Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome back to Leading in Conversation, and also a very Happy New Year to you. We’re kicking off our first podcast of this new year 2024, with a special guest, our colleague, Andreas Ernst. Welcome, Andreas!
Andreas: Thank you, Kate. Good to see you.
Nelis: We’re excited to have you here. We have touched base from time to time from many years back to very recently in a hotel, but there’s also years that we don’t see each other. So it’s good to have you here. But our guests don’t know you, so why don’t you share a little bit of your background and what you do, where you’re from, etc.
Andreas: Thank you. Yeah. My name is Andreas Ernst. I’m an MK, for those who might have heard that term. It means missionary kid, which means, basically, I’m confused, lost my identity. No, it just means it takes a bit of a while to explain my identity. But I was born in Cameroon, grew up there, with parents who were involved in language development work. I’m currently working with SIL in media training, coordinating media training. And, yeah, I love what we do in media today in SIL, and I’m glad I have a chance here to talk to you two about what this conversational leadership look like might, what conversational leadership looks like in the context of community development.
Kate: So Nelis referred to a hotel. We actually met up with Andreas and his wife for dinner in a hotel in Budapest, when we were there a couple of months ago, weeks ago, our leadership team was there, and we touched on the subject of conversational leadership. And Andreas’ eyes lit up. He was like, “Oh, I’d love to talk to you some more about that.”. So we said, “Well, how about you do it and we record it for our podcast?”. So thank you for being a willing victim! So tell me, Andreas, how did you first hear about conversational leadership or get interested in it?
Andreas: I think the first time I actually heard that particular term used was probably during one of our SIL Leadership training events. We have this foundational course that you both know and are part of building and teaching, and it’s called 4 Pillars. And during this time leadership was talked about a lot in terms of how you can bring different cultures together. How do you work in cross cultural settings, and especially the need for that sort of leadership style to be very inclusive and and very much based on conversations and dialogue. And that’s something I’ve always been fascinated with and loved. So it attracted me. And also, just because of the way I grew up living in different cultures, I’ve often found that I’ve had to sort of be a chameleon, adapting to cultures and always asking lots of questions to gain trust, to bridge, I found myself sometimes between African cultures and Western cultures. And I’ve seen that’s actually something that gives trust and safety so that you can work together more easily with other people. So when I studied literacy program development, I got very interested in all the participatory methods. And yeah, so that’s where my passion comes from.
Nelis: I find it interesting what you’re saying here, Andreas, because you, at the start you said being a missionary kid means I’m basically confused. You said, that’s part of my identity. And then you took it right into this conversational leadership concept about listening, about being in between cultures, about not always being sure building bridges. It’s kind of fascinating. You’re bringing your identity into actually this topic. Am I reading that correctly?
Andreas: Yeah, and you know, for me it’s been an ongoing battle in my life to know, who am I? I have always found myself between different sort of cultures. So you know my parents, you know they’re from a Western background but serving in Africa for over many years. But then me having been born there and growing up, going out with my friends and setting traps, and hunting with slingshots, and fishing in the rivers, and playing soccer, and learning the culture that the way you live as a community of children. And then the uncles and aunts you have in an African village – it takes a village to raise a child, as they say. So I always had all these different cultures around me. I realised there are these clashes between different world views, and I often found myself in between, because I could kind of sense the differences in expectations. I remember one particular moment when I actually decided not to join a group on a trip, because I was embarrassed.
Because I felt like you know, I’m not sure how this is going to come across. And that’s just because I was immature, didn’t really know how to handle those differences. But yeah, it’s that clash of different cultures and worldviews where people are doing the best they can to communicate. And yet I’ve always felt there is that need from both, from whatever side one comes from, culturally speaking to find a meeting ground somewhere, also in terms of how decisions are being made. In terms of verbalising expectations, and not assuming too much. So I think that’s where my interest comes from all the way back to my roots.
Kate: Obviously, you said, you’re interested in how we can use conversational leadership in community development. And you’ll have a natural inroad there from your childhood, growing up in an African village culture that will probably, I assume, make it easier for you to have those conversations and culturally appropriate ways in Cameroon because you grew up in that context?
Andreas: In some ways, yes, I have had the privilege of growing up with those different cultures. The other side of it though, too, is that because I can switch, I sometimes don’t behave the way people expect me to behave. So, just to give an example, somebody might think I have a certain mindset and I come to a project and just because of the colour of my skin they might think “Well, this guy’s gonna throw money at things just the way the other person did before them or somebody else, or some other organisation has been doing so let’s expect them to do that”. And that has a big – I would say – almost negative impact on how community development can be developed.
Kate: That’s a really interesting point about the expectations that are there even before you arrive in a given context to start a conversation. You’re up against people’s expectations of you, based on your culture, the colour of your skin, etc. They will make assumptions about you.
Nelis: Yeah, but I think that’s also one of the strengths you bring. You’re more aware of your assumptions and your worldview than somebody who hasn’t been in multiple cultures at the same time. And I think what you’re saying and I resonate with that is, so much of conversation and conversational leadership depends on unearthing assumptions, unearthing expectations. Otherwise you talk at a surface level, but you never get to the real issues. So from my perspective, you do have a leg up there and I think it’s one of the reasons you’re so interested in it because it helps you bridge those different sort of realities. So can you say a little bit more about how you’re practically doing that? So when you are in those kinds of contexts, how do you bridge gaps and expectations? How do you help people understand one another?
Andreas: Well, I guess through trial and error. It’s making a lot of mistakes in learning from them. Yeah, I mean, I’ve been involved in a couple of different community-owned projects. And I’ve come sort of to the conclusion that it’s a lot to do with just taking the time. You know I do have some Swiss blood in me, being half Swiss, and having been professionally working in Switzerland as well and also the kind of organisational structures, and planning, impact planning and what not that we do typically in organisations can kind of make us be focused on intermediate goals and short-term goals that we need to measure. So I have also been involved in development projects like that where I’ve probably tried to move ahead a bit more quickly than I should have. But one thing I’ve just learned is just how precious it is to be on the ground. Just to give an example, I was working in an area in Cameroon where we had a very clear task given by the organisation, which was to promote literacy to promote the use of mother tongue in the local churches and we were even as people on the ground, being fed very specific things that we were supposed to be doing and even there already the conversational leadership between us who were on the ground and the higher up leaders of the organisation wasn’t always running smoothly. There was sort of the idea that you were being told what to do, because others knew what that community needed, because they had researched it and planned the project. But then, as I was working on the ground, I realised that the felt needs of the community were very different. And if we were going to achieve anything in that community because they were so closely such a close community, and everything was controlled by the sort of traditional leaders, we were needing to get some trust from the leadership, from the local traditional chiefs. So that, for example, even the Muslim community there would not really accept what we were doing, would not accept us, would not understand the reason why we were there without that. And so I would just regularly go and visit the chief. He would invite me to come and just chat with him because he was lonely, you know, he felt that me as an expat, I was sort of approachable and safe, so he would just want to have long conversations about his religious beliefs, and so on. And then, with the trust that came over time, he started asking me to go. He said, “Okay, it’s all very nice what you’re doing, and I’m supporting. But can you help us find water? That’s the biggest problem we have”. So he took me up to the mountain with all his advisers, and we went up there several times, and then we started looking into partners who might be able to drill a hole. Get that water flowing back down to the village. And it was through that conversation that we gained the trust, and then, later on, we were able to start a reading centre in that village, and he made a decree that the different schools, the different religious communities, that everybody should contribute a certain number of bricks. And even the schoolchildren were making bricks for us to build the building. He gave us land for it. And actually today that project might become a radio station. I think, for me, it was a lot about having conversations, so that we know what people want, and so that people know that we have good intentions, that we care, that we are flexible, we’re serving. And then out of that grew what became a reading centre. And again, our plan had been to say, “Okay, let’s have some books and reading materials available for the youth there”, because a lot of kids were studying at secondary level. But then, when the project evolved, it actually became a reading centre for kids who came and they had solar energy in the evening, so they could do their homework, they have all the books available there. That was not planned. That was how it evolved. And then, I still remember when the chief reached out to me and said, “I’d like to thank you, because this year we got the best results of all the schools in the area thanks to the solar system and the centre that we had built”.
Nelis: It’s fascinating what you’re touching on. One is taking time. And I think that we have touched on that in other podcasts as well, the importance of taking the time. The importance of building trust. And flexibility. And I think that last point of, just, it’s going to evolve into something different from what you expect is, I think, a key part of conversational leadership. We talk about this whole uncertainty, and you can’t plan it all out and it’s kind of exciting to see how you very practically do that at the local level, and what the results then are. That’s encouraging.
Kate: So my question is, how much were the people in the community involved in coming up with the solutions and what was needed? You said at one point that the chief made a decree. That’s not what we consider conversational leadership but we’re dealing with very different cultures here.
Andreas: I think that the fact that the chief made that decree was not to say that there wasn’t a need for us to have lots of meetings, so we had very regular meetings and we made sure we chose kind of a neutral place and we we kept sending invitations to the Muslim community, different church communities, different political leaders, and they’d show up, and there’d be lots of plastic chairs out, and and then also for me, it was very important that right from the start, when we were leading these meetings, I wasn’t the one always talking, so I had by that time I identified some local Christians that I trusted in, with whom you know I had been sharing the idea. They had already inspired the idea through what they saw as the need. And so it became our kind of vision to explore. And then, as we invited these communities, we kept having to have meetings because it wasn’t just about what the chief had decreed, but it was to help people understand what this might look like, what are the practical needs? And then there was the eternal hunger for people to know who is going to own this? Generally, people want to know, who’s going to own this? Who has the power in the end? That’s how people understood, you know what it might look like. And they also felt like we were building into what they were saying, the concerns they had. So, for example, we built a committee of people who were going to manage the construction site itself and we made sure that every community had a representative in that structure and so forth.
Nelis: I love what you said about the ownership question. We haven’t explored that deeply in this podcast, but I think it’s on the minds of a lot of people when actually, decisions are made, who owns it in the end? Do I have a real say, or is it just show? Is it just a sense of, yeah, we talked to you but in the end the decision is actually somewhere else. That sense of real ownership, I think, is a core point. And I see how that worked in the community and how you created symbols around that, that it’s not just what you do. It’s also putting some flag in the ground, basically saying, “Well, we’ve got a representative on the committee that won’t guarantee that real ownership, but it’s a symbol of it”. And I think that those are helpful concepts to keep in mind.
Andreas: And one thing we felt that we talked a lot about during those meetings with the different communities was not just about who might do what and how we could share the load. But also what types of people are needed. You know, people, sometimes, they might say, “We need an imam, we need somebody religiously positioned to have power”. Or they might say, “Well, we need people with MA degrees”, or politically favoured people and that sort of thing. So it was also talking about, are we sure we want this? What would it look like? What are the ups and downs of these types of people and then defining together…that was very interesting. What should be the moral characteristic that we’re looking for in these people? And also that conversation actually ensured that people were trusting each other more because they were realising, “Okay, we are making consensus on this. You know, the Catholics are not saying the Pope has to be in charge, or it’s the Pope’s”. I mean, that’s exaggerated. But you know, it was kind of becoming clear that we want to keep it at a humble level, where we want people that we trust, that are serving, so that afterwards we don’t start accusing each other of abusing power, or trying to benefit personally or as a separate community from the project. And yeah, so it was that moral side of it that we could have a conversation about with everybody. So that was interesting as well.
Kate: Dialogue is such a key thing when you are bringing together different faith communities, isn’t it because you have to spend a long time talking to build the trust, to make sure you’re all on the same page. And it’s great to see that demonstrated in your project.
Andreas: I think for me also, one thing that I struggled with at times was to just say, “Okay, I don’t wanna be the one leading it. I can be there to assist. I can bring in a lot as a neutral person, but the local people are facilitating that conversation”. You know, sometimes you wonder, okay, why didn’t they also ask this other thing? Or why did they push back so hard on this thing? Or you know, sometimes you wish people had a bit more experience in long term exposure to this sort of conversational type leadership. But you don’t, or you can’t always assume that people have that. And yet they can learn it through the process. And then to say, okay, that is in itself a goal worth pursuing. And it doesn’t mean one has to jump in. But it’s also something they learn, and also to realise that people tend to belong to one community or another. No matter, you know, how much they want to bring in consensus, and they will be seen through the eyes of what group they belong to. They may not have the sort of neutral sense of trust directed towards them from other communities simply because they are being categorised. And so when they speak, they also have to make sure they represent that particular, those particular roots that they’re representing. And I think to be honest, I think that’s where we, as you know, neutral facilitators from the outside, do have a role. I do think that you know any development agency organisation has a huge moral responsibility to be involved in community development and conversational change simply because we have on our side managed to be a little bit more neutral if we will accept it and work with that. I’ve heard it said that we Westerners shouldn’t be involved in community development because we don’t know the culture. We don’t really know what’s going on and over the years I’ve seen that I’m not sure it’s always true. I’ve seen some Westerners that are very good at knowing the local culture, very good at asking questions, at bringing consensus and also some local facilitators who are maybe using a model of leading change that is very top down, even though culturally acceptable. And that doesn’t always work simply. So it doesn’t work just because they are from that community or may know the community. So anyway. But I don’t know. That’s something I actually would love to hear what you two think about, too.
Kate: Yeah, I think we definitely have a role. I mean someone coming in from the outside to a situation where there’s a lot of vested interest, and you want the whole system represented in the project. You want to know that you’re hearing the views of different communities, different sub-communities within the bigger project community. That we can perhaps bring that neutrality that is helpful sometimes. Nelis, you’ve worked in Cameroon specifically, any thoughts on this.
Nelis: Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, there is that possibility. And I love the way you put it as almost a moral responsibility. But it’s also very tempting to forget that the real ownership lies with the people themselves, because you so easily as a development person with relative power, relative money, sort of take on the Savior complex. And secondly, I was really convicted myself that it is very easy to see how other people should solve their problems. Because you don’t know the nuances of it. So you don’t see how hard it actually is. So, as an outsider, you always think that the problems of somebody else should be easy to solve. But you know how difficult your own are. Well, if we come with that humility, and really recognizing the ownership of the local, to really recognize the complexity and and often really good reasons why it wasn’t solved up to this point. Then you can, I think, have a valuable role as an outsider, whether that’s coming from the West or from within the wider culture, or whatever. But there’s a commitment to humility and listening, and not taking up the ownership or taking it away from the people, I think, is going to be key in that. And interestingly enough, that I think is, it applies actually to wider conversational leadership conversations in general. So I see a beautiful sort of overlap with what we talked about in other contexts.
Kate: I don’t know if you listen to the podcast we did with Peter Van Dingenen? I loved how Peter described the way he went into the villages, and kind of acted a bit dumb and just asked questions. So what do you mean? And tell me about this. He went with the assumption, they have all the information needed to solve the problem, and in this case it was latrines, installing latrines. The one installed by an NGO just kind of collapsed and wasn’t appropriate, and he was there to try and help solve the latrine problem. But he just went in asking questions and kind of playing a little bit dumb. Like, “You tell me how this works”. That’s connected to what Nelis is saying about humility, not going in with all the answers. You have to hold back as a facilitator, even if you might have more information, if you want a solution to emerge from the people, from the community, they have to be the ones to bring the solution, to bring the answers.
Andreas: Yeah, I really like that reminder also. The fact that the way that people might sometimes expect somebody who’s a facilitator to act in a certain way can also kind of create that idea in ourselves that we think, oh, we are, we do have some answers. And oh, these people are expecting a solution. Particularly in some African context where you know it’s the elite, or it’s the person who is well positioned financially, or whatever politically, or from the outside. Typically there is a certain expectation that they come in, and they solve the problem as a sort of Messiah. And so it’s not just being very much aware of what we don’t know when asking those questions, but also when people respond or interact with you as if you are that sort of person to say, Okay, this is a trap. I am very basic here. I don’t really know what’s happening, and I am allowed to ask questions that make people think, even though I know that what they would probably answer would bring it back to me again. And so it’s that sort of that sense of playing dumb that can sometimes break up the notion that people have that they can’t do anything, or they don’t really know, or that they shouldn’t be talking because somebody else should be talking. Even asking specific people that are not used to being asked can be one way of breaking that up and bringing that wise input from a particular person or other, and nobody can tell you. Hey? Why did you ask that woman to say something when the village chief is present because you’re just a naive Western white man, so…
Kate: You can use that to your advantage at times. I recently did some coaching training, coaching not to become a coach, but to help me become a better supervisor. And I was really struck by the emphasis on shifting away from yourself. It’s not about you. Even the information you want to find out about, that’s not really what it’s about. It’s all about the person you’re supervising or coaching their agency, their ability to do things themselves. You shouldn’t be telling them, you shouldn’t even be asking leading questions that take them to the conclusion you want them to reach. Really challenging for me, actually. And there’s a whole sense of sort of emptying out of yourself when you are entering into a facilitational role like this. You’ve got to leave yourself and your preferences and ideas at the door. Now it’s different if you’re a participant facilitator, which we often are in work situations, you know we are part of the solution as well. But if you’re coming just as a facilitator to a community, and actually you won’t be living in the community and living with the solution that is developed, you’ve always got to empty yourself and to give the community agency to come up with the answers themselves, the solutions. Yeah. I thought that was really challenging for me, actually.
Andreas: Yeah, I think that is very true. It’s so challenging to make sure we empty ourselves. And I think it’s particularly difficult, too, because we in some sense, to build a change or to bring innovation there are things that maybe an outsider brings in, in terms of the know-how or advocacy, that can take root, that people may not know about. So in some ways you have to know what it is you offer and be very clear about it. But by doing that right away you also influence how much responsibility or expectations, how many expectations come your way in terms of what you’re going to be doing. So I think that’s also a really very big challenge. And if I compare, for example, this project I talked about earlier, where something came out of it that was quite shaped by the different participants in terms of location, the books that were available, and so forth. With when you want to maybe start a radio project. Again, you might know who could be technical partners, financial partners. What sort of process is needed to have the licensing from the government? You may be in a position to be an advocate for a project like that, and, or to find other local people who can do that. And so giving that information, but doing it in a way that the people receiving it own it, that you say, “Okay, this is what you could do or do you have more questions?” but being courageous enough to own what it is that we really can bring to the table, and also what we can’t and constantly renegotiating, re-clarifying that. And the other thing I find very difficult is just to refrain from intervening when something doesn’t move forward. To just say, “Okay, this meeting last time, this last meeting didn’t take place, or they haven’t yet collected this amount of money that we had decided we would collect” and then just wait on it, even if it takes a couple of months. So that people see, okay, this is really not going anywhere if we don’t do anything, and to be okay with that. And I think long-term it does pay off.
Kate: The problem is, if you play to heavy-handed a role when you leave, inevitably, as the ex-pat, what’s going to happen? The aim is for a sustainable product, a sustainable library, or whatever it is that you’re building. And if, if you are too involved, then things may not last beyond your presence, but also what’s produced may be something that works for you as a Westerner, but doesn’t work in the local context. Therefore it’s not sustainable in the long run, either.
Nelis: And that needs to be balanced with still wanting to see change. And actually, people looking to you to help bring that change from both sides, actually from the agency that sent you and from the community. And so I think that’s the art, isn’t it? There isn’t a recipe as such. It’s knowing when to keep pushing, and when to really step back and just wait. And really allowing that ownership to be real, but still play your role. I think that comes back to the question we always ask ourselves: so in conversational leadership, how do you play the role of leader well enough? Because there is a leadership aspect for this. And so I find it’s fascinating to keep wrestling with that. I think that’s what we all need to do to learn that.
Andreas: Yeah. And just to give an example, recently, I realised that sometimes you’re kind of stuck between two worlds. Recently we started a radio project and this partner gave us the whole studio equipment, the antenna and everything and we got the licence from the government. The community worked really hard. They mobilised funding for a lot of the aspects of the work. And then, because of safety reasons they were still afraid of starting the broadcasting and it was just delaying and delaying, and they had also outsourced some of the practical work on the antenna to somebody. And then there was a kind of a dispute with the technician and what not. And now that the partner wrote to me and said, “Well, if you guys are not broadcasting very soon, we think we might need to take away the whole station and send it somewhere else”. And you know I kind of diplomatically tried to write back to them, say, “Well, thank you for your patience. It’s taken more time than we maybe we were planning for. But you know…”. So I just realise there’s also that side of realising that you’re not just communicating to the community, you’re also protecting them, and being okay with that.
Andreas: And also, I think sometimes, as Western ministries, we realise how much ownership is important. And we even, for that, we have a plan. We say, “Okay, we’re, gonna spend 5 years or or 2 years or 3 years on this. And after that we’re gonna, that’s it. No more. Nothing. We’re not gonna help”. But during that intense time we may be intervening in a way that creates dependency on us because we’re trying to speed things up. And so I think it’s also bravely considering, what does it mean, actually, to own something locally by the community? And at what point can we say, “Okay, we’re done”. And how do we discern what role we have in the future? And I think that, too, it should lead us to really integrate everybody from the start. But maybe not be too systematic about the way we time and define what it means to not be involved anymore.
Kate: I think learning to become more comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing is a big part of conversational leadership. You can’t control everything. You can’t plan everything. You may start reality. You may start a conversation or a process, thinking you’re heading in one direction, but then, if the real issue emerges, you may want to go in another direction. And sometimes it’s quite hard as leaders involved in conversational leadership, to let go of that outcome you had in mind and actually go with the other solution that’s proposed. Nelis any thoughts around this?
Nelis: Yeah, I’m just thinking, that’s hard, because you’re always driven by the reality that solutions are expected, your finances depend on success. If you don’t deliver the project is probably gonna stop or fall apart just like you described. So it is that fine line between flexibility, listening, letting the real issue emerge, but not losing sight of the outcomes that together you aim for, or the direction you’ve set, and that is such a tricky interplay. And doing that well, I think we constantly need to challenge each other on that: “Hey, guys, we need to be more flexible” or “Wait a second. Are we losing track of our objectives here? Are we letting ourselves be sidetracked too far?” And it’s that interplay that I think we need each other to hold each other accountable to that. In practice, Kate. I see you and I actually do that in our work as we go, as we lead, in our leadership team. Sometimes we say, “Well, you’re saying that, but is this still the right thing? Is this truly conversational? Have we asked the right people or….”.
Kate: Or have we slipped back…
Nelis: into “top down”, yeah?
Nelis: I think we can start to wrap this up. What I really loved about this back and forth is, is around ownership and flexibility, and then holding each other accountable to that. And as we started wrestling around that, I think that is something we can take forward and actually think about in our work with communities, but also in any kind of leadership role: Am I taking on too much ownership? Am I emptying myself out enough? Am I listening enough? Am I interested in the other rather than in my goals only? So I think that is something that I’m going to take away from this conversation is a really helpful concept to move forward.
Kate: Thank you. Nelis. Thank you, Andreas. It’s been good to have you with us. And let’s keep talking, keep thinking about these things. That’s all from us today, and, as always, do hop over to leadinginconversation.net, if you want to comment, ask questions, or even just look at the transcript or the show notes. That’s all for today. Thank you. Bye.
Nelis: Thank you. Bye, bye.