Cultivating Conditions
This work will likely be both uncomfortable and liberating. Discomfort will come through mental models and identity being challenged, and by some of the individual work happening publicly within the Collective. Liberation will come because doing this individual work is immensely rewarding and restorative, and will make you a better leader.
Cultivating the conditions is about preparing ourselves and our collaboration for the work of building Collective Power. It is essential foundational work, and the most underdone, rushed or even avoided part. Cultivating conditions is highly deliberate work - often slow and gentle. It is the intentional tilling of the soil so that when seeds are planted they take with strong roots and are able to grow tall over time. This work is often invisible, and only becomes visible when the seeds either fail or flourish.
Our frame
At CCL we made sense of our learning by deepening our framework for collective building power to transform systems.
For Collective Power to have the potential to transform systems, conditions must be cultivated at two levels - the individual level and within the collective.
Individual level
Collective Power becomes possible when enough leaders in Collectives change their own relationship with and use of power. Broadly, we learnt that the individual work of leaders is in 3 phases:
Leaders connecting with their ancestral and lived experiences that shape their understanding of power, how they use it, and what triggers & biases they hold.
Leaders reckoning with their ancestral and lived role in perpetrating and maintaining systemic harm .
Leaders reckoning with what they have lost by being raised in and upholding Western approaches to power. This step involves reconnecting to and valuing collectivist qualities of interdependence, shared accountability, ritual and the sacred, and connection to nature.
Collective level
Collective Power does not simply emerge. It requires careful, consistent and skilled building of conditions within a Collective. Building conditions means building shared:
Commitment to an ongoing process where it is understood that:
Internally - the Collective’s progress towards Collective Power will be iterative and non-linear: 2-steps forwards, 1-step back.
Externally - the dominant ways power is used in the systems the Collective is seeking to change will periodically assert themselves. In some instances, the collaboration’s emerging Collective Power will not be developed or resilient enough and power dynamics will revert back to status quo. Collaborations need to be aware that this ‘snapback’ is inevitable and requires fast action and redoubling of effort.
Willingness to examine and change the collaboration’s beliefs & structures. This includes the collaboration:
strengthening its relational practice to enable people to participate in more full and authentic ways - deepening trust, introducing time for storytelling, ritual and embodiment, and fostering shared values.
examining both formal and informal power dynamics, addressing structural barriers and inequities, and working towards creating a more transparent and inclusive environment.
Below we share learnings and questions about what it takes to cultivate conditions. We acknowledge the wisdom and generosity of those we have learnt with and call out their thought and practice leadership.
-
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world.
-
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world.
-
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world.