We’re not in traffic, we are traffic.

One 4-hour session: Saturday 2/8 (1-5pm Eastern / 10am-2pm Pacific) Quaker meetings are ideally places where power is shared broadly. However, we come conditioned by power relationships in society, carrying complicated relationships with authority. When we don’t understand how power works – or how it could be working – we can fall into unhealthy habits….

Workshop Description

One 4-hour session: Saturday 2/8 (1-5pm Eastern / 10am-2pm Pacific)

Quaker meetings are ideally places where power is shared broadly. However, we come conditioned by power relationships in society, carrying complicated relationships with authority. When we don’t understand how power works – or how it could be working – we can fall into unhealthy habits. (anyone witnessed a disheartening power dynamic in business meeting?)

What does healthy power really look like in our organizational life? This workshop will provide us the tools and understanding to move us in that direction.
We’ll cover personal relationships with power:
• A wider and more nuanced vocabulary around power and rank
• Typical mental traps when we find ourselves in high- and low-power places
• Ways to inoculate ourselves against these traps
We’ll also consider the organizational:
• Differences in expectations between standard hierarchical and distributed-power organizations
• Foundational requirements for success when power isn’t concentrated at the top

We’ll take this exploration into a “Power Lab” unpacking typical undesirable patterns of power in Quaker meetings, and seeing how we might interrupt and correct them.

There are no advance assignments for this workshop, however participants who want more may be interested in reading “Power, a User’s Guide” by Julie Diamond and/or “The Power Manual” by Cyndi Suarez.

Leader Experience

Susan is a nonprofit consultant, working with organizations that are interested in creating as good a world inside their walls as they are striving to build on the outside. She designs and facilitates processes for change, planning, skill building, and organizational improvement with particular attention to broad and effective participation and power dynamics within organizations (more information available at www.sloucks.net). She has served as clerk for Beacon Hill Monthly Meeting, Pittsburgh Friends Meeting and Lake Erie Yearly Meeting.