Author: Terence

I am a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. My current ministries focus on consultancy and teaching about consensus based decision-making, mediation, governance training and professional supervision for Ministers. I am co-author of the book "The Church Guide For Making Decisions Together". I live on the beautiful Far South Coast of NSW from where I undertake ministry across the globe. Contact me at terence@makingchurchdecisions.com

Six Thinking Hats – A Book Review

6 Thinking Caps

A special way to think

Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono was first published many years ago (in the 1980’s). As such it could be considered out of date. However, it remains highly relevant and should be introduced to a new audience.

De Bono believes that there is a problem with the normal approach to dealing with issues. The normal approach is to talk about what you like or do not like about an idea. This leads to people becoming combative and only seeing the issue from their point of view. De Bono sees this argumentative approach as inefficient and unproductive. Like people who are committed to consensus building, he wants people to work together. His way of getting people to work together is to divide up the consideration of an issue into six categories. The 6 ways to look at an issue are called six thinking hats.

The Six Thinking Hats

When you approach an issue that needs a decision what do you need to know? Some people want information, others need to be sure that risks are taken into account, for some people how they feel is a crucial consideration and others look for new options or a positive view in a situation. Each of these is a way of exploring an issue and each has its place.

Based on these different approaches de Bono offers a “hat” for each one. His six hats each have their own colour and when wearing it people look at an issue from a different angle. The hats are:

White: is neutral and objective. Wearing this hat people are focused on facts and figures – data.

Red: carries the idea of passion, emotions.  Wearing the red hat people talk about their feelings, provide an emotional perspective on the situation.

Black: is serious, maybe even negative/sombre. When working with this hat people are encouraged to point out weaknesses and to be cautious and careful.

Yellow: is sunny and positive. Wearers look for the positives and point to where there is hope.

Green: carries the image of abundance and growth. This is the place for creativity and generating new ideas.

Blue: like the sky, it is above everything else. The blue hat is concerned with organizing the process and the use of the other hats.

How to use the hats

This is a fairly simple process but because it is a new thing to many people de Bono spends time unpacking the use of the hats. For example, the black hat is curious and careful and should not be only seen as negative; and the red hat allows emotions to be respected without having to justify them and then to be able to be placed alongside other perspectives.

Basically the leader of a discussion says to the group that now we are all going to put on a particular hat. So if it is our white hats -what information or data do you know or need to know to help us to think about this problem?  Putting on the green hat has everyone bringing their creative thinking to the task and thinking laterally about an issue – it encourages creativity.

The key to using the hats is to sense when a particular perspective on a problem is going to move the discussion along. Here the leader is crucial as they will need to sense the next thing that is necessary to build insight and discernment.

Thinking hats and consensus building

The main similarity between de Bono’s thinking hats and a consensus approach to decision-making is that both want people to work together rather than to argue with each other. De Bono emphasizes that arguing back and forth only entrenches positions and does not guarantee that all the information and options are in front of the group. His approach is to get people to work together by looking at an issue or problem from the same angle at the same time. This builds collaboration, shared understanding and a sense of partnership in finding a solution.

Consensus building also affirms the value that we are all on the same team and has the aim of ensuring that everything that we need to make a good decision is out on the table. The six thinking hats, like consensus processes, respect all points of view and know that we need all of them to make a good decision.

Conclusion

There are many ways in which issues can be explored. The best ones are those that build collaboration, reduce competition and generate the best information and ideas. In this respect, Edward de Bono’s thinking hats make a wonderful addition to the tools that achieve these ends.

 

Liminal spaces – a waiting time

Easter Saturday and Consensus Building

Liminal spaces are essential in life. What can Easter Saturday teach us about how to do discernment? For these ideas, I am indebted to my colleague, Rev Dr John Squires. John wrote a very fine post at Easter called: “A time in-between the times, a space in no space.”

In his reflection, he observed that “Easter Saturday is a liminal space. The word liminal comes from the Latin word līmen, which means “a threshold”. Technically, that is the place that marks off one space from another.” For the first disciples, there was something slow, cautious and anxious about Easter Saturday. For today’s Christians, there is a waiting hopefulness that there is something to celebrate after Easter Saturday. For all, it is a time in between – neither one thing nor the other.

You can’t rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday – one just has to wait in hope. There are no shortcuts – it takes time and patience.

Consensus building discernment has these times of waiting. Times between what is known and what might be. This is the creative moment where God is doing God’s work while we stand by helpless – except in our patience and hopefulness.

Liminal spaces – waiting for God

I know so many people who resist using consensus discernment because they can’t cope with the uncertainty. Consensus discernment is a process that requires us to let go of what we know and to wait in hope. Built into it is uncertainty!

Instead many people like to stay with what they know – never letting go of their points of view and the importance they give to their experience. Many people cannot let go of their preferred solution. So they stay mired in the present and the future is lost to them.

Others want to rush to the next idea, a great plan, a quick fix that will remove the tension of not knowing what to do. For these people there is no “time between time” and they cannot find “a space in no space.”

However, the way to God’s future so often requires patience and waiting!! Instead of clinging to the past or rushing to our idea of the future, consensus-building invites us to wait. The waiting is not passive or lazy. This waiting is expectant, attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit and patiently waiting for God to do what we cannot do in our human strength and wisdom. Discernment needs its Easter Saturday experiences.

What to do in the liminal spaces

Like the disciples – be together. Stay connected to the community of discernment and support each other.

Do not pretend that it is easy to wait for discernment to come – because a lot of times it isn’t! Share honestly the experience of loss and grief that comes with the realization that things are being put to death.

Reach out to the God who has brought you to this liminal space of waiting – keep praying and engaging in spiritual disciplines.

Don’t try and come up with a quick fix – there probably isn’t one! In patience imagine all the possibilities and then let God surprise you with the gift of new insight and a future that you could never have made happen.

Conclusion

As John Squires observed: “On this Saturday, the day in between Friday and Sunday, we look back at what was lost … and we yearn for what is yet to be.” Consensus-based discernment is a spiritual practice that can mirror the Easter experience. Yes, there is loss, waiting, anxiety and uncertainty – but ultimately there is new life by the grace and work of God.

 

Overcoming our blind spots

overcoming blind spots

Blind spots and me

Blind spots – all of us have differing degrees of ignorance about what is going on inside us. In the previous post, I used the example of white privilege as a case study on blind spots. There I wrote about the reality of them and how they distort our relationships and world view.

It is dangerous for others and harmful to us when we don’t recognize our our blind spots. When we don’t recognize our privilege then we:
    • mess up and don’t make the best response to situations
    • don’t understand the feelings of others
    • fail to provide genuine spaces for all to contribute
    • damage relationships
    • miss out on accessing the best wisdom to address our problems

Blind spots are real and we need to deal with them for the sake of creating healthy communities – Christian and otherwise.

Consensus discernment is hampered by blind spots

Have you ever been in conversation, or perhaps a meeting, where someone is incredibly biased? So often this person doesn’t even realise how their behaviour is excluding or harming others. For them, their attitudes are normal and they assume that everyone else thinks the same. And if they don’t think the same then they certainly should!

I recall working with a church body introducing them to consensus processes. After the presentation, the first three people to speak were all white, male, middle-aged, first world, well-educated clergy. They were all opposed to consensus processes. From their point of view, the parliamentary style of debating was just fine and everyone could do it. It was immediately clear that they just did not recognise the privilege that came from their position as white, male, middle-aged, first world, well-educated clergy! Multiple blind spots prevented them from seeing how other people were disadvantaged by the things that work for them.

Consensus building is seriously disadvantaged when people do not deal with their blind spots. Consensus discernment only works if:

    • all the people in a meeting can contribute
    • the culture and practices make it a safe space to contribute
    • the powerful keep quiet long enough to hear from the weak
    • people are humble enough to be corrected by different perspectives
    • the methods for exploring issues do not privilege certain participants

What can be done?

1. It’s a spiritual problem

The first thing to understand is that these blind spots are a spiritual issue. This is because they prevent us from living as Christ intends. When we live out of our subconscious privilege then we disempower and estrange others which is the antithesis of the reconciliation that God seeks through Christ.

Therefore the first thing that we need to do is to listen carefully to the heart message of the Scripture. In this, we must take on the role of the humble one who expects God to correct us.

Quoting Richard Rohr: “Evil is always incapable of critiquing itself. Evil depends upon disguise and tries to look like virtue. We have to fully cooperate in God’s constant work, spoken so clearly in Mary’s prayer (Luke 1:52) which is always “bringing down the mighty from their thrones and exalting the lowly.” It is the de facto story of history, art, and drama. And we have to get in on the story.”

Groups that seek consensus will create a culture where people can be challenged to see their biases and the weak can find their voice. We have to live the story of “exalting the lowly” and “bringing down the mighty” – even when we are the mighty ones.

2. Spiritual disciplines

If we have a spiritual problem then we need spiritual resources in order to effectively address it. Richard Rohr is a contemplative Franciscan so he offers the experience of his tradition.

“Some form of contemplative practice is the only way (apart from great love and great suffering) to rewire people’s minds and hearts. It is the only form of prayer that dips into the unconscious and changes people at deep levels — where all of the wounds, angers, and recognitions lie hidden. Prayer that is too verbal, too social, too external, too heady never changes people at the level where they really need to change. Only some form of prayer of quiet changes people for good and for others in any long term way.”

The important take away here is that the spirituality of our meetings cannot be some superficial touch of the Bible and a few rushed words of prayer. People in our meetings are full of feelings and in need of correction and healing or both. So we need a spirituality of gathering that makes room for these things to be addressed. These are not things that we put at the start and end like bookends to a collection of stories. They are the story.

3. A deep and genuine desire for equality

Rohr again: “As long as all of us really want to be on top, and would do the same privileged things if we could get there, there will never be an actual love of equality. This challenges all of us to change and not just those folks who temporarily are ‘on the top.'”

This is an attitude of the mind, and orientation of the heart. It requires the saving work of Jesus Christ to have touched our lives and an openness to the Holy Spirit leading us to sanctification.

How sad I find it when I am present at discussions among Christians and arrogance is so obvious. It is as though the experience and the perspectives of others are irrelevant. Yet in the ecclesiology of my church, this is a heresy. The Uniting Church declares that government in the church is a calling from God to women and men who are chosen because God has gifted them for this role. So to deny them processes that help to give them their voice is to insult God. All persons who are present in our decision-making contexts are there because God has gifted them to us. Therefore we do well to create processes that ensure that all can contribute.

4. Live the way of Jesus

“Jesus’ basic social agenda was simple living, humility, and love of neighbour. We all have to live this way ourselves, and from that position, God can do God’s work rather easily.” (Richard Rohr)

Consensus-based processes assume love for neighbour and humility. By building these expectations into the way we discern Christ’s will for his church we are laying down the tracks that will help overcome blind spots. Sometimes we have to learn by doing. Therefore using processes that match what we know is authentic Christian behaviour – even before people are ready to do it – can deliver positive outcomes and change lives. I think it was John Wesley who, when concerned about the poverty of this faith, was told to “preach faith until you have faith”.  So let’s do the things that express and foster faithfulness until they become natural.

Conclusion

It is naive to think that we can avoid subconscious biases influencing our meetings. Therefore the best thing to do is to name the issue right out in front. This will mean that on some occasions we name our privilege and the disadvantage of others so that we can try and work out what to do with it.

It is foolish to think that people will do their own spiritual work before they come to our church meetings. Of course, some will but many will need help. Embed deep spiritual practices into your meeting – especially when biases start to show up and/or things get ugly!!

Create processes that reflect the highest Christian expectations – equality, respect, humility, love, desire for growth and maturity in faith, etc. Lay down the tracks for faithfulness until that behaviour becomes the norm.

Finding our blind spots

Blind spots – they are with us all the time

Blind spots were something that Jesus was very concerned about. In a very well known passage from Luke he is recorded as saying:
“How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Luke 6:42)
The inability to see inside ourselves is a major problem for our relationships, our effectiveness at work and our ability to build consensus with others. Our blind spots mean that we do not realise the problems that we make for other people! When we do not see the things that put us outside a healthy relationship with others then the wheels come off our ability to collaborate with them.

Where are your blind spots?

My thinking about blind spots and its impact on consensus building was stimulated by an article written by Romal Tune. The article appeared in Sojourners Magazine. In that article, he interviews Richard Rohr who is a Franciscan priest from the USA on his experience of white privilege.
As I read the interview, I was reflecting on how deeply hidden our biases are! Our core operating assumptions are often unknown to us. Everything that he was saying about white privilege can be applied to other social advantages. Many of us do not think of ourselves as racist. We men probably don’t see ourselves as sexist. Social status in Australia is not venerated as much as it is in other cultures.  Many members of the clergy don’t like to see themselves as superior or privileged over lay people. Yet within us, there are assumptions that drive our behaviour that surely rest on the privileges of race, gender, class and social position.

White privilege: a study in subjective blindness

Rohr says: “White privilege is largely hidden from our eyes if we are white. Why? Because it is structural instead of psychological, and we tend to interpret most things in personal, individual, and psychological ways. Since we do not consciously have racist attitudes or overt racist behaviour, we kindly judge ourselves to be open-minded, egalitarian, “liberal,” and therefore surely not racist.
Because we have never been on the other side, we largely do not recognize the structural access, the trust we think we deserve, the assumption that we always belong and do not have to earn our belonging, the “we set the tone” mood that we white folks live inside of — and take totally for granted and even naturally deserved.”
We may not be racist but we can presume and enjoy all the benefits of white privilege. We may not be patriarchal but men operate as though they have a right of presence and agency that not many women automatically feel belongs to them. Some clergy may like to think that they can treat all members of the church with respect, but they still enjoy the privileged place of being sought after as a contributor and counsel in all situations.

What’s wrong with using these privileges?

Rohr notes: “I profited from white privilege on so many fronts that I had to misread the situation many, many times before I began to feel what others feel and see what others could clearly see. Many must have just rolled their eyes and hopefully forgiven me!”
When we don’t recognize our privilege then we:
    • mess up and don’t make the best response to situations
    • don’t understand the feelings of others
    • fail to provide genuine spaces for all to contribute
    • damage relationships
    • miss out on accessing the best wisdom to address our problems
Rohr again: “Frankly, it is dangerous to put the Bible into the hands of people who still worship their own group, their own country, their own denomination, or any other idolatry. They will always abuse it.”
Perhaps even more concerning is that because of our blind spots we probably end up abusing the Bible and misrepresenting God! When we take our subjective reality and make it the social norm then we put our perspective/group on top. When people are on top they often use the Bible to keep themselves there!!

Where are your blind spots?

Before you can answer this question you need to get help. We cannot know how our subjective worldview skews things. The only way to glimpse its impact is to have friends, colleagues and opponents point them out to you.

In the next post, I will look further at this question. For now, I invite you to prayerfully reflect on your situation. Where might your privilege be and what negative effects is it having?

Blind spots and consensus discernment

Our ability to grasp how our biases and privileges are at work is incredibly difficult. Failure to understand and allow for the inherent privileges that we possess makes genuine engagement with others impossible. When others are not engaged in the process of discernment then genuine consensus is not possible. Consensus building approaches to discernment need to address the subconscious and subjective privilege of all participants in the process. To fail to do so entrenches the dominant privilege(s) and creates significant disruption to the quality of the community’s life and decision-making ability.

Values Trump Facts – Is Consensus-Building Possible?!?

Is there hope for consensus-building when the facts don’t overcome existing values / biases? According to some the answer is “NO!!!” I’m not so sure. Here’s why.

Why don’t facts seem to matter any more?

On May 8th, 2019 David Barker and Morgan  Marietta wrote a piece in Niemanlab. In the article they explored  the impact of the Mueller Report on US public opinion about the President of the USA. Mueller’s investigation into the Trump election campaign and the Russians found no collusion but  areas where there may have been an obstruction of justice by the President.
These two eminent political scientists concluded that the Mueller Report did not move the needle for the vast majority of people in the USA with respect to their attitude to the President. If people already thought that the President was engaged in illegal activities they were confirmed in that view. If they thought the President was innocent then Mueller confirmed it for them.

Values count more than the data

Why does this happen? According to Barker and Marietta it comes down to this. “We found that voters see the world in ways that reinforce their values and identities. If they start with a particular set of values then everything they receive by way of information is interpreted as support of those values. In such a context “fact checking” or hearing “the other side’s point of view” has no impact on changing the mind of people.”
An interesting illustration of this phenomenon is the attitude of Americans about whether there is racism in the USA. Quoting from the article: “… according to our data from five years of national surveys from 2013 to 2017, the most important predictor of whether a person views racism as highly prevalent and influential is not her partisan identification. It is not her general ideological outlook. It is not the amount or type of media that she consumes. It isn’t even her own race. It is the degree to which she prioritizes compassion as a public virtue, relative to other things like rugged individualism.”

What does this mean for consensus-building?

The pessimistic view of the authors is that “Perhaps the most disappointing finding from our studies … is that there are no known fixes to this problem.” Well that’s all a bit disheartening!!! I disagree with them.

The first things that it means for a consensus-building approach are not to try and ram “the facts” down a person’s throat; and secondly do not be disparaging of others as bigots and closed minded.

Findings like those is this article are greatly encouraging to the people who understand consensus based discernment or decision-making. Why? Because it affirms how important it is to get behind the presenting words and feelings. It compels us to look past the first things that people say, and instead attempt to understand what is important to them. Consensus-building processes know that people act out of their values – fears, hopes, identity, world view. These processes want to hear about these things from people. Consensus-building processes take values and identity seriously and respect them.

Where values differ these need to be explored. However, it is a much richer and respectful conversation if we invite others to tell us what is important to them. This is a much healthier and more constructive approach than seeking to persuade them about “the facts”.

The great failure of the parliamentary style of debate and decision-making is that it gets into this world of duelling facts. Then when the debate is over and the vote is taken there is a decision. But in the world we live in today the divisions remain because the values have not changed.

What can be done?

Here are some attitudes and strategies that can be used in a consensus-building context to help avoid the stalemate that comes when facts reinforce values.

  • Get the agreed facts out on the table (even the ones that you don’t like!)
  • Ask people what they conclude from / make of this information.
  • Take a step back and find a way to talk about our values or the things that shape what is important for us. In the church this can include significant faith stories.
  • Speak about our understanding of God and God’s hope for the world.
  • Seek out common values and affirm the common ground. Note that people have many values and some will have precedence at different times. Some we may disagree with, yet many we will share.
  • Explore, with respect and humility, how the options / actions that we are discussing support our shared values.

Optimism can be found for the Christian community in that when we go deep enough we do have a common narrative /vision / hope. Many societies can find this common ground too – if they are prepared to work to find it.

However the great advantage that Christians have is that they have at their foundation the community that God has created through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This common ground is not their choice it is the will of God and our responsibility is to live into that reality. As the Apostle Paul noted there is one faith, one Lord one baptism – one God and Father of us all (Ephesians 4: 5,6).

Conclusion

Of course we have to deal with reality. There are not really ‘alternative facts”.

However we need to understand that it is our values that give meaning to the things that we see. If we are going to get past “duelling facts” and name calling them we have to explore values.  Consensus building processes understand this. They foster this deeper and respectful engagement, and provide the tools for discovering shared hopes and then actions.