Navigating Invisible Currents with Dr. Stephen Schuitevoerder
Have you ever wondered how invisible patterns and rhythms within our interactions shape our understanding of the world? In this episode, I explore this question with Dr. Stephen Schuitevoerder, a distinguished international consultant and facilitator. With expertise in individual, interpersonal, and system development and change, Stephen has made a significant impact in over 20 countries across various sectors, including healthcare, academia, banking, and notable organizations like the United Nations and the Esalen Institute.
Listen in as we dive into race relations, political transitions, and crisis management, from Eastern Europe’s shift to democracy to racial tensions in South Africa and Australia. We also discuss the perils of self-righteousness in social justice, the nuances of transformative leadership, and the importance of self-awareness and constructive dialogue in addressing today’s political polarity and social challenges.
And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!
What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:
The dangers of self-righteousness in social justice movements.
Transformative leadership and reconciliation.
Why we are so often resistant to change.
How to recognize and overcome internalized oppression.
The importance of self-awareness in social movements.
Political polarity and the need for constructive dialogue.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“Our attitude towards it has a moral superiority that wants to decimate the other, and unconsciously we become them.” – Stephen Schuitevoerder
“How do we create eldership and wisdom in a place which so often lacks it?” – Stephen Schuitevoerder
“The reflection for each of us, is to what degree do we get caught in the reactivity as opposed to a depth of vision of what we would like to create in the world around us?” – Stephen Schuitevoerder
“No one wants to see that part of ourselves, that is our shadow. It’s much easier to see that in other people.” – Stephen Schuitevoerder
“I choose not to act on it – that’s the idea of awareness.” – Stephen Schuitevoerder
Resources:
Stephen Schuitevoerder: LinkedIn
Connect with me: Instagram
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Find The Squeeze wherever you listen!
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Speaker 1 0:01
Hey, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to The Squeeze.
Speaker 2 0:11
To what degree do we get caught in reactivity as opposed to a depth of vision of what we would like to create, I today
Speaker 1 0:28
on the podcast, I'll be speaking with Dr. Steven Voorter. Steven is an international consultant, lecturer, and facilitator working in over 20 countries with many diverse communities and organizations, including healthcare, academia, banking, United Nations, Esalen Institute, and more. Steven's expertise is in the area of individual, interpersonal, and systems development and change. He's particularly interested in how members of social and organizational systems relate, cooperate, and collaborate. His passion for community development has encompassed the change from communism to democracy in Russia and its relations to Eastern Bloc countries, also race relations in South Africa, the change from apartheid to democracy, conditions and situations of indigenous people in Mexico, the crisis at Fukushima, and the challenges in racial relations of white and Aboriginal people in Australia. I was first introduced to Stephen's work in 2016 during my tenure in leadership development inside a prominent BC Health Authority. Stephen's ability to uncover the inherent wisdom and invisible patterns from within our group, leading to a much richer and holistic experience, was quite profound. Process work, which is Stephen's primary framework, is about tuning more deeply into the unique rhythms within interactions, paying attention not just to what's said, but reading behind the lines to uncover the hidden gems and challenges. Stephen's work has contributed powerfully to my practice, and I've continued to find ways to interact with Stephen ever since. I hope you enjoy his conversation as much as I did. So, Steven, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 2:08
Thank you, Christina. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1 2:10
Yeah, it's great. So, you and I go back a ways. We've worked together in a number of different configurations. I first met you when you came in to support the healthcare organization that I was inside of, and then you and I were part of a small process group where we were focusing on organizational and leadership development, and we were getting a chance to unpack real-life situations, and that was really cool, and then I also participated in a much larger international online group that was called Advances in Group Work, that you were leading, and you referred to that as world work, and that was an incredibly eye-opening experience for me. There were people from, like, all over the world. There was a pretty strong bent towards social justice, which is not a world that I'm, you know, I find myself inside of that much. And during those calls, we talked a lot about something called spiritual rank, which I think can look like a lot, can look to a lot like sort of moral superiority or self-righteousness, which you described as one of the most addictive feelings, and I thought that was quite interesting. You said something else that really struck and stuck, and that was that standing up to something is just the beginning of the process, and that we are in danger, also of potentially becoming that thing that we hate. That's quite a mouthful, given the current geopolitics. So many people right now around the world are standing up in protest, mostly, most currently, of course, over Israel and Palestine. But according to the site Global Protest Tracker, over 400 significant anti-government protests have erupted worldwide, and I reviewed the site for a few minutes, and it was truly mind-boggling. So, all these people standing up to things, I mean, that in itself is an interesting pattern, and you know, maybe it indicates something about our global climate, I suppose. But you're saying that protesters could be in danger of becoming the thing they're protesting against, and I know that in some circles, saying this could be a bit like match and a gasoline, so I really want to unpack this. So, help us understand what that means.
Speaker 2 4:13
You know, there was a wonderful play, Christina, that I watched a number of years ago. It's called Two and a half minute ride, and it's by a woman by the name of Lisa Crown, and it's an autobiography, it's a self-biography, and she, her father was in the Second World War, he was German, and he escaped Germany, and then after the war, because he was fluent in German, he was asked to come back as an interrogator and interrogate people that they thought were guilty of war crimes and the Nazis in particular, and his job was to go in there and interview them and break them, so they would confess to what they'd done, and he recalls one man that he saw, a young man who eventually broke and. A, and of course, by the way, this guy's Jewish, so I'm Jewish too, but he was Jewish. Lisa Kronstadt is Jewish, and she's Jewish, and so the young man broke, and he said, "Of course, I was a Nazi. He said, "Of course, what do you expect of me through my whole childhood. The best thing I could have done was to be a Nazi. This was the pride of my village, the pride of my parents. Wearing that uniform and being a Nazi was the good thing. It was a great thing. And now, suddenly, at the end of the war, you tell me how terrible I am, what you expect of me, and he, the guy, had confessed. He gave him to the soldiers, and according to Lisa Kronstadt's dad, they probably took him away, dug a hole, and killed him, put him in the hole. I think that was apparently one of the things that was done by the Allies, and Lisa Cones' dad thought for a moment, and he had this thought, he said, "Thank God I'm Jewish, because if I was in that kid's situation, what would I have done? And the reflection from each of us, it's very easy, because of self-righteousness, we talked about spiritual wrath, the ability for us to feel I am virtuous, I've got right on my side to slip in to being something which in another moment we could easily be against, and so we can fight very easily against genocide, we can fight very easily against many of these things, and we should. These are wrong. People shouldn't do these things to each other, but instead of coming in with the depth of understanding that a different context, we would be that very perpetrator. Our attitude towards it has a moral superiority, which once they decimate the other, and then unconsciously we become them too.
Speaker 1 7:07
So it's like the slippery part of that is that moral superiority is what I hear you saying.
Speaker 2 7:14
That's the tricky thing. All of us want a better world. There's no question. There's certain things happen in the world, they're horrific, but we don't reflect deeply enough on our own contribution. We like to look at the other, it's much more, it's very relieving, it's such a relief to look at the other and think how bad they are. Then we can feel good about ourselves, but that's a slippery slope that goes all the way down into repetitive violence and cyclical violence, which the history of world knows all about. I was working a number of years ago for the United Nations, and in the former Yugoslavia, and that war has been going on for over 1000 years, through generations, handed down and handed down, and how many people have been killed because at one moment people have to hold their breath and say okay, look at the pattern, Who's right?
Speaker 1 8:06
Yeah, this is the,
Speaker 2 8:08
this is the challenge we're in, and it's a hard challenge, but this is the challenge we're in, is how do we create eldership and wisdom in a place which so often lacks it,
Speaker 1 8:22
yeah,
Speaker 2 8:22
things with that wisdom, as opposed to reactive superiority or self-righteous violence.
Speaker 1 8:30
So that makes me think of something else, because I think I recall, I recall you saying something about how true transformation really requires both the marginal and the mainstream voices, and that if both sides can engage, something really interesting can happen, and for me, imagining this in action seems sort of like an impossible proposition, in a large, you know, to a large extent, in our current climate, I think we're more apt to hear something along the lines of, you know, it's not your turn to speak, you've had your turn, and now it's our turn. You don't have a voice here. This is a really difficult one for me to grapple with, because part of me does want the world to shut up and let everybody have a voice. But on the other hand, I know the impossibility of this. I love the idea of transcending this ridiculous amount of polarity that we see, but maybe I'm not feeling too hopeful at the moment. There is, is just so much pain and suffering that is real, as you said, that is real, and isn't it just a human reaction to want to get away from the perpetrator, and thus the dichotomy, so transformation requires a conversation between both those voices. Help me understand that a little better,
Speaker 2 9:39
you know, there's, there's, you know, the best way to understand it is to look at role models in the world that many of us know about, and the one that I look at that has been remarkable for me, and just a remarkable human being is Nelson Mandela in South Africa, so he was a guy who was in prison for 27 years in. Robben Island in South Africa, he was part of a group that was horrifically oppressed for many, many centuries, a number of centuries in a form of genocide by white folks in South Africa. White black folks' lives were not much of value when I was born, and I was born in South Africa for 25 years. I lived there, so he came out of that. He came out of prison, and he had - he had an opportunity, and the question was, what was he going to do? Kerry was a potential leader. He negotiated his way with white folks who were very conservative to come out and create a black government in South Africa, and he had a choice. He could come out and say, "This is my time to speak. I've been oppressed. This is my voice. But he didn't. He came out and he said, "We're all South Africans, we're all African, white, black, colored, every, that's the useful mixed race in South Africa, every single color, we're all South Africans. This is a rainbow South Africa, and he created a theme of inviting everyone, and what he did by that is prevent tremendous bloodshed and tremendous suffering on both sides. Now, what does it take for someone who's been so hurt, their life so destroyed, the majority of their life being in prison to come out and do that? And Clinton asked him that, and he said to Bill Clinton, he said to him, as I was walking out of the gates of prison, and there was a big crowd there. I realized I had a choice. The government, apartheid government, had taken 27 years of my life away, and I was angry, and I thought, if I stay with my anger, they will continue to take my life away, not theirs, but mine. And he dropped his egg, and so my, my, and so the reflection for each of us is to what degree do we get caught in reactivity, as opposed to a depth of vision of what we would like to create in the world around us and become more of what we would like to be, as opposed to, as Gandhi said, be what you want the world to be, and more of more of that, and less of we're right and they're wrong.
Speaker 1 12:35
Yeah, I almost wish that Gandhi quote had been not been so widely circulated, because it's become pat now, it's become a bit of a trope, but in the context that you're sharing it, it makes a lot of sense. So, a couple things, you know, it made me think immediately of the movie that was made, called Invictus, and you know, I enjoyed that. I thought that was quite a good movie, all about the story you're telling of Nelson Mandela, but I also know that there are so many who resist that theme, and I'm wondering, like, so when you talk about that, getting caught in our reactivity and wanting to stay with that anger, and I love the way you painted it, like there's a, you know, there's a crossroads here for Nelson Mandela, as he left the prison, he could see I can continue to hold on to this anger, and then they, they still have me, or I can let go of it, like, so that beautiful self agency. There, a lot of people resist that, though. I'm not convinced that Invictus was everybody's cup of tea as a movie, it's not always a popular theme. So, what is it? What, what is it in us that resists what you're saying, which I think sounds incredibly practical and realistic, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 13:46
No one wants to see that part of ourselves, which is our shadow. We don't want to see that. It's much easier to look at that in other people. I'll tell you a story, if I can, about that personally, because this is a personal journey that each of us has to go on to truly reflect on who we are, and the story goes that I was working with the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia, and I was flying into Serbia on my way to Montenegro to work, and I was afraid because I'm Jewish, my family has a brutal, brutal history in the Second World War, in the Germany and the Holocaust. Many of my family were killed, very direct family were killed in the Holocaust. I'm first-generation South African, and I'd, I'd found that out about eight years before I flew in, and I never knew that until then, and I was still had a lot of reaction and still do have cause to anyone who's involved in genocide, it's a ruthic act, and so I was afraid because I knew I was going to meet people who were active in the genocidal process in the war and I didn't know how I was going to risk it and. And I was flying in and I thought, you better work on yourself, because you're the facilitator, your job isn't to be reactive, and you might well be, and I realized that I'm a white South African now, I could easily dismiss it, I did a lot of good things, I ran away from South Africa, I didn't participate in the military for various reasons, I escaped, I wasn't horrifically brutal, but by virtue of being there, I was a passive person who, by virtue, where the country I lived in was part of and got a whole lot of privileges by virtue of the repression of black
Speaker 3 15:38
folks
Speaker 2 15:38
in South Africa, and I realized that that's not far off from being genocidal myself in certain ways, of course. I can excuse it, it wasn't me, but I can see that in my shadow, I can see that part of me that was participant to the repression of black folks, and I got a shock when I realized that on the airplane, because I realized I can see that part of me that's also has that quality, I choose not to act on it. That's the idea of awareness, is that if you can see it in ourselves, then we have a choice. If we don't see it, it grabs us and possesses us, like it did the German people in the Second World War, and so I realized that, and it transformed the way I facilitated when I got to go to Montenegro, and in fact it resulted in remarkable sharing of people who were actively involved in genocide, the stories that I was incredibly touched by of people reclaiming, being aware of what they've done and beginning to reclaim the agony of it, which is for me the beginning of the development of our own humanity.
Speaker 1 16:50
So, in some way, on the airplane, you were reclaiming the agony for yourself.
Speaker 2 16:56
That's right.
Speaker 1 16:57
Wow, so this is interesting, because if we think about, like, you've, you've often referenced all the voices that we have within us, and I remember one example that stuck out, like, we are both the vulnerable renter and we are the mainstream landlord, and we have both those voices, and that's a particularly poignant example here in where I live, in Vancouver, where you know there's a real disparity between, you know, the renters and the people that own properties and rent those properties, but I hear, like, what I think what you're saying is that we're not one or the other, but in fact we hold, we hold all the rules inside of us. So you just gave an example there about yourself on the airplane going to Montenegro, recognizing you held both those roles, but can you say a bit more about that, because I think that's a little bit of a tougher one, because of course our shadows don't want us to see that, that's what you were also saying,
Speaker 2 17:51
right, correct, so you know if you're renting a place, for example, you aren't the landlord, you are the renter, that's your identity, that's who you are, but the greed that you might project on the landlord would, what could well be Europe agreed to, you know, we're all caught the value, at least in United States, one of the strong, strong values is money, and people prize themselves on money, and we all often get caught by attributing money to quality and human humaneness, and that's just not the case. So many of us will agree, or getting caught by a desire for more, and that's a reaction we could have, because we want more ourselves. No plan, but just learning those kind of patterns behind the roles themselves becomes important, so it's not that the renter is the landlord, it's more that the renter might have a quality or has a latent quality that could easily be irritable in the other. So my rule is when I'm in reaction, it's not that I don't have moral values, I have strong moral values, but when I'm in reaction to another person, I'm fired up, I am caught. Period. I am stuck, and my work is to find out what am I in reaction to, and claim that inside myself. It doesn't mean I don't stand against the other, but the quality of the way I'll do it has much more opportunity to transform the situation than coming and firing. The huge danger we've got for marginalized folks is when I have a look at the Black Lives Matter movement throughout the whole time. The thing that's made me most sad is I could see from the beginning nothing will change in the states, because you see, if we really want to change the condition of black folks in the states, we'll start having a look at the healthcare system and how it really is marginalizing black folks. We'll start having a look at economics and how it's marginalizing black folks. We'll start having a look at jobs, we'll start having a look at 1/3 of black men involved. Of in the prison system in the United States will start truly begin to transform some of the grassroots structures that are creating an incredible repression of black folks in South Africa, sorry, in South Africa, the states, wherever, actually, but black folks in the states, but instead of doing that, what we're doing is having this token scene of Black Lives Matter, and everyone's pretending Black Lives Matter, and nothing has changed, and I feel nothing has changed, and that's the sad thing for me, is that we have
Speaker 4 20:31
these
Speaker 2 20:31
movements, but they become reactive, and then, of course, the other side gets upset by the reactiveness, and then reclaims power another time, and that dissipates away, and here we are a few years later, and what happened to that movement? It doesn't have the strength it needs, because we didn't go deep enough into truly what does that matter.
Speaker 1 20:53
Yeah, and
Speaker 2 20:54
change some of the significant things, and you can see in organizations this has been a trick for many
Speaker 3 20:59
years.
Speaker 2 20:59
They'll put a token woman in there, or put a token black person in there, and they said, "Look, we got a black president, or we got a black whatever, and the board is running it instead of the CEO. There's many tricks to get circumvent that, and then, of course, look at our, look at the diversity on our board, but you get women, for example, in the softer, inverted commas roles within leadership in organizations, so you don't really get the transformation of gender, you don't get the transformation of race, you don't get the transformations that you truly yearn for in the emergence of some of those movements.
Speaker 1 21:36
Hey, you're listening to the Squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of citrus couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader, well, to be a better human. We also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more. If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website@www.citruscoaching.com and the show resumes now. So, then let's talk for a minute about the quality of the work, the quality of the way that I work with this, so you reference that the reaction is the opportunity to wake up, kind of, and say, okay, I'm caught by something, I'm caught here, whether I'm getting, you know, reactive to the perception of the landlord's greed, or in a racial issue in the US, or whatever it is, that there's the reactivity, I'm caught, and then you said that that's the place where now we, you know, I knew I need to do some work here. So, what is the work I need to do?
Speaker 2 22:52
I think the first piece of the work is to find out why you're reacting, what's going on that you're caught. In other words, when I'm caught, I'm thinking, why am I caught? What's going on? Is it that my voice needs to become more eloquent, and I need to stand against something that I'm not? I'm passive, and I need to be firmer. Is it that I'm getting caught because that part that's emerging is a quality of myself that I'm having trouble with, we got, so we got to find out there's no answer to why we get caught. We got to find out what is the
Speaker 5 23:28
answer, so,
Speaker 2 23:28
and that's the tricky thing, is that we really need to dive deep in and say what is really going on, and then once we know what's going on, we can begin to unpack it.
Speaker 1 23:40
So, two things come up. I want to use myself as a, as an example in a second here, but before I do that, so what I hear is that oftentimes in these protest movements that people are acting from reaction, that there's not that recognition that they're caught, or that inquiry into what's occurring, what is happening for me, why did I get caught that if that's not happening, then you're acting from your reaction, which is then likely. I mean, I can see it in action promotes sort of that equal and opposite reaction from the other side. Then, whereas if I am working with that part of myself, or at least I'm open to exploring what is what is that, that's needed there, that then the way that I then work in that issue, whatever it is that I'm opposed to or wanting to change, I'm working at it in a different way that I'm actually coming across differently. Have I got that somewhat? Correct me where I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 24:39
There's nothing like a disturbance to wake up the culture, it's the beginning. So people often explode because there's so much repression going on, but rather than say, okay, we've got an explosion, how do we manage this? Well, not to repress it, but how do we begin to hear what's the messages behind the. Explosion. What's really wanting to occur, and how do we truly utilize it for two true transformation and growth? We either, from the mainstream, we either see it as a disturbance that needs repression, and we just want to crush it. Let's destroy it, and that's the strategy. It's never really.. it has worked sadly when you get the genocide of groups and the total destruction of groups, but it's complicated because it often comes back, or it results in the next war.. there's. there's a wonderful movie on on Israel after this, after the six day war, many, many years ago, six soldiers, it's called Censored Voices, it's a wonderful documentary. And after the six day war, the interviewer interviewed six men who were involved in the war, and he also, then the the movie was banned, and 50 years later it came out, and what the interviewer did was interview them again 50 years later, found these six men, and interviewed them again, and the men described what had happened, apparently according to them, after two days Israel had won the war, they don't really want, and the next four days was a period of what some of them described. I don't remember the exact words, but absolute atrocities. Men were killed, rounded up, destroyed. There was a ethnic cleansing going on by the Israelis, and for many of these men, they felt that their Zionism, Zionism, that come to Israel as Zionist, was dead, and that hadn't changed 50 years later, and one of them said, well, a couple of them said they felt that that war was the beginning, the end of that war was the beginning of multitude of wars to come, in other words, rather than say, "Look, we're being attacked, we need to defend ourselves. Let's defend, and let's create a humanity in that process. We become the very thing that has upset the Jews for so many years, and this agonizes me.
Speaker 1 27:15
Yeah,
Speaker 2 27:16
and it doesn't mean that I'm for the Palestinians. The Palestinians' idea of exterminating Israel and exterminating the Jews from Israel is not okay for me either. That's not the point. This is not pro-Palestine in my message, because I'm Jewish, and I'm proud of being Jewish, and I want pride in being Jewish, and I want pride in the Jewish people having a depth which sometimes I see is lacking civilian leadership, and this is why there's a schism itself in Israel, which just isn't seen now, which of the atrocities that happen, and of course, what happens now is the Israelis go into Gaza and create so much trouble, and I understand they want to get rid of Hamas, understand Hamas is a real problem that has to be addressed, and but how it's done is such a miss of an opportunity, and instead, rather than see, you know, we are a good people, we want peace. This is a world, this is an opportunity to create so much goodwill in the whole world towards the Jews and Israel. More importantly, I don't identify as Israeli, I identify as being Jewish, but the Israelis had such an opportunity, and I felt, ah, politicians like wars, it makes them stronger. They've always been attached to wars. I'm a war president. We heard that with George Bush before he went into Iraq, and I think what a disaster he should be knew wasn't right. Well, people around him knew it wasn't right. It wasn't Saddam was saying, irrespective whether Saddam is saying who's good or bad, but we go in with this reactivity and without a sense of what the end game is.
Speaker 1 28:51
Yeah, yeah, there's such a
Speaker 2 28:54
behavior will create the next wars. I can see it already.
Speaker 1 28:57
Yeah, that's gonna say
Speaker 2 28:59
create it's so sad for me, because the Jews deserve a home, a peaceful home, you know. After 2500 years of repression, if any people deserve a place to be, it is the Jews. There's no question for me, but how we do it becomes critical.
Speaker 1 29:19
Yeah, how do we manage it well? So I'm going to love something into the midst, which is because there's a depth to what what we're talking about here. I want to just acknowledge that, and I also want to keep coming back to this, this piece of reaction and being caught, because what we're doing, you know, we're looking at a global scale of what also occurs, of course, simultaneously is occurring individually, and then on all these different fractals. One person who is probably single-handedly responsible for creating the most reactivity in the world is an easy one, you can guess, and I really do want to use. Myself as subject, why not, and that's Trump, and so you know it's, it's sort of easy to take pot shots at what he's doing, where how he's not managing things well, that's a very generous way of describing it, but being the person that I am, where I'm really deeply committed to understanding more, like I don't want superficial, I want to play with this, and say, okay, so Trump, like, pushes so many buttons for me, and I also get to watch my husband, I mean, if he were on the podcast, we'd have a lot of fun with him, but he's not, so I am, so let's talk about my own reactivity. Can we play with this a little bit? Okay, so, so Trump, so it's.. it's just like I could start a litany of things that are rotten and wrong and horrible and awful, and I have to say, in all sincerity, I think I've probably desensitized a bit over the years, I think, particularly as a woman, I'll identify as a woman in some of these interactions that have been made public. I felt actually quite unsafe, viscerally unsafe, and so there's no question that at times, maybe not so much in this moment, which is why it probably feels safer to do this with you. At times I have felt incredibly reactive to Trump in one guise or another. So, can we, can we play with this a little bit, and like look at that as a disturbance? Like, I'm willing to use me, because I know it's affecting everybody. Can we play with that a bit?
Speaker 2 31:36
Of course, of course. So, how do you play with it? Tell me, you want to look at your reactivity.
Speaker 1 31:42
I do. Let's look at my reactivity. Let's see what the disturbance is, and what I can do to manage it well.
Speaker 2 31:49
Okay, so tell me, what do you think of Trump?
Speaker 1 31:52
Okay, so I'm gonna just pause and go inward for a second, um, because I do want to be sincere about this. Okay, so I think it's an easy one for me. I think the say one thing, do another, it's it's it's something that the world seems to be okay with, and he's the leader of, and that is just, I can feel like this just like almost unspeakable aggravation, like the hypocrisy, that's the piece I think that really grabs me. The other stuff is a little simpler for me to work with, but this one, it's like that's the big kahuna, so that's what I got.
Speaker 2 32:32
And, as a matter of interest, I'm just interested in this. This is just a question, why would you think that other politicians don't do that?
Speaker 1 32:42
I think it's that there's a certain tolerance that I have for what I'll call the political game. I mean, I know it's played, I play it myself, but there's a, there's the length that he will go. He goes way past any kind of pre-agreed upon implicit kind of, this is how the game is played. He's changed the game, and in doing so, he's made it well. I think he's just created confusion now, so that there's no standards of anything regarding integrity,
Speaker 2 33:14
you know. And I just divert, I'm going to diverge for just a moment, not focus on you, Christina, but I want to focus on something else, and that is why do you think people like him? I mean, almost half of the United States wants the vote. Are
Speaker 5 33:29
they
Speaker 2 33:30
all just crazy?
Speaker 1 33:32
No, not whatsoever. I think there's a lot of reasoning behind it, that yeah, I've done lots of deep dives down rabbit holes, listen to people, talk to people. There's a lot of really sensible logic behind why people support Trump.
Speaker 2 33:45
Yeah, well, it's interesting. I was watching comedian Dave Capel talk about why people like Trump, and he said in the interviews before he became president, Hillary Clinton was sitting up there and with Trump and Hillary Clinton attacked him for shirking on his tax responsibilities, and he said, Of course, I am. He said, I'm paying as little tax as I can. I'm proud of that, and she said, You see, and, and he said, you see, the thing is, I own it. He said, and if you didn't like what I was doing, you would change the tax code, but you don't, do you? Because all of your donors want you to keep the tax code that way, so they can all shirk it. The difference between you and me is I'm proud of the way I play the system, and if you want to change it, you should change the tax code, and I thought, and that Capel says at that moment the star was born, and what he did is he caught out. This is why people see Trump as honest,
Speaker 1 34:58
yeah,
Speaker 2 34:59
because he. Calls out stuff that many people don't have the courage to own and call out, and then he's labeled as manipulative, say one thing and do another, etc. Now, is he? Of course, but so is everyone else in politics. It's the political game, you say the right thing, so you can get elected,
Speaker 1 35:21
right? Right.
Speaker 2 35:22
And, but, so it's interesting that we target him. So I'm wondering, if I was to work with you deeper, I'd say go deeper and find out exactly what is it like to talk about being a woman, and what he's done to make you unsafe as a woman. I'm more interested in that. So I would suggest we can do it online, or we can do it at another time. You can do it, but I'll go deeper into really the role that he plays for you as a woman, and the role that he, where he diminishes, you know, his relationship to women primarily has been one of objectification, an incredible diminishment, and many women will vote for him and love him.
Speaker 1 36:05
Yeah,
Speaker 2 36:05
and he's of course he's totally manipulative, as many politicians are, but he's, and he's also a narcissist, you know, he's very self-oriented. I can continue with various other adjectives, but that's not the point. The point is, where are we caught by him?
Speaker 1 36:24
Yeah,
Speaker 2 36:25
and why do people like him so much? Because they're not all fools, as you and I know. And so this stops the.. it doesn't mean now that you agree with him, or I agree with him, but it changes my reactivity.
Speaker 1 36:39
Yeah,
Speaker 2 36:40
I start thinking about it deeper,
Speaker 1 36:45
so there's something. Also, there's a way that Trump tells the truth, whatever that truth is for him. There's a way that he brings his voice that probably, if I am being really honest, I would admit to, I wish I could do that, even a tiny little bit of a fraction, and that even feels dangerous to say, because who wants to look like that?
Speaker 2 37:14
Well, you see, he doesn't care, or he, or he's very wise in the way he cares, and so the so that quality he has that you would like more of is an important one to develop in you the courage to say things that are not always politically correct as he does all the time,
Speaker 1 37:33
yeah, yeah, and so it's just so funny because I want to come in with a disclaimer very quickly to anyone listening and saying no, no, no, I don't want to be like Trump, I don't want to be like Trump. So, so just to couch this in, in the sort of the background theory that we're looking at here, it's it's really that he's representing something that I see, which has been a bit of a no-no for me in my life, which is telling the hard truths. Now, I actually take great pride in identifying myself as what I call the skinny branch shaker, right? Like, I really enjoy that part of it, but I know there's plenty of times that I don't, and so I want to, can I take this theme and just run with it a little bit, because this telling, not telling the hard truth, shows up in my work a lot, and
Speaker 2 38:16
I just, yeah, yeah, yeah, before you go there, because you're saying something quite profound is, and this connects to being a woman, as often as women, women's voices have historically insulted times to be marginalized, and so if you have a look, alike at Trump, who's a man, and he says whatever he wants, and it's not to really have a view that might be politically incorrect or not quite culturally appropriate, this becomes a huge thing of internal and external oppression for women.
Speaker 1 38:48
Yeah, yeah. Okay, and this is so crucial, right? You and I've talked about this in the past, and it's been a bit of a godsend for me in understanding my own relationship to my marginalization at times in my life as a woman, so I, the woman you know, the voice of women having been marginalized, and then you get someone like Trump, and then you get all these women voters who support him and create lobby groups and stand up, and so can you just unpack what that is like? I think I understand that from my own work, why that is the case, but from your vantage point, like, why are these women, who they're women, their voices have been marginalized to greater or lesser degrees? Why would they be supportive of somebody like Trump?
Speaker 2 39:34
You know, I don't know. It's a good question. I don't know. Oh,
Speaker 1 39:38
I was so sure you would have the answer to that.
Speaker 2 39:40
I wish I had no, I don't know that clearly people, people are relieved at his voice for many reasons, they feel he's speaking for them, he's telling what they would like to say, and this is often marginalized people, paradoxically, that will feel drawn to him because he's. Saying he goes to court, and he says he shows his anger, and he shows his frustration. He lets people have it. Doesn't matter where the context is, he's just saying, "You see, it's a sham, whatever. Now, could be a sham or not, but he's saying what he feels, and people are relieved to hear that voice and to stand behind who you are.
Speaker 1 40:26
Wow, now he doesn't know crazy,
Speaker 2 40:30
but, but his voice is so.. I think people identify, you know. I don't know specifically why women are drawn to him, but I would imagine many people feel drawn to him, and often his crowds are very loud and boisterous, like ears, and you can see a lot of politicians who imitate him now becoming like him.
Speaker 1 40:49
Yeah, well, and then I look at the political discourse. I mean, obviously the US political discourse dominates on Trump, but we have it all over. We have it here in Canada, and there's this way that I look at, I'll just call it the left, that you know, they're just, just can't seem to move beyond what I would call the shock, or the, you know, just sort of like indignant, like, oh, this is, you know, and I'm kind of like, look, we can't afford as humans to be in shock about this anymore, we need to move forward, and we need to understand and like unpack this, and you know it's, it's so frustrating being on the sidelines of the political discourse, which is just as much in my country as in yours, in a way that, like, that there's not that understanding, and there's not that willingness to look at the role that we're actually playing in creating the very polarity, and like all that incredible vitriol that's going across back and forth, it's just, it's just so hard to watch that without that unpacking and understanding of it. I know you, you absolutely,
Speaker 2 41:52
no question. And for me, for me, you know, we can continue on this discussion forever, actually, because for me, when I have a look at the reactivity and the liberal view, and it's kind of dismissive, like superior.
Speaker 5 42:06
Yeah, they don't know what they're
Speaker 2 42:07
talking about, and the dimension that's that escalates the other side. The other side feels you don't really even think we have a legitimate way of thinking. We're a bunch of fools here, and that's just not the case. There's a complex view behind Trump, and it's underestimated, and it continues bothered to be,
Speaker 1 42:28
yeah. And that's the hardest part, as I watch the left fail to sort of educate themselves about that reality, which is that the right is very, very well organized, very well understood,
Speaker 2 42:42
and the left also has so many problems, like when we.. what I notice is around the enthusiasm for making everything right and making everyone equal results in the reaction of the more conservative voice, and then it comes in, and I think that's the same case in Canada as it is
Speaker 1 43:00
in the States, the
Speaker 2 43:01
liberal voice creates the more conservative voice,
Speaker 1 43:05
yeah,
Speaker 2 43:06
as they each do, and they play it off in the polarity, and I feel like if you want to have a way of working, you have to all work together. This is Mandela,
Speaker 1 43:17
yeah, and there's a part of me that also hears it, like almost like a children's song. We all have to work together, like we've been hearing this since we were children, right? We have a hard time. We're very resistant to our shadow, aren't we?
Speaker 2 43:32
Very right.
Speaker 1 43:35
Yeah, yeah. Superiority,
Speaker 2 43:37
this is the spiritual rank you started with. We all sticky, sticky
Speaker 2 43:42
morally superior. I've got right on my side. Look what's happened to me. Look at my experience as a Jew, as a blackness, or whatever it is, and it never works.
Speaker 1 43:54
Yeah,
Speaker 2 43:54
never has. That's not it works.
Speaker 1 43:58
No, it's like some of the ego work I remember doing when I was in spiritual communities many, many years ago, it was like, if you knew what I'd been through, you wouldn't put upon me the way you are, like there's almost like this sort of like the race to the most, you know, victim, the biggest victimization that we could come up with, because then if I reach there first, then everybody's just gonna back the hell up, and then leave me alone, and you know, give me the respect that I deserve, and you know, all that victim power, which
Speaker 6 44:30
to
Speaker 1 44:30
my mind doesn't actually have any power at all. It's interesting.
Speaker 2 44:34
Well, yeah, it's complex. Foucault did a lot of work on power in that area. Sorry, who
Speaker 1 44:40
did a lot of work? Foucault. Yes, yes, we're familiar with Foucault. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to bring this into a little bit more of granular, or a little bit more of a practical level, for a second, if you're cool with this, because there's a way in which you know, in my organizational work, I see these. Patterns operating, and so there's a couple things I'm just going to share, and then if we can just sort of like tease that apart, and you can help me sort of bring even deeper understanding. I think that's going to be useful for people listening, because these are not unusual examples, they're common. So, you know, I was just thinking about a team that I was brought in to work with many years ago, but they were, you know, it stayed with me. It was impactful, and so I was brought in specifically because, and these were senior leaders, and there were these two people who were not playing nicely together on the team, and so I had some individual conversations with those two, identified the identified dyad, and I recognized very, very quickly that this was not the story, that there was a much bigger story on the team that was not being told, and what I recognized was that the leader of the team, who had brought me in to work with these, this dyad, was not, he was like he was hiring me to tell the truth to them that he couldn't tell them that their behavior was not working, so that was the first example. The second was getting an evaluation after running a session with a group that I got to know over a very long period of time, very comfortable, connected, and reading the evaluation and hearing all these things in it about just criticism of this criticism of that criticism of this and just really scratching my head after and saying what, like, you know, what was it that prevented you from being able to actually bring that voice up in the room and co-create your solution? So I see a, I see a similarity in those two situations around like telling the hard truth. Do you, do you also see that?
Speaker 2 46:42
Yeah, yeah, I think in the second situation, criticism in the background of criticism could easily be often this is what happens at the water cooler, everyone is gossiping or criticizing, whatever, and that is because it's there's not enough directness of interaction and communication, what's often so when people are more direct, when they're honest with each other, they don't need to gossip to other people about them, they can have it up without and create greater collaboration together, but it's edgy, there's a developmental growth step in that, and so people don't have it, and you know, and I've seen working in many organizations in Canada that people are very nice. There's this niceness, but it's untrustworthy, because behind all sorts of stuff goes on that's not so nice.
Speaker 1 47:35
Yeah,
Speaker 2 47:36
other than bring out the non-not nice side, it gets repressed, and then underneath you have that dark niceness,
Speaker 1 47:43
yeah.
Speaker 2 47:44
So, I think, I think what you're hearing is that the leader of the first group, the first example, was unable to be direct. He was unable to, or she was unable to really say, "Hey, folks, this isn't working, I want you to sort it out. You know, I'm really.. you know, I had an experience. I've had two experiences, or many experiences with this, of course, but I had experienced two experiences I'd love to share. If that's okay,
Speaker 1 48:06
yeah, please. The
Speaker 2 48:07
first experience around directness was many years ago. The group, a group I was working with, a CEO and his team, one of the members was irritating everyone else, and he said, let them have it, they gotta have it, and he came in, and he said, I need people to be very direct, and he said towards this person, and people were very direct, and that didn't work either, but what happened is the person who was the focus felt bullied, felt it was the worst meeting they'd had in their lives, and they didn't stop talking about it for years, and I thought that didn't work, and after that I took away that the best process would have been, and this was a wrong conclusion, actually. In total, and I'll tell you why, but I took away that the best way to do it is, do it off, you know? If there's feedback, they're offline, get feedback, do a 360 do some kind of evaluation, help the CEO lead it, be it, help the CEO of their edges, etc. All of it in the background, but not in the group, because the group will gang up on an individual, they'll all feel right, you see that self-righteousness playing out again, and that person is wrong, and it becomes a real diminishment and not harmful. More recently, I was invited into another group. I work a lot with CEOs and executive teams, so I was working. I was invited into a group, and one of the particular members of the group was very disrupted, very good at what they did, but very poor in how they did it, and all the members the group were upset with him, the whole group were upset with it, and no one was being direct. Sound familiar? Yeah, so I said. To the CEO. Okay, listen, you got to do a 360 on this person, sir, because this is a real problem. It's creating havoc in your organization, it's messing up your engagement scores. Everyone is unhappy, people are leaving the organization because of this person, but the way they do things is very, very good. What they do is right, but how they do it, as we, and it's consistent messaging, and it never got resolved. And so I went over to facilitate them, or facilitate them every six months, or so I went over to facilitate them, and I said, "We're bringing it out to this year, we have to, but I was afraid, because I thought I don't want to gang up, and then I spoke to the CEO about it, and neither did he, and he framed it really well. In fact, his first piece of feedback was, let's be really honest with each other, he gave someone else in the group feedback, and it slowly moved to this person, and I then supported the person's voice too, so we didn't have a ganging up, we didn't have one person being right and the others wrong, because the edges or the development was in two places, always were always long was in two places.
Speaker 5 51:14
The one
Speaker 2 51:14
area for development is the feedback that this person needed to hear very clearly, which was given. The second area of development is people needed to be skillfully direct. The key is not in a self-righteous way, not in a beating way, but as a true sense of how do we work better together and bring out their own voices. And that team needed to grow, so there was many, many areas of growth in that team, and those were the two primary ones we were working on. So everyone came out enriched with the awareness that they need to grow. It was a very, very productive meeting. Actually, the nice thing about it is I didn't go away and do a 360 or something and go over the edge for them and be direct, but they did it themselves, and that creates much more sustainability.
Speaker 1 52:01
Yeah, okay, you just said something there that you would talk about a lot in our work. Go over the edge, so when you say the edge, can you just say what you mean?
Speaker 2 52:10
I've been trying to kind of use the word edge, and then kind of explain it. An edge basically is an invisible boundary between that which is known, that which is familiar, known, comfortable, and that which is emerging, so it's a growth place, it's a growth path, it's this invisible boundary where you move into an area that you're not quite familiar with. So people are really nice, and then they have trouble, they don't know what to do, so they gossip, or they indirect, or they hope someone else deals with it, but the crossing the edge, going over the edge, would mean actually being direct and sharing with them, similarly, if someone is getting feedback and they're not hearing it, stopping and hearing what's going on and really getting the feedback and drilling deeply into to find the wisdom of it becomes really important. That's also an edge, and those were the two edges of two growth patterns that were evident
Speaker 7 53:00
in this group,
Speaker 1 53:02
yeah. And I get the feeling, and this is from my experience as well, that groups don't tend to stumble on that ability to be skillful themselves all that often, do they?
Speaker 2 53:12
No, they don't. I mean, most people are afraid of being direct because they see the repercussions of it, therefore they don't do it all, rather than recognizing this is about a polarity coming together simultaneously, we either think we have to be kind or direct, but actually tough love or being loving and firm can go simultaneously together. This assumption of polarity in the way we do things is not right. We can be very loving and very kind and very direct at the same time.
Speaker 1 53:43
Yeah, so let's just pretend that somebody's listening right now who knows they're not being direct when they need to be direct. They've been sitting on that pattern, they're doing the nice thing, they don't have the benefit of us for much longer. What, like, what kind of advice would you have for someone about building that skillfulness? I know that's a super general question, but like, what, what could somebody do in that situation?
Speaker 2 54:11
What they got to do, the first thing they got to do, Christina, is they got to be working on themselves in terms of their reactiveness, and was they gonna find out why am I not being direct, what's going on, and recognize that in some ways they can be really tough, but indirect gossiping, whatever else, being reactively moody, being snippy, or whatever it might be with that person. The second thing they got to do is, if they recognize and they're not direct when they find that out, is to think they don't have to let go of their kindness and the consideration. In fact, being direct can be a very kind act as well. I think that becomes really important.
Speaker 1 54:51
Yeah, by
Speaker 2 54:53
the way, so I'm sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 1 54:55
no, we are, we are wrapping up. So just want to take a second and. A, like, thank you so much, Stephen. This has been exceptional. I really appreciate it, and I hope there might even be a part too. Thanks for being with me today. So, you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges. If there's anything you don't agree with, thanks for joining us. And see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 55:31
Bye.