Talking Politely


In order to solve tough problems peacefully, people must be willing to talk openly. In Paraguay and in the communications company, people hesitated to speak openly because they were afraid of authoritarian reprisal. In Canada, my native country, I worked on a project in which I noticed a different kind of hesitancypeople hesitating to speak openly because they were afraid of offending someone, or of being embarrassed.

We Canadians are polite. It is not that we do not have the same conflicts and passions as other people, just that we prefer not to talk about them. As Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once said, "Just because English Canadians don't move their faces much doesn't mean they don't have feelings." Sometimes this politeness helps us deal with our challenges, but sometimes it hinders us.

In 1996, I worked with a Canadian team that was trying to make progress on the long-running constitutional tension between Quebec separatists and Canadian federalists (like the Basque conflict, but less violent). Politicians and civil servants had been trying to resolve this issue for decades, without success.

I was coming home, which had disadvantages as well as advantages. I knew more about the country, or at least I assumed I did, and this meant that it was harder for me to listen without rushing to judgments and jumping to conclusions. Being an expert is a severe impediment to listening and learning.

Four federal government civil servants, intelligent and well informed, took the intellectual leadership. Of everyone on the team, they were the ones who had been the most disappointed and embarrassed by previous heartfelt but failed attempts to resolve the conflict. They were therefore cautious, even cynical , about the potential for the team to make a difference. They were also adept at talking about problems dispassionately, conceptually, and politely. I also was more comfortable with this way of talking, and uncomfortable with open , emotional conflict.

The team followed the lead of the five of us, and so conversation remained mostly impersonal, abstract, and calm. From time to time, one of the young people, activists, or entrepreneurs would get excited, but he or she would quickly settle down again. In one session, a doctor declared that alcoholism was a serious problem in aboriginal (Canadian Indian) communities, but his remark was treated with offended indignation, and so he shut up.

There was one particular moment when someone lifted this veil of dispassion. One evening I invited members of the team to tell a story about a personal experience that might illuminate our understanding of the Canadian system. Halfway through this session, a young francophone man from Quebec said this:

I have to say that when we started this exercise, I thought that with a bit of luck, my turn wouldn't come because we wouldn't have time. In any case, I had decided that I would also like to talk about my family. My father is from Sydbury, Ontarioa Franco-Ontarian. His family had lived there for generations.

His father was a carpenter but my father decided that he liked school and went further in his studies than was the norm in his community and in his family. Eventually, he went to Toronto to pursue his education and his plan, because he realized that Francophones in Ontario were not on an equal footing with Anglophones and all the Francophones he knew were very poor. His plan was to become like an Anglophone, but he had a hard time of it. Toronto wasn't Sudbury. There were almost no Francophones and he felt very isolated. He couldn't fit into the system, so he flunked out.

Then he moved to Quebec, figuring "I'll go somewhere where Francophones are in the majority," because he thought that Francophones in Quebec must be the ones with the power. He arrived in Montreal and felt like he had been hit by a speeding locomotive. You see, he expected to find a mirror image of Toronto, but in French, and instead he discovered an Anglophone city where all the signs were in English and where it didn't matter what part of downtown you were in, you couldn't get any service in French. At one point he was in despair and saw some graffiti proclaiming "Le Qu bec aux Qu b cois" [Quebec for Que-beckers] and from that point on, he became interested in the nationalist debate and in politics.

I've told you this story because it explains to some extent the background of a lot of Quebeckers, the way we perceive Canada. For a variety of historical reasons, Canada has not evolved into the bilingual country we could have hoped for at the start of Confederation [the founding of the country] and I don't think that is something we will ever achieve. Perhaps we have to come up with a plan that is completely different from what was envisaged at Confederation.

I found this story fascinating. Although I had grown up in Quebec, a member of the English minority, I grasped more of the underlying force driving separatism from this five-minute personal story than from twenty-five years of reading newspaper analyses. The story touched other people as well, but I didn't have the presence of mind to recognize its importance. The moment passed, and we continued with our work as before.

The team had unusual difficulty agreeing on a set of conclusions. We had to add an unplanned fifth meeting in order to break the deadlock. Ultimately, we came up with an elegant and abstract set of messages: the country had to adapt quickly to a rapidly changing world; an incremental approach would be dangerous; and success depended less on whether the governance system (including the constitutional arrangement between Canada and Quebec) changed dramatically than on how any change was accomplished.

As soon as our workshops were over, the project fizzled out. Some team members presented our conclusions at conferences and meetings. Then our work was forgotten.

Politeness is a way of not talking. When we are being polite, we say what we think we should say: "How are you?" "I'm fine." We do not say what we are really thinking because we are afraid of a social rupture : "How are you?" "I'm terrible." When we talk politely, we are following the party line, trying to fit in and so keep the social system whole and unchanged, even though the whole may be diseased or counterfeit. Talking only about concepts is one way of being polite. Usually we are not even aware that we are following rules of politeness, but when we first enter a system with an unfamiliar set of rulesas when I entered PG&E and Shellwe notice them.

Most of the Canadian team were comfortable with the status quo. After all, most Canadians had a good life, there was no war, and few people were exercised by the Quebec-Canada impasse. We were afraid that if the country changed, we might find ourselves in a situation that would be awkward or uncomfortable or dangerous. Unconsciously we therefore kept our conversation safe, conceptual, and polite. The conclusions we agreed on were dispassionate and neutral: we did not take a stand for anything but prudence. Our fear and politeness ended up smothering change. We accomplished the formal objective of the project, but we didn't produce results that anyone cared about.

The young Quebecker stood out because he did not follow these rules. He spoke personally , not conceptually; he was passionate ; he took a stand for what he believed in. In these senses he was impolite, which is why his speech was both so jarring and so riveting.

When somebody speaks personally, passionately, and from the heart, the conversation deepens. When a team develops a habit of speaking openly, then the problem they are working on begins to shift. By contrast, a habit of speaking overly cautiously obscures the problem and keeps it stuck. The Canadian team had a hard time agreeing on conclusions because our conversations did not go deep enough for us to find the ground that we truly had in common, and from which we could construct a way forward that we all believed in.

These polite dynamics also play out in ordinary family settings. When my brothers and I go home to see our parents, we all talk politely, staying away from sensitive subjects (or talking about certain subjects only with certain people), keeping things under control. Sometimes I am afraid that if I say what I am really thinking, others will be hurt and upset. I am afraid that I will rupture the family wholewhich anyway isn't so bad. So we all say what we always say, replaying the same conversations and the same family reality, over and over. Politeness maintains the status quo.

Most of the meetings I've been in, in organizations of all sorts all over the world, have been polite, like the gatherings of the Canadian team and of my family. Usually this isn't a problem: the issues under discussion are simple and can be dealt with adequately through cautious, dispassionate, amiable talking and listening. But sometimes this kind of conversation is completely inadequate, leaving a dangerous reality unaddressed and unaltered.

The movie Conspiracy depicts such a conversation. It tells the real story of a ninety-four-minute meeting on January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee villa outside of Berlin. Kenneth Branagh plays the chairman of the meeting, charming and urbane Reinhard Hey-drich, the right-hand man of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo. It was at this meeting, held over food, wine, and cigars, that a committee of senior Nazi officials, including Adolph Eichmann, discussed and agreed on the details of Hitler's "Final Solution." I found the movie chilling because it is not melodramatic at all. It seemed to me that I was watching a completely ordinary business conversation. Heydrich calmly and cleverly moves the agenda along. He invites everyone to contribute their views while making it clear, through the kinds of subtle pressure that I have seen in countless meetings, that he is not open to dissent. Although several members of the group have deep reservations about Heydrich's scheme, they want to be seen as "team players," and in the end they go along. The horrible plan is approved.

As long as the status quo is working, we can afford to remain polite. But when we see that the status quo is no longer working, we must speak up.




Solving Tough Problems(c) An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities
Solving Tough Problems(c) An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 53

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net