Activists Training – Useful Tips

I think it would be a terrific idea if we added some really useful tips for your journey as an activist -and information about how to conduct oneself and navigate through intense and professional meetings – is one area I’ve always thought we don’t pay enough attention too. So, among other things I’ve decided to collect a small series of useful activist tips I find from around the web -there is some brilliant information out there – the worlds’ most talented activists are virtually sharing all their knowledge with us on websites all over the place! If you see anything you think has been or could be helpful – do let us know, otherwise, stay tuned for this small collection of tips.

This first one comes from Silvia Petrelli, a terrific powerhouse of a UK HIV activist, one of the  movers and shakers behind the UK’s famous organisation for HIV positive women called Positively Women (now renamed Positive UK). I really like her blog and the way she approaches her subjects in a really honest, direct way without all the copycat phrases that get used all to easily sometimes (good as they might be but so often overused they just seem to diminsh the impact). Here is her refreshing take on what she gained from a recent workshop; thanks Silvia! Catch her blog here.

“Once we step up to be activists it is very likely we will be thrown in at the deep end.”

We will have  to attend meetings with people who we perceive to be  much more powerful than ourselves: doctors, scientists, managers, commissioners, policy makers. It can be really hard and scary.

I was really thrilled when Elisabeth Crafer agreed to facilitate a session on how to deal with people in authority at the UKCAB treatment activists training.

Elisabeth used to lead the organisation where I work now, when it was still called Positively Women. She has a long experience in activism from fighting apartheid in the 60s and 70s in her home country South Africa to provide Sexual Health Services  to marginalised women in the UK through a mobile clinic and much more. She has played a huge influence in me as an activist, in developing my skills and confidence, and it was even her idea that I started this blog.

So here are some of the ideas Elisabeth shared with us on how to deal with people in positions of power, I hope you find them useful, and if you have something to add to it, I would love to hear how you deal with people in authority.

1) Think about how you behave in relationships to those close to you: parents, children, friends, colleagues. There may be similarities with how you behave  with people in authority. What is easy, what is difficult?

 2)  Think about how you would like to come across in a meeting, and be aware of it.

 3) Very often in a meeting we enact a ‘dramatic’ triangle in which somebody plays the ‘ victim’ somebody else  the ‘persecutor’ and a third person the ‘rescuer”. Observe which role you are playing. How is this role limiting you?

 4) If something goes out of control, for example somebody plays the victim and has a tantrum. Stand back. Don’t play the game. Do nothing.

What role do you take on in meetings? Benjamin de Loenen, Bia Labate, Leon Garcia, Amanda Fielding, Joan Obiols and Claudio Naranjo at this years Ayhuasca Conference, click pic for link.

 5) If you find it hard to get a word in and put your point across, as everybody is talking on top of you (believe me I have been there!) watch body language, so that you can tell when somebody finishes a sentence. They have to pause at one time, and you have to come in then.

 6) Don’t breath in before starting to speak because in a heated discussion somebody will speak while you pause to take a breath.  Start taking the breath in while the other person is still talking and then just jump in.

 7) Ask yourself: do I have a point? Do i have something to add to the discussion? Then you can start your sentence with “ I would just like to add something to …”

 8) Ask somebody to clarify and build on their point., sometimes it is good to repeat and amplify a point if it helps what you are trying to put across.

 9) Sometimes the meeting is not the most important thing. It is more important  what happens in the break or  after on the way out, in the ‘interstices’. Who are you going to talk to? How are you going to build your alliances? Are there going to be doughnuts…? It is while eating the doughnuts, in the down time, that some of the most important discussions happen. Pay attention.

10) Remember:  authority is about power. The essential thing about authority is that the power is unequal. Reflect: “ How do I behave when I do not have power?”

 11) Think about unequal relationships in your life:  parent and child, employer employee. Examine in in what role you may have authority/power. For example as patient representative, parent, office manager. Remember also running a home needs to be done from a role of authority. Experience gives authority as well as knowledge. Very often we show authority in the way our parents have shown us authority.

12) Have a strategy, think: “What do I want out of the meeting, how can I achieve it.?”