The Most Important Person in the Room

Happy New Year! I hope you are all having a peaceful and prosperous 2014, and that you are thawing out from the Polar Vortex (if you are in the U.S. outside of California or Hawaii). My husband has encouraged me to continue this blog in the new year, possibly so that he is not the only recipient of my rambling reflections. So, please enjoy and add your reactions in the comments!

In December, I traveled to West Africa with my family to facilitate two planning workshops in western Burkina Faso and northern Nigeria. The purpose of the workshops was to envision different future development trajectories for dryland West African agricultural systems, and the organizers did a really good job of involving diverse participants. At the workshop in Kano, northern Nigeria, two of the participants were women from local farming organizations. They didn’t speak English, and had only a grade school education. These ladies, in a ‘round robin’ reflection on the first day, expressed astonishment that their accommodations and food were ‘nicer’ than they ever thought they would have the chance to experience. They were usually quiet during large group discussions, but participated in the small group discussions with the assistance of translators.

On the first day of the workshop, mid-morning, the minister of agriculture for the state (interestingly, the first woman to hold this post) was ‘announced’. She swept in to the room and planted herself at the table in the middle of the circle of chairs (which was not there for anyone to sit at; we simply hadn’t found a place to put it against the wall in the small room), and read a prepared speech. Afterwards, I led the group in an exercise designed to stimulate conversation. The premise of this exercise is that participants stand in one corner of the room if they agree with a statement which I read out loud, and in the opposite corner if they disagree. The presence of the minister disrupted this exercise, because the crowd watched to see where she placed herself and followed accordingly. The lone dissenters were foreign scientists who didn’t have much stake in the regional minister’s opinions. Fortunately, she didn’t stay very long, because she had other events to attend.

Now, I don’t mean to criticize the minister; my colleagues told me that she was quite supportive of agricultural development initiatives and sympathetic to the needs of her constituents. I’m just using these two women—the poor farmers and the minister—to exemplify the power dynamics inherent in any group process. As my career has moved into group process facilitation, I have become much more aware of, and sensitive to, these dynamics. To whom do we listen? Whose opinion counts? Who takes up the space in the room (both literally and metaphorically)?

And lest you think that this phenomenon is unique to Nigeria, admittedly a very hierarchical society where rank and status count for a lot, let me correct you. Yesterday, I was at a meeting at my home institution when our provost entered. I made a conscious effort to pay attention to how she was received, compared to other meeting participants. People gave her their rapt attention. When asking questions or giving comments after her speech, people spoke in very deferential tones, nodding vigorously whenever she made a point.

Again, I am not saying this to criticize our provost, whom I respect. And I’m not suggesting that we yawn, roll our eyes, or check our email when the provost is speaking—after all, that would be rude. But how many ‘less important’ people—like poor female farmers, for example—do we feel free to treat in exactly this manner? Numerous studies have documented the ways in which we sub-consciously identify the most powerful person in a given situation and defer to them through our body language, mannerisms, and means of address. Even if you consider yourself a very egalitarian and democratically-minded person, you probably do this.

My research is related to agricultural development, poverty alleviation, and environmental conservation, and any insights I can derive from this work are critically dependent on the perspectives and knowledge of the people who live and work in developing world smallholder systems. So I’m not just paying lip service to the Christian notion that ‘the first will be last and the last first’—like many so-called ‘spiritual’ realities, this plays out practically in the world as well. Let me give an example: a colleague told me that last year, several prominent faculty from our institution traveled to Seattle to pitch some grant ideas to the Gates Foundation. Midway through their prepared slides, Melinda Gates interrupted them to ask about the role of gender in the ideas they were presenting. Essentially, the lady holding the purse strings was telling them that the only way they would get X million dollars was by listening to and incorporating the voices of poor female farmers!

So the voices of poor smallholder farmers are just as important as the voices of the agricultural ministers. However, because we prioritize the voices of ministers over farmers, we should actively be seeking to encourage, highlight and promote the voices of those we don’t typically consider important. Also, as academics, we need to be aware that we often take up far more than our fair share of space in any discussion or process. We love to hear ourselves talk, but sometimes we need to shut up and listen. Tom Dietz, a sociologist and champion of scientists serving the public, puts it this way: we must be the ‘guide on the side’, not the ‘sage on the stage’.

So now my facilitation mantra is the following: before I begin the first day of a workshop, I repeat silently to myself, “I am the least important person in the room.” And I try to believe it.