Circles of Change as Organizing: Cynthia Suarez

Cynthia Suarez has been a participant in SIA’s Circles of Change  program.  (Her comments are also relevant to the Leadership Training Network, which is currently accepting applications for a training coming up in January).  Here are some of Cindy’s thoughts about Circles of Change:

I’ve been trained in Circles before, in a very different way, in the Yukon with indigenous people. It was out in the wild and very experiential. They were more concerned with having you understand the values and life that support circles, and not big on methodology. One thing that I was seeking and got from the Spirit in Action training was more of a sense of structure. The focus on healing divisions was particularly important. The Yukon model is a restorative justice model, which starts with an assumption of sameness. It was good to experience ways of actually working with difference head on. I like having a variety of approaches available.

I’m the Training Director in my network, and I’m a black Puerto Rican woman. Our new strategic directions has a core goal of connecting mostly white-led statewide groups to community-based groups, and in doing so to more groups led and defined by people of color. I suggested that how we do this work is very important. We don’t want to go into these sessions asking people of color we don’t know to join our predetermined projects. It’s a fine balance of working together to advance our goals and being open enough to build authentic relationships and learn. We plan to use circles as a core process for this work.

I exposed the organizers in my network to circles and they loved it. Some were concerned about their ability to do them. I felt they were thinking, “I’m not a charismatic person of color, how could I do this?” For me, Spirit In Action demystifies circle leadership. It provides concrete planning steps, as well as create a space were the principles are lived so you get a clear sense of how it ties together.

People want to do this relationship building, vision developing work, but are at a loss for how to start. Organizers in my network struggle to balance leadership development and the campaign driven outcomes central to the work.   

We use a one-on-one relationship building model and while it is great, I think another space, a group space, will help us do leadership development in a more exponential way. Rather than one organizer “developing” a group of leaders, the organizer creates conditions where the leaders learn together, from many sources. The circle model brings in a much needed heart focus, so that it’s not just the analytical approach of “do this because it’s in your own best interest.” 

The circle model also moves us closer to a systemic view. By hearing different people you get a better sense of what the system looks like. Everyone is in the position to teach something as well as learn.   

I’ve used circles to help one of our state-wide groups develop their strategic plan for the year. It’s been a tough year for this group, and when you have a group of passionate activists, there’s always a potential for tension. They developed a shared understanding of the work they wanted to do this year, obstacles to doing that work, principles to drive their work, and a detailed plan of action for the year. It was the first time they were able to have this sort of collective input and build understanding and buy-in. Their ability to work together is really taking off. Linda helped me plan these circles.

I’ve used the Healing Divisions exercises in a gathering we held recently that had a focus on racial justice. It included the state groups in our network in six New England states and New York state, plus other groups working on racial justice that we want to build relationships with. We’re just starting to use circles in this work.

The circles model is important in working towards equalizing the voices at the table. It tends to be organizers, who are the lynchpins of the work, who want this. An organizer who is a man of color said to me, “I don’t want to bring other people into an organization where I don’t have a voice.” The circles exercises are a great start for doing what is really difficult work.

I haven’t experienced many approaches to collective visioning. I love those exercises, how it moves you from your individual vision to the collective vision. It helps move the work from being issue driven to vision driven. 

Linda is a great support. It’s great to have someone so smart and experienced to talk through circle design. She’s a life-saver. It helps me to have someone of her stature devoting her energy to circle work. It’s so different being committed to racial justice and actually having the skills to do something about it. She keeps in close contact with me. She’s driven out to meet with me in Boston. She’s been so interested in what I have to say. It’s rare for experienced people in their fifties to be interested in the ideas of people in their thirties the way she is. She says that she thinks that we’re the source of new ideas for alternative paradigms and frameworks, which I think is true. But this is not often even acknowledged, much less valued by nonprofit leaders. When my friends and I have met to talk about this stuff, there is an overwhelming feeling that we might not be able to shift organizations that exist. But Linda share my vision of what could be. She values questioning everything, our very assumptions, which I love, but seems to be scary and “not the work” for many nonprofit leaders. That gives me faith and helps me feel more confident in what I know. 

In my network we focus on infrastructure building. I’ve been thinking about how to create spaces where paradigm pioneers can thrive, spaces for creativity that are not driven by direct outcomes, spaces for regeneration, visioning, and hope. I think of them as generative nodes in the infrastructure, between organizations, as opposed to a think tank model.