Building Relationships

Salimah Samji Welcome to the Leadership Organizing and Action Podcast series. In this six part podcast series, Marshall Ganz walks you through the five key practices of people, power, and change and also provides practical strategies to learn this craft. Welcome to the second episode of the Leadership Organizing and Action podcast series with Marshall Ganz. Welcome, Marshall. 

Marshall Ganz Thanks, Salimah. It’s good to see you again. 

Salimah Samji Great. In today’s podcast, we’re going to do a deep dive on the first key practice of leadership, organizing and action, which is relationship building. So, Marshall, why don’t you kick us off with helping us understand why is this important to build relationships? 

Marshall Ganz The whole approach we take to this is that people are at the center. In other words, it is about the value we have we constitute with each other and it is about our capacity to become agents with respect to ourselves and our communities and so forth. So it’s people centric. And I’m sort of a fan of Pope Francis on that because he has a rootedness in liberation theology. But his critique was it became very ideological. And then you’re trying to fit people into boxes. And his approach, he calls people’s theology where, no, you start with people with human beings and their lived experience, and that’s where we build from. So it’s not how do we use people? It’s how do we enable people to become agents themselves? That’s kind of the idea. So it’s just the fundamental and the fundamental about people is that we are not solo atoms somewhere. We are constituted relationally. We’re relational creatures and we construct ourselves in relationship to others, others in relationship to us and so forth. So starting with relationships is to start with the fundamental way in which people form connections with one another. And it goes way back. Well, I should say this, too, looking at the world today, this is one of the major challenges, is that there are all these mechanisms that dehumanize us, particularly in treating us as if we were isolated individuals and thereby making us that. But that doesn’t work for us. And it’s like what they call the alignment problem in AI. The starting point of the alignment is that all models are wrong because you take complexity and you develop a model of how an element of it works and you then begin to confuse the model with the reality. And then you start trying to shape the world to fit the model, which would describe the economics profession for the last 50 years I think. Well, that’s problematic because then you’re transforming the real source of value into something else. Well, if you think about the dynamics of individualization of reducing people to objects, to data points, to profit points and so forth, there is decreasing cultural grounding for the relational work that constitutes us as people. And so then we wind up looking for substitutes of all kinds and surrogates, and it doesn’t work. We’re left unsatisfied and we’re left disconnected. I know people have talked about the Internet. Some of our students saying I feel over connected, but under committed because the essence of relationship is commitment. In other words, when it comes to forming relationships and I should say we’re talking about something that everybody does, part of the idea of these practices is they’re grounded in what we do. So they’re not requiring a nuclear physics degree. It’s taking a lot of what we know implicitly and making it explicit so we can bring craft and purpose to it. And so we’ve all had experience with relationships, some of it good and some of it bad, but we all have experience with it. And so when you reflect on what does it really take to constitute a relationship? Often people say, well, because we’re the same. But if you really think about it for a moment, what’s then the motivation? What’s the incentive? What’s the benefit? So in relationships there is this element of exchange. You perceive a value in me, I perceive a value in you, and we can exchange that. And so we’re making something new. We’re making something that’s greater than both of us. You’re good in math and I’m good in stories. And so we collaborate on something. We form a relationship around that collaboration. The tricky part is that the exchange is not enough. Exchange is transactional, and we’re embedded in so many transactional interactions these days. And then we wonder what’s missing. Well, see, the transaction, the exchange creates a motivation. But for it to become a relationship, it requires that we make a choice about it. Let me give you an example. You go and you have coffee with somebody and it’s like, oh, it’s very interesting. You know, a colleague or whatever. You have a great conversation. There’s a lot to exchange here. And then you say, well, why don’t we get together next week, to continue. And the other person says, Yeah, that’d be great, but I have this meeting I have to prepare for. Okay, well, what about the next week? Well, that’d be great, but I got folks coming from out of town. Well, what about the next week? Well, why didn’t I send you an email? So we all know what that feels like. We just got dumped or we got dissed. What was missing was the mutual choice to take the risk of committing to one another in sustaining this interaction. So it’s commitment that really creates relationship because it transforms it from transaction, it transforms it into something that has a future. And by giving it a future, then it opens up all the different ways in which we learn more about each other. We discover interests that maybe we didn’t have or resources. I mean, somebody said, you’re really good listener. Oh, I am? I didn’t realize that. Or we start being tennis partners. And then it turns out that, we both love opera, but it’s a learning, growing, enriching dimension of life is relational growth development. So that’s really powerful stuff. And it builds out of who we are as human beings and the necessity for being in relationship to develop our potential, our individual potential comes from being in relationship with others. So that’s why it’s so foundational and that’s why it is so important in our lives and unfortunately, in many of the lives that we’re living these days there are transactions, but where’s the commitment? Where’s the commitment to a future? Where’s the commitment to learning and growing with each other? So that’s why it’s foundational for this work of leadership, organizing, action of people, power, change. You start with people and you start with creating the conditions under which we can develop as people, discover our common concerns, discover our common interest, develop the affective bonds that enable solidarity and mutual support and sustained learning. Now in organizing, there is a craft, an approach to relationship building, as we’re calling it, relationship building. Maybe we should call it relationship growing. That might be a little more accurate, but because it is so fundamental. 

Salimah Samji So given that we live in a digital world and you know, everyone’s moving to online, can you do this work of building relationships digitally or online? 

Marshall Ganz I think it depends. Because it’s very easy online to just interact with people as symbols or as labels or something. So it’s a choice to say, okay, are we going to invest in trying to do relational work online? Now, for me, the revolution was being able to see people because the black hole of conference calls were just deadly. Once you could see people, boy, it changes things. It’s not the same thing as being in person, but it’s sure different from a black hole there. And because if you think evolutionarily we signal to each other through facial expression. Before we had words, before we had language. So we were engaging in visual communication, gestures and all that. So we’re really well equipped for that. Since we don’t sense the physical presence of the person, then we compensate by developing greater acuity and paying attention and paying attention to what we do see. I mean, my experience with this came from this online teaching I’ve been doing where with intentionality we can build real relational community. But it’s the same thing. It requires exchange. It requires commitment. It requires all that. And so if that’s not what’s happening, if people say, well, we’re here to learn about X, but we don’t do any relational work, well, no, you’re not going to build relationships any more than you would offline. But you can do so much online. My class last spring in organizing, they had 146 students from 25 countries. And actually it’s interesting 42% English, not their first language. And so we’re learning with people from all over the world. And people are building real relationships that persist afterwards because in the class, they’re learning to build relationships and they build them with each other. And then they take that with them. So I’m very enthusiastic about how we can use the technology, but it’s how we can use it, not how it uses us. And so there’s a question of agency there that is critical. And I think it’s too easy to just make everything transactional because the technology makes it really simple. Here’s an example. Zeynep Tufekci is a communications sociologist at University of North Carolina. She wrote a book called Twitter and Tear Gas. And what she was doing was looking at all these mobilizations that didn’t go anywhere where we put out the word. There’s a motivational thing. Show up in Tahrir Square. And yeah, they did a great job mobilizing. That’s a good example. But what the young people hadn’t been doing is building relational commitment, organization, leadership, all of that. So it’s easy to fall into the trap of whoa, a thousand people came. But if the reason they came is they were motivated because they heard about it and it’s not because they were building relationships with one another, then it all dissipates. She really makes the point very, very persuasively. And I think we see that all around us. So it makes a lot of confusion between mobilizing and organizing, because mobilizing turn out a bunch of people for a rally, then they go away. Organizing is about bringing people together to make decisions about whether to have the rally or not, and then what to do with it and why. So it overlaps with thinking tactically rather than strategically. Oh, we’ll have a rally. Why? Who decides that? So it comes back once again to relationship building. And so the Internet can allow you to bypass what is really the fundamental source of power building and kid yourself that numbers mean power, but depends on what the numbers actually represent. One other point Tufekci makes is that 250,000 people on the Capitol Mall in 1963 with the March on Washington really scared the hell out of the Kennedy Administration because they knew that behind the 250,000 people was all kinds of depth in organization, otherwise there’s no way they could have gotten there. Well, today it would be, oh they did a great job of social media. That’s not scary. Again, it’s just trying to really focus on the basics, on human beings and their connections and what it means. 

Salimah Samji Yeah, I really like how it comes back to that commitment. Right? So you show up to this rally or whatever, and then what? And just finding ways even online to be able to make that commitment to actually do more than just attend something or just show up to one thing, it’s something bigger than that one event. 

Marshall Ganz And the key commitment is not so much to the idea as it is to other people. See, that’s where the power is. It’s in the horizontal relationships, because otherwise you’ve got a hub with a bunch of spokes who go out there, but nobody’s committed to each other. Well, then you don’t have a collective, you don’t have any real power. 

Salimah Samji You don’t have a wheel. 

Marshall Ganz That’s right. Yeah, No, it’s exactly right. The relational lens is really, really important. 

Salimah Samji So that’s really helpful to be able to understand why this is the foundation, almost like the building block, to be able to do anything further and why people are so important and building relationships where not only do we engage with each other with this commitment, but I really like your example on how we can learn about not only each other but ourselves through the engagement with people. And I think that really is a very beautiful point. So how does this practice work, building relationships? 

Marshall Ganz Well, if you think if you go way back, most of our relationships were defined by kinship, who we’re related to. And for most of human history, that kind of set the terms, it was all about who’s brother in law or whatever. And that was sort of okay. Now, there was an early challenge to this idea, which was in Greece, which was Cleisthenes, the Greek reformer who saw that it was very hard for them to establish a polity based on equality before the law, when everything was related to kinship, because it’d be my uncle, my brother, my this, that or the other. So what they did was reorganize the tribes in Athens away from being kinship-based to being geographically-based. Took away the hierarchical structure of kinship and made it much more flat. And that then became the basis for participating in the polity. So what they did was develop a different foundation for relationship. It wasn’t kinship based. It was based on commitment to a common set of values, to a common political community. And that’s kind of the invention of citizenship because it puts relationship on an intentional basis. So not just who I happen to be born to or with. Now, I choose who I want to be in relationship with. But in the formation of a political community like Greeks were doing, it’s commitment to others. It isn’t just commitment to self. And it’s commitment not just to another person, but to other people in a common enterprise, in a common set of values and so forth. So when we distinguish, we often distinguish public relationship or civic relationships from private relationships. Private relationships, about kinship, about intimate friends and public relationships with civic relationships, about commitment to shared purpose, to shared values and so forth. And so that’s one of the transformations in the modern world, is to create that kind of agency-based choice. So it means then that we can choose with whom we want to be in relationship. We can choose to constitute a political community or intentional community that’s based on people committing to that community. It was interesting because I was in a conversation with people at MIT about online communities and we’re talking about this community. And I said, Well, that’s really interesting. I said, so what is the commitment that people make to the community? Well, what do you mean? How many people show up? Said oh, so this is a community that requires no commitment? So is that a community? Or, is it a gathering? A place, you know we come in to hang out? Because how can you have rights of participation without obligations and obligations to one another? And so it’s foundational in the formation of intentional community, our entry into these kinds of relationships with each other and with the relationship in general. It’s like, if any time we want, we can exit. Well, then it’s not a community, then it’s a gathering place. So that sort of takes it both at a micro and at a macro level, the significance of making commitments to one another and commitments more broadly to the community of which we form a part. The other thing about relationships is that since we’re talking about chosen relationships and not just communities of choice, not chance, as they say, then the kinds of relationships matter and not just this public-private distinction, but the question of: Do we form relationships with people like us? Do we form relationships with people not like us? Well, this classic work of sociology by Granovetter called the Strength of Weak Ties. It’s a foundational piece. It started by saying: Do we find more jobs through relationships with people like us? Or do we find more jobs through relationships with people less like us? Well, often people say, oh, people like us. Well, the answer is no. It’s with people unlike us, because people like us, the networks fold in on each other. And so pretty soon we’ve got this little network of people. But that limits our information. It limits our experience and our access. So it turns out that people really find jobs through networks with people not like us. So when we’re doing relational work in the context of organizing, we’re also making choices about with whom to enter into relationship based on what the overall mission is. And, so, usually a mix of people like me, people not like me. Now, obviously those are terms of art and they mean different things in different settings. But it’s a strategic choice about what kind of political community or intentional community I’m trying to build. And these days, frankly, the significance of diverse perspectives and diverse experience can’t be exaggerated. It’s always been the case that diversity feeds creativity. It feeds imagination, breadth of information, all of that. But it’s even more critical when we’re speaking in a world in which heterogeneity can be used as divisive. And heterogeneity can be rich, creative. And so it’s a motivation or an incentive for taking people like us, people not like us. So then it’s often to say, well, then what is the common ground? Well, that’s where values work comes in, because there are boundaries. James Baldwin was quoted as saying that we can argue and disagree and I can still love you, providing what we’re arguing about is not my humanity or right to exist. So there are boundaries, but we go much deeper and farther if we think in terms of values as a foundation for what we’re doing. The last thing I’ll say about this is that relationships are never just one on one because we have relationships to other people. And that’s where the heterogeneity comes in, too. In other words, we are all parts of social networks. And so that means that we can build based on networks within we exist not just the 1 on 1. So relationships also become a way to initiate something, to start something, to develop something new, as opposed to relying on existing institutions to do that. And maybe I’m getting ahead here, but that’s one of the foundational insights for how we built the Farmworkers Union, how we won South Carolina for Obama. And we can say more about that. 

Salimah Samji I really like your points on how it’s commitment that separates an intentional community from a gathering and how values is really the common ground that brings people together. For our listeners who are listening to this podcast, from your craft perspective, how do you learn how to do this particular practice? Build relationships? 

Marshall Ganz Well, there are probably many different ways, but the approach that we’ve learned to bring intentionality to this and to scaffold people’s learning, the framework for learning something is not the same thing as the something. In other words, I’m learning to drive. I got a checklist. One, two, three, four. I do this, do this. The something is driving. It’s not going over the checklist. And we internalize and then we’re able to become practitioners of it. So scaffolding is just that, scaffolding. So the first way in which we scaffold learning about how to bring intentionality is in what we call the one on one meeting. And this is kind of a foundational piece in organizer training. And what it is, it’s not how do I sign you up to join my club or how do I get you to sign my petition? I explore whether or not we have enough in common that we will commit to working together. So it’s not like mobilizing people to just show up somewhere. It’s actually exploring the potential for a shared relationship. So it usually takes the form of reaching out to someone with whom you want to build a relationship. And there’s a lot of ways we get those leads or cues. And the first challenge is to give them enough of an interest in taking the time to talk with us. So it’s kind of like just anybody reach out to no, there’s got to be some interest created. And so it may be that, oh I saw you came out of that class and, you know, maybe we could just talk about possibilities. We could support each each other or father so-and-so in this town, in the church said that you’re the person to talk to in this town because you’re the one that knows how. So you have to create enough interest and incentive that they will take time to actually sit with you. Because it’s not just about bar talk, you know, it’s not just chit chat. It is intentional. So, once you’ve crossed that ground, you get attention. You develop the interest. Then comes the conversation. And the conversation then is really one that’s more about why we’re doing what we’re doing. People may expect, oh, we’re going to have this kind of, this person’s an organizer, we’re going to have a conversation. So they’re going to ask my position on this, that or the other. No, no, let’s just take a few moments to get acquainted. So how do you come to be doing this? That’s where it overlaps with the story work we do about conversation that is deeper and doesn’t have to be long, but it’s an exchange I share why I’m here. Not I’m here because I’m trying to sign you up for whatever. Why I’m here is that, you know, when I was growing up, I learned that it really mattered who would back you up. And so I got involved in organizing. Blah, blah, blah. And then you invite the other person to share in a similar fashion. So you’re actually exploring each other’s sources of value. Now, you know, you don’t say, now we’re going to explore our sources of value. It’s simply being curious about one another. And it’s very hard to be good at this if you’re not curious, because curiosity in the other is what invites people’s participation in the conversation. I mean, rarely do we have someone who’s interested in us, who’s not there to use us, or to try to get something from us  ask real questions about us. And they’re paying attention. And they’re not just going down a checklist or doing an interview. It’s not like that. So it’s really a kind of crafted conversation that we’re talking about. So it’s a process. We call it process of exploration. And then you get to the point, well, are we finding something that we share? And often we do. So then, well, gee this has been very interesting. And so how about if we get together again in a week or two and continue the conversation? You think there might be some value in that and we could commit to that? Yes. No. And then if it’s a yes, well, then that’s great. Then the time, the date, the place and that there will be a reminder call. And so it is that kind of interaction. It’s purposeful. It’s intentional. You’re actually trying to discern both of you whether you have enough common interest or value to want to risk a commitment because commitment’s always a risk. I mean, we can’t tell the future what’s going to happen, so we risk commitment or we don’t. That’s why values are important, because that will give us the motivation to take the risk. So that would be the one on one meeting. And so, when we’re learning this, we learn how to do that. 

Salimah Samji Yeah. I was actually going to ask you. So I really like how you’ve laid out how this one on one works with exploration. But I had two questions. One was, what do you do if you are not used to doing something like that? Going up to someone you don’t know. How do you have this conversation? And second, do you practice these kinds of conversations, especially if I’m going to share something personal about myself? Maybe I’m not used to doing that. And is there a way that you practice that so that one becomes more comfortable to share their own story, to invite someone else to share theirs? 

Marshall Ganz Yeah, definitely. See, that’s where when in the broader context, we talk about practicing democracy and these main practices. Well, practices are built on capabilities we have, but they’re intentional. There’s craft involved. And so that’s where training comes in or whatever word we want to apply to it, that we aren’t just born. We’re born with the potential. But it takes craft. In traditional societies, craft is taught by parents or by kinship. There’s a learning thing. So now if we’re operating in a broader context like this, where do we learn how to do this? Well, we create learning venues or we teach people and we create conditions under which people can learn. One of de Tocqueville’s whole points when he’s lifting up the importance of civic associations in American democracy was their intentionality. And it was a way people could learn where they had common interests as opposed to just individual interests and so forth. So we learn these things. Maybe we’re part of a church. Maybe we’re part of a movement. Maybe we’re a part of a union. Or maybe we’re simply trying to learn how to build collective effort through an organizing campaign or a community building campaign. But it is the case that how can I say sometimes people say, well, you learn by following me around and do what I do. That’s okay. But it’s not because there’s much more intentionality. See, that’s where pedagogical craft is part of this. And it’s part of every single one of these practices. So there is a pedagogy of practice that involves explanation. It involves modeling. It involves practice and it involves debriefing. So there’s intentionality to that. But the focus of it is a way of teaching in that learners can become teachers themselves. So there’s a transparency to it. And so the pedagogy is intimately related to the practice because what you’re trying to do is equip people with skills that they can share with others. So I really appreciate the question because it doesn’t just happen, doesn’t just happen. 

Salimah Samji That’s exactly what I was thinking, is that a listener could be listening to this and say, I couldn’t do that. How do I even start to do that? I get it in my head, but how do I even try to do something myself? 

Marshall Ganz Come to our online class, get a few people together. I think it requires scaffolding, and part of the scaffolding that’s most valuable is coaching. In other words, it’s like learning with, not just like.  Oh, I’m going to just learn this, I’m going to watch the video. And then and coaching is in some ways even more fundamental to all of these practices because it’s how we can learn. And how we can teach. And coaching is not advice-giving. It’s eliciting from others their potential. It’s much more about question asking than it is about advice giving. And when we train people in coaching. That’s how we train. Help this person with their challenge. But you can’t give any advice. Ask questions and then it becomes developmental and we can really support. It’s a whole other conversation about coaching because it underlies the pedagogy for all of what we’re talking about here. How we become resources to one another. I was in the UK and we did a teaching leadership and coaching with senior and junior civil servants in the NHS and so they never talked to each other and they’re scared of each other, it turns out. And so what we did was bring together senior and junior and then paired them, and then they had to learn to coach each other. Well, what really, this young person that doesn’t know anything can coach me or this old guy is going to…. So, it was so rich and so productive and so surprising for everyone. So really, coaching is probably something we should just talk about. No, I appreciate the question because it is central to how learners become teachers and how we become resources for learning to each other, which underlies the whole project in a way. But, where we go then from the one on one is, okay, now we need to build. We call that the house meeting. And it’s not because it’s in a house, but traditionally it has been in a house where, okay, so this is great. So you’re really interested. We’re building our relationship. But why don’t you get together some of the people you are in relationship with and we can have a conversation about this thing with everyone. This is how we were trained in organizing the farm workers. And we were doing campaign for Howard Dean in New Hampshire, and we taught everybody how to do house meetings. And so it started. You had to ask the person to make a list of 50 people they knew. Now, that assured that you got out of just the intimate, you got into a broader range. And so then you coached them in how to reach out to those people and invite them to come to their house on X day to learn about something they’ve been learning about that they want to share with them. And then you coach them on how to make those invites and then you check back in and see how it’s going. So you’re building coaching in and you’re doing the reminders and then maybe out of the 50, 10 show up. So then you go and then you talk. It’s like Tupperware parties. See? And then, out of that meeting will come 3 or 4 more. And out of that, 3 or 4 more. And pretty soon, you can build a pretty extensive network just based on one on ones and house meetings and the networks. In South Carolina, when we were helping Obama on that campaign in the primary, Hillary had all the institutional support. We had to build from scratch. And this is how we did it. We did about 500 of these house meetings. We built an army of 15,000 that then we’re able to turn out the vote and win. So it isn’t just like, oh, this tiny little thing, but it’s learning how to leverage relationships to build more relationships, more relationships. That’s how you build a movement. 

Salimah Samji I love it. This idea of how you build a movement, leveraging relationships. And thank you for sharing practical strategies like the one on ones and the house meetings and how it’s coaching and teaching and training that gets you to be able to be in those positions. And you can’t and don’t have to do this cold turkey all by yourselves. And there are ways to be able to bring craft and purpose together. And I particularly love this idea of how the learner becomes the teacher, and that’s how you really build a movement. So thank you very much for sharing the first key practice on building relationships with our listeners. Thank you, Marshall.

Marshall Ganz Thank you.