More human in our work
Emancipator not only brings an innovative perspective – engaging men for gender justice and liberation from traditional masculinities – but also an innovative way of working. We want to work both for a change that should happen later, elsewhere, outside ourselves, and to allow that change to exist in the here and now. We are the change.
The ‘normal’, taken for granted way of working in organizations and throughout society is patriarchal. What is considered ‘professional’ work or cooperation is a lot of “head”, reason, doing, result- and goal-oriented, competitive, individual – and more such characteristics traditionally called ‘masculine’, which are socially valued higher than characteristics or traits traditionally called ‘feminine’: emotion, being, process- and people-oriented, connecting, facilitating, listening, collaborative, intuitive. And those patriarchal, ‘masculine’ norms, exist, of course, not only in men. They are omnipresent: in structures, norms, expectations about who and what is ‘professional’, in organizations and society as a whole.
We believe that we cannot dismantle patriarchy if we continue to work (together) in that patriarchal way, and cannot transform masculinity if we continue to work in a “masculine” way. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, as Audre Lorde wrote. One of the core values of our organization, central to who we are and how we work, is a different, essentially anti-patriarchal, regenerative, what we call gender transformative, way of working together, inspired by an approach called Genuine Contact.
Genuine contact
Genuine contact assumes that people cooperate best, and therefore that teams and organizations function best, when they do so as whole people. And that people are precious and valuable as whole people. When everyone can bring all that they are, including and especially all that is often considered ‘not professional’, to share with colleagues, they feel more connected to each other and their professional results will be better too.
Each and every person is more than their thoughts, reason, words. Everyone has feelings, emotions, experiences, different forms of intelligence and of knowing, and all of these things are an important part of who we are. If we don’t consciously and explicitly allow room for all those non-rational (not ‘professional’) sides of our humanity, then they will remain present under the surface, disrupting what we are trying to do. The harder we ignore and push them away, the more they will get in the way. And not only is it impossible but also undesirable to push that side of people away like that, because we can work better together if we do allow space for it.
Working together as whole human beings
In the way we work, we consciously make space for our full humanity. We express this in different ways.
In our internal team collaboration:
- We seek a horizontal structure that values everyone’s contribution, recognizes that everyone has different experiences, talents, perspectives and thus insights, and uses that diversity for better collaboration and better results
- We create space for emotional depth and personal development. Genuine contact is a holistic approach that also recognizes that there is more to our lives than our work, and ensures that our whole person is nurtured and inspired.
- We furnish our office nicely, with a comfortable sofa, for example, and we ask you to take off your shoes.
- We always start meetings with a check-in: asking about how you are feeling at the moment: meaning all of you, not just your head but also your body and needs and desires and disappointments and all those things that you may have learnt are not ‘professional’ to share with colleagues.
During workshops and training courses, events and meetings:
- We don’t put talking heads on stage, because our story for social change will only resonate with people if it connects with their personal experience and if people experience the change themselves. We minimize the talking and let people experience change in different ways.
In meetings or sessions:
- We pay a lot of attention to the process, more so than to the goal or intended result. And precisely by paying attention to the process, we achieve better results.
- We use different formats and alternate plenary work with work in pairs or small groups.
- We prefer to sit in a circle instead of at a table.
- We take signals from participants seriously – if someone needs to go to the toilet or needs a break, that usually applies to more people.
In this way, we do our utmost to take good care of ourselves, each other and the process – and by doing so, the result takes care of itself, as the genuine contact method teaches us. If people are welcome in a meeting with their whole being, it makes for better results.
Genuine contact
Genuine contact is also about being in genuine contact with each other, and the approach assumes that people can only be in genuine contact with each other if they are first in genuine contact with themselves. As such, Genuine Contact is also about personal development, self-reflection, for some people it is about spirituality. At MenEngage Alliance, the global network of organizations working with men on gender equality, it is called ‘inner work for social change’. Work on personal development is not only personal, good for ourselves, it is also essential for social change and revolutionary precisely because it is essentially anti-patriarchal. After all, we ourselves are part of what needs to change: there is no hard dividing line between ourselves and the big bad outside world, because we live in that world and cannot help but be part of it. Everyone, and especially people socialized as men, has work to do to unlearn internalized patriarchal patterns and expectations. For social change we will also have to change ourselves.
It is precisely in this context that the personal is political and the political is personal. This can feel like navel-gazing while the world is on fire, but it is precisely in this world that it is a radical political choice to be soft, not to shout but to whisper, and to listen attentively to each other.
The process is also the result: we cannot work with ratio and conflict and rigidity to achieve social change with the goal of more empathy, heart, peace and gentleness. Because a process of struggle will never result in softness, and because it will never be ‘done’, at least not during our lifetimes. The better world we want will only come if we create it, exists only in the places where we create it, so we need to do that in the here and now. We want to be the organization we want to see in the world; we are the change; through our existence we want to celebrate our humanity and our belonging together.
This holistic approach to people and organizations is also essential to the problems we are working on. We are not going to ‘just fix’ gender inequality or patriarchy with simple interventions. Ensuring that women have an ‘equal’ place in the existing system is not going to be enough. Indeed, the oversimplification of ‘just break the glass ceiling’, ‘fix’ women, set quotas and then it’s solved, is also a straightforward, superficial, patriarchal approach to a complex, systemic problem. What is needed is a major, social transformation that changes all oppressive systems from their core.
The holistic, process-oriented approach based on genuine contact is thus an essential pillar in who we are, alongside our substantive focus on transforming masculinities. You could say form and content, but for us the two are actually indistinguishable: no transforming masculinities without genuine contact. There will be no radical, gender transformative system changes if we don’t do it in a radical, human way, together. We work towards radical equality, from radical love.
It works
We know that this approach makes us unique and gets results. We hear back from colleagues at partner organizations that they appreciate our ways of working, that it is so nice to have a couch in our office, we almost always hear from former employees that the thing they most appreciated about us or will take away from us is the check-in. And we also hear from our staff, that when they are somewhere else and suddenly have to meet with people who don’t do a check-in (“not professional!”), don’t take breaks, work only from the head all day, they are no longer used to that and even become very unhappy about it. In genuine contact, we learn to distinguish between life nourishing and life depleting ways of working: we no longer want to participate if we feel it is not good for us, in our whole humanity.
By setting this example, just by showing that there is an alternative, we believe we can contribute to both personal and systemic transformation.
Accountability
If we really want to contribute to the solution and not simply reproduce what we are against, we need to include accountability. On this page, we outline the dilemmas and pitfalls in working with men and boys on gender equality and social justice, the principles and tenets we commit to, our shortcomings in them and our reflections on them.
Accountability also includes taking responsibility for and being accountable for misconduct, or if you feel we do not (have not) behaved in accordance with our principles in any way. If you have anything to say about this, we encourage you to contact us using the form at the bottom of this page.
Genuine contact in your organization: what we offer
Want to know more about genuine contact, how we put it into practice, or how it can contribute to greater job satisfaction and better results in your organization or team? How organizational change can contribute to solving all kinds of social problems?
We are currently developing an offer for organizations and teams around different components and themes within genuine contact – get in touch: info@emancipator.nl.
