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Drafting a Project of Piarist Community Life Madrid, 3rd April 2013 Dedicated to Pedro Lasheras
Introduction There is a beautiful passage at the beginning of the tale Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. The passage is at the beginning of the book where the reader is introduced to the main character. It reads as follows:
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-‐the-‐Pooh.”
I think that these words of Edward Bear are applicable to our basic life experience. There are lots of situations where at back of our minds we somehow suspect that perhaps there could be better ways for us to do things but we usually give up. We suffer, but we don’t have the time, the
energy, or the right circumstances for reflection that would be necessary to change the way things are. In my opinion, this is true of us, Piarists as well. It is true of the communities we live in, our schools we work in, and our parishes or the churches we serve in.
So if I had to give a quick answer to the question what I think community projects are good for, I would say: they provide us with the opportunity to stop bumping for a moment and think of why we are doing what we are doing.
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In this short presentation, I don’t want to talk about technicalities. Rather, what I set before me is to expand on this a little bit. So I want to say a few words about why we need community projects. What are community projects good for?
Starting with WHY In this part of the lecture I heavily rely on Simon Sinek’s great ideas in his lecture and book Start With Why? How Great Leaders Inspire Action. His ideas are summed up in the model he calls The Golden Circle. Let me show it to you.
This is what Sinek says.
“WHAT: Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. WHATs are easy to identify.” (43)
Perhaps in our case we could say the WHAT of the Piarist Order is to run schools. Our WHAT are schools or education.
“HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better. Not as obvious as WHATs, many think these are the differentiating or motivating factors in a decision.” (43)
I think when we Piarists speak about our style, or the Calasanctian style, or the way Calasanctius did things, we refer to this how. Also when we want to differentiate ourselves from other teaching orders, we enumerate elements that belong here. Sometimes I have the impression that we give answers too quickly. We give readymade answers. We already know what the community is like. We already know what our mission is. We know all too well what a superior should be like, or what a religious should be like. My question is: do we not give answers too soon? Do we dare to ask questions, and to question things, for the sake of getting deeper; for the sake of freeing our deepest desires, our deepest calling?
But let’s go on to the very center of Sinek’s model.
“WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? I think Sinek is absolutely right in saying that it is this WHY that should be at the focus of every company or
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organization, every individual. And I also think that the clarification of this WHY is the objective of what are called community projects.
Why do we exist? What is our purpose? What is the cause that we want to pursue, the cause that gives us strength and energy every day to get up in the morning and continue the whole day? Why do we exist in the first place? What inspires us as a community and as members of this community? These are the questions that community projects answer.
Two kinds of HOWs Sinek says there are two kinds of HOW’s. One is accessed from WHAT, the other from WHY.
The first type of HOW is the one that is accessed from outside, in other words from the WHAT. This kind of HOW emphasizes the differences from other organizations. And it can also emphasize in what way they are better, bigger, nicer, and so on. This HOW defines the company or the organization by WHAT it does. The greatest problem with it is that the company will get stuck in this WHAT. It won’t be able to do anything outside it. It will not have the freedom to do anything else. And when it wants to justify its existence, it will have to emphasize its difference from others. Basically it will have to convince people why it is better than others.
On the other hand, the HOW in the WHY à HOW à WHAT sequence is different. This kind of HOW is in a sense the inner structure of the WHY. It spells out the WHY of the organization. It even allows it to realize itself in several different ways. It won’t be fixed to a definite way of doing things. Using theological terms, we could perhaps say it will allow individual and personal incarnations of the same purpose, of the same WHY.
It will also free you from the constraint of proving that you’re the best, or at least better than others. You don’t have to be the best. You have to be good. Best and better are relative terms, and so they take your freedom. Comparing yourself to others is always a dangerous and self-‐destructing thing to do.
So if you know your WHY, others can join you and your cause. The WHY, a clear WHY, makes it possible to join forces around a cause. A clear WHY makes it possible to create community around a cause or belief. A community where each member is
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free, and even is called to, give life to that WHY. Each member will be fully responsible and not just some kind of a secondary citizen, or a simple executor.
Clarity of WHY creates community, because it makes possible a personal and responsible participation.
Come back to your original WHY As time goes by, it is quite frequent that the original WHY of a company or community loses its colour and flavour. The original WHY is no longer clear, and so the WHAT is no longer consistent with it. This is what Sinek says:
“A WHY is just a belief. That's all it is. HOWs are the actions you take to realize that belief. And WHATs are the results of those actions The only way people will know what you believe is by the things you say and do, and if you're not consistent in the things you say and do, no one will know what you believe. It is at the WHAT level that authenticity happens." (73-‐74)
So Sinek essentially says that your WHY becomes incarnate through your actions, your HOWs, in your WHATs. And WHAT you do must be consistent with what you believe. He also says that after clarity of WHY you need discipline to be consistent and authentic. You need discipline for this, in other words you always have to go back and start again from your WHY. You have to be sure that your HOWs and WHATs actually come from your WHY.
When we speak about community projects, this is another reason for doing them. You have to come back to your original WHY, time and again. I would say that, in our context, this is one of the principal tasks of provincial and local chapters. One of the main tasks lying before a province and local communities during a chapter is to gain a fresh look at our WHY. And an important part of it is to question what we take for granted.
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Question what you take for granted Why is it important to question what we take for granted? For two reasons, as Sir Ken Robinson, an education expert, says1. And these two reasons are: habits and habitats.
The way we do things in our everyday life, the routines that we follow, i.e. our habits, shape our way of thinking and our way of seeing things. And as time goes by, we lose contact with reality.
The second is habitats, that is, the environments we live in or work in. As Churchill once said: “We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.” Structures are not neutral. As Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler say in their book Nudge [Spanish: dar un codazo; Italiano: Spingere, Esortare; French: Pousser] : Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness – where they propose libertarian paternalism, for me a very Piarist thing:
“[…T]here is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ design. […] A good building is not merely attractive; it also ‘works’.” (3)
I think it is true of our religious life, personally, at a community level, and at the level of our organizations. The structures that we have constantly need revisions.
How can you step outside yourself? It is not very easy to revise the structures that you have. Because our habits and habitats belong to the things that we take for granted. And it is very difficult to see what you take for granted, precisely because you take them for granted. You need to step out of yourself and your structures, which are also parts of you. You are in a way expected to do what Baron Munchausen did in the famous story, where he pulled himself out of a swamp by his hair – as we can see in this picture.
Paradigms Paradigms are our mental structures, our way of seeing things. We do not simply perceive reality as it is. We create reality according to our paradigms.
But how can we recognize our paradigms? 1 Radio interview with Sir Ken Robinson. http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/232-‐dishymix/episodes/3066-‐sir-‐ken-‐robinson-‐creativity-‐innovatio
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I think this figure can help us.
It shows that the way we behave and the way we speak are related to the way we see things.
So if we want to understand better, and to learn more about our paradigms, we can examine our behavior and also our language.
Let me give you a simple example.
How much do you talk about people who are not present? And how do you talk about them? Could they be present? Would you speak the same way if they were there?
Stephen Covey, the great American thinker, that I am going to quote later as well, speaks about six metastasizing cancers, that is, six cancerous behaviors that are verbal behaviors. They are: criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, contending, and cynicism.
Feedback, correctio fraterna In trying to be able to look at ourselves and our structures, it is also helpful to ask feedback from those around us. This is also true personally and at a community level. Feedback from the other members in your particular community, or in more traditional terms, correctio fraterna, can be especially beneficial for the creation of trust within the community.
Feedback however should not be used for finding your individual WHY or purpose, or that of the community.
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A joke about feedback There is a joke, where someone is driving a car in a divided highway (autopista in Spanish), and as he is driving he is listening to the traffic news in the radio. And the radio says: “Attention. Attention. There is a car heading in the opposite direction in the highway.” And our man asks himself: “Only one? All of them are driving in the opposite direction!”
It is not for people outside to tell us what our purpose is. It is only a kind of assistance that helps us to step outside us in order to see what we don’t see. People can tell you that you are heading in the wrong direction. But if you want to go in the opposite direction, then you’d better not follow their advice. If this is your purpose, don’t change course.
Horizons So how can we step outside our structures? How can we see and question what we take for granted?
We need vantage points to do this. We somehow need to be able to look at ourselves and our structures from outside and from above.
The high-‐altitude points can be provided by looking far ahead and looking deep inside at the same time. When I say looking far ahead I don’t mean simply that we need long term goals. Rather than specific goals, we need horizons that are wide enough. Horizons extending in space and time, and in this sense we could say long term goals. We need these horizons in order to free our deepest desires.
Covey: the Hedgehog Concept I like very much the ideas in this regard by Stephen Covey. In his book The 8th Habit: he speaks about what could be called an extended version of the Hedgehog Concept . Covey has four questions:
-‐ What are you really good at, maybe the best in the world? -‐ What are you deeply passionate about? -‐ What will people pay for? In other words, what are the human needs and
wants being met that would drive your economic engine? -‐ What does your conscience counsel?
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Covey says: “The overlapping of all four areas is where your voice is to be found.” And adds: “[…T]his approach would apply for an individual finding his or her voice, as well as to an organization finding its voice.” (220)
What Covey calls voice, is in my opinion the same as what in theological terms is called vocation.
What are your strengths? I would like to add two points here, in order to refine things a little bit.
We usually speak about a person’s strengths, and what we mean by this are the things he or she does well. We have just seen Covey’s first question: What are you really good at? I have recently come across a book by Marcus Buckingham who presents a slightly but significantly different definition of a person’s strength. He defines strength this way:
“[…C]onsistent near perfect performance in an activity. “ (Now, Discover Your Strengths. How to Develop Your Talents and Those of the People You Manage, 20)
And in an interview he said this2:
“A strength is an activity that makes you feel strong—it's an activity that strengthens you. that invigorate you, that you have an appetite for, that cause you to practice more […]. ”
So according to this definition your strength is what strengthens you. And if that’s the case, it is you who can know what your strengths are. But it does not mean that to see our strengths comes easily. We have to make efforts to see them. Buckingham says we have to “keep our eyes peeled” for the signs of it.
He says:
“ the two most obvious signs of a strength that you could give your full attention to, is firstly, what do you find yourself positively anticipating, actively looking forward to? And then rapid learning: What do you pick up quickly? What do you find that you get so involved in, that you lose track of time?”
2 http://www.vistage.com/content-‐and-‐connectivity/vistage-‐library/5-‐questions-‐with-‐marcus-‐buckingham.aspx
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I think these ideas are especially helpful. And the activities that he suggests, which are basically paying attention to the signs of our strengths, can be made part of our prayer life, in the fullest sense of the word. Paying attention can happen in personal prayer, in a conversation with one’s spiritual accompanier, in personal meetings with friends and brothers, in a dialogue with your superior. The question in all these situations can be: what gives you strength? How can you experience and really see what your strengths are?
What do your feelings say? The second point that I would like to add concern our emotions. As you know emotions are especially important because they report from our deepest being. They report what our reactions are, but they also give information about our deepest needs and desires, our beliefs and attitudes.
As emotions and feelings have such a weight, it is very important to be clear about them. In his book Being Genuine: Stop Being Nice, Start Being Real Canadian author Thomas D’Ansembourg distinguishes two kinds of feelings: genuine feelings and feelings that are tainted with judgment and interpretation. In the Hungarian edition of his book there is a whole list of feelings that belong among this second type. The list includes such feelings as manipulated, abandoned, betrayed, not understood, humiliated, etc. The important thing with these feelings is that they are not feelings, rather they are judgments. They put others in boxes, they create separations, and instead of putting you into contact with reality they mislead you.
So it is really important to learn the language of feelings, to be able to give names to what you feel so that you can become aware of what you are truly experiencing.
How do personal projects relate to the community project? As we saw earlier, the same method applies for an individual finding his or her voice, or vocation, and a community finding its voice, or vocation. So just for fun, not entirely seriously, let me comment briefly on the relationship between personal projects and community projects. What I mean by personal project is the same as what Covey meant by finding your voice.
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Is the community project of a given community the sum of the personal projects of its members? Or is it the other way round? In other words, are the personal projects subordinate to the community project?
If personal projects are these (cf. figure) that you can see now,
is the project of the community a minimal overlap (cf. figure)?
And if it is a minimal overlap, does it work like color addition or color subtraction (cf.
figure)?
If it is like additive color combination, then the project of the community is added up by all the members. If it is like subtractive color combination, then the members have to give up something for the sake of the community.
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Or is it what I would call an extended overlap (cf. figure),
where each member contributes to the whole, the same way as in the case of additive color combination, and where the whole community and each member is called and able to participate in the particular relationships between two members.
I am not sure about the answer, and probably the models I use impose their limits on what we can say. But I have a quite strong opinion about two points.
First, it is not like color subtraction. It cannot be, it mustn’t be. If community extinguishes what its members have, if community can only be achieved by the members giving up their own color, their own voice, then either community is not worth creating it, or it is not community but a commune combined with some kind of slavery.
Second, community cannot simply be a minimal project. Even if the members don’t have to give up their voice, their color, what they have in common is not able to create community, or at least not a religious community. It is too weak, too superficial, and too accidental.
There could be perhaps another sort of relationship, which I could illustrate with this
figure (cf. figure).
What I think is important here is that each member is called to relate to the voice or calling of each other member. And for me it is also important what I mentioned in
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the “extended version”. Namely, community “happens” in the particular relationships between two members as well.
What can be said independently of the models I have presented is that there must be a dialogue between a member and the community. This dialogue is an ongoing one and it must be honest, open, and transparent. This dialogue necessitates an atmosphere of confidence.
The importance of trust I would like to finish with a few words about confidence.
Trust must be there beforehand. It is a prerequisite for the whole process of community project. But it is also the result of the experience that our WHYs, our purposes, our beliefs are similar or the same.
Trust is a prerequisite in the sense that you have to make yourself vulnerable if you want to create trust. Trust is not something that must be earned (cf. Marcus Buckingham: First, Break All the Rules. p. 116). If you think so, you in fact have mistrust. You have to run the risk of making yourself vulnerable to others in the community.
And trust is also the result of realizing that our values and beliefs are the same. This is where the individual WHYs meet and where they meet the community’s WHY. If this meeting does not happen, there cannot be community.
In practice, we usually take for granted that our WHYs and the community’s WHY coincide. And it is exactly the point where I set off. It is this where we should start our community and personal projects.
We have to question what we take for granted in order to create an environment of trust and confidence. Where we can discover our vocation, our WHYs individually and communally. Where we can flourish and develop our full potential. Where we can become what we are called to be.
Summary Let me sum up the theses that I wanted to make.
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1. Structures can become habits, they tend to fossilize. Structures are not neutral, they convey a message, they shape the way we think and see.
2. We have to try and get outside of ourselves and our existing structures. We have to question what we take for granted in our communities, in the order, and in our personal lives.
3. We need to come back to the WHY of our existence, because we usually get stuck with the WHAT and the HOW, and adopt a “from the outside in” approach.
4. The WHY comes from your heart and from the heart of the community. 5. It needs honesty with your feelings, and trust. 6. It also creates trust if we share the same beliefs and principles. 7. The personal projects of the members of a community and the community
project are internally related. There must be a constant dialogue between them.
A few books that I consulted and find important: -‐ Ilarduia, Juan Mari, Proyecto comunitario. Camino de encuentro y comunion,
Coleccion: Fronter Hegian 14, Frontera 2004. -‐ Ilarduia, Juan Mari, El Proyecto Personal Como Voluntad De Autenticidad,
Coleccion: Frontera Hegian 6, Frontera 2010. -‐ Covey, Stephen R., The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. Free Press
2004. -‐ Simon Sinek, Start with Why. How Great Leaders Inspire Action, Portfolio
2009. o Also his TED lecture, with the same title.
-‐ Buckingham, Marcus, Now, Discover Your Strengths. How to Develop Your Talents and Those of the People You Manage. Pocket Books 2004.
-‐ Robinson, Sir Ken, The Element. How Finding Your Passion Changes Evertything, Penguin Books 2009
-‐ Thaler, Richard – Sunstein, Cass R., Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Penguin Books 2009.
-‐ D’Ansembourg, Thomas: Being Genuine: Stop Being Nice, Start Being Real, Puddledancer Press 2007.