Video and transcript from Sunni Brown’s talk at Austin’s 2nd Annual Facilitator Summit, Control the Room
Please join us for the Control the Room 2021, which will be held Feb. 2-4, 2020. You can find out more and buy tickets here.
This is part of the 2020 Control The Room speaker video series.
In February we hosted the second annual facilitator summit, Control The Room, at Austin’s Capital Factory. We launched the summit last year in partnership with MURAL to create a space for facilitators to gather, break down the silos, and learn from one another.
The three-day summit is a rare opportunity to bring together an otherwise unlikely group of highly experienced and skilled professionals across various industries and crafts—from strategy consultants and negotiators to Scrum Masters and design thinkers.
Anyone interested in deepening their knowledge on how to successfully facilitate meaningful meetings and connect with other practitioners is welcome. Together, we dive into diverse methodologies, expand upon perspectives, and learn new insights and strategies that enrich our expertise.
This year we had the pleasure of welcoming 24 speakers, all innovation professionals, who shared their insights and strategies of successful facilitation.
One of those speakers was Sunni Brown, the Chief Human Potentialist at Sunni Brown Ink, a creative consultancy and agent of social change. Sunni’s presentation— “Seeing Past Your Me: How to Facilitate from a Place of Deeper Wisdom”—illustrated the impact of equanimity on effective facilitation.
Sunni explained the difference between facilitators that are “strong with force” versus “drunk with power.” Facilitators with force possess and practice: curiosity, deep listening, responsiveness rather than reaction, self-responsible, and are firm but not aggressive.
Conversely, facilitators focused on self-power are reactive rather than responsive, dominate/tightly control the room, and conspire with harmful behavior if it colludes with power.
Watch Sunni Brown’s talk “Seeing Past Your Me: How to Facilitate from a Place of Deeper Wisdom” :
Read the Transcript
Sunni Brown:
Thank you. Thank you so much. I didn’t know y’all were woo curious. What? Because I missed the memo, I didn’t get to come this morning. So how much woo happened? Did people do hallucinogens? What’s going on?
Speaker 2:
Can’t you tell?
Sunni Brown:
Right? We’re all like woo. So this is a talk about being like Yoda. Y’all can hear me okay, right? And the intention of it is to set you guys up for success. You guys are all facilitators, which means that… Or you have responsibility of getting groups to do things that they may or may not want to do. Right? So I refer to that as getting energy, moving in the direction that you want it to move. So the intention of this is to talk about it just for a little bit, then get you to practice something. And then we discuss that together. And just like Douglas, I’m super collaborative and open to learning at all times.
Sunni Brown:
So I’m not up here as an expert, but I am up here as a practitioner and a super passionate person. And I’m on mushrooms, so what’s up? I’m just joking. I’m just joking. Just joking. Lloyd, maybe later? So these are the methods. I am a facilitator, I have been for 13 years. Where’s Linda Baker? She was my early trainee. She trained me. She trained me, yes, when I was a young Jedi. And these are the four methods we use and I’m not going to unpack these today, but they are in Gamestorming, so thank you for the shout out. And they are also in the Doodle Revolution, which was the book I wrote after Gamestorming, emphasizing visual thinking.
Sunni Brown:
So this is a quality that I want to talk about today. Does anybody know what this quality, really it means, what it is? Do you love it? Do you love this quality? Do you have this quality? We all practice.
Speaker 3:
We all practice, yeah.
Sunni Brown:
Exactly. So when I was a… I’ve done a little over 200 facilitated events all over the world in different environments and I got to witness a variety of ways that people show up, including myself. And I started to appreciate one particular quality that I noticed was most effective in moving people toward a direction that you want them to move to. And it was this quality. And this is not a quality that we’re particularly skillful at in the West, because we’re very like faster, more, now, do the thing. But it is a very incredible supporting way of being. And this is the definition. So it sounds kind of hard, right? This is Yoda. This is how Yoda operates. He’s kind of unflappable. It doesn’t mean that he’s a pushover, but it does mean that he has a real sense of spaciousness and capacity.
Sunni Brown:
And when you’re a facilitator, you don’t know what’s going to come to you. You have no idea… Depending on how you work. So I’m external, so I go into environments and I don’t know necessarily what is going to show up. So for me, this practice is really critical to staying steady in the face of all kinds of unpredictable mayhem. Obviously you design a process to avoid that. But still, we’re humans and we’re really messy and miraculous. So I always tell people to use the force, not power. Right? And what I mean by that, is I mean that the force is non egoic. So I’m not up saying I know something you don’t know. I’m not competing with you. I’m totally and completely on your team and I have a sense of spaciousness around whatever you bring. And it’s like being a good shepherd.
Sunni Brown:
And so I’ve noticed that the most skillful facilitators, and it happens over time, mastery and facilitation is a long journey and it could take many lifetimes for all we know. But they’re the ones who occupy the force. Right? And so here’s some examples of what that might look like behaviorally when you’re in a group. Can you all read it? I just like to give people time to take in stuff on their own. But you can see some of the qualities, right? Curiosity, self responsibility. Yeah, for sure. So deep listening, responsiveness rather than reaction. So responsiveness means that you’re not charged, your system is not charged and you’re essentially receptive to and available for a skillful response. So you’re not reactive, you’re self responsible. So if something goes haywire, you don’t start pointing fingers, you own that and you say, what can I do to help?
Sunni Brown:
And that’s just an orientation that you always come back to. And you’re firm, but you’re not aggressive. And so this is not… These are difficult things to do, because we’re humans and we have defenses just like everyone else, right? But this is what I’ve noticed are the qualities that facilitators have when they’re really in the zone, when they’re strong in the force. So a facilitator drunk with power, we’ve all been that. I’ve been this, I will probably do this today. I’m going to marginalize somebody, you know what I mean? So not on purpose, it’s going to be an accident.
Sunni Brown:
But this happens all the time, right? So we’re reactive. When we get defensive or when we get startled or when we’re not sure suddenly what’s going to happen, or say somebody comes in who we perceive to be threatening, we can instantly move into power plays. Any facilitator can do that. And so some of that looks like presenting as an expert or dismissing someone or trying to sequester someone or talking over someone. I mean there’s a whole host of strategies that you can do when you’re drunken with power. What’s that dude on the Simpsons? The one who’s like, “He he.” That dude, that dude is wasted with power.
Sunni Brown:
So again, I want to emphasize using the force and it’s a practice. So I’m not trying to set it up like a binary, like, oh there’s facilitators that are strong in the force and there’s facilitators that are just terrible. What I mean is it’s a continuum and a spectrum and a practice and it’s an ongoing practice. And I know everybody celebrates failure, but I really do celebrate failure, right? It really is a thing, when you are available for missteps and mistakes, the instruction is so rich that… In Zen, I’m a Zen student, I have been for 13 years. We call it one continuous mistake. So you actually show up for that. You want that, because you get instruction from it. So I don’t mean you have to be in a rarefied state of mind. I just mean anytime you notice yourself doing a power play, notice it and try to move back into your Yoda state.
Sunni Brown:
So how the fork are you supposed to do that? And y’all are lucky because I curse all the time. Has anybody dropped the F bomb yet? So of course it’s going to be me. It’s always me. Here’s something that I perceive when I go into group environments. This is something that I hold to be true about the group when I’m meeting them, which is the modularity of the mind. So all of this stuff is evidence based. So it sounds woo, but it’s actually all data-driven and science-based. So the mind is modular and there’s general consensus among scientists around this. And basically what it means is that instead of being monolithic, so like Sunni is always this way, right? It means we’re kaleidoscopic. So if Sunni is this way right now, because I’m on a stage and there’s an expectation, but when Sunni goes to happy hour, very different person.
Sunni Brown:
So there’s always this shifting mind states that we have available to us at all times. And that’s adaptive and creative and you want that, right? So when there’s somebody in a meeting who you perceive to be a jerk, it may be true in that moment they are being jerk-like, but it doesn’t mean they are a jerk at all times, right? So I keep that always in mind, meaning that there are circumstances in which that behavior is coming online because there’s something in their system that is nervous or concerned. So I just hold spaciousness around that because it happens to me too, because I’m a human being, right? So here’s an example. If you were to personify these parts of yourself, they’re essentially neurological networks that have memory and strategy and experiences, but you can personify them and you can refer to them as parts.
Sunni Brown:
So right now there may be a part of you that is active, you have a state of mind that is active and it’s receptive. So say it looks like this, it’s just a student. How many of you feel receptive right now to what I’m saying? That’s awesome. And then how many of you feel like this lady? Suspicious, you might be unsure of what we’re going to do and that would be okay. Right? I’m making room for all of those facets of us that are here for some particular reason. So every time you are in a group with human beings, you’re not looking at one monolithic person, you’re looking at a constantly shifting state of ways of being that they need to have access to in order to get through that circumstance. So just knowing that is important.
Sunni Brown:
And also we’re so complicated, you can have multiple states of mind at the same time. Just to throw that in the mix. You can actually have like five. So here’s some of my states of mind. So I can personalize this for myself. On a good day, these are the things that I wake up doing. This is how I manage and conduct my life, generally speaking. And these are all likable. The world saver, she’s a little delusions of grandeur, you know what I mean? She’s like, “I can do the thing.” But most of the time these are fun and benevolent to occupy. But because I’m a human being, if I get exhausted, I also have these states of mind. The punk, the stress bucket and the disciplinarian. And those states can come on quickly and they can fade quickly, but they’re also part of me. Those are part of me.
Sunni Brown:
So if somebody comes in who I suddenly find intimidating, I can get real sassy, real fast. Right? I’m defending myself. I’m protecting myself from something, from a perceived threat and I need that strategy to do that. So I’m forgiving of myself when I move into those states because I know that it’s a healthy response to a perceived stress in the system. And that’s true for all of us. Okay? But some are easier to appreciate. A lot of times people who are with me, if I get in that salty state of mind where I’m pessimistic and the world is hopeless, like the punk, my husband does… Do you think he loves that lady?
Sunni Brown:
I mean, not really. Because I’m like, “I’m going to shave my head. Oh wait, I already did that.” I did do that. Oh, what was I saying? Oh yeah. So anyway, it’s easy to not like some and to like others, but the truth is they need to all have the Yoda perspective. We need to allow them anthropologically and recognize that they have a job to do and that they’re here for some reason and respect and honor the fact that these are adaptive conditions that we come to. Right?
Sunni Brown:
So here’s the other piece that I always hold dear and y’all are actually going to practice this, because it’s not conceptual. This is practical and tangible work that you can move into the force. Okay? So they all have positive intent and this one is always surprising to people. So they have a job to do and they have a concern that they’re preempting. And when I say they, I mean these neurological networks get activated. And you can refer to them, you can personify them and refer to them as parts, but they have a job to do. And they have a concern that they are preempting. Right? So what are the jobs of these parts of me? What would the visionary’s job be?
Speaker 4:
The art of possibility.
Sunni Brown:
Yeah. The art of possibility. Exactly. So she’s constantly scouting, what is my dream? What’s my vision? Which way do I want to go? What’s the job of the problem solver? I mean it’s in the titles, but still.
Speaker 5:
Solving obstacles.
Sunni Brown:
Yeah, constantly looking for ways to move past something. So that’s a job. That’s actually a task and a strategy for getting through life. And what about the punk? What’s the punk’s job? Y’all wouldn’t know, it’s a-
Speaker 6:
Overthrow the existing order.
Sunni Brown:
Right? Rebellion. Yes. So the punk, I’ve noticed that this state of mind comes on when I’m tired. And what I’ve discovered about this mentality for me, is that the punk’s job is to stop me from overworking, because she has a sense of hopelessness. So she’s like quit trying so hard and it’s really helpful. So when I notice the punk, instead of being mad about that state, I’m like, thank you. Thank you so much. Because I get that she’s up to something for me that has positive intent at all times.
Sunni Brown:
So if you’re in a facilitator meeting and there is a person who is a bullying type persona, even that has positive intent for the person. And that’s really hard for people to understand. But it means that there is a reason why that person is behaving in that way, because they’re concerned about something in the environment or in their minds or in their history or with the person sitting right next to them and they’re activating that to defend themselves. So that should summon compassion, when you understand that that’s the nature of humanity. This is the human condition. And we need to have these parts. This is how we survive, this is how biologically you’re still here.
Sunni Brown:
So this is the game and y’all can ask questions as I set it up. The game is, how would Yoda see? So if Yoda sees a benevolent anthropologist, right? And he does a lot of mushrooms and he’s 800 years old, so a lot. This is the game. So you have cards on your tables and you can just distribute them haphazardly. Everybody just get a few and there’s like 10 of you, right? There’s roughly… Let’s see. We’ll split you up. At your tables, split up into groups of four and three.
Sunni Brown:
And then, once you have your groups split up, three and three or three and four, yes. You’re looking at them. Okay. Okay I’m going to give you all ways to play, okay? So assign one, two, three, or four to yourself in your small groups. One, two, three, and four. Assign them to yourselves. Yeah. So you’re going to answer these four questions. Whoever goes first, I just want you to go down the list and answer these questions. And I can give you an example. Do y’all want an example? Okay.
Sunni Brown:
So say you draw a card. Just hand me a card. Yes, love this dude. Y’all can’t see it, but whoever has a card with the red armchair, the guy who’s blowing smoke out of his ears. Does anybody have that guy? Okay. So the way you play this is you go… Because you’re trying to summon compassionate equanimity for this dude. So it’s a practice. So I see this dude, he’s looking a little Al Bundy and he’s kind of pissed and he doesn’t take care of himself and he’s got a black cloud over his head. So that dude comes into your meeting, right? He’s everywhere. They’re everywhere. These cards are everywhere. So my practice is I go, oh, I call myself the grump. That’s what he’s calling himself. And his job involves, oh I get it. So he has a positive intent.
Sunni Brown:
So his job is like, make sure that you don’t get too excitable about all these product development ideas, because it’s just going to go haywire and then we’re not going to have the resources. So stay grumpy so that people don’t get too fanciful. So he has a job actually. So that’s what he’s concerned about. That’s number three. So his job involves shooting down ideas. That’s his job, right? That’s his job. He has taken on that job for whatever reason. And then the thing he’s concerned about is what I just said. Every time we get a bunch of ideas, we suddenly all get overtaxed. He’s not necessarily explicitly saying that, but that’s why he’s activated. Okay? And his positive intent is what? What would the grump’s positive intent be for the person?
Speaker 7:
He’s trying to keep everybody from wasting time.
Sunni Brown:
Right. He’s trying to keep them from wasting time. Is that what you were going to say?
Speaker 8:
Avoid being disappointed.
Sunni Brown:
Avoid being disappointed, totally. Legitimate reason.
Speaker 9:
I was just going to say not create false hope.
Sunni Brown:
Yeah. No false hope. I mean, so that makes him lovable all of a sudden, even though his presentation is not lovable. Right? Does that make sense? Yeah. And you will find that to be true for every single facet of a human being’s constellation, inner constellation. That is actually true for all of them, even the real crazy ones. It really is true. So that’s what I want you to do. I’m going to give you… My timer is not here, so I’m going to give you about 10 minutes and I want you to do as many cards as you can in your small groups and just go through the motions. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Okay? And use your imagination. You don’t have to get it right.
Sunni Brown:
I know that was super lively. Are y’all so excited and you love me now? I love all of you. So I wanted to give us time to debrief a little, because it is a challenge. It can be challenging to wrap your mind around that and to understand how to hold that and practice with it. So to practice with the force, using the force. So does anybody have questions? And just to motivate you, I have $45. I know. I’m going to pay you to talk to me. That’s what’s happening. Daniel.
Daniel:
Microphone. I found it confronting when there were multiple people in the picture to see who I identified with.
Sunni Brown:
When you say multiple… Oh in one card, yeah.
Daniel:
In one card, yeah.
Sunni Brown:
You’re right, yeah.
Daniel:
Because there’s a whole scenario.
Sunni Brown:
Totally.
Daniel:
Like the scolding mother and the lackadaisical son and then the happy family. And you’re like, who do I identify? Or is it about the pattern or the system?
Sunni Brown:
Uh-huh (affirmative) yeah. And you can identify with all of them or one of them or one of them in a certain way. So that’s why I like this game because it is very evocative and you don’t have to always identify with something in one moment. Sometimes I don’t identify with the punk rocker at all, but I can. We always have those, what we call seed potentiality, so we always have the option of identifying with something. Right? Does that make sense? Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 11:
Just how many of them were about care in some way.
Sunni Brown:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Speaker 11:
It was from maybe a different angle, but it was-
Sunni Brown:
You got a lot of care cards?
Speaker 11:
Care, yeah.
Sunni Brown:
Did you connect to that?
Speaker 11:
I did.
Sunni Brown:
Yeah, parts of you. So you might have a nurturing part. And what’s a good job that the nurturers do, right? Yeah.
Speaker 12:
I did. Before as you were talking, I started going through the cards and I just sort of picked four that I thought were like me.
Sunni Brown:
Relate to, yeah.
Speaker 12:
And then having to actually go through them and tell those stories about myself, was kind of interesting. But I had a question. I wonder if it’d be interesting in a scenario to actually show these cards before you start facilitating that and let people have the opportunity to self identify, pick them up and say-
Sunni Brown:
Totally. I don’t know if y’all could hear that, but he was talking about how valuable it might be to actually make them available to the participants in a meeting and help them self identify without shame, without guilt, without burden, without problem. Right? It’s huge. It’s a huge conversation starter. Yes.
Speaker 13:
Yeah I’m hearing… They were saying how there’s one way to execute this activity where you’re self identifying, but I immediately would think of people that I’ve worked with and try to channel that and practice that form of empathy. In my experience, I’ve seen the positive intent, but it’s only once you’ve worked with that person that you can see the full picture.
Sunni Brown:
Totally. And that’s why it’s a practice. It really is a practice. And the value of it and which is what y’all are speaking to is the recognition. What’s that word? Sonder, Douglas? He taught me this word yesterday called sonder, which was essentially the keen awareness that everyone around you has just as rich of an interior world as you do. Right? It’s a German word. Those Germans, you know, they always describe things that we don’t have words for. But that’s part of the beauty of that practice, is that you recognize, yes, the constellation in others. Then the constellation in yourself, and then you recognize there’s no distinction between any of us. It’s just what is happening in our world at that time, what’s our history and our experience. What parts do we have? What parts have we watered? I call it watering those seeds, but we’re all part of this gorgeous fabric of the force. Yeah.
Speaker 14:
Yeah. I actually did it the opposite way, where I blind believe. I was like, okay, which ones I going to do? Because I know for myself, you had mentioned when that person that walks into the room that you’re confronted with and you’re just kind of like, uh, at first. So I did that with the cards to practice getting… Finding the non-emotional place and identifying. But what’s so funny is even though I did that, as… Do I feel real echoey or is it just?
Sunni Brown:
No it’s just powerful.
Speaker 14:
Because I’m right next to the-
Sunni Brown:
You’re very powerful.
Speaker 14:
I’m with the force. Wow. Okay. But as I went through all my cards, I realized I was just defining myself as a facilitator.
Sunni Brown:
Like on purpose?
Speaker 14:
Oh no, not on purpose.
Sunni Brown:
That’s just what happened.
Speaker 14:
But we’re creating this, so it’s really who we are, even though we think we’re identifying some other creature.
Sunni Brown:
Exactly. Totally. And that’s the complexity of our internal systems. We have all of these aspects of ourselves. Linda.
Linda:
Question, Built on what was just said, I have a question. Whoever looked at this card may see something totally different.
Sunni Brown:
Completely.
Linda:
And the next thing-
Sunni Brown:
The interpretation.
Linda:
Next thing that occurred to me, and I’m wondering if this makes sense, is when people talked about, I could give these out at a group and lay them out on a table and say, “Which character do you identify with?”
Sunni Brown:
Exactly.
Linda:
Somebody picks up the card and then the question is, how do you think other people might see this person?
Sunni Brown:
Great question.
Linda:
And what’s another way that they might see this person? And I think I like that one because I think that sometimes… Not that I’m saying thinking about me, but sometimes people are perceived somebody differently and they don’t know how they’re being perceived by other people.
Sunni Brown:
Totally. And it’s a way to give feedback with a little bit of separation. And a reflection, it’s a way to give a reflection.
Linda:
I mean that would never be me, but somebody else.
Sunni Brown:
No, Linda, you’re flawless, lady.
Linda:
I’m transparent.
Sunni Brown:
Hello. She was my Yoda back in the… So I was going to say, one way to do this too with these cards is that you can actually just pick a specific topic, because what happens is people have different constellations arise relative to different topics. So say you’re going through a merger and acquisition, so that is a topic around which certain aspects of people suddenly become available. But if you’re going through a promotional conversation, totally different pieces of them arise, so you can make it topic specific. Yes. Thank you.
Speaker 16:
This feels like a really strong way to help find two people who don’t agree.
Sunni Brown:
Yeah.
Speaker 16:
To help them find the thing that they do agree upon, to resolve conflict or to drive change or whatever. Getting in the practice of doing this as a way to help facilitate getting people to agree.
Sunni Brown:
That’s right. Getting that energy gathered because you… We were talking last night at the speaker salon about telling a shared narrative so that everybody can see themselves in the vision toward whatever you’re trying to move them toward, but they can also recognize the pieces of the whole or what makes that possible and have respect for all the pieces of the whole. Yes.
Speaker 17:
So one way to add on that, I just thought of is last night in the speaker salon we were talking about powerful questions and one of them was, for what higher purpose? And it’s a way of getting to that shared intent. If all of the people surfaced the motivation behind that card and then you keep asking that question, to what higher purpose? Eventually you’ll get to a place where they start to actually connect and they realize that they have some kind of shared motivation.
Sunni Brown:
Exactly. That’s so beautiful. And I want to make sure that I’m mindful of people that are not as obvious. Have there been people in the… Go ahead.
Speaker 18:
So one of the things that occurred to me is that I think the way that the game was framed, it made it pretty easy for me to then find compassion, which I think you are doing. Which is like, okay, now I can see why this person is being a jerk. But I think there were still cards where I just felt dismissive of the value and it wasn’t out of… I could still be compassionate for someone, but I couldn’t necessarily find the idea.
Sunni Brown:
Yeah, totally. And that’s actually instruction, right? So when something is hard for us to empathize or be compassionate with, we call that a trailhead, which means that you can start to inquire, oh there’s parts of me that are judging that. What’s that about? And don’t judge the judge. So if there’s a part of you that’s active and has a perception around it… I mean I have parts of me that don’t like some of the cards, so then the question is, oh, what part of me has arisen? So then I can meet that part. Right? Does that make sense?
Speaker 18:
That does. And actually what she had said before I asked the question, kind of started to get an idea in my mind too, where it’s like, okay, that can at least be the start of a conversation where you can understand how this brings value.
Sunni Brown:
That’s right. Totally. Yeah, and actually I want to commend you for experiencing compassion, because that doesn’t happen for a lot of people a lot of the time when we run into these particularly challenging aspects. Because compassion is something that is summoned in the body and then it moves through the heart and into the mind, but not everybody can even access it. So good for you for experiencing it even one time. You know? Yes.
Speaker 19:
There’s a lot of vectors for diversity and inclusion. We talked about how important that is. And what it did for me, is I thought about a new vector for when you build participants in a workshop. I know last night we talked about the homework you can do ahead of a workshop, making sure that not only we’re checking in… What’d you call it? The homework?
Sunni Brown:
I call it pre-work. Or priming.
Speaker 19:
Yeah, priming.
Sunni Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Speaker 19:
And making sure that what I saw in each card, I detached from the way the people looked in the scene. And by listening to each person’s interpretation, you became aware of what that person’s competency was.
Sunni Brown:
Interesting.
Speaker 19:
And so in terms of thinking about diversity and inclusion of participation in a workshop, as let’s make sure we have a diverse set of competencies because each one of us has a default one of these cards and that’s what you’re competent at.
Sunni Brown:
Totally. Right. And that’s right. And he’s identifying something that’s true of all these parts, is that they… Because they have strategies and they have jobs. So they’re actually quite skillful, often quite skillful at those jobs. So my problem solver, I’ve been working that thing since I was a baby. So I have a mean… I mean not a mean, like a mean ass, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like a bomb ass, something like that. Problem solver. Really good at problem solving. Right? Which can wear some people out. Right? Because it’s not always people looking for a solution. So for me to be aware, oh somebody just came to me with a story about grief and I’m trying to quote, solve their problem. Not really helpful.
Sunni Brown:
So it’s good for me to know, oh I have a very strong problem solver that can come on. I want to be mindful of that so that I can be present. Right? And that’s the Yoda move. Yeah. There’s so much excitement. Yes. I know I’m not ignoring you, but you already had a question.
Speaker 13:
I’m curious how this could be used for disagreements, because if I care about one thing and you care about another and we’re trying to make a decision, even just talking about those unspoken values and concerns. And that’s why I say yes, because I concern this and you say no because you’re concerned with that. How can this be used for disagreements?
Sunni Brown:
In that way. So you could say, something’s come up. I think Douglas mentioned what… I call that part to part, when there’s basically power meeting power. So not meeting power with the force, but power meeting power. So then it’s part to part. So then both people… That’s what self responsibility is about. That’s why good facilitators have self responsibility. So if you find yourself in an argument with another person, then the backwards step is to go, oh wow. So we’re both bringing sword to sword, right? So then I want to say what part of me just woke up and did some stuff, did some fancy stuff. And sometimes depending on how charged it is, you need space to do that. But you can go back and identify, oh the problem solver part of me got way overactive. The visionary came in and disrupted everybody’s engineering conversation, right?
Sunni Brown:
So you just start owning the constellation in you. And that encourages people to own the constellation in them. And it’s blameless, because ultimately these are functioning, healthy systems. These are creative, adaptive systems. We are incredible organisms, right? So there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing, it’s just a matter of not being aware of them. Does that make sense? I have one minute. So I was going to say, I’m so grateful for your questions and I’ll be here after so we can talk again. But I want to quote Yoda, right?
Sunni Brown:
So when you are a facilitator and you find someone in your midst that is troubling or frustrating or irritating, my request to you is that you not try to go hand to hand, right? Do an aikido move where you try to figure out, oh, what is the compassionate place? What’s the place of equanimity? And with which I could view that person. Because ultimately, that’s going to get you in the space of moving them in the direction that they want to go. Right? And that’s our jobs. So thank you so much. May the force be with you.
