Brexit: let’s get unstuck
Just over a year on from the EU Referendum, Alison Whybrow explores how we can make sense of Brexit
Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, the collapse of Brexit talks: the UK general election results on Friday 9 June have sent the uncertainty around Brexit into hyperspace.
A quick Google search just after Article 50 was triggered by Prime Minister Theresa May, yielded these headlines on 31 March 2017:
- ‘Brexit is a tragedy, but there’s much more we can do before the final act’
The Guardian
- ‘EU tells UK: We will not punish you. Brexit is punishment enough’
The Independent
Positive perspectives were more difficult to find. The headlines today focus on doubt over the talks, together with a reminder from the EU that the clock is ticking.
A polarised vote, not surprisingly led to a ‘splitting’. The outcome? Judgement, blame, anger. The existential crisis triggered is being played out, painfully.
If we take a view tinged with Heidegger’s existential philosophy, there is no absolute right and wrong in any situation, let alone a situation of such complexity. There is, however, a lot of emotion, stuckness and uncertainty.
If this were a coaching client, we’d be rolling up our sleeves and working through using dialogic enquiry, curiosity, listening deeply, exploring the options. We might do some somatic work and a bit of meditation to bring ourselves to centre and balance.
But, of course this is a whole continent. And as that continent, we seem to be ‘stuck’ on what was the right answer – and now, after the election, frozen on the question of how to move forward.
The map is not the territory. Before this latest General Election, we might have assured ourselves that someone, somewhere at least had a map; but it’s clear now there is no map, not even a sketch on the back of a napkin.
As coaches we have a set of skills that can be put to good use and we can offer a framework to enable people to process, move through, make sense of and become informed about what is in front of them, and ‘unstick’.
I found just such a framework in November last year when I attended a ‘making sense of Brexit’ session run by Katie Hodgson and Dave McCormick of Sensemaking. The session was enabled by Kym Hamer who, as a result of her organisation’s response to Brexit, was personally facing a very uncertain future. Sensemaking are specialists working in the strategic leadership space and helping leaders and organisations cope with uncertainty.
Speaking with Kym, I explored the reason for putting the session together: “We were so shocked after June, and so uncertain – now we’re still uncertain, but not so shocked.” The whole Brexit discussion is “so polarised, there is no space for constructive dialogue”.
The session was not about expert perspectives, or one ‘right way’ to view the situation. It was a process based on enquiry, listening and… making sense.
“People were in so many different places”, yet, as Kym noticed, “the biggest aspect in the room was uncertainty.”
Together we looked at what exiting the EU meant. Of course there were no certainties, only questions. We worked through and discussed the questions in small groups and decided which were most impactful for us as individuals or businesses. The shift in the room was palpable. One angry person was almost tearful in their relief at the end of the session. The process, while not providing answers or affirming a particular remain/leave stance, had allowed an unsticking. People could move again.
On reflection, Kym wondered “perhaps remainers feel that they haven’t been heard. They haven’t been understood and this gave them space to be heard and to talk about it even if they don’t know what they think or what to make of it.”
While blame, accusations and bemoaning the referendum result take up airspace in conversations around Brexit, we are dangerously close to missing the point: the opportunity to create response-able qualities in the face of this seismic, systemic shift.
Unsticking is powerful. It enables people to pay attention differently, to process, to become more open, more informed. It reduces the experience of stress even when the situation is no less difficult.
As Sir Paul Collier notes, informed citizenship is what builds economies and societies that work.
What role can we as coaches play to nurse a system that is dying while being midwife to an emerging story? From the perspective of levels of development, in particular Kegan’s levels of subject-object awareness, the Brexit conversation has been stuck at the level of ‘socialised mind’. To enable the shift to an emerging story, there needs to be a developmental shift
in the conversation to one that is ‘self-authoring’.
Such a shift needs space and time. Our collective coaching skills and mindset are valuable to enable letting go, making space for exploration and holding the space of uncertainty, the not-knowing which facilitates the emergence of a new story.
How do we create these spaces for engagement now? There is a fertile opportunity. In any new phase, the most powerful point to shape what emerges is at the beginning of the story. Whether we have hard, soft or a ‘something else’ Brexit, there is a lot of making sense to come.
- To explore how you can get involved in these conversations, visit the Sensemaking website: www.sensemaking.co.uk
References
- R Kegan and L Laskow Lahey, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. Jossey-Bass: San Francisc0, 2001
- Sir Paul Collier, accessed through the edX course: OxfordX: OXBSG01x From Poverty to Prosperity: Understanding Economic Development Accessed 21 April 2017
Brexit: I’m out
Just over a year after the EU Referendum, a leadership coach shares why they voted to leave
Brexit: Vote remain or leave.
I stared at the ballot paper. Why were there only two boxes? I wondered whether I could draw a third: Remain, but reform the EU.
But that would simply be recorded as a ‘spoilt ballot paper’ and have no impact.
Now that the question had been asked, I couldn’t vote for remain. What would I be voting for? If the UK voted ‘yes’ then no-one would question the current direction of travel of the EU; the push for further fiscal and military centralisation: one-size-fits-all.
Good on paper
The EU bureaucracy seemed to ignore the important differences between communities, countries and cultures which was playing a significant role in driving nationalist political agendas across the region. The EU: an ideological political dream pushed through regardless of the cost.
I believe in collaboration, transparent collaboration and deep ties as a means of living and thriving. We are European, we are one globe, we are one humanity and we have one shared home.
What was I going to vote? I’d already been standing at the booth for a few minutes. I’d read documents on the EU and EC, the purpose of the EU, how things were set up. I’d discussed with colleagues around the globe, I’d read and thought deeply about the state of our Earth and the role of human systems in where we find ourselves today.
On paper, the EU and EC as institutions for collaboration made great sense. At a political level and on the ground, things seemed to be a bit less positive. I reached out to some simple principles: clarity, community, transparency – and yes, democracy.
The notion of ‘elite politics’ had been bandied around over the past decade or so – the idea that there could be such an elite level of clever politics and politicians that citizens of nation states shouldn’t be given a democratic voice because ‘they didn’t understand’. Really? The EU feels distant, but it doesn’t have to be.
The repeated political nod to new European legislation, the sense of ‘our hands are tied’ that we receive from our own UK politicians. Whether hands or tied or not, Europe being presented as an excuse does not indicate strength in our own
political leaders.
Where’s the learning?
The Euro experiment had been so blinding to those in power that Greece had been included in the Euro framework with criminal levels of dealing and rule bending to make it a reality. And now? Greece had fallen apart, the country had to open itself up and sell itself and any natural assets to the highest bidder because it has no means to protect itself, its landscape its people from the need to pay back the debt. Other countries aren’t far behind this destitution. Where’s the learning?
How is the EU reflecting on itself and its agenda? How is the EU learning? How is the EU planning to engage in real debate about the journey on which it is taking European citizens? What is the EU doing to foster real collaboration and transparency in its relationships?
With all this running around in my mind as I hovered over my choices, I decided that actually, it wasn’t good enough for us to continue to forge ahead without question.
Did I believe the rhetoric on either side of the Brexit debate? Did I vote for a particular political point of view?
No.
Blinkers off
I voted leave. And I did so knowing that it, if it came about, it would lead to pain, anger, shock. However we needed to rip the blinkers off and have a really good look at who we are and what we are doing with the EU.
What I voted for was to reassess and reignite a deep collaboration with our European neighbours based on a transparent, holistic and appropriate way of operating. We have to deeply collaborate to deliver ourselves and the larger than human world to a flourishing future. We have to do so with transparency, accountability, learning and reflection.
Most people assume that people around them are from the remain camp, and those who voted remain loudly believe they are morally right, that those who voted leave are bigoted, stupid and have damned the country and Europe to a terrible fate. And, the remainers will make the leavers wrong, because there are surely only two sides to the argument?
Taking a systemic perspective, the UK vote to leave is an indication that the system of the EU has deep challenges. All is not well. That we need to listen, really listen to what is emerging, or trying to emerge – and listen without fear.
No one view is ‘right’; no one person is right. The sooner we start listening to understand, rather than ‘fix’ and offload our pain, the sooner we can start to co-create a way forward. And that’s where we need to remember that we are coaches and we are all Europeans.