Introduction

A course about Public Narrative in Action – Four Leadership Challenges: Loss, Power, Difference, Change run by Marshall Ganz at Harvard University. The course notes below are from the following documents –

• Intro (5 pgs) – For students and wider network
• Teaching Materials (10 pgs) – Weekly teaching notes for Training Fellows
• Concept Notes (16 pgs) – Weekly concept notes for students
• Posters (5 pgs) – 1-page visuals that explain what each week and challenge is about.

Intro

These resources were developed to help guide future Training Fellows and Workshop Facilitators in teaching the key concepts for each of the 4 leadership challenges.

Questions of what I am called to do, what is my community called to do, and what we are called to do now are at least as old as the three questions posed by the first century Jerusalem sage, Rabbi Hillel:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

When I am for myself alone, what am I?

If not now, when?

To lead is to accept responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty.

Public Narrative is a leadership practice – the craft of storytelling to enable others to respond to moments of disruption with agency – the emotional capacity to make mindful choices. We practice Public Narrative by learning to tell a Story of Self to enable others to experience why we are called to do what we do; a Story of Us to enable others to experience the values they share; and a Story of Now to enable others to access those values to choose mindfully in response to urgent challenges. We turn now to a deepening of that understanding by focusing on four profound, and perhaps universal, leadership challenges: enabling others to deal with loss, difference, power and change.

We can learn to mobilize the emotional resources embedded in our values to respond to disruption with self-efficacy instead of self-doubt, solidarity instead of isolation, and hope instead of fear. In this way, we can transform threats from which we flee into challenges we can embrace and enable others to do so as well.

We are all natural storytellers. We use narrative to construct our individual and collective identities, share experiences that reveal values embedded in those identities, and access the moral resources to respond to the challenges of an uncertain world. Storytelling enables us to speak the “language of emotion” to articulate, communicate, and share values that can move us to act.

Four Leadership Challenges: Loss, Difference, Power and Change

A Leadership Challenge is a specific moment in which we hold the responsibility to enable others – our “us” – to respond to disruption with agency as opposed to react with fear.

The Empathetic Bridge is a way we can learn to engage others in recovering their capacity to make mindful choices. It is grounded in respect for oneself and for others – the foundation upon which the Empathetic Bridge is built. It is not rescuing, it is enabling. It is not feeling sorry for someone, it is honoring their dignity. It is not putting oneself down. It is drawing on one’s own resources, enabling others to draw on theirs. And we know how respect feels: it is to be seen, to be heard and to be valued.

The Empathetic Bridge has four elements:

Acknowledge the challenge:

Do not ignore it, deny its importance, or tell the other person ‘not to feel bad’. These words dismiss or belittle the real pain, fear, or anger. Respect requires recognizing the hurt of others.

Offer empathy but do not claim it:

Do not say ‘I know just how you feel’ because you don’t. On the other hand, you may offer your own experience. People often respond to a friend’s news that a loved one got diagnosed with cancer by sharing a story from their own experience. Making yourself empathetically available can create a safe space within which others can experience validation for their own feelings.

Narrate Hope:

Don’t promise everything will be okay! It may not be. And you can’t promise it anyway. Don’t promise that something will save the day. We have our own sources of hope in our faith, relationships, or life experiences. Hope lives in the space between certainty and fantasy: the possible if not the probable. We can elicit sources of hope from within the life experiences of ourselves and others. We can enable others – our “us” – to experience the capacity to respond with agency.

Offer a choice:

When we experience a deeply disruptive blow,we can lose our sense of agency or our ability to choose our future. The last step in the empathetic bridge is the restoration of choice. This is neither telling others what they will do nor what they must do. Instead, it means offering possible choices your “us” can make now. It may be a choice of how to respond emotionally to what has happened. Do we let it overwhelm us so much that we must hide, or do we discover that we can find the sources of courage and solidarity to face it?

We focus on four major leadership challenges: loss, difference, power and change. We focus on a very specific moment in which you – or another – had to step up or step back – to enable others to respond to disruption with agency. What did you say? What did they say? Words matter. Because reality is complex, each of these perspectives is only a lens with which we can focus on useful aspects of that reality rather than a box within which to contain it.

Often a single moment of disruption can be looked at through multiple lenses, each suggesting different ways to respond. Change, for example, often involves loss or difference involves power. Using different “lenses” to understand a moment of disruption can illuminate new perspectives, nuances, and connections that you may not have noticed before.

We begin asking how we can craft a narrative response enabling others to respond with agency to the experience of loss. Narrative psychologist Dan McAdams identifies two ways people may interpret the experience of loss. One is contaminative: the experience of loss is so hurtful that it becomes predictive: good things will always go bad, I will always be a victim etc. McAdams calls the other way to respond redemptive: the loss is real, painful, and lonely but can also become a source of learning, growth, discovery, and resilience.

We then turn to difference: the question of how widely or narrowly and how deeply or shallowly we bound the us with whom we engage. Narrow bounding is rooted more in multiple kinds of shared experiences, like members of a particular team. Broad bounding is rooted in fewer kinds of shared experience, but may be more inclusive, like an entire school. Neither is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The objective is to evoke values shared by the “us” so as to enable it to act with agency. We may also consider the depth of the shared experience in which our “us” is rooted. We may experience moments of parenting. for example, quite deeply no matter how widely shared. We may also experience neighborliness quite lightly, even though many of these experiences are shared.

The challenge of power inequality occurs in any moment in which a dominant and a subordinate meet. Drawing on the work of political scientist James Scott, we distinguish among four different stories being told in such a moment: the public and hidden stories of the subordinate, and the public and hidden stories of the dominant. The question is how we can use narrative to enable the agency of the subordinate and, at times, even the dominant, on a continuum from compliance to resistance. When and how do we choose to comply or resist? Choosing is a matter of responding with agency rather than reacting. Power depends on strategy – can we turn the resources we have into the power we need to win? Similar choices can be made on the dominant side as well.

Finally, with change, we ask how leaders can enable their us to respond mindfully to disruptive change. This does not refer to “change” we seek, but rather, change which is thrust upon us. We consider four positions: (1) reject the change by insisting on the old story; (2) embrace the change by insisting on a new story; (3) accept elements of change to the extent they can be accommodated within the old story; (4) accept elements of the old story to the extent they can be adapted to a new story.

These four leadership challenges describe the kinds of disruptions many of us have experienced in our own lives. Here we look at them as leadership challenges; how can we enable others (and not just ourselves) to respond with agency.

Pedagogy: Diagnose, Analyze, Learn

The pedagogy of Public Narrative requires focusing on specific moments, in this case, specific moments of leadership challenge. To understand how we might respond differently to such moments we draw upon specific moments (cases) of leadership challenge in our own lives.

Each case describes a specific moment in which you were a participant among an “us” confronted with loss, difference, power or change. Because our focus is on narrative, specific words of what was said matter. You need not have been the one holding leadership responsibility to analyze the moment, but you do have to have been present. Cases can be drawn from any personal, work, or social setting in which you participated. Analysis of personal cases can be very useful in learning how to respond to disruptions in our professional lives (and vice versa). By reflecting on these cases from our own lives and giving language to the relationship between the Self and the Us, we build our capacity to make sense of and respond to these leadership challenges in the future.

In doing so, you will:

• Diagnose a leadership challenge drawn from your own experience by using the tools of Public Narrative to describe the challenge, who was involved, and the distinct narratives in play.
• Analyze the leadership response to this challenge by examining these narratives in terms of their intent, the values they articulated, and their effectiveness in enabling the agency of the Us.
• Learn the leadership lessons from the use of Public Narrative that you can bring to your own practice.

Deepening our understanding of Public Narrative

While learning to tell a story of self, us, and now equips you with a vital leadership practice, especially enabling others to “get’ your calling, focus on Loss, Difference, Power and Change is about enabling others to find emotional resources – often in each other – to respond to serious disruptions with agency.

We learn the craft of public narrative to access the motivational resources we need to enable others to respond to urgent challenges with agency. The craft reveals the power embedded in the experience of a single moment that can change not only our own lives, but the lives of others as well.

Teaching Materials

We revisited all the lectures, sections, team meetings from 2020 to draw learnings, best practices, common challenges and a list of potential discussion questions for each week.

Teaching Loss Week

Since this is just the second week of Loss, Difference, Power, Change, many students are still grappling with the basic concepts of the course. This week, it’s most important to make sure students understand “leadership,” as we define it, and the case framework. Because the Loss framework itself is relatively simple and intuitive, you can also use Loss cases to focus on these more general concepts. Across your case preparation, discussion leading, and paper grading:

• First, make sure the students understand our conception of leadership and agency. Do they get that leadership is about enabling others, not just dealing with the loss oneself? Is there a Self enabling an Us in their cases? And are they clear about what agency is (e.g. acting intentionally on values)? The redemption vs. contamination contrast can be a helpful way of making “leadership” and “agency” more concrete.
• Second, prioritize the basic case framework. Do they understand what a “leadership challenge” is? Can they identify what the loss is specifically? Are they following the basic case structure? Are they answering all the questions associated with each part? Are they doing an analysis, rather than telling a narrative? In both your coaching and leading section discussion, it can work really well to move thoroughly through the debrief sheet, top to bottom. And in evaluating papers, grasp of the case framework should be priority no. 1! When students aren’t getting it, be direct and lay out the framework clearly in your comments.
• Third, do they understand what a Loss case is? A wide variety of challenges can be interpreted as “loss.” What matters is whether there is a threat of contamination and a possibility of redemption. Are the students correctly using these concepts in their cases? Can they identify their specific Loss in their case? Drawing on examples from lecture (the Joy Luck Club film clip) or your own experience can be helpful for clarifying the concepts.
• Last, look for a grasp of the Empathetic Bridge. Have the students understood what it is, including all four steps? Have they applied it in their cases? Make sure in section discussion to spend some time analyzing a leadership intervention in detail through the empathetic bridge framework. This will prove invaluable for later weeks.

Potential discussion questions for Loss

Below are some common questions that come up in discussions of Loss cases. Flag any that feel relevant to your section’s cases:

• Do the steps of the Empathetic Bridge have to be completed in order to enable agency and create a redemptive experience for the Us? Why or why not?
• What is the difference between claiming empathy and offering empathetic availability?
• Can a leader create a redemptive narrative for the Us when they themselves are stuck in contamination?
• How can a leader help their Us through the Loss when they themselves are grieving?

• What role does the timing of the leader’s response play in their ability to successfully navigate a moment of Loss when they are also feeling the pain of the loss?
• What challenges arise when not everyone in the Us experiences the Loss in the same way or there are multiple losses experienced? How might a leader cope with this?

Takeaways

In case you are short on time and/or the students need some scaffolding to get to richer takeaways, here are some questions you might pose in order to help the students crystallize the key points for Loss:

• How do we define leadership? What’s the difference between leadership and authority?
• How do we define agency?
• Can you “give” agency? Why not?
• Why is acknowledging the loss a critical step toward enabling agency in the Us?
• What role does respect play in the Empathetic Bridge?
• How does a redemptive response to Loss enable agency for the Us?
• What is the difference between offering empathy vs. claiming you know just how they feel?

*Another option is to revisit the questions the presenters asked at the end of their cases

presentations (if they were good questions!).

Teaching Difference Week

In this week, it’s most important to make sure students understand what a challenge of Difference is and how leaders can make strategic choices. Across your case preparation, discussion leading, and paper grading:

• First, make sure that students understand what a Difference challenge is. Do they understand that Difference is a challenge that deals with what it means to be an Us? Do they understand that the leadership moment comes at a time when the differences within an Us or between two or more Us’s becomes so disruptive that it threatens the group’s agency? As with Loss (and all of the leadership challenges in Part 2), students should focus on analyzing a specific story moment that deals with the challenge of Difference.
• Second, prioritize the Difference framework, particularly the strategies for bounding (broad vs. narrow and shallow vs. deep). Do they understand the distinction between the two dimensions for bounding? Can they demonstrate that they know the difference between narrow and broad bounding and when either strategy might be appropriate for enabling agency? Are they able to articulate whether a specific bounding strategy was based on shallow or deep values, beliefs, and experiences?
• Third, connect concepts from last week: definitions of leadership, agency, strategic intent, and the Empathetic Bridge. Are students distinguishing between authority and leadership? Do they understand that the leader’s strategic intent in a (successful) Difference case should be to enable collective agency in the Us, not just individual agency? How are they mapping the Difference concepts onto the Empathetic Bridge?
• Last, look for connections between Difference and Story of Us. Students should be able to make the connection between bounding strategies and crafting a Story of Us. Are they using the language of Story of Us in their analysis or discussion?

Potential discussion questions for Difference

Below are some common questions that come up in discussions of Difference cases. Flag any that feel relevant to your section’s cases:

• How does a leader’s understanding of the Us or multiple Us’s impact their strategic intent?
• What are the advantages of narrow bounding? What are the dangers?
• What identities, values, or experiences is the leader bounding the Us around? Was it successful? Why or why not?
• How can a leader address conflicting narratives within an Us or between two Us’s at odds with one another?
• In terms of the Empathetic Bridge, how should a leader narrate hope for the Us? What purpose does this step play in dealing with a Difference case?

Takeaways

In case you are short on time and/or the students need some scaffolding to get to richer takeaways,

here are some questions you might pose in order to help the students crystallize the key points for Difference:

• As a leader, what’s the goal in navigating a Difference case?
• Is “inclusive” bounding always the right answer? Why not?
• Does broad bounding always mean that the shared values and characteristics will be diffuse or shallow? Why not?
• Why do we focus on strategic intent in analyzing our cases?

*Another option is to revisit the questions the presenters asked at the end of their cases presentations (if they were good questions!).

Teaching Power Week

This week, it’s most important to make sure students understand what a challenge of Power is and how leaders can make strategic choices about how to deal with an imbalance of power. Across your case preparation, discussion leading, and paper grading:

• First, make sure that students can define power and what a power challenge is about. Are students able to define power as a relationship between interests and resources? Do they understand that power is fluid rather than fixed? Can they describe power as a leadership challenge that deals with an issue of unequal power between two parties?
• Second, reinforce that the goal is always to enable agency. Can students articulate the difference between power and agency? Do they understand that the goal for power – as with all of the leadership challenges – is enabling collective agency for the Us?
• Third, prioritize their understanding of the 4 stories: dominant public, dominant hidden, subordinate public, and subordinate hidden. Can students define all four of these stories and do they understand the relationship between them? Are they able to identify that the public story is often shared by both the dominant and subordinate parties?
• Next, make sure that they understand the compliance-resistance continuum. Are students able to draw the connection between the 4 stories and the continuum (i.e. that making the hidden story public is a means of resistance, while keeping it hidden is a form of compliance)? Do they understand that there is no “right” answer in terms of successful responses to issues of power, but rather that where to land on the continuum is a matter of context and what will be the most agency-enabling for the Us?

Potential discussion questions for Power

Below are some common questions that come up in discussions of Power cases. Flag any that feel relevant to your section’s cases:

• How do existing public narratives contribute to/perpetuate existing power dynamics?
• How/why does surfacing private narratives create a power shift?
• How does a leader’s position (as either a member of the dominant or subordinate party) affect their narrative strategy?
• How can a dominant group enable the agency of a subordinate group? Under what conditions would the dominant group encourage resistance in a subordinate group? What might this look like?
• Can you be both dominant and subordinate at the same time? How does this affect your ability to enable the agency for the Us you are addressing?
• Under what conditions is resistance a successful strategic choice? Under what conditions is compliance a successful strategic choice?

Takeaways

In case you are short on time and/or the students need some scaffolding to get to richer takeaways, here are some questions you might pose in order to help the students crystallize the key points for Power:

• What is our definition of power? How is power different from agency?
• Is the leader in a power case always a member of the dominant group? Why not?
• Is resistance always the right response? Why not?
• Why is it important to consider the 4 stories involved in an unequal power dynamic? How does understanding these 4 stories help us make decisions around how to proceed?

*Another option is to revisit the questions the presenters asked at the end of their cases presentations (if they were good questions!).

Teaching Change Week

This week, it’s most important that students understand what a Change leadership challenge is as well as the different narrative strategies for responding to Change. Across your case preparation, discussion leading, and paper grading:

• First, make sure that students understand the leadership challenge. When we talk about leadership challenges of Change, we’re not talking about initiating change, we’re talking about responding to a change that impacts the Us. Even with movements of change, there is usually some kind of provocation that forces an Us to respond, and the focus of the analysis should be on the leader’s narrative response to change. Helping students get clear on this will make a big difference in their ability to successfully analyze cases of Change. Can students identify what the change was that the leader responded to? Can they articulate the Old Story and the New Story?
• Second, prioritize students’ understanding of the 4 responses to change: rejecting change, accommodation, adaptation, and rejecting continuity. Can students define each of these responses? Do they understand which responses are rooted in the Old Story and which are rooted in the New Story? Are they able to differentiate between cases of accommodation and adaptation?
• Next, reinforce the goal of enabling collective agency for the Us in dealing with a moment of Change. Are students able to articulate strategic intent in terms of enabling agency? Do they understand the difference between reacting from fear and responding with hope? Are they able to identify that cases of rejection rarely (if ever) enable agency for the Us?
• Last, revisit concepts from previous weeks where applicable, including the Empathetic Bridge and the connection between cases of Change and other applicable lenses (Loss, Difference, Power). Do students see that rejection responses often miss the first step on the Empathetic Bridge (acknowledging the challenge)? Are they able to make connections to leadership challenges from previous weeks (for example, many Change cases are also examples of loss)?

Potential discussion questions for Change

Below are some common questions that come up in discussions of Change cases. Flag any that feel relevant to your section’s cases:

• Is rejecting change or rejecting continuity ever successful in enabling agency for the Us? Why or why not?
• Are responses to change always static? When or why might a leader start with one narrative response and then eventually move to another?
• What does a leader have to know about their Us in order to be strategic about responding to a challenge of Change?
• What’s the role of narrating hope in responding to a disruptive moment of change?
• Is rejecting the change the same thing as fighting the change? Why or why not?

Takeaways

In case you are short on time and/or the students need some scaffolding to get to richer takeaways, here are some questions you might pose in order to help the students crystallize the key points for Change:

• Why is it so important to understand your Us’s relationship to the Old Story and to the change that’s occurred?
• Where on the spectrum do we find the most success in enabling agency for the Us?
• What is the difference between accommodation and adaptation?
• Why is acknowledging the challenge so critical in cases of change?

*Another option is to revisit the questions the presenters asked at the end of their cases presentations (if they were good questions!).

Concept Notes

Loss Core Concepts

Loss is the first leadership challenge we focus on in this course. It is conceptually the simplest, but emotionally perhaps the most profound. A Loss challenge encompasses many kinds of loss: the loss of a significant person to death, or to a breakdown of relationship; the loss of a job or significant position; the loss of a campaign, political party, etc; even the loss of belief (in God, another person, in oneself). There may be elements of Loss in all the challenges (Difference, Power, and Change) .

For the purposes of our work, we define loss based on the work of narrative psychologist Dan McAdams: that it is serious enough to threaten an individual or group with contamination.

The experience of loss is so hurtful that it becomes predictive: “Good things will always go bad,” “so why bother trying?” It is easy to get stuck in a reaction of despair.

Contamination disables agency: it engenders hopelessness, inhibits action, neutralizes values. The person sees themself as a victim, not as a survivor, much less an agent. There is, however, another way to respond to loss, which McAdams terms redemption. A redemptive response acknowledges—and makes space to feel—the pain, grief, and loneliness of the loss experience But it can turn it into an opportunity for growth, learning, and resilience. It does not attempt to conceal or downplay the loss (denial can be seen as another form of contamination), but nonetheless finds reason to hope within the loss itself. Redemption enables agency: It can turn the loss into an opportunity for growth, learning, and action.

In contrast with the other leadership challenges, this week’s framework is explicitly prescriptive: contamination is understood to always be a negative response, and redemption always a positive response. So the key leadership question for Loss is: how, in the face of Loss, does one move an Us from contamination to a redemptive response?

Because Loss is the first challenge we introduce, we also use this week to flesh out concepts foundational to the course as a whole: leadership challenge, agency, and the empathetic bridge. A leadership challenge is a specific moment in which we hold the responsibility to enable others – our “us” – to respond to disruption with agency as opposed to react with fear. We define agency as the capacity for mindful choice in response to disruptive challenges. We evaluate the effectiveness of leadership practice in terms of whether it enables the agency of our Us or disables their agency.

How to build an Empathetic Bridge:

The Empathetic Bridge is a way we can learn to engage others in recovering their capacity to make mindful choices. It is grounded in respect for oneself and for others – the foundation upon which the Empathetic Bridge is built. It is not rescuing, it is enabling. It is not feeling sorry for someone, it is honoring their dignity. It is not putting oneself down. It is drawing on one’s own resources, enabling others to draw on theirs. And we know how respect feels: it is to be seen, to be heard and to be valued.

The Empathetic Bridge has four elements, which often — but not always — unfold in the following order:

• Acknowledge the loss: Do not ignore it, deny its importance, or tell the other person ‘not to feel bad’. These words dismiss or belittle the real pain, fear, or anger. Respect requires recognizing the hurt of others.
  • In Jacinda Ardern’s address at the Christchurch Memorial, she acknowledges the pain the nation — and the Muslim community, specifically — is feeling two weeks after the terrorist attack: “What words adequately express the pain and suffering of 50 men, women and children lost and so many injured? What words capture the anguish of our Muslim community being the target of hatred and violence? What words express the grief of a city that has already known so much pain?”. She also describes specific examples of individuals feeling the pain of this tragedy (the man who could not sleep because of the hurt and anguish of others).

• Offer empathy but do not claim it: Do not say ‘I know just how you feel’ because you don’t. On the other hand, you may offer your own experience. People often respond to a friend’s news that a loved one got diagnosed with cancer by sharing a story from their own experience. Making yourself empathetically available can create a safe space within which others can experience validation for their own feelings.
  • After asking “what words” there were to describe the pain New Zealanders were feeling, Jacinda says, “I thought there were none.” Rather than trying to present herself as a stoic public figure, she offers vulnerability through this simple statement that speaks to her own pain.
• Narrate hope: Don’t promise everything will be okay! It may not be. And you can’t promise it anyway. Don’t promise that something will save the day. We have our own sources of hope in our faith, relationships, or life experiences. Hope lives in the space between certainty and fantasy: the possible if not the probable.y. We can elicit sources of hope from within the life experiences of ourselves and others. We can enable others – our “us” – to experience the capacity to respond with agency. This step may involve one or more of the following: remembering and celebratingsomething valuable about what was lost (e.g. what a loved one “stood for”); shared past experiences that illustrate hope or resilience (“We did it before, we can do it again”); shared values (“We are more than what happened to us, we believe in…”); evoking solidarity (“we’re in this together”); or casting a hopeful vision of the future (“we can carry that legacy forward” or “this will teach us how to do it differently next time”). Hope is about possibility, and offering a genuine source of hope requires knowing who your Us really is.
  • Jacinda narrates several sources of hope in her speech. First, she finds hope in the words of the Muslim community, “As-salaamu Alaikum.” In doing so, she reflects the hope she sees withinin the Muslim community rather than locating hope in something external (for example, she does not attempt to narrate hope by making promises about what the government will do). Jacinda also narrates hope through describing the “stories of bravery” of civilians who responded to the attack. Though she talks about the values of New Zealand, she says they are aspirational — something the community must work toward together.

• Offer a choice: When we experience a deeply disruptive blow,we can lose our sense of agency or our ability to choose our future. The last step in the empathetic bridge is the restoration of choice. This is neither telling others what they will do nor what they must do. Instead, it means offering possible choices your “us” can make now. It may be a choice of how to respond emotionally to what has happened. Do we let it overwhelm us so much that we must hide, or do we discover that we can find the sources of courage and solidarity to face it?
  • Because the values of New Zealand are aspirational, Jacinda calls on the people to “be the nation we believe ourselves to be.” Again, rather than saying the government will fix everything, she points to the nation’s collective responsibility and capacity to “make the very best of us a daily reality.” “We each hold the power,” she says, pointing to the individual and collective agency each of us holds.

In working on your Loss case, begin by identifying the Us, what the Loss meant to the Us, who the leader was in that moment, and what they said. Use the Empathetic Bridge to analyze what was said, identify whether the outcome for the Us was one of redemption or contamination and why. Finally, consider what insights you gained from analyzing the case through the lens of Loss and what lessons you are taking away for the future.

Difference Core Concepts

The leadership challenge of Difference concerns the question of how widely or narrowly and how deeply or shallowly we bound the us with whom we engage. The leadership challenge lies in how to strategically approach bounding so as to enable agency. Narrow bounding is rooted more in multiple kinds of shared experiences, like members of a particular team. Broad bounding is rooted in fewer kinds of shared experience, but may be more inclusive, like an entire school. Neither is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The objective is to evoke values shared by the “us” so as to enable it to act with agency. We may also consider the depth of the shared experience in which our “us” is rooted. We may experience moments of parenting. for example, quite deeply no matter how widely shared. We may also experience neighborliness quite lightly, even though many of these experiences are shared.

Public narrative is crafted to enable the agency of an Us in pursuit of shared purpose. Constructing an Us requires articulating the shared values that define its identity — it’s “Us-ness” — so as to enable collective agency.

What is the commonality that its members share, that an individual must have to “belong” to? Is it religion, culture, family ties? Race, gender, sexuality? Class or political loyalty? Shared values, shared history, shared beliefs, shared affinities? Whatever commonality defines an Us will also mark Us “different” to those who don’t share it: they won’t belong.

Furthermore, any Us will also have many internal differences, which have the potential to divide it (think of the way politics may divide a family!). This means every Us faces the question: in what respects may its members differ, and what experiences do all its members share? Furthermore, how sharp is the boundary of the Us?

For example, students in this class have many differences: culture, race, nationality, generation, religion, gender preference, profession, etc. In Self, Us, Now, we learned how to address this challenge by locating shared values to ground a Story of Us. Sometimes this can be far more challenging. Differences may emerge within an Us that threaten its continuity.

Or our Us may find itself in conflict with another Us based on irreconcilable – or contradictory – differences in our stories. Can those who don’t share what’s most important to the Us be included in some way, or should they be excluded? Is there an opportunity to turn differences within an Us into assets as opposed to liabilities?

A Difference challenge arises when making a decision about these questions becomes urgent: when the boundary of an Us becomes an issue that must be addressed. This can come in both forms described above: preserving an Us that is threatened to lose its agency by difference or creating an Us so as to enable agency. A leader may find themselves trying to create a new Us among divergent groups that must unite across their differences to face some larger threat. An existing Us -– a family, a team in the workplace—may be threatened by division that demands resolution. An Us with well-defined boundaries may face demands to include a group previously excluded from it, as when a marginalized group tightly defined by race or sexuality is asked to open up to “allies.”

While there are many kinds of “difference,” from a public narrative perspective it is particularly important to look at values. Values are the bedrock of narratives, and they are uniquely powerful in defining an Us. If shared values can be found between groups, they can unite across even the most trenchant forms of difference. Conversely, if values are not shared, even a seemingly tight Us may come apart at the seams. A key focus for this week is on the fact that decisions about boundaries are critical to exercising agency.

Sometimes, an Us may need to broaden its boundaries and become more inclusive. People may need to come together across long-standing differences in order to face a challenge that demands diverse resources and perspectives; a narrowly defined Us may need to let in new groups to escape insularity or stagnation. On the other hand, sometimes an Us may need to narrow its boundaries—to exclude—in order to protect itself from external threats and develop its own agency. An example here is the gay community in Milk, which created an “exclusive” Us so that its marginalized members could begin to experience the power they could have by acting together. Excluding others allowed them to learn they could solve their own problems—and could actively defend themselves against bigotry. Of course, it is also possible — as in the Milk example — that a narrowly bounded Us gradually begins to broaden its boundaries as they experience more collective agency and feel the need or desire to build a coalition. In other words, sometimes becoming more inclusive is agency-enabling, and sometimes becoming more exclusive can be agency enabling. Many of us, however, view “inclusion” positively and “exclusion” negatively, so the second idea tends to challenge us. “Inclusion” can in fact be very problematic when the more powerful demand it. It can be a way to smooth over real differences, to the disadvantage of a weaker party (We return to this issue next week, on “Power”).

There is another dimension to consider: shallow vs. deep bounding. As also with Loss, sharing a particular experience (a Story of Us) is much more powerful than trying to connect through abstraction (“we’re all human”…). Broad bounding does not always mean that the Us’s shared values and experiences will be diffuse or shallow, just as narrow bounding does not always mean that the shared values and experiences will be deeper. The boundaries of an Us can be shallow or deep regardless of whether it is a broadly bound Us or a narrowly bound Us.

This week’s readings focus on different ways narrative can be used to deal with these challenges of Difference, and this week’s videos (Milk, Mean Girls, Sesame Street) offer examples of bounding ranging from very narrow to very broad and very shallow to very deep. Overall, there are two narrative strategies we focus on this week in response to the challenge of difference:

• Bounding an Us narrowly or broadly: Which strategy will enable collective agency in the Us?
• Deciding whether the “Us-ness” created will be shallow or deep: What shared values and experiences are you drawing upon in constructing your Us? How meaningful are these shared values and experiences to your Us? How might you narrate them?

It’s important to emphasize that no one of these strategies is always the right answer. Unlike with Loss, where redemption was always good and contamination always bad, with difference, the narrative strategy to restore agency depends entirely on the situation.

THE EMPATHETIC BRIDGE:

As with Loss, the Empathetic Bridge can be a valuable narrative tool for leaders dealing with a challenge of Difference.

• Acknowledge the difference: Recognizing and acknowledging a difference, rather than denying it, is nearly always the right thing to do when facing a challenging Difference issue. “We’re really just the same” is the analogue of “don’t feel bad:” it denies the challenging reality and belittles the others’ experience (in this case, their difference). This is as much true for stories of inclusion as for stories of exclusion; in each case, recognizing the reality of the difference is the first step.

• Offer empathy but do not claim it: Make oneself empathetically available to the Us by speaking from one’s experience. This is key to establishing some emotional credibility. In other words, it is hard to exercise leadership in resolving an internal division unless both sides have the sense that you get them. And when it comes to bounding an Us, people need to get the sense that you get the challenges involved in that as well.

• Narrate hope: Identifying sources of hope within values shared by the Us is the heart of the matter. Once a difference is acknowledged, finding common ground no longer erases the difference (“we’re not different”), but builds on it constructively (“yes, we are different, but we are also alike…”). However, it’s also important not to claim what you share is equivalent (two experiences of, e.g. prejudice may still be quite different!), but simply to share it.

• Offer a choice: Identify and articulate the choice an Us can make. How does the Us want to move forward through the Difference challenge? Will they choose to act on their values or not? Bounding or re-bounding an Us won’t work unless members of the Us choose to make it work.

As with Loss week, respect is the necessary foundation for constructing an Empathetic Bridge from the Self to the Us. Additionally, respect plays an important role in making decisions around bounding, with deep resonance found in James Baldwin’s quote:

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

In working on your Difference case, remember to focus on a specific moment of leadership challenge — why was there a need for bounding? After identifying who the Us (or Us’s) are and who is doing the bounding, analyze whether it was an instance of broad or narrow bounding and how shallow or deep the bounding was. To what extent did these boundaries exist before this moment? To what extent did the leader strategically bound an Us to enable their agency? Decide whether or not the Empathetic Bridge is relevant in your case, and if so, analyze the moment through that lens as well.

Power Core Concepts

In this section, we explore situations in which there is a relationship of unequal power between two parties. One of these (the more powerful) is dominant, and the other (the less powerful) is subordinate. Power inequality is a particular type of Difference challenge—for this reason, some Difference cases may actually turn out to be Power cases—but one with special dynamics that merit their own analysis (remember: lenses, not boxes!). The key leadership question this week is: how to exercise leadership to enable an Us to respond with agency in a moment of power inequality — from a subordinate or dominant position.

At one level, our understanding of power is intuitive: if you need the resources I have more than I need the resources you have, who’s got the “power?” I do. Turn it around and you do. But if we each need the other’s resources equally, to create a co-op daycare, for example, we can create more “power with” each other than we can access on our own.

In the United Farm Workers (UFW), for example, we first organized a credit union, a cooperative bank, to begin building the “power with” each other — interdependence, solidarity, confidence — to be able to take on the power that the grape growers exercised “over” us. An unequal power relationship typically works to the benefit of the dominant party and the detriment of the subordinate. The subordinate party may suffer all manners of abuse, exploitation, or belittlement.

It is important to distinguish between power and agency. Remember that agency is the emotional capacity to make mindful choices, while power is the capacity to get what you want (based on resources, interests, and needs). Regardless of how much (or how little) power they hold, a subordinate party can still experience and exercise agency. Generally, however, a subordinate will most often experience its agency as constrained. Subordinates often feel powerless to change the situation, and may come to view the domination as inevitable or even beneficial. Interestingly, however, the agency of the dominant party may also be constrained, in spite of its greater power. A dominant party may be trapped into playing a particular role to maintain its dominance, even when it doesn’t want to.

In thinking about the dominant party, it can be useful to consider the three faces of power:

• Obvious: Who directly wins as a result of this unequal power dynamic? This is the easiest to identify and will most likely be the dominant party you identify in your case analysis for this week.
• Hidden: Who decides? Who creates the agenda? The second face of power is concerned with whoever decided or authorized this dynamic and the subsequent actions.
• Invisible: Who benefits? Who loses? The third face is concerned with the larger structures that enable this unequal power dynamic to continue and thrive.

Considering these three faces of power can be useful in understanding both the immediate context in which the leadership challenge is occurring and the broader, structural context that allows for and perpetuates the existing power dynamic.

The narrative analytic framework for this week is based on the work of political scientist James Scott, who distinguishes four different stories that are always present in a relationship of power inequality. Each party will have a public story (in Scott’s language a “public transcript”)—the “official” interpretation of the situation—and a hidden story (or “hidden transcript”), which each party keeps to itself. This means that an analysis of a domination relationship should identify four stories:

• Dominant’s hidden story
• Dominant’s public story
• Subordinate’s public story
• Subordinate’s private story

The two public stories usually overlap and reinforce each other. Each party’s hidden stories, on the other hand, are sharply distinct. In private, subordinates will often talk about the injustices they suffer and how best to deal with the situation—whether by bearing it with gritted teeth or by resisting, indirectly or directly. Through these hidden stories, they may find ways to keep their capacity for agency alive so that at some point they may be able to shift the power dynamics.

In the American South, for example, during slavery, the Black Church offered a venue in which the community was able to govern its own affairs, nurture its culture, and develop the agency that was constantly looking for ways to break out of the power relations.

The dominant, behind closed doors, may air their doubts about the subordinates’ actual loyalty. Their hidden story may also express whatever concerns (moral or otherwise) they have about maintaining control, give voice to the resistance they feel to “playing the role” demanded of them, or even concerns that they actually are not being “tough enough” on the subordinate party.

So long as the public story is upheld by both parties, and the hidden story kept private, an unequal power relationship tends to remain stable. But when the public story is challenged by one party, and the hidden story aired, the situation is thrown into upheaval. An opportunity arises for renegotiation—or open conflict. The result of this upheaval may be better for the subordinate than the previous “status quo,” or worse: there is always a danger for the subordinate that it may lose ground once the situation is destabilized.

Accordingly, in responding to power inequality, subordinates always face a choice along a continuum from compliance to resistance. Compliance is a strategy for dealing with domination by not openly contesting it.

By playing along with the public story, it may be possible to carve out a space within which benefits of real value may be realized. In the film North Country for example, Glory the union leader has led her fellow women miners to protect their jobs, as well as their personal autonomy, by complying with much of the daily abuse they have to contend with. In this case, it is interesting to note that within compliance, Glory is able to negotiate some small improvements for the other women.

Resistance, on the other hand, means challenging the public story, raising the possibility of open conflict and escalation. Often, resistance begins with choosing to make the subordinate’s hidden story public. This is the path that Josie, in North Country, chooses. She finds the men’s abuse unbearable, and decides to confront it openly, asking the other women to follow her. However, they oppose her at first because they fear not only jeopardizing the gains they have won, but also escalating the abuse.

When a situation of Power is constraining an Us’s agency, should a leader enable the Us to comply or resist? Should a hidden story be made public? As with Difference, there isn’t always one right answer. For the subordinate group, outright resistance may be the necessary response to an abuse of power; at other times, it may be disastrous. For the dominant group, there is often little incentive to encourage resistance, since they benefit from the unequal power dynamic. There are instances, however, when a leader from the dominant group may encourage resistance from the subordinate group. Resistance and compliance, in fact, are better seen as two poles on a spectrum:

Compliance ←—————————→Resistance

Where on the spectrum the right response falls depends on the circumstances, the constituency, and the judgment of the leadership. This week, we will explore the conditions under which compliance or resistance may be the best strategic choice.

One further layer of complexity in cases of power inequality is that both dominant and subordinate groups often have their own internal divisions—and each division may have its own public/hidden stories. A dominant group frequently has a hierarchy, and the less powerful dominant actors, if resentful of their superiors, may find common cause with the subordinate. They may likewise face the question of whether to “resist” or “comply” (consider the 3 faces of power). Within the subordinate group, conversely, a division may develop between those choosing resistance and those choosing compliance.

THE EMPATHETIC BRIDGE:

As you analyze your case for this section, it may be useful to consider whether or not the leader used elements of the Empathetic Bridge. Remember that the purpose of the Empathetic Bridge is to make a bridge between the Self and Us in order to enable collective agency. In thinking about the Empathetic Bridge in a Power case, it is important to first consider who the Us is.

• Acknowledge the challenge: Recognizing and acknowledging the power imbalance and presence of hidden stories may be an impactful first step regardless of whether the leader is a member of the dominant or subordinate party. For example, if a 10 member of the dominant party addresses the subordinate party, acknowledging the challenge might look like acknowledgement of the fact that there is a power imbalance, offering their hidden story, and/or acknowledging that the subordinate party has their own hidden story. Or, for the subordinate party, acknowledging the challenge may simply be acknowledgement of the differences between the public and hidden stories and why that is a challenge for the Us. Again, consider how respect plays a role in acknowledgement of an unequal relationship of power.
• Offer empathy: In a Power case, establishing an empathetic connection with the Us might look like sharing feelings of discomfort, anger, fear, or sadness caused by the imbalance of power. Creating space for empathetic connection is a way of demonstrating respect.
• Narrate hope: Identifying sources of hope within the Us is important in Power cases, as with the other leadership challenges. What about the Us makes you hopeful for the future? What shared experiences or values can you draw upon in narrating a genuine source of hope for your Us? Remember that making false promises about a more hopeful future undermines the feeling of mutual respect.
• Offer a choice: This is where the compliance-resistance continuum comes in. How will you identify and articulate the choice about whether to comply or resist in the face of an imbalance of power? Will compliance or resistance enable the most agency for your Us?

Remember to focus on a specific moment of leadership challenge (what was said) in your Power analysis. Was the leader a member of the dominant or subordinate party? Which Us are they addressing? Did they reinforce the public story or did they vocalize the hidden story? Where would you locate their response on the compliance-resistant continuum?

Were they successful in enabling collective agency for the Us? How do you know?

Change Concept Notes

Change is the last leadership challenge we look at in this course. The leadership question we raise here is not how to initiate change (a different kind of challenge!) but how to respond to a change that is already happening. It may be a change in your Us’s job, relationships, physical place, environment, or “world.” It may be a change in a family, a community, or an institution—or a wider change unsettling the whole of society (the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, racial conflict, gender norms, immigration, results of the 2016 election). What all these changes share is that they disrupt the familiar, confronting us with new sources of uncertainty. The leadership question is: how can we exercise leadership to enable an Us to respond with agency, as opposed to react with fear, to the new source of uncertainty?

One way to think about narrative responses to change is to look at it through two stories — the old and new. The Old Story is the Us’s narrative about the status quo and “the way things were” before the change occurred. The New Story is the narrative about the new reality that exists after the change. We identify four responses to change along a spectrum:

• Reject Change: Reject change by insisting on the old story. This response strives to ignore, halt, or reverse a change that has disrupted the Old Story. A story of this kind calls on an Us to reject change as inconsistent with the values of the Old Story. It may take the form of a fundamentalist reaction that seeks safety in the past by walling out a dangerous present or future. Consider the extent to which this is a response rooted in hope, solidarity, and self-worth as opposed to a reaction rooted in fear, isolation and self-doubt.
• Accommodate Change: Accept elements of change to the extent they can be accommodated within the old story. Accept only as much change as can be accommodated within the Old Story. This response recognizes that the Old Story can only be sustained by accepting elements of change. One accepts only enough change as required to conserve the Old Story. Sonenshein calls this response “accepting” or telling a “stability” narrative about the change.
• Adapt to Change: Accept elements of the old story to the extent they can be adapted to a new story. This response interprets change as the basis for a New Story, but draws on enough elements of the Old Story to enable a transition to the New Story. Essentially this is the corollary response to Burke’s: conserve in order to change. In order to move forward into a New Story, an adaptation response brings forward elements of the Old Story, grounding the change in long-held values. Sonenshein calls this a “change championing” response, and a “progressive” narrative of the change.
• Reject Continuity: Embrace the change by insisting on a new story. This approach experiences the Old Story as irreconcilable with a New Story that embraces the change. This view rejects the Old Story as obsolete, worthless, horrific. It entails telling a wholly New Story with the intent of leaving behind the Old Story entirely. In Sonenshein’s model, this too is “change championing” but in a more extreme form. Rejecting continuity may appear optimistic, constructive, and utopian, yet the wish to break so completely with the past (or to even deny that it existed) may leave us bereft of any sources of agency, creating a new kind of dependency. In this approach, the past is all too evidently imperfect, while the future, as pure potential, holds the enticing possibility of perfection. Striving for future perfection, however, can be enormously problematic because it may entail an attempt to shed our values, histories, and institutions, as well as our flaws—that are inextricably caught up in the past. At the extreme, rejecting continuity can result in radical efforts to create a new and perfect humanity, also devolving to coercion or a break from reality.

Responses acknowledging the change lie on a spectrum running from rejecting change to rejecting continuity. At the extremes are rejections (change or continuity), and in the middle are responses of acceptance (enough change to enable continuity in the Old Story or bring forward enough continuity to enable change to the New Story). The following chart summarizes the four responses to change and demonstrates what each response looks like in the context of a responses to immigration:

Example: Responses to Immigration

“Build a wall!”

“They can assimilate, we’re a melting pot.”

“We support Multiculturalism, like a salad. Everyone should speak more than one language.”

“We should have no borders. We welcome anyone and everyone.”

The key to strategic intent with regard to challenges of Change is about where values-based, collective agency can best be enabled for the Us. Some may fear the future. Others may fear the past. Agency implies intentional, values-driven choice rooted in hope and grounded in reality. The first step in dealing with a challenging change is recognizing and accepting it as a real challenge, which must happen before a hopeful and intentional response can be mounted. To be agentic, responses must accept and then consciously move through reality in all its imperfection and complexity (a response) rather than run away from it or remain in denial (a reaction).

THE EMPATHETIC BRIDGE

In addition to the spectrum, it may also be useful — though not necessary in all cases — to analyze responses to Change through the lens of the Empathetic Bridge. How might a leader employ the Empathetic Bridge in responding to a disruptive change?

• Acknowledge the challenge: As with all of the other leadership challenges, the first step is to acknowledge the challenge — in this case, a disruptive change that affects the Us. To honestly acknowledge the challenge facing the Us, the leader must first understand their Us’s relationship to the Old Story and to the change that has occurred.
• Offer empathy: In addition to the leader’s need to be vulnerable about their own response to the change, establishing an empathetic connection with the Us involves understanding your Us’s emotions in response to the change. Are they fearful of the change, of losing elements of the Old Story that are deeply rooted in their own values? Or are they more hopeful about the change and the New Story that will come out of it?
• Narrate hope: Once an empathetic connection is established, it is the leader’s responsibility to find and narrate a genuine source of hope for their Us, looking to shared history, values, and hopes for the future. In doing so, it may be useful for the leader to reflect on the Us’s relationship to the Old Story. Is the Old Story a source of hope for them? Or is there more hope to be found in the New Story?
• Offer a choice: As with the other challenges, the choice being narrated to the Us can be a literal choice (an action the leader is offering to the Us) or a choice about how to interpret and make meaning from the change that has occurred. The goal of the final step of the bridge is to enable agency for the Us for they are able to respond to the change rather than react.

Because the distinction between reacting from fear and responding with hope is so central to the change framework, this week is an opportune moment to return to the question of what agency is. In evaluating the different responses to Change, keep returning to our criterion: which narrative response is most agency-enabling? There is no “right answer” in evaluating among possible responses. The best response always depends on the particular circumstance, and the values of the Us. Remember also that all responses are on a continuum, so within each category there is variety. An accommodation response, for example, might accept more or less of the past—might lean toward denying change altogether or toward seeing it more positively.

In working on your Change case, remember to focus on a specific moment of leadership challenge — what was the response to the Change? Identify the Us, the leader, and what was said. Then, analyze the Old Story vs. the New Story, the Us’s relationship to each, and where the leader’s response fell on the continuum from rejecting change to rejecting continuity.

Decide whether or not the Empathetic Bridge is relevant in your case, and if so, analyze the moment through that lens as well.

Posters

1-page visuals that explain what each week and challenge is about.