taking sides rather than holding the space for both sides to express themselves and listen to the others. My learning from this is that it was too much for me to be able to stay present and open while being a participant in the process. One of the reasons for this was that I was largely working in isolation. I had no other participatory leadership practitioners with me most of the time so I had no one to help me recognize when I was getting triggered and reactive. I would like to think that I am able to avoid such reactions and to always respond with mindfulness, consciousness and emotional awareness. The reality of this stressful environment is that I was not capable of such an enlightened response and I suspect no one else would have been either. It is so important to not work alone and the more demanding and stressful the environment, the more important to have support. This leaves me with a question of what to do when finding oneself in a situation that needs skillful hosting without mates.
The other reminder for me from this experience is the importance of hosting myself to be able to stand in the place of unknowing and uncertainty, to be able to listen without judgement and to hear the truth in all positions. This personal work is so important to be able to work in highly charged and stressful environments without having one’s own personal issues triggered and when they are triggered to be able to recognize it and acknowledge it. This experience definitely made me aware of my own limitations and my own need for more personal work.
To me, it seemed very important that our volunteer network develop as a system, that we established norms and expectations and regular meetings and clear processes that would allow all of our actions to be coordinated. So, I proposed meeting times and I tried to implement processes in the meetings that I knew to be supportive of effective communication. And I advocated for a regular schedule. And I felt like I met resistance at each step of the process. The group wanted to do good with refugees, not to have effective meetings and coordinated schedules. For awhile, I pushed harder and then at one point I realized that I was overly attached to a particular outcome and this was not helpful for the group or for my peace of mind. At that point, I remembered that order is a natural outcome in any self-organizing system and that any attempts by me to rush the process or to impose order was just another form of control and not helpful. From then on, I continually reminded myself to let go of expectations and attachment to any particular system and instead to intentionally hold space for order to emerge. Well, I certainly felt less stressed with this new approach but I am not sure that the system was ready for the emergence of order. What seemed to happen is that one person after another would attempt to impose a plan or a system, would experience push back and would get tired or discouraged and another system would get proposed. Just holding space for emergence may not be sufficient if there is too much external stress in the system and if there is inadequate skill and experience or lack of vision in the group.
This whole experience has been practice in walking the “chaordic path”. The forces of chaos were well represented by the anarchic volunteers. Forces of control were represented by the Youth Center. The sides were clearly established: chaos and individual autonomy versus systems of control. What was missing, from my perspective, was an appreciation for order and cooperation and mutual accountability. Accountability only to self or accountability to authority seemed to be the only options and neither served the work we wanted to accomplish. So, my question in this is what is my role as someone who has experienced and appreciates participatory processes? How can I be a constructive influence within the system when I have no authority, no standing and no invitation to play a hosting or leadership role? My sense is that I had some effectiveness when I was able to be be present and unattached to any outcome and to ask questions, when I was able to really see the various participants and to appreciate them rather than react or judge them. But this was so difficult to do in the midst of the turmoil, and especially when there was not time or space for me to engage in my own practices to help me stay present.
As I look back on this whole experience, I am saddened by the loss of opportunity to co-create a more functional system. It is so easy for me to take this on as a personal failing but I also recognize that this task was beyond what any individual could do, even with greater capacity and more skills and more presence. Such work requires a team and a very effective team. For a few days, I was joined by Joost, an Art of Hosting colleague, who helped me immensely just by his presence. As a team, we were able to create a more effective meeting space with a beautiful centerpiece and to host good check-ins that allowed people to begin to know one another more deeply and we were able to shift the energy of the group from frantic urgency into at least a moment of silence and reflection. These sound like small accomplishments and they were not sustainable when we were not present, but they were significant improvements at the time.
There is so much more to be harvested and learned from this experience. I hope to be able to continue to deepen my understanding through more reflection and conversation. For now, I am still left with so many questions about what is possible and how to invite the possibilities in during times of great crisis and conflict. This is such important work and I need so much help and support in it.
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