What do you hear? Do you listen? What is the difference? The distinction is subtle and profound. We hear noise and listen to music. We hear background sounds and listen to what people say. These concepts are crucial to WDI with our intention to become a stronger organization, serve organized labor, build better lives for working families, foster a dialogue between business, government, unions, environmentalists and social advocates. The operative words here are serve and dialogue.
In simple terms, a waiter can not serve unless he is clear what the customer wants. In a brief conversation he makes sure we know what is on the menu; answers any questions, confirms that we have been heard and that he knows what we asked for.
Similarly, WDI offers a menu of services. Our website and regional staff makes clear what we can do to help and then we take our customers “order”. This seems to have worked well, so far. Now we are testing ourselves. We began focus groups; managed by Deborah Reyome, Ph.D., a Fellow from the SUNY’s Center for Women in Government and Civil Society, asking those we have trained how well WDI served them. We also hired a communications director, Ryan Goodenough, and launched a new website to enhance our dialogue.
The previous site was cluttered, more of a static billboard; broadcasting without helping us to learn. The new site uses social networking and interactive technologies, provides information and encourages input and feedback. Still, we want technology to supplement not replace individual and local group conversations. It is through these subtle interactions we learn; not just from the words used but from intonation, observing relationships between those who explore a subject, their hopes, enjoyment, frustration or satisfaction at being listened to as much as being given an opportunity to speak. We listen and learn, adapting programs to meet real needs.
WDI has moved into new territory. We are happy with the new technologies but wary that we do not lose our human touch. We have regional directors participating in local conversations and forums. They experience and sense what is happening on the front lines of our economy; note shifts in perceptions and assist unions as they adjust to changes, including new technologies. We recommit to individual and group interactions, listening for what is meant as much as what is being said.
I believe in dialogic learning. Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire wrote of teaching literacy to rural adults through dialogue in two books, Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Education for Critical Consciousness. Freire spoke of a “banking” form of education. A teacher deposits information and later submits a withdrawal slip in the form of a test. He contrasted this with dialogue where a teacher and student learn together, from one another.
The farmer/student has life experiences and knowledge in realities the urban teacher doesn’t understand. As she learns the language of agriculture she helps the farmer learn to write using words, sentences and paragraphs he is familiar with. She learns how their students learn, what is important to their daily life and then serves each new group of students better.
Freire gave language to my own experience. I spent eight months in Vietnamese language school on my way to war. I learned from urban, civilian Vietnamese college graduates in El Paso. My training was excellent but out of context and artificial.
During my war, I was assigned to the Central Highlands, did combat intelligence as an agent for an infantry division; worked with rural people, ethnic minorities and had little use for the language of a college graduate, to order in an expensive restaurant, to ride a train or to discuss sophisticated subjects. Considered fluent by my government, I had a learners permit. Still my training helped. Fortunately, I knew how to listen. As a Catholic seminarian I lived in silence for ten months. We meditated and learned active listening, a skill that helped me understand what a Vietnamese meant as much as what they said. I learned they did not agree with what Americans believed, what Saigon said or Washington’s perspective. They wanted to be left alone, security, peace and national reconciliation. In the long-run, reality prevailed over politics and rhetoric.
In our shifting economy, WDI gathers workforce intelligence. We are less interested in remote, academic analysis; more concerned with what is happening within communities in transition, at companies, to and for workers being laid off. We need jobs, less theory and more programs that work.
WDI is expanding our technological capacity to supplement regional staff’s commitment to listen, learn and serve. I am interested in subtleties, stronger relationships and learning from union members and their families, however they want to communicate. In a time of realignment and new communications technologies we will learn together. We remain on guard against certainty in a shifting economy. Transformative social change is led by new participants, younger generations, adapting social and business relationships. Vibrant societies incorporate new information and alternative relationships while sustaining essential values. Organized labor is changing along with our society. WDI is using social networking technologies to gather ground level information, enhance our learning, not to replace direct communication and community dialogue.
With each of these commentaries, I invite responses and discussion. As director I need to know what I should be listening to. Please share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from more of you.
