Make Discernment Your Go-To Mindset

If you work in progressive policy or politics–or are close to someone who is–you know how hard the last few weeks have been. We’ve seen our past work dismantled, vulnerable populations that we know well or are part of harmed, and a non-stop barrage of deranged and often illegal decisions out of the White House (the “rule-of-law” crowd that hates to see Black and brown people protesting sure is quiet lately, despite the flagrant violation of many statutes in the past few weeks). 

As progressive leaders and organizations try to respond to the firehose of insanity, I’m seeing a lot of otherwise strategic people fall into one of two camps. 

First, the “say yes to everything because everything is urgent and essential” people, who have very good intentions and are trying to prevent harms from accumulating or becoming entrenched in practice. These folks mean well but aren’t able to see how saying yes to everything means you’re actually saying no to doing anything well. 

The second camp is the “say no to everything because nothing we do right now matters and because we just can’t keep up with the parade of horribles” people. These folks also mean well, and are operating from a “first, do no harm” principle. But they’re forgetting how easy it is to acquiesce to this new reality, which has the unintended consequence of raising the threshold for what constitutes abnormal–or abhorrent–political behavior and outcomes. 

Bittersweet berries in late-day Fall sun.

One way to disrupt our knee-jerk tendencies is to step back and think about the concept of polarities, which Jaime Rapaport Barry introduced me to a couple of years ago. Jaime turned me on to the Navigating Polarities book, which explains how and why this way of leading and managing shows up in so many contexts, and how we can undo the habits that keep us stuck in one camp or another. 

In short, it’s first about recognizing this way of responding and thinking, and taking time and space–even briefly–to see why always saying yes has pros and cons, and likewise no. In terms of management and leadership, it means having conversations with your colleagues and teams about choice points and tradeoffs in always sticking to one way of operating versus the other. 

Of course, polarized ways of thinking and decision-making go beyond this simple yes/no dichotomy I’m discussing here (which, again, I’m doing because it’s so relevant, from what I see, in the progressive space right now). We all likely know leaders and managers (including ourselves!) who might be in the habit of always being flexible (and never being structured); or always being collaborative (and never directive); or always prioritizing programmatic work (and never administrative). 

In short, there are myriad ways polarized thinking might show up in our work, and learning to recognize this in ourselves and others can be a big first step in disrupting these habits and patterns and bringing more balance and strategy to missions, programs, and operations. 

And this new way of thinking can help us navigate the worst of times, which the current era qualifies as on many fronts. Now is the time when we need to challenge our ways of thinking and working, and really push ourselves to grow. If nothing else, we can control what we want to learn right now and how we want to change to meet the moment and otherwise take care of ourselves and those close to us.

In moments like this it might feel like the only thing we can do is to work more and harder–or to hunker down and ignore the very extreme changes happening each day. Those kinds of feelings are valid and real, but this moment is good for making even small adjustments in our habits that might make us more efficient and effective as leaders and humans. 

The fight we are in will be long and quite possibly unlike anything we've seen in our lifetimes. Discernment is a great tool to have in our toolbox.

If you are in the fight right now–in ways big or small–thank you. Take care of yourselves and be kind to one another. And never stop growing.