Negotiating difference

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From the course by University of Cape Town

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

300 ratings

University of Cape Town

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

300 ratings

This free 6 week course is for anyone who wants to make a difference. Whether you are already familiar with the field of social innovation or social entrepreneurship, working for an organization that wants to increase its social impact, or just starting out, this course will take you on a journey of exploring the complex problems that surround us and how to start thinking about solutions. We will debunk common assumptions around what resources are needed to begin acting as a social innovator. We will learn from the numerous examples of social innovations happening all over the world. You will be challenged to get out of your comfort zone and start engaging with the diverse spaces around you. By the end of the course, you will have formed your own approach to social innovation, and you will have begun to develop the concepts, mindset, skills, and relationships that will enable you to start and evolve as a changemaker. You will be able to purchase a Verified Certificate if you wish to show evidence of your achievements, but this is optional, and you may apply for Financial Aid if you are unable to pay the certificate fee. The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship co-created this course with RLabs, a social movement ‘born-and-bred’ in Bridgetown, Cape Town that is now active in 22 countries. The movement empowers youth through innovative and disruptive technology by teaching them vital skills and providing much needed support and a sense of community. Advocating and supporting initiatives such as RLabs forms part of the Bertha Centre’s mandate. The Centre is a specialised unit at University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, and is the first academic centre in Africa dedicated to advancing social innovation and entrepreneurship. You can view the course trailer at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcWYG64WO20 Tweet about this course using the hashtag #socinnMOOC

From the lesson

Getting out of your comfort zone

By nature the world of social innovation is made of crossing boundaries, bringing together different actors, resources, spaces, but it can be overwhelming. Part of our challenge on the journey to becoming changemakers is to learn how to become comfortable with discomfort and how in the social innovation space where you take yourself into spaces and you surround yourself with people that you normally do not engage with. Understanding how we define differences using cultural, sociological, psychological and spiritual lenses and what the nature of the differences is helps to develop tools for getting out of your comfort zone. It takes a little bit of courage because it makes you uncomfortable, but that’s how you build the competencies, the personal resilience to engage with difference when we do go and drive for innovations or we look to make differences in communities that are unlike us or operate in a different way.

RLabs: Journey of Hope Part 36:31

Bricolage: recombining ideas and people3:52

Thinking about difference7:08

Engaging difference3:41

Negotiating difference8:51

Reflecting with RLabs: comfort zones12:17

Meet the Instructors

François Bonnici
Director
Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
Warren Nilsson
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
Marlon Parker
Founder
RLabs

[MUSIC]

By nature the world of Social Innovation is made up of crossing boundaries,

bringing together different actors, resources,

spaces, but it can be overwhelming.

Kurt, thanks so much for

sharing your story of getting out of your own personal comfort zone.

But perhaps you can help with some practical advice as,

how do you go about starting this journey to get out of your comfort zone?

Sure. One of the first things we do is

in engaging other people and engaging difference is to speak to them.

And most of us have been trained, or consciously or

unconsciously in discussion and debate, which is the dominant

modes of conversation one finds across the world, regardless of culture.

But there are many modes of conversation.

In fact, there are nine different ways of conversing, some of which are discussion,

and debate, and dialogue, and rhetoric, and so on.

And each one of those modes of conversation have ways of listening.

We are use to listening by evaluating either the content

of what people are saying, or the people themselves.

And by interpreting, so we hear something that sounds similar to our experience or

something we know something about.

And so, then we come back with answers and solutions.

In those modes of listening, we're actually not open to other people's points of view.

So, dialogue teaches a way of suspending judgment, taking your own point of view,

literally, and sitting on it.

And then, through inquiry, questions, opening up of your own assumptions,

asking the other person to clarify their assumptions, were you able to then share

meaning as opposed to their meaning as winning or my discussion as leading.

And dialogue teaches us to actually allow the issues to

emerge as opposed to I've already come with a solution

to the situation.

And so, this speaks to what you were speaking about in your

earlier video about the democracy of emotions.

In order to create that space, to hear and understand and

allow those meanings to emerge one needs to engage in different forms of listening.

What else can you do?

One other practical thing one needs to do is take yourself into other spaces,

other situations, different environments to what you're comfortable with.

That's part of leading if you'd like in the social innovations space where,

courageously, you take yourself into spaces.

And you surround yourself with people that you normally do not engage with or

even hang out with.

And it takes a little bit of courage, because it makes you uncomfortable.

But that's how we build the competencies,

the personal resilience to engage with different, when we do go.

And drive for innovations, or we look to make differences in communities that

are unlike us, different to us, operate in a new way, a different way.

I like what you said about it being a competency that something that is almost

a skill that we can practice and we can learn from.

Let's take a look at RLabs that you're getting to know quite well.

But, Kurt, they didn't have the competencies and

skills to negotiate these different spaces.

They had to understand the world of psychology and

the professional hierarchy of the psychology.

They had to develop expertise and engage with techies and IT specialists.

There was also stigma attached to them engaging in these places,

how would you have recommended, and what other examples have you seen about how to

go about negotiating power that is intimidating?

Well, let's start with a corporate example.

If I take Microsoft in the early days.

Bill Gates had the vision, he had the energy to drive his ideas to fruition.

He does talk about early on in developing his business, he had to bring

on board professional managers, very different skill set to himself.

He did come from quite an educated base in the sense that he had grown up

educating himself in computers and the world of computers and software.

And he actually started to negotiate with business managers who understood finance,

and understood resources and funders.

And he talks about his own transformation and

growing as a business leader, having to cross those boundaries.

One can also think of different examples where someone doesn't start with

the same necessary skills base.

And so, I can think of an example here of Jireh,

who is based out in Mitchells Plain, a disadvantaged community.

And you had a man who had a vision to give hope to a community.

He himself, coming out of the world of gangs, and so, even though

he had a vision, even though he got the people on board to buy into this vision,

he still had to then negotiate with other people different from himself.

So, coming from a base where initially, he didn't have the same resources,

he didn't come from a similar background, but he had to engage funders, people who

saw the vision could see the future of that vision, and did so successfully.

And James Lowe, the person who had the vision initially, has actually gone beyond

the borders of Mitchells Plain to now engage in mentoring of fathers with sons,

women and issues around gender, and many other initiatives that has grown out of

his ability to cross his own boundaries and engage with difference.

What do you think gave people like him and people like Marlon and

the others at our labs the capacity and ability to negotiate power?

Often we think of people in certain environments as being disadvantaged,

and they may be, typically from a resource point of view.

But from a skills base, both Marlon and James Lowe had to negotiate.

You know, being in an environment in which gangs are thriving,

in which your own personal safety is under threat, you find ways to negotiate.

Your build in a personal resilience.

You find ways to cope, and

I think that's another confidence which is probably played on in academic literature.

We often think of those communities as disadvantage,

in fact, there may be advantage from the point of view of certain competencies

that you do not get if you're not struggling, striving, and so on.

It does mean many of those will who come from resource privileged backgrounds,

educational privileged backgrounds, may have to, themselves, develop certain

skill sets to operate in context that they aren't familiar with or comfortable in.

Perhaps you want to talk about this other power dynamic, which arises when

people from outside certain contexts come in with their ideas and their resources.

Yeah. Often there is a belief that

I am bringing my knowledge, my experience, my resources to you, and

I have a way of thinking that you can benefit from.

Without realising that, that is a very useful tool,

a very useful set of experiences to bear on

an issue on a community, but that one has to be context relevant.

Within a context, there's certain skills that you may or

may not have got coming from a different background.

So, privilege can be both an enabler In that you have access to resources,

networks, but it could be a stumbling block in that you might come

with the perspective that I'm here to help a few folk who need my help.

Whereas, in fact, I think there's a co-creation that can happen

in which both learn and grow, and serve

the society, the community, the issue that needs to be solved.

Thanks, Kurt.

I think the key messages of understanding the differences, and engaging in

difference, has really been about starting to develop the competencies,

practicing through dialogue, through listening, through inquiring

[MUSIC]

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