Editorial

The power of positive communication

At the January 3 Gray Town Council meeting, there was heated scorn, accusations, and abusive language from the Community Economic Development committee members toward the Gray Town Council. The Council had asked the CEDC to attend the meeting so they could learn to what extent the committee's efforts were an enhancement or a detriment to the Town of Gray.

Instead of engaging in honest dialog with the people who are their bosses, most of the CEDC members chose to be combative and aggressive in their communications.

To the Council's credit, they listened, remained calm, and used appropriate language. That was the right choice.

Language, our use of words, and the tone of voice we use to express that language plays a critical role in whether we are building community or disabling it.

According to Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D, author of Nonviolent Communication: A Language Of Compassion, "When we use force, blame and self-righteousness instead, even if we manage to create the outcome we want in the short run, we distance ourselves from those whose actions we want to change."

While we may not think that of the way we talk is "violent," as Dr. Rosenberg characterizes it, words can lead to damage and pain, either for ourselves or others, he said.

Further, municipal bureaucracies are part of a dominant system designed to regulate human affairs. Such systems have a bureaucratic language all its own, a language that denies choice, with words like: "should," "have to," "ought," or "must."

As theologian Walter Wink describes it, domination systems are ones in which a few people control [many] to their own advantage. In domination systems you have to train people to think in ways that support the system, so they fit the system. That's the CEDC, a micro-domination system struggling to stay alive. That system describes the previous Council. And it describes the Manager, as well.

In Wink's books The Powers That Be and Engaging the Powers, domination systems require suppression of self, moralistic judgments, language that denies choice as mentioned above, and the crucial concept of 'deserve.'

In seven months of observing the Gray Town Council, I have seen that they strive to break from the usual bureaucratic domination system in their communications and move toward a collegial one. They listen with feeling, they use appropriate language, and they absorb and integrate information and events through a filter of service, not self.

For some, such as the CEDC members, and the others who spoke so violently, it may be too much to expect that they set aside their usual pattern of resisting, withdrawing, or attacking when faced with scrutiny or criticism. But I will ask them to try. Honest listening and respectful talk through a filter of service will, in the end, achieve mutual goals for the betterment of all.