Workshop 5

To be different, the Network Movement program abolishes the organizational hierarchy ladder and creates a completely different interpersonal environment. In an Affinity Group, equality and affinity are not just stated values but regular practices. Members will live in a different atmosphere; they would breathe different air than in party life.

Reader: How often? How often shall they meet to breathe in that atmosphere you describe? How much of their normal lives would it take?

Author: I imagine . . . like congregations going to church every Sunday. Not too sparsely, though. Living organisms must have their own pace of breathing to survive. Much remains to be determined in practice; there are no existing models that we may copy. All radical groups known to me operate as a small team of active leaders who control the group’s social media and resources and, with that, activate others in their campaigns. Affinity Groups are a different story in their interpersonal dynamics. My belief that the person-centered approach has a good chance of not repeating the same old patterns leans on the experience of training groups (T-groups) in Applied Behavioral Science and on a specific process of decision-making in the Affinity Group. I shall discuss it in great detail because the problem is real and heavy. We must make an arduous and sincere effort not to fall, like other political organizations, under the “power corrupts” spell. 

  

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMICS OF POWER CORRUPTION

Power corruption in the public mind is associated with unethical and illegal behaviors such as embezzlement, favoritism, sexual abuse of subordinates, fraud, Machiavellian scheming, and lying particularly by promising with no intention to deliver. Politics attracts the more power-oriented people, but most beginners are not corrupted. Nevertheless, once they enter the party system, the hierarchical competitive environment corrupts their attitudes toward and relationships with people.

Power corruption in political parties goes much deeper than meets the public eye when corruption cases hit the headlines. It spreads among politicians who do nothing that the conventional mind and the politicians themselves consider illegal or unethical. The inevitable power corruption settles when human relationships become power relations.

The espoused values of democratic equality, decency, and integrity become corrupted by the hierarchical party life. Deliberation and discussion become, as we discovered earlier, “correct-lining, personal attack, and counterattack.”

Imagine being in the position of a young idealistic person who decides to make a political career as a party member. They will have to attach themselves to some seasoned party operators to begin learning the intricacies of the party culture and codes of behavior as in any other workplace. Soon enough, they will realize that to make headway, or to make people listen to them, they would need to find favor in their superiors’ eyes. They will learn that sincerity and openness and the courage to express their real opinions or say something that could be interpreted as opposition to the boss, the party line, and the party strongmen will lead them nowhere. In a reality of factions, each will have to attach themselves to one. A political environment that presents itself as an alliance of free and equal people who act in solidarity is in reality an interpersonal battleground full of intrigue and backbiting. That hypocritical chasm separating the outer shell of ideology and reality is the congenital root of corruption in hierarchical political parties. 

If the naïve new arrival to the party stays there, they will adapt to the corruptive environment and become corrupted. They will be most forcefully made to “put the good of the party above personal interests,” which means to follow the party line of the leader or leaders and put the good of the party above that of the lofty social ideals for the realization of which the party presumably exists. The iron rule of party politics is that party greed for power supersedes individual greed for power. Individual greed for power is not considered legitimate. Power is sought by obedience to higher-ups and by covert scheming; “the party,” which in reality is the leadership’s greed for power, is always justified.  

Political parties are voluntary associations that must observe democratic procedures. One such procedure is primaries, the internal competition among members for top positions. Because members who vote do not know the candidates personally, the entire procedure takes the form of a marketplace fair. The propaganda machinery is activated with all its tricks of self-advertisement and self-aggrandizement. The candidates hasten to make their supportive constituents get the membership cards that will allow them to vote. This whole business is widely open to buying votes; bribing the leaders of social pressure groups, lobbies, and businesses; making secret deals with big donors; and spending the party’s funds on it—a huge enterprise for legal and less legal corruption. I am best acquainted with conditions in my country, Israel, but to the best of my knowledge, the corruption-ridden processes by which political parties elect their leaders are not much different elsewhere in the free world.

Compare this to the person-centered Network Movement in which the whole process of primaries is operated by people who know the candidate, and the candidate knows them as people. Decisions are made in Affinity Groups after face-to-face direct deliberation. I think that PR and propaganda strategies would not be able to succeed in such an intimate environment. The language of discourse in a small group of people who talk to each other must be decently straight as in normal life situations. The language of political party discourse is the language of propaganda and conflict, a psychologically exploitative “strategic” language both internally and externally. In a small-group setting, candidates must be real themselves to earn the confidence of fellow members. Based on the experience of encounter groups (T-groups) a climate of openness and trust will have the best conditions to develop in Affinity Groups.

In elaborating on this idea of a grassroots-based organization, I took the danger of power corruption extremely seriously. The determination to root it out should be visible so that members may be proud of it. To minimize the danger, all executive roles must rotate with no exceptions. No person will hold any leadership, executive, or representative position for more than the minimum necessary period—one term. Members shall decide how long one term is but ensure that no behind is stuck in an executive armchair ever!

Executives and functionaries of the Network Movement will abstain, when in office, from using their positions for participation in the party’s decision-making on matters of ideology, party line, or any of its internal issues. If the Network Movement publishes a newsletter or newspaper, the contributions of executives would not be preferentially treated for publication. Its representatives elected to national or local political power positions could not use such positions as springboards for influencing the movement’s internal discussion and decision-making. They could naturally have equal access to the movement’s decision-making through their Affinity Groups like every other member.

In that light, the reader may reconsider their earlier question of what happens if the elected representative of the Network Movement fails to comply with their Affinity Group call to resign from their high office. The chances of it happening seem much smaller than if it were some party representative called back by his local party branch. A polarly different type of politician should germinate from a Network Movement of Affinity Groups.

 

THE SMALL GROUP IS THE BUILDING BLOCK

OF THE MOVEMENT

 

Reader: Politics and politicians bring to mind the concepts of emperors, commandants of armies, presidents, prime ministers, ministers, diplomats, houses of representatives, congress, senators, demonstrations, insurrections, national interests, wars . . . that is what politics is about, and that is what news is about. Do you believe that all this will change for the better if some common people sit around in small groups and talk and deliberate with one another?

Author: Not just talk. Deliberation ends with making decisions!

Politics is not only ministers, generals, and leaders, as we know bearing the consequences of their politicking. I believe, first, that the lives of those who sit around in small groups, talk with one another, and make common decisions will change for the better. Today, common people stand or sit opposite politicians alone, alienated and mostly feeling helpless, being ignorant of what is done in their name. Second, yes, the framework of small groups of equals is the central element of structure in person-centered political organizations.

The organizational chart presents a voluntary partnership of small groups. Like a living organism, the Network Movement is composed of small cells. The number of people in a group should allow everyone to get to know the others, meet in an ordinary private home, and listen to others person-to-person like in a conversation rather than having to address an audience. In a small-group setting, every individual can have an equal opportunity to be heard.

Reader: Are Affinity Groups the only possible way of person-centered organization?

Author: If our goal were only to ensure equal access of all members to decision-making with no intent to change the alienated conditions of political experience, other arrangements would also be possible. Modern means of communication allow an unlimited number of people to participate in decision-making by casting their votes by telephone or digitally. The Internet can technically be the vehicle of decision-making without direct interpersonal involvement.

Direct individual voting on legislation, or “government by polling,” would technically serve the values of majority rule, equality in power sharing, and participation better than the existing system of political parties and their representatives. However, without a genuine dialogue and deliberation process, public opinion would lack most of what is valued in its wisdom. That value comes from passing one’s opinions through the testing ground of human congregation, interrelation, discussion, process, growth, and change. In the absence of genuine dialogue, decision-making would become the result of computation rather than deliberation, as in public opinion polls. The democratic process would be reduced to counting the hands of isolated and the most frequently alienated people.

It would be technically possible to form small discussion and decision-making groups electronically in writing or even talking to and seeing one another on a computer screen. If that experience works, people involved in such medium-mediated interpersonal communication could then decide themselves whether to meet face-to-face and how often. With the further development of visual media, video conferences could facilitate live interpersonal interactions and deliberations in small groups. However, according to all the evidence in front of me, there is no substitute for direct person-to-person contact. Hands-on affinity like hands-on lovemaking.

Reader: Then the question of power remains. Would a political power organization in which all decisions are made by all members in their small "Affinity Groups" be able to compete for power with the ruling ministers, diplomats, representatives, congressmen, senators, governors, and so on? In the political system, people once elected don’t need to deliberate with anyone if they don’t want to. They can make their decisions swiftly and efficiently.

Author: In light of the organizational theory of applied behavioral science, there is good reason to believe that a person-centered organization will be incomparably more efficient than hierarchical political parties, and decisions will be much better attuned to reality and therefore effective and impactful.

In theory, organizational health and effectiveness depend on valid information, free choice, and internal commitment. In political organizations, secretiveness is the way of life because valid information is power, and in a competitive environment, it is kept from potential rivals. In political parties, secrecy often becomes an obsession. Many bad decisions are made because valid information about glitches will be kept from superiors to keep oneself out of harm’s way, and bosses’ information will be kept from subordinates who are considered unreliable. That is how organizational rot settles in. With no valid information circulating in the veins of the organizational body, problems are left unattended until a crisis bursts out. In a small and much more intimate affinity group, valid information will have far better chances to surface.

That is particularly true about personal information that closely corresponds to internal commitment, high motivation, and high spirits. I already mentioned in connection with deliberation that feedback is indispensable for a sustainable climate of deliberation. Feedback is the tool for exposing personal valid information instead of keeping silent and gossiping behind one’s back. Personal criticism, complaints, grudges, and hurts will be discussed openly in feedback that is built into the egalitarian working process of affinity groups.

The space of every organization consists of two dimensions: task and maintenance. Maintenance refers to not only machines but also mostly people. Good organizations must score high on both dimensions to be sustainable and avoid waste, inefficiency, and human attrition. Political parties would be rated low on human maintenance. In affinity Groups, the close personal setting, the atmosphere of equality, and the care taken regularly of individual and interpersonal problems by feedback will keep them on an incomparably higher standard of organizational life—task and maintenance.

Reader: Hmm . . . It could really be fun, feedback. Imagine a Prime Minister in a meeting of the government or a chairperson of some parliamentary committee saying at the end of the session, “Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” or “Okay, guys” or “Okay, comrades—time for feedback now. In the next 20 minutes, let us bring to the open the problems, the obstacles you felt in our working as a team today.”  Is that possible?

Author: Not in a governmental committee that runs on hierarchical power as of today. The idea will be shocking to them. But do imagine this: Would it not be revolutionary in the most crucial aspect of their lives? Would it not change the rules of the entire “ballgame” by bringing it closer to being person-centered?

Reader: They would resist it, see in it a ridiculous waste of time; be silent, defensive-aggressive; and sabotage it in any of the ways they are so skillful in using.

Author: That is for sure, yes. Power-oriented people “understand” psychologically only power. That is what invariably occurs at first in T-groups of workers and managers in businesses. Then they unfreeze, gradually, if the facilitator persists in not taking charge and lets them deal with their thoughts and feelings as equals, not as climbing on different rungs of the hierarchy ladder.

But we are not talking about them. In this optimistic scenario, that is, if representatives of the grassroots Network Movement become one-day parliamentarians or ministers, feedback for them will be natural, a necessary routine. Feedback and the small, personal-sized setting of the Affinity Group are the features that should make the Network Movement what is called a “9-9” organization, which means high at 9 points out of the ideal 10 both on the dimensions of task—efficiency in working—and maintenance—workers’ satisfaction, motivation, and internal commitment.

 

NETWORK DECISION-MAKING

The task of people in all Affinity Groups is to make decisions for their Network Movement. The flow of decision-making from the grassroots local basis to the movement could be organized as follows.

A member has a proposal for the movement to adopt. Their first step would be to put the proposal on the agenda of their Affinity Group. If accepted by the group, the group sends its proposal to the clearing center. The clearing center puts the proposal on the movement's agenda, which is a far cry from what individual members of a party can do to bring their ideas to the attention of decision-makers. If an Affinity Group accepts the proposal—no authority can prevent it from being discussed and decided upon by the movement. All members of the Network Movement will be equally empowered to motion for decisions to be adopted and carried out by the movement. In a political party, decisions are made at the top; members have formal access to decision-making only by electing their representatives once every several years. The reverse flow of decision-making, from the ground up, will make members much more empowered.

Reader: There are likely to be too many proposals for the network to make decisions on all of them. Deliberation takes time. Issues could wait on the agenda list for years before their turn to be decided upon. The movement will have to install some filtering mechanisms and allow some members rather than all members to make some decisions. Otherwise, decision-making will lag way behind the events.

Author: Of course. I guess those mechanisms will be adjusted to the size of the organization. If the number of items on the movement agenda that the Affinity Groups submitted for a given decision-making time is too high, the clearing center may send the list of items back to all Affinity Groups for rank-order them based on urgency. The items rated highest by the majority of groups are then put on the movement agenda for the next decision-making time.

Another way could be limiting the number of issues that a single Affinity Group can put on the movement’s agenda over a certain period—or rotating the right to put items on the agenda equally between groups. If…, I hesitate to put it down lest they say I'm utopian but you pointed out that possibility – if the number of groups and members who have ideas for political action becomes too great, they would have to devise intermediate filters on a regional basis. In all variations, high performance on task—making decisions efficiently on time—and on maintenance—setting the agenda and making decisions by Affinity Groups of all members, should be preserved. The intergroup agenda-setting process can be conducted by electronic communication.

Reader: Could elected representatives put their proposals on the movement’s agenda?

Author: Sure, like everyone else, by way of their Affinity Group. In addition, the movement may authorize its representatives to make decisions within the range of their executive roles without passing them through the channel of their home groups. 

Reader: People live in a fancied political world in which their leaders understand politics and know how to run the country. Leaders make the decisions, and common citizens accept that as given. They may grumble, complain, and despise corrupt hypocritical politicians, but they do not imagine that the system can be different. “What do I know about the economy or foreign affairs?” they say. They want politics to leave them alone; they have more important things to take care of. In the Network Movement, you want them to make the political decisions themselves, with no leaders to turn to. Extremely few people would find that attractive. 

Author: Yes, they will be left only with their fellow members to turn to, but that relationship in a small Affinity Group will be intensive and real. With their leaders they cannot deliberate, with their fellow members they can. People stand alone in relation to their leaders – in the Affinity Group they'd never be alone. Persons who decide to join an Affinity Group will not be those who stay away from politics and let leaders run the show. They will be those who are into social change. Then, from their place inside the movement, the world of politics will look different; their lives will change.

Reader: Okay, there are always a few activists. But others? Will the Affinity Groups Movement have a realistic chance to expand? Would it attract more people?

Author: Granted that most people believe that only leaders can make wise decisions. Most of us do not imagine that a government by the people could be anything other than a slogan, an impossible make-believe that in reality is government by leaders or the leader who legally represents the people. Conversely, the network movement is making the government of all people as real as can be. Then, gradually, if it grows, the reality of it would make a government by the people rather than by the leadership possible in conventional minds. This surely is an attractive idea, but I cannot predict how attractive the Affinity Groups will become, and whether they will grow, and how fast. I believe anyone's estimation of it will depend on how appealing is the idea to them. 

Many features in the Network Movement should be extremely attractive.  Affinity Groups can be many things people like, need, crave, and mostly lack, such as company, congregation, community, friendship, solidarity, personal growth, actualization of social and moral values, and, of course, empowerment. For all I know, the probability that affinity groups would attract many people who are currently politically passive, alienated, or dependent on leaders is real.  

   

MEMBERSHIP

Membership in an Affinity Group will be the only formal connection of a member to the Network Movement. The group will grant membership status to applying individuals after members have gotten to know them personally and can form their opinions about them based on their participation in the group’s life. Membership will not be sold for money as is the accepted way of getting a party membership card in conventional political organizations. People who want to belong will have to share something of themselves with the group, communicate with others, and accept the group’s internal regulations to become equal members of the small community.

Reader: Membership will not require money to buy the membership card? 

Author: The small group can decide whether it needs members to pay something for its regular functioning. Besides, there’s no need for membership cards. Members of Affinity Group know one another by name as persons, partners, associates, and friends. 

Reader: Well . . . let’s say a filthy rich man wants to join. He offers to contribute a mountain of money to the group but will not attend the meetings because he’s too busy. The group is supposed to reject his offer?

Author: The group can graciously accept the money as a donation. But granting membership that would allow him to take part in decision-making without personal participation would be like letting him buy the decision-making power in the network. Then he could use it for his political agenda in the community or the country. The only comforting thought I have about such a case is that the corruption will be limited to that Affinity Group and not affect other groups.  

Members of the Affinity Group – they alone and no one else – will have the power of decision regarding acceptance of membership and termination of membership of individuals. There will be no personal dependency on any party apparatus ever! In fact, there will be no party membership in the same sense as today. Individual membership will have meaning only within the small affinity group, where members know each other as persons and not just as “party members” (usually no more than a written name on a list with an address, email, and telephone number).

The membership of an Affinity Group in the Network Movement will be based on the group’s participation and compliance with the Movement’s conditions. A committee of members from other groups, preferably in geographic proximity, will be authorized to decide on granting, renewing, or denying membership of an Affinity Group in the Movement. Central executive organs will have no authority in matters of membership.

Reader: You mentioned, that individual membership will have meaning only within the small Affinity Group. Does it mean that the Network Movement's decisions will be made by a majority of groups and not by individual members?

Author: No, I didn’t mean that. In matters of belonging, individual membership will have nothing to do with the Network Movement beyond the Affinity Group. But in the decision-making results, it will. The group will report the results (for and against) of its deliberation on network issues. Individual members who are a minority will be represented in the general count of votes. In the Network Movement too, a minority of members in an Affinity Group could come up as a majority in the Movement. The citizens’ democratic right to take equal part in a one-person, one-vote election procedure will not be forfeited.

 

INSTITUTIONALIZED LEADERSHIP: GOOD RIDDANCE

The person-centered condition of equality in sharing organizational power is incompatible with institutionalized leadership. Life in an organizational environment of personal independence and equality cannot, by definition, be realized in a climate of leaders and followers, party bosses, and rank-and-file. Hierarchical pyramids of power reflect the authoritarian patriarchal experience and, through that, rule out any possibility of realizing people’s historical aspiration for fraternity (and sorority) in their sociopolitical experience.

Institutionalized leadership authorizes some people to use power and denies others that authority. Hierarchical power, arranged by property rights as in a corporation, or by the right of representation as in a political party or government, is universally justified as necessary for efficiency. It makes the final decisions.

Institutional leadership becomes a breeding ground for power corruption. Therefore, at long last, for the first time in the history of right or left politics, this organizational design abolishes institutional leadership. We shall leave that particular cause of corruption of the organizational experience behind us once and for all.

The person-centered grassroots Network Movement substitutes the institution of leadership with organizational arrangements that acknowledge both human nature and the need of members to accomplish their political tasks effectively by working together.

 A personality cult is a deeply rooted manifestation of Collective Insanity. In suggesting an alternative to institutionalized leadership, we consider dependency needs described by Lewis Mumford, the eminent historian of cultures:

 

"In their impatience, in their despair, people secretly long to cast the burden of their own regeneration upon a savior: a president, a pope, a dictator—vulgar counterparts of a divinity debased or a corruption deified. But such a leader is only the mass of humanity writ small: the incarnation of our resentments, hates, sadisms, or our own cowardices, confusions, and complacencies (Mumford 1973)"

 

We must not distance ourselves from the bulk of humanity in all its negative aspects, but we can adopt measures to compensate for human deficiencies in designing our organization. Nothing human should be alien to us. Some of us have a natural flair for leadership, while some do not; some have natural charisma, while others have little or none. During group decision-making, certain individuals will be more dominant, more skilled in persuading others to support their position, and more influential in guiding the process toward their preferred outcome. Each person is unique in their natural characteristics, but in our organization, leadership will not be institutionalized. In the Network Movement, it will remain personal and natural.

 

LIFE, REGULATIONS, AND ORGANIZATION:

BASIC CONSIDERATIONS

 

"I had learned from my experience in the Great Peace March that the healthy living system can and will solve its own problems if it can just organize itself in a way that allows that". —Tom Atlee, Empowering Public Wisdom–A Practical Vision of Citizen-led Politics

 

On the threshold of the Affinity Group meeting place, let us consider the problem areas we must navigate to put it in a "9-9" shape in the task (work, efficiency) and maintenance (feeling good, motivation, spirit) dimensions. The problem areas are in the interpersonal space between individual well-being and the task to be accomplished in the absence of bosses and leaders. We must now observe the rules and regulations we have taken upon ourselves to facilitate our life as a group and through working together. By rules and regulations, I mean all that limits free interaction between individuals.

Rules and regulations can be compared to roads and signposts people use in the territory of their living environment to avoid bumping into or running over one another. On both sides of the road are pitfalls easy to fall into: hierarchy on the right and anarchy on the left.

Watch out on your left:

Anarchism and anarchy can be highly attractive to people who value their personal freedom above all. This attractiveness lasts as long as they do not try to practice it in large numbers. Knowing many anarchistic spirits from personal experience and having similar sentiments myself, I can only hope that many well-intentioned rebellious spirits would not reject the Affinity Group because of its rules and regulations. As a political strategy, anarchism is for conscientious people, a default option in a world where they see no better alternative. Recently, I read a message from a leader of the British radical scene, in which he admitted, “We don’t know how to organize effectively,” and justified his suggestion that we would be better off not trying. Affinity groups, I believe, is one way that people like him might consider trying.

Anarchy is great and sounds great in art and music, such as at rock concerts. On stage, anarchy is an artistic illusion created by much hard, well-disciplined work in rehearsals. Below the stage level, it could quickly become a disaster area where no regulations and authorities sell tickets, control the entrance, and generally ensure that the masses of young anarchistic spirits will not be trampled on or suffocated in their crowd.

An anarchistic state lacking an effective police force would become more violent than a totalitarian police state because when all limitations on free interpersonal interaction are suspended, criminals will freely attack and exploit ordinary citizens.  As a guiding principle in selling firearms to people, it will be disastrous. 

Anarchy is necessarily ineffective as a strategy to create and maintain a safe and open society. Much of normal humanity fears anarchy and tries to escape it as quickly as they can. In past decades, hippies have been replaced by yuppies. The French overwhelmingly supported the authoritarian de Gaulle when threatened by the anarchistic “Student Revolt” of 1968, whose most celebrated leader was Daniel Cohn-Bendit (then called Dany le Rouge), who specifically opposed formal organization. Over the years, he became more organizationally “square” and was even elected to the German Parliament (Bundestag). The celebrity in the United States at the time was Abbie Hoffman, whose fabled bestseller "Revolution for the Hell of It", written under the nom de plume Free, inspired many adolescents with generalizations such as “The stable middle-class home is falling apart.” He ultimately became, predictably, a stable middle-class home type, an insurance agent as I had heard. Richard Nixon’s victory in the 1972 presidential elections and the emergence of the “moral majority” in the United States had been a backlash against the 1960s “counterculture” that swept America with provocative slogans such as “screw the system.”

Those who resist any organizational rules and regulations will not be able to organize. They would be free only of the means to control their destiny; not free from living for the rest of their and their children’s lives under the social system or regime they so much wished to change. Alternatively, they could become free riders on the system’s back, allowed to sing and dance, watch anarchy on TV, and grumble, protest, and demonstrate in the system’s public gardens as long as they do not cross police barriers.

Watch out on your right:

On the right-hand side of regulated roads lie the pitfalls of hierarchy leading to the corruption of person-centered egalitarian-democratic values and then, further down, to authoritarianism. To avoid such pitfalls, we need rules and regulations that, on the one hand, would ensure security and personal freedom and, on the other, grant conditions for effective decision-making.

In an Affinity Group, rules and regulations must satisfy free-spirited but not irresponsible individual members. They must prevent sliding down to power relationships while maintaining satisfactory relationships among equals and allow enough space for free activity, spontaneity, and creativity. Rules and regulations must facilitate personal freedom rather than hinder it; they should be at a minimal level but not below it.

My point of departure is that the meaningful difference between any good and bad social system, be it as big as a state or as small as a family, is not between having rules and regulations and being free of rules and regulations. The difference between hope and despair, freedom and oppression, and equality and exploitation lies between good, well-administered laws and regulations and bad laws and regulations or any poorly administered laws and regulations that cause misery, confusion, and conflict.

Rules and regulations are human inventions that, like signposts, become part of our social environment. However, human life and behavior can never be completely regulated; signposts can forever be misunderstood or ignored and can never regulate every aspect of life. Even in total institutions, such as prisons or concentration camps, prisoners have some space to behave according to their inner self-regulation systems, for better or worse. A society’s or organization’s success overwhelmingly depends on the rules governing it but is never independent of the people’s will and ability to follow, interpret, and apply the rules in any new situation in an ever-changing reality.

Organizational rules and regulations are necessary but never sufficient. Without its constitution, it is impossible to imagine that the United States could survive as a nation. Nevertheless, even such a magnificent constitution must be interpreted and amended as necessary and could be distorted and even emptied of meaning. All religions have rules, yet their leaders must perform the interpretation, change, and adaptation of their regulations, however divine they may or may not be. Democratic laws and procedures may formally regulate a country, but if its citizens lack the skills of democratic living, they will not sustain democracy.

Laws and regulations serve as means to translate values into patterns of living. They alone cannot ensure the realization of any value. Unless one sees solitude as their supreme value, without some formal or informal rules and regulations, even the most sublime intentions will lead to conflict.

The power of any social contract depends on people’s willingness to uphold it and society’s ability to enforce it. Since the affinity group is meant to be a voluntary association of free individuals, nobody will be able to enforce anything on it. The effectiveness of its rules and regulations would depend only on group members’ willingness and ability to abide by them. I shall suggest the best rules and regulations for the group process I could think of, which would be like a recipe for you, with the results depending on your “cooking” skills. In practice, you have all the freedom to change the recipe to suit your needs, change ingredients, and use different ones to suit your taste.

In conclusion, we must admit the truth of no liberation without organization and that organization adopts rules and regulations. As long as well-intentioned and decent people do not learn how to organize effectively to gain political power without compromising their values of equality in power-sharing, they are destined to live in a world of power hierarchy where, if not they, some other people will suffer from domination, exploitation, and oppression.

 

EGALITARIAN GROUP WORKING PROCESS

Affinity groups have the power to make decisions regularly for the whole Network Movement. Their task is to make decisions for themselves and for the Movement. If they do not make decisions, or make decisions but fail to implement them, the group will become a social debate club. For members who want to make a political difference in society, such a group would lose its purpose for being.

Decision-making is our task. Work, for us, is deliberation and all that is needed to enable it. Democratic decision-making requires proper physical conditions for allowing people to communicate and deliberate their issues and then reach a decision through an accepted procedure. The necessary but limited physical resource for democratic decision-making is time, that is, time to respond, to influence, to argue, to listen, to think, to answer, to make up one’s mind, and so on. The quality of life in decision-making is largely a function of time-sharing and time-using. The lower the quality of life in decision-making, the more aggressiveness you can feel in people’s fight for time: shouting and cutting each other off trying to seize the greatest possible amount of time to sound their voice. We must therefore find arrangements that would ensure maximum quality of democratic life in sharing the precious common resource for decision-making: time.

 

 

EGALITARIAN GROUP WORKING PROCESS

 

1. Appointment or election of a chairperson

2. Setting the time limit for the decision-making process

3. Ratification of the agenda

4. Division of the group’s time (as set in (2) among agenda items

5. Appointment of a “timekeeper” who reminds speakers, if needed, that the agreed-upon time is over or about to end

6. Deliberation and decision on each agenda item within the time limit decided upon in advance (4)

7. With each agenda item, publishing the decision made in writing, including who is responsible for carrying it out

8. Feedback

 

Step 1: Appointment or election of a chairperson

 

The “chairperson” is the person that the group authorized to manage the shared working time according to the group’s decisions, dividing and allocating time among members and agenda items. The most obvious reason for having a chairperson is the same as in decision-making sessions anywhere. Imagine what would happen if the discussion and decision-making processes of political assemblies, congresses, and parliaments were not conducted according to strict procedures imposed by the speaker, the chairperson.

If the number of people involved is not greater than six, and all are exceptionally skilled in interpersonal communication, they could perhaps do without a chairperson. Perhaps they could make decisions with no formal structure, freely and spontaneously like friends over coffee. However, even in a dialogue between two persons, the freedom of each to use time to present, substantiate, or defend their position is limited by the very presence of the other. Time must be shared fairly for people to feel good about the time they spend in deliberation. If each of the 5–6 participants is exceptionally gifted in the art of interpersonal communication, they could perhaps get along well without an appointed chairperson. If even one fellow among them is a well-meaning bore, that would become difficult or impossible.

By interpersonal communication skills, I mean the most important skills for living that schools seldom teach. To achieve a satisfactory level of mutual understanding and collaboration for common goals without institutionalized hierarchy and without degenerating into power corruption, one must operate on a much higher level of interpersonal competence without a coordinator than when there is one. With the support of good agreements on the decision-making process, people would develop their interaction skills naturally as most of us learn from experience. To facilitate this, the egalitarian working group process contains feedback, an item specifically added to improve the group’s level of interpersonal relations in decision-making and collaboration in the implementation of decisions made.

You can develop your interpersonal skills by experience. With that, assistance from professional facilitators in group dynamics would be extremely helpful. In small groups in which the interpersonal process is the subject of learning, participants learn skills from their experiences “here and now.” Such learning is justly called personal growth. Carl Rogers referred to encounter groups in group dynamics as “perhaps the most significant social invention of the century.” It is the most egalitarian, participatory, nonauthoritarian learning method.

If your decision-making process in a group is unstructured and unregulated, you will soon feel what in organizational development is called “a pinch.” This is the moment people feel that the atmosphere becomes tense, dense, and heavy or realize that it becomes difficult to contribute to a discussion without forcing one’s voice on others, that the deliberation moves around and around without going anywhere, that people occasionally lose patience, erupt, block one another, and do not listen, and so on. Then it should be understood that some formal procedures for conducting a meeting must be agreed upon and followed. The group’s formal agreement on its procedures will serve as a means for regulating how and by whom and how much of the group’s working time will be used. The accepted general rule in working groups is agreement on process should precede agreement on contents.

Affinity groups would need a chairperson and a formal decision-making procedure. At the same time, egalitarian values and people’s well-being require a sensitive application of the rules. The idea should be that the more frequently the chairperson job rotates among members, the better. Each chairperson of a meeting should think of the job as if they were the treasurer and the group working time the cash given to them for safekeeping. The chairperson must see to it that time is not squandered or appropriated by unauthorized persons. The group’s time is a precious asset that belongs to all and must be shared fairly.

Considering the physical constraints of time and your needs and values, you may evaluate this process for conducting the regular meetings of Affinity Groups. The Egalitarian Group Working Process is the "recipe" that will enable the participants to deliberate and make decisions in an atmosphere that is truly democratic, not putrefied by incompetence and not corrupted by power.

Think of the small Affinity Group as a way to humanize organizational space. Think of the Egalitarian Group Working Process as a way to humanize organizational time.

 

Step 2: Setting the time limit for working on decision-making

 

The chairperson expresses and displays in writing when the decision-making session ends. The group must agree or change and set the time for ending the work.

This procedure is simple enough; it could be applied in any session of any group that makes decisions. However, readers who, like this author, have spent hundreds of hours of the best years of their lives in boring, tedious, tense, and irritating sessions of committees or teams have had different experiences more often than not: The self-appointed chairperson is the boss, who announces the agenda and starts talking right away. Nobody knows when exactly this is going to be over except for the comforting thought that at some not-too-distant future, there will be a coffee break and, sometime later, there will be an end to it, and one will be free to go home. If the participants care and have a real personal stake in what is being decided, such meetings could be compared to a ballgame in which players do not know when the whistle signaling the end of the game is going to be sounded and how much longer they must play to win. They do not know how much time they have to plan their strategy, to save their energy, what is going to happen next, and so they would become exhausted and aggressive and kick at each other’s shins.

Egalitarian decision-making in a group is an inherently competitive situation. Without clear rules governing time, when the issue becomes hot, the discussion heats up. People try to “score” the decision, so they keep the ball (the floor) to themselves as long as they can. You may recall the dynamics of the New Left meetings mentioned earlier (correct-lining, snap judgments, and labeling . . . haze of rhetoric, personal attack, and counterattack). In such “ballgames,” often the result remains zero: zero decisions, zero positive energy left, and zero motivation to go on like that next time.

In such conditions, the stage is set for the more energetic (which sometimes means brutal), less democratic persons who become the real makers and movers of decisions. Decisions, if any, are made by one or several persons in the last moments of the meeting using strong pressure on the exhausted opposition, or after the session ends, a few stronger players reach a deal among themselves.

The egalitarian group working process aims to prevent these outcomes. It allows the group full control over the use of their time. Therefore, you must decide (explicitly agree and display in writing for everyone to see) when the time to make decisions begins and ends.

Efficiency, even in machines, refers to work done per unit of time.

If people take full responsibility and control over their time working interdependently with others, they can use and allocate their energy well and accomplish the group’s common task. This experience will make participants feel good knowing that the “ballgame” was played fairly; they all had equal opportunity to speak and be heard. Even those who came out as the minority would “own” the decisions if they felt the deliberation process was fair to them.

Do not begin discussing anything before you and everybody know when that discussion must end. When that is agreed upon, deliberation may begin. 

 

Step 3: Ratification of the agenda by the group

 

Display the agenda for the group meeting on a board or flip chart with items numbered according to urgency. After setting the decision-making time frame, agree on the agenda. This stage in the decision-making process is necessary because you must minimize the possibility that some members would have to participate in the discussion feeling that the issue is not relevant, or the group has not been sufficiently prepared to make a decision. If you do not ratify the agenda first, individuals may become frustrated, believing that other topics are more important and urgent or that their important issue has been left off the agenda again. Situations in which some individuals would not be happy with the issue that the group chose to discuss cannot be avoided in all cases but could happen less often and be easier to bear if each person has an equal opportunity to set the agenda before the group starts working on it.

Think of making decisions as deciding “what do we do next.” Think of ratifying the agenda as deciding “where do we go next.” Whoever has the authority to decide where everybody is going next has a decisive organizational power. Because we want to share that power equally, we put it in the hands of everyone in the group by ratifying the agenda first. Your values of equality in power sharing demand that no human “bulldozer” could make decisions without first getting an “okay” from the group for putting them on their agenda.

Further, efficiency in decision-making demands that we be highly conscious of time constraints. Therefore, the egalitarian group working process requires that agenda ratification be settled quickly. The organizational structure of the Network Movement would make most of the Affinity Group agenda include its political items. Groups will have their internal agenda too, and you might often feel time pressure. In all cases, the step in the decision-making process at which the group ratifies its agenda for that session should not be skipped. Individuals at this stage of the group’s work could motion to add or omit agenda items for that session.

This ratification stage should be brief, with no discussion permitted. Members suggesting a change in the presented agenda could explain their suggestion in one or two sentences with no time for others to object. The group will then decide whether to admit or reject the change by consensus or majority vote.

In the regular work of groups and teams, the first item on the agenda is usually a report by those charged with implementing previously made decisions. The work will become more time-efficient if the reports are prepared in writing and handed to members first.

 

 Step 4: Division of working time among agenda items  

 

This step of the Egalitarian Group Working Process would make a big difference for anyone who attended committees, meetings, sessions, and others. It states that before working on the agenda, the group decides how much of its total working time will be spent on each item. The best way to execute this step is the clearest one: write down the agenda on a board or flip chart for all to see, and write down next to each item its scheduled time for working on it before proceeding to the next item.

I view this step as absolutely necessary for the same reasons that made us decide when to finish. The actual decision-making process is a cycle of the group’s life focusing on each issue: introduction, deliberation, resolution suggestions, decision (by consensus or voting), and putting it on the record for implementation. The need to control the precious resource, time, which applies to the whole session, applies to each such cycle as well. It requires knowing how long it would take to make a decision when opening the deliberation process on an item.

By structuring our working time to be portioned among agenda items, we ensure that we are not fixated on one item and are left with enough time to take care of the others. That way, we meet our goals: efficiency in work, equality in time-sharing, and good feelings that come with a high quality of organizational life.

 

Step 5: Appointment of a “timekeeper” to remind speakers, when needed, that the allotted time is out or almost out

 

I see this suggestion as optional. Perhaps you could use the time wisely and divide it fairly without the services of a timekeeper. In any case, the chairperson can be assisted by another person who would sit with a watch in hand and concentrate on executing the group’s decisions about its use of time. If a speaker’s time must be limited, the timekeeper will have the duty and the authority to tell the speakers, “You have one minute to finish” or “Your time is out.”

Time to group decision-making is what money is to economics and what power is to government. The datum prompting me to suggest the timekeeper function is that groups experience tremendous psychological difficulty in openly addressing problems of individual use—and misuse—of time. Many excellent, good-intentioned ideas get lost forever because of that little thorn in the group’s flesh: the difficulty in effectively and fairly sharing time among individuals in a way that would not hurt the feelings of many good people whose egos are much more sensitive than their biological clocks. It is difficult to overstate the extent to which practical skills in democratic decision-making are dependent on time and the degree of importance of the procedures that help avoid conflicts inherent in time-sharing. 

Therefore, I suggest that the most important datum in determining whether or not to appoint a timekeeper should be that time is the precious scarce resource that is shared during decision-making. Therefore, the group must be extremely careful, open, and determined to maintain full control over its time, whatever it takes, including a timekeeper.

 

Step 6: Deliberation and decision on each agenda item within the time scheduled in step 4

 

When the time allotted for discussion of an agenda item nears its end, the chairperson or timekeeper should inform the group that the time for deliberation is over and that they must proceed to decision-making. This is the imperative of efficiency in using the group’s time. From that moment on, there is no more time for persuasion, explanation, clarification, or any form of influencing others. From then on, time is used only to write the proposed decisions on the board for all to see.

With time running out, members would want to add arguments, clarify points, and press for acceptance of their opinions beyond the time limit. People would likely manipulate the chairperson and the timekeeper to let them have more time and get more attention. The egalitarian working procedure should not allow this beyond the set limits. The process—let us hope that a competent chairperson and timekeeper are responsible for it—will direct them to formulate the wording of their propositions. Then the group will choose one proposition by consensus or majority vote.

 Adherence to the egalitarian decision-making process at this stage will “revolutionize” most working groups, committees, and others as we have known them. The familiar situation in which people’s interest flares up around some topic, often in inverse proportion to its significance, to the point that they forget all the rest until their time and energy are spent, will be highly unlikely to occur.

 

DECISION-MAKING

 

While voting in a small group is a technically easy procedure, it leaves some members in a minority. Consensus is often chosen as a more socially convenient and pleasant option. When achieving consensus, ensure that the feeling of consensus is not illusory or superficial. A group member may push for consensus, saying, “Okay, we are all agreed,” whereas in reality some members are not in agreement. They may simply think that under the circumstances, their voice would have no chance to be heard or understood, so why bother? Consensus is not the same as unanimity. Preferably, it could be a situation in which not all participants fully agree on the proposal as it is formulated but feel that they had a fair opportunity to voice their opinion and were listened to and understood. They accept that they have not persuaded the majority and therefore choose to join the consensus.

 

Step 7: Display in writing the decision made and the names of those responsible for carrying it out

 

Going through the stages of the process so far, we have attended to the group’s task (decision-making) and maintenance (conditions, rules, and regulations to make people satisfied with working together). Now is the time to ensure that the work is productive. Decisions must not be left on paper; they must be implemented in the real world. The greatest danger to the productivity of decision-making in groups is that the decisions would only be verbal formulations whose life spans between their conception and the group’s minutes. There, the decisions would simply fade into thin air without ever becoming action in reality. In light of a long experience in the past, it is difficult to overestimate such danger even when people have the best intentions, are highly sophisticated, and skilled in interpersonal communication.

 

FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE - THE PITFALLS OF ABSTRACT-MINDNESS

 

When I was studying in the United States in the 1970s, I wanted to find out if any political organizations were structured in line with the organizational development (OD) insights I studied. OD was a predominantly American branch of behavioral science. Reviewing written materials, I found one such group that appeared saner than any other political organization I had ever known or heard of. It was called Movement for a New Society (MNS). In their writings, I found they were committed to being, “here and now” among themselves as in the new society they visualized for the future. The term “here and now” belongs to the terminology of groups for experiential learning of interpersonal communication skills that are part of OD training. There were more indications of the influence of OD on that movement, terms such as “personal growth” and “a climate of trust.” There was also an adage that expressed my strong conviction then as now: There can be no radical change without a radical change in our own behavior. The MNS presented itself as genuinely radical, different from others.

As an observer, I took part in one of their meetings while they drafted a position paper, or as they call it in party politics, a “platform.” The draft contained phrasing such as “We believe that the present exploitative economic system—Capitalism—is a major barrier toward creating a just society capable of meeting human needs. We believe that a democratic socialistic society is crucial to ridding ourselves of the irrationality and dehumanization of Capitalism.”

The discussion was heavy. Tension, controlled anger, impatience, and frustration could be felt in the participants’ tone and body language. It dragged on, however, to the highest level of abstraction, flaunting “big” abstract words: socialism, capitalism, democracy. People behaved extremely well and tried to listen more than I had ever known in previous political party meetings. They seemed mesmerized by their own rhetoric, losing sense of what was going on outside their minds in the “here and now.” Nobody asked practical questions such as why they needed to decide right then whether capitalism is or is not a major barrier to creating a just society. What were they going to do about it tomorrow and in the following month or so, and what, in real life, is meant by “ridding ourselves of the irrationality and dehumanization of Capitalism”? They behaved like sleepwalkers enveloped in the web of their verbal images without questioning what it meant for their political lives. The session ended with a quick consensus on “The terms ‘racism,’ ‘sexism,’ ‘classicism,’ ‘hetero-sexism,’ and ‘ageism’ should be available in some form in our literature for those who are struggling with these terms.” Yes, people invent abstract terms, and then they are “struggling with these terms” rather than struggling with things in reality. 

The MNS did not take off. Human energy requires the fuel of success in reaching one’s goals, which can be achieved only in the reality here and now. - END OF THE PERSONAL STORY

 

The core of that problem is not in the disharmony among people, not even in time pressure. It arises from the very foundations of human perception and orientation that create over-abstraction. Words in the decisions may correspond to people’s wishes and ideas but often may not correspond to reality. In the textbox, you see a real example of the debilitating power of over-abstraction that this last step of the egalitarian group working process intends to prevent. It requires that the persons responsible for carrying out the group decision be written and displayed clearly. Members responsible for implementing a decision should regard their task as an action plan. Action takes time, so in appointing the member or members who would execute the decision, time for reporting back to the group about its implementation must also be set and made visible.

The stages of this Egalitarian Group Working Process intend to serve as pegs driven into the ground of reality, tying down the group members lest they soar upward, borne aloft by windy-fiery rhetoric and, like so many of their predecessors, lose contact with the ground under their feet.

Wherever and whenever not the executive leaders make the decisions, most group decisions end up in the book of minutes and die there, even more so in political organizations. If you listen to candidate speeches and read political platforms to find out what their action plans are, you would seldom find any answers. “The party will strive to . . . act for . . . develop, ensure, provide for . . .”—nothing, or almost nothing that can be understood as a commitment to do something specific in their term in office once elected. Only when they know they are making decisions that matter to them, such as who is going to climb up to a position of power, what place on the party list of candidates, and so on, do their words become sharp and aggressive or bone-dry and punctilious like the language of formal legal documents.

The separation between word and deed is the bread and butter of politics. Well-meaning idealistic revolutionaries and reformers have been no exception. In a group that is relatively open and honest in its internal discourse, the gap between words and deeds will bring about failure and demoralization.

Another element of the group working process designed to narrow the gap between words and deeds, intentions and results, would be the procedure of putting on the agenda, as the first item, a report on the implementation of decisions made in previous meetings. We must avoid wasting our time and energy on decisions formulated in phrases such as “We shall examine ways . . . ,” “work for . . . ,” “improve our . . . ,” and so on. Such decisions would end with the comfortable feeling that we have overcome our differences and agree on what to write down in the minutes record (for the next generation?). We must leave such self-deluding practices behind.

A person-centered political organization needs only realistic action plans in which it is clear who will do what, how, how soon, and what exactly should happen in reality that can show us the extent to which we have succeeded in reaching our goal.

 

Stage 8: Feedback

 

Within the egalitarian group working process framework, feedback must be the last item on the agenda. However, it is not a decision-making process, and not all elements of the working process apply to it. Feedback time is not decision-making but rather a reflection on it. The group does not discuss issues on its political agenda, only those vital for its own life. Members need these to overcome difficulties and conflicts between them and support one another. Things said during feedback sessions should find their way to hearts and minds and not to the minutes book or other records.

Feedback is the information people obtain about their own behavior here and now. The decision whether to accept such information and change something in one’s behavior as a result lies in the individual and not the group or anyone else. Only when one’s behavior becomes an item on the agenda can the group decide on it. If it is raised during feedback, nobody except the person to whom it is directed can make a decision about it.

Structurally, feedback takes place at the end of the group’s working time at which the group discusses the session that had just ended. Interpersonal affairs, which are the substance and evidence of feedback, are fresh in memory at that time. Members can express their opinions and feelings about the part they and others took in the events during the group’s session that had an effect on the process for better or worse.

Giving and receiving feedback involves discussing what is going on among us. In terms of personal experience, this is so revolutionary because personal feelings, except when negative emotions burst, are not usually discussed in public. In feedback, we can discuss who and what helped and hindered the group’s work or hurt individuals’ feelings. Its purpose is to resolve personal and interpersonal problems and conflicts, clarify misunderstandings, and find constructive channels for expressing anger and frustration honestly to help and correct things. Feelings and opinions about everything that is regularly held back, said behind one’s back, accumulated until it poisons the atmosphere and relationships, or erupts in aggressiveness at the least suitable time can all be channeled to feedback while memory is still fresh.

Feedback in groups has an extremely strong effect. Through the feedback mechanism, grown-ups can receive information about reality they would never know otherwise. This is among the most important forms of information, the most important lesson one can learn in life: how others perceive, understand, and evaluate us. Feedback is a conscious effort to do something about the human condition by which we tend to easily see others’ defects and be blind to see them in ourselves.

Authoritarian people, bosses, and leaders do not want their faults to be pointed out; they want their subordinates to praise and respect them (in politics, “respect” often means fear). Consequently, they try to avoid and block any criticism. In an egalitarian person-centered political organization, we make all efforts not to contract that social disease, with feedback as our most effective antidote.  

Feedback requires a high level of intellectual and emotional effort and considerable skills in interrelations, such as empathetic listening, openness, and assertiveness in self-expression. For group members, this will function as an effective antidote against individual tendencies to dominate, manipulate, devalue, or control others. Psychologically conflicted people who need extremely thick defensive walls against the truth about themselves would be particularly offended and choose to leave. However, it would always remain the real touchstone of quality in the group’s life. People who are open to learning and less afraid of change will find feedback a valuable tool for personal growth.

Personal feedback could hurt, the kind of hurt that truth hurts, which brings to mind Khalil Gibran’s verse: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell and encloses your understanding. Even as the fruit must break that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.” Yet it could be given and received as an act of true loving care and generate positive feelings in people. A democratic-egalitarian group that succeeded in integrating feedback into its life could consider its quality of life as incomparably higher than that of any conventional group, political or otherwise. It would then have a chance to attract capable people, overcome its difficulties, and succeed in reaching its goals without degenerating into power and conflict relationships.

 

The practice of feedback

Group feedback is a structured behavior based on theory, research, experience, and know-how that requires learning and practice. Learning is “experiential”; that is, people learn from their own experience with others in the group. Frameworks of such experiential learning are T-groups that focus on group dynamics. Many professionals and paraprofessionals can serve as facilitators for affinity groups, and their intervention would be much welcomed in the initial stages of the group’s life. The major reason for this is that feedback runs against the most deeply rooted social habits in human relationships.

 

The leading institution in human relations training since its beginnings in mid-20th Century in the US is the NTL Institute, National Training Laboratories. In its website they specify the elements of their program of Human Interaction Laboratory. Examining the list of these elements you may readily see that they belong to a different world than the world of political power organizations, but are vital in an egalitarian group setting. The elements of training include:

• Self-Awareness

• Emotional Intelligence Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

• Group Dynamics

• Authenticity in Relationships

• Deep Listening

• Giving and Receiving Feedback Effectively

• Leadership Effectiveness

 

Normal interpersonal relationships rely on conventions built around the principle of authority by which, unless you are the boss, you should not voice personal remarks directly to another. If you do, it takes the form of a personal attack. Directly feeding back personal remarks is associated with the use of aggression whereas feedback should be the opposite of that; it should serve as an instrument for helping solve interpersonal problems and heal interpersonal injuries. A climate of security and trust must prevail because people under attack do not accept the teaching and do not learn. An external professional facilitator who is impartial regarding group conflicts can foster such a supportive climate.

The profound change in attitudes and habits, associated with a departure from the usual patterns of interpersonal dealings toward feedback, is the reason why professional help should be welcomed. For the benefit of affinity groups that lack members who are experienced in giving and receiving feedback, here are some accepted techniques for conducting feedback sessions. I shall briefly explain the common reasons for using these techniques:

• It is better to ask for feedback than give it to a person who has not asked for it. At the beginning, in particular, it is good to start with a person asking for feedback. For example, a natural and good way is for the chairperson to ask for feedback that would evaluate their recent performance on the job, what could be done differently, better, and so on.

• It is better to offer feedback to a person and obtain an agreement to provide it than to impose it on an unwilling person. Rule of thumb: whenever person A wants to criticize person B, they should first ask person B if they want or can accept feedback here and now. If person B is not up to it, person B may be given the option not to receive it at that session. If feedback is dumped on someone who is not ready and willing to receive it, the chances of it being helpful would be considerably less.

• Give positive supportive feedback, including affirming another person’s behavior if they truly deserve it. Criticism and praise stem from contrasting emotions and elicit contrasting emotional responses. To balance the atmosphere of feedback, if not for its own sake, it is advisable to remember the full half of the proverbial half-empty glass. Most people want to be liked, supported, and appreciated; this is an important element of what amounts to a good social climate and quality of life. It also helps open peoples’ hearts to constructive criticism (though even the most useful criticism, or “negative feedback,” could be painful).

• In groups where open personal feedback might seem too threatening, impersonal group feedback could be employed. This could begin with each person responding anonymously to a short feedback questionnaire. The written feedback could include questions about what were the high and low points of that group meeting, who contributed most, what impeded progress, and so on. Then it is summed up and the results presented as the basis for a general discussion.

 

TOOLS

1. The master key for reconnecting broken lines of interpersonal communication

 

This is an empathetic listening technique. The rules of the game are as follows: Person B agrees to receive feedback from person A. Before person B responds to person A, person B must first repeat the essentials of what person A has said in their feedback. Person B, the receiver of feedback, should begin with a version of “If I’ve understood you correctly” and has to get person A’s consent that person A feels understood. Person B is not allowed to respond to person A’s feedback before person A confirms that, yes, person B has understood them correctly.

In direct personal feedback, this rule is highly recommended. Only after the feedback receiver has obtained that confirmation from the giver can the receiver respond. This helps the feedback giver avoid being misunderstood and the receiver avoid rushing into self-defense but instead take time to reflect on the feedback and become less emotionally threatened.

I have hardly ever experienced the “master key” technique go wrong rather than do good for all parties. The technique is like a brake you can always engage when there is a danger of collision or accident. The “If I’ve understood you correctly” mode broadcasts openness and real willingness to listen. This would be decoded as if the person said, “Your opinion about my behavior is important to me, and I wish to make sure I understand it well before I respond.” Then, when we as speakers receive confirmation that we were well understood, we feel humanly valued, which is crucial for productive criticism. Not really listening is how people most frequently devalue one another. Being criticized while feeling you were altogether not listened to and have been misunderstood is a common experience of devaluation.

The “master key” is only a technique, but it compels the user to listen. You cannot fake it; if you were not listening, you would not be able to summarize what others say, and you would not obtain their consent that you understood them correctly. Listening is the oxygen in the human communication atmosphere. By the same metaphor, political interpersonal communication as we know it works on pure carbon dioxide. Listening is considered a weakness; trying to force your views on the other person is the rule. Let us leave this manipulative game behind us once and for all.

 

2. Safety valve: the right of all to impose a short period of silence

 

Each member has the right to impose 30 seconds of silence once or twice in a meeting, at any time the individual wants, with no right of anyone to object. Granting individuals this right requires courage to break a lifelong cultural habit. After that, it becomes easy. It allows more respect and power to every individual, and everyone is bound to feel it. Its purpose is to tap every source of inner energy in tense situations and return it to the sources of self-control, reflection, rationality, listening, and awareness of oneself and others here and now. This technique will help prevent the outbreak of the noise characteristics of defensiveness, aggressiveness, and anxiety. The flow of discussion will be discontinued for a short time (30 seconds of silence feels lengthy in such circumstances). The time of imposed silence will be insignificant compared to all the decision-making periods but could be crucial in avoiding dangerous collisions or preventing the deliberation from sinking into psychological mire.

 

3. Person-centered preparation tool for Nonviolent Direct Action

 

This tool lists steps in preparation for political action, which refers to any consciously chosen activity that aims to change something in others’ behavior. Demonstrations are political action—demonstrators want to change something in the policy of the national government, local government, corporate management, board of directors, or others. The preparation tool is equally valid for personal politics in every situation you decide to confront someone with a request, a demand, or an ultimate injunction to change something important to you in their conduct. Writing a letter to the other side as a first move or attempting a direct face-to-face confrontation could be political action to which this preparation tool can be helpful. 

This preparation tool is person-centered from the start because it is guided by the fact that government, management, municipality, board of directors, and so on are people, human beings. Conventional political activists often forget about this. Those people must be forced or persuaded to change something in the policies they practice within the range of their authority. A resident's appeal to the sanitation department to change something in its service in the neighborhood is a political action by this definition; some decision-makers authorized to change sanitation practices must be convinced to change their routine. A single employee who makes a decision to approach their boss and ask for a salary raise performs a political action in this sense; they'd have better chances to succeed having prepared themselves with the help of this tool. Even talking with a family member about something in their behavior that bothers you will have a better chance to succeed if you prepare for the talk using this tool. 

When you depend on other people, being well prepared would often spell the difference between success and failure in reaching your goals. In my case, I regret every time I forget to use the preparation tool in my trials and tribulations. You can use it individually and in teams whenever success depends on some specific change in other people's behavior.

I developed this tool based on the Force-Field Analysis conceived by Kurt Lewin, considered the founding father of applied behavioral science. He had a realization that seems simple, even self-evident today, but then was a stroke of genius: social “forces” are human beings. Force-Field Analysis, for all its air of sophistication, is a simple draft of a fat vertical line and arrows pressing on it from right to left and from left to right. This line represents the status quo, and the arrows represent people or groups of people. Arrows pressing on the status quo from left to right are those advocating for change, while those pressing from right to left are those who want to prevent change and preserve the status quo. The Internet is full of such diagrams if you would care to look. People who create their action plans using Force-Field Analysis examine their draft and get busy strengthening the decision-makers on the left side pressing for change and weakening the influence of those on the right opposing change.

As a democratic political power organization, your success will mostly depend on influencing people from outside your movement to join it and support your campaigns. The Network Movement's growth, necessary for becoming a powerful player in politics and for your feeling of achievement, will depend on your success in reaching out to people. Convincing others to support and join you is what truly democratic politics is about. It is a formidable task, and the strategy tool for direct encounters helps in just that.

 

STEP-BY-STEP PREPARATION FOR DIRECT ACTION

1. Who is the target of this action? Do we know enough about them? Must we collect more information before informing them of our demands? Are we ready with our fact-finding regarding the issue in their policy that we demand to be changed?

 

The person-centered approach always considers opponents as persons to be persuaded to change something in their conduct. The first step is establishing contact and presenting our case by communication. Only when opponents do not respond positively can we use our strength to make them. We turn to nonviolent direct action, which can escalate to civil disobedience. The person-centered approach rules out violence.

 

1. What is our practical goal? What exactly is the result we wish to attain with the other side in the confrontation (or in an answer to our letter)? What exactly should the other side say, sign, promise, agree to, give, do, and so on to make you feel that you have obtained what you want? Express your response such that, as soon as the action is over, you will know whether you have reached your practical goal.

 

Categorically, do not begin to take action if you do not know your practical goal and how you will know whether you have achieved it. Otherwise, you could easily trick yourself into believing that you did something that contributed to your cause while in reality you did nothing of the sort. Many social change groups mostly launch projects such that the only achievement in doing them is that they took place and made them feel they have done something. Avoid making decisions such as planning demonstrations or staging a street event only because “something has to be done.”

 

1. What is your alternative practical goal? If, in the course of the confrontation, you realized that it was impossible to attain your goal—what would be your alternative? This alternative practical goal must be an achievement so that the result of choosing it would not be zero. All-or-nothing alternatives are riskier.

 

1. What is the heart of your message? What is your strongest point? Prepare it in advance in brief but clear and decisive words. The “heart” of the message is what should give you the greatest feelings of confidence and strength in putting it forth. Think of the heart of your message as your most necessary equipment for surmounting possible obstacles on the way to achieving your goal, your strongest argument in the planned encounter or confrontation. Have it ready with you as if it were the last round of ammunition in the fight, the last sentence you would utter if everything else fails.

 

To think comprehensively and know in depth the heart of your message is crucial for building your inner strength. After memorizing the heart of your message well, you should feel positively stronger and more confident inside. If you do not feel strong enough—consult with others you trust. As long as you do not feel confident in the heart of your message, you would do well to either postpone the action or change your practical goal.

 

1. What would you say or do when, in the course of dialogue, the other side did not budge from its negative attitude, and you decided to terminate the encounter? What would you say last on parting?

 

1. What could be the obstacles you must anticipate? Consider technical obstacles (e.g., “He’s not available now,” “This is not our responsibility,” etc.) and the arguments the other side might put forward to substantiate their disagreement with you; anticipate difficulties originating from the character of the persons you would encounter.

 

Role-playing, in which someone plays the role of your opponent, is the best way to prepare for a direct encounter.

 

1. What should you avoid, including facts, arguments, terms, strategies, and others that you must be careful not to use in the encounter?

 

1. What exactly are your demands on the other side? What will be your answer if the other side responds with something like, “Okay, what is it exactly that you want me to do?” Be sure you know not just what but also how soon.

 

9. Who are the potential supportive forces (e.g., persons, organizations, institutions) that you could ask for support before the encounter with the opponent to increase your chances of achieving your goals (Force-Field Analysis)?

10. Who are the opposing forces that you could directly or indirectly influence in preparation for the direct encounter to neutralize their negative impact on your chances of achieving your goals?

 

11. What would you do next if you have failed to achieve any of your goals by communicating with the opponent?

 

Consider telling it to the opponent right there in such a case. Be sure to make it understood that that is not a threat but instead true information about your intention to continue your campaign until your demands are met.

----------------------- ----------------------------

 

 

 

 

 

FAREWELL–CONCLUDING NOTE

 

"Why is it, that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he’d just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard?" --- Jonathan Livingston Seagull

 

That has been the complete program for the egalitarian political organization. It specifies how the organization should maintain person-centered relationships among its members to prevent power corruption, make effective decisions by all, coordinate itself nationwide, elect its representatives, safeguard individuals' freedom, and maintain its boundaries. You could see how it avoids corruption by over-abstract, inflammatory, deceitful, and divisive rhetoric in influencing the organizational decision-making on personal, and “ideological” issues.

To the best of my knowledge and experience, this "recipe" has all the ingredients necessary for attaining political power in the community or even the country without compromising your human values and with good chances of preserving solidarity and affinity with one another.

At the very least, this recipe promises to contain the strongest antidotes to the Power Corruption and interpersonal conflict that have poisoned the lives of most idealistic and conscientious radical reformers and often resulted in paving the road to hell with their good intentions. The rest depends on you.

                                                                                September 14, 2024