Safely discharge the energy that remains.Notice the sensations, the vibrations.Remember these five anchors to take care of yourself during difficult times in courageous conversations: Be authentic by sharing honest feelings.Shomari: These conversations can sometimes be challenging, and they can sometimes be revealing and make us vulnerable, so these three guidelines kind of provide us with some rules or norms about how we can be in that space: Ultimately, if we continue to share or shirk our responsibility to involve all different perspectives and all different voices, we will not be moving together. Build bonds and bridges, and a lot of times, cross-sectional with individuals who may not come to the table believing what we believe.Gain understanding that will help establish truth in relationships.Gain wisdom to see from a bigger perspective. The goals of courageous conversations are to: I really want to know where you're coming from and why you're coming from there as much as I want you to know where I'm coming from and why I'm coming from there. Paul: Courageous conversations really revolve around coming to the table with people who think differently than you, revealing needs, shining light on fears, identifying preconceived beliefs or understandings, and spending time building a pathway to better comprehend each other’s perspectives, creating an atmosphere of patient listening that blends the elements of mercy and truth. Because if I’m seeking to transform someone else's belief, I need to meet them where they are. So, what would have been best served for me is to maybe show up in my thinking and take time to think about my beliefs a little bit, then explore my emotional quadrant, and then proceed to my action quadrant. We were planes crossing in the air, without having any opportunity to build relationships or build bridges. And when we engaged in discussion, we were not seeing eye-to-eye. I was operating from and coming to the conversation in my head or in my thinking/intellectual quadrant. They were operating from and coming to the conversation in their feelings quadrant. This particular part of the community was not in agreement with what my beliefs are. I was in conflict with the community in which I serve around building a body of work, specifically equity, that I thought was really important to the success of our students. We want you to experience all of them, but just note this example from my personal experience: And there's nothing wrong with any of them. Because centered is a way that we will most achieve opportunities to build bridges and build relationships with other individuals.Īnd so just looking around the compass, oftentimes we either fall into the feeling or the emotional quadrant, the believing or the moral quadrant, the thinking or the intellectual quadrant, and the acting or the relational quadrant. Instead of landing in emotions, we want to evaluate and assess where you are in each one of these categories so that you can be centered. It's interesting to see how I've progressed through my continual practice. After some practicing, Paul, I’m actually seeing that I no longer hardcore die in the emotional space. So for example, I tend-specifically, when engaging in conversations that are complicated-I tend to show up a lot of times in my emotional space. You can have a couple of different spaces that you react to immediately. You don't have to only come from one specific space. And we really boiled this down to four spaces in which you traditionally come from. The compass in and of itself is just a tool that we utilize to express that sometimes when we come to the table, we're coming to the table from a different space than the person who we may be engaging with. Shomari: Courageous conversations are opportunities for us to engage with each other, seeking opportunities and ways to learn and grow within ourselves and within relation to one another. That turned into this podcast that we have called Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream, which is Shomari and I talking about all things related to equity and education we bring on guests, and it's fun.Ĭould you talk about your work around engaging in courageous conversations? What are they? Coming out of COVID, we started having conversations with each other just about stuff that we are noticing and just issues that were surfacing, and so we decided to start recording it. We work on various projects together, but mostly, the thing that we do together is this podcast, this little project that we started. Paul: I've been working with Shomari for several years now. How did you meet and start working with each other? I'm associate professor of education at Pacific Lutheran University. I am the director of equity and strategic engagement for the Bellevue School District.
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