Jul 27, 2021
Dr. Jane Vella and Peter Noteboom chat with Christine Little, Certified Dialogue Education Teacher, about the axiom “Affirmation is like oxygen – we all need it to survive.” Christine first met GLP nearly twenty years ago through her work with Habitat for Humanity International – one of the first organizations to broadly apply a learning-centered approach. Chris and Jane reflect on how this axiom builds on one of Jane’s old favorites: lavish affirmations. Genuine affirmation is essential for adult learners, even if they might resist it at first!
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This show is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton Jr, with theme music composed by Kyle Donald.
Read the transcripts for the episode below.
JANE
Welcome to Simply True, with yours truly, Dr. Jane Vella. On this podcast, we sit down with dear friends and colleagues from over the years to do one thing: explore the simple truths behind some of my favorite sayings in Dialogue Education.
PETER
My name is Peter Noteboom and I have the real privilege to serve as the President of Global Learning Partners. And today, Jane and I are joined by Chris Little. And Chris Little is an Organizational Development Consultant with RTI International. And today, we want to explore the axiom that “affirmation is like oxygen – we all need it to survive”. Welcome.
JANE
Thanks, Peter.
CHRISTINE
Thank you.
PETER
Yeah. So as we often do, let’s start with just a little bit of history and introduce ourselves, give each other- share a little bit of background. Chris, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to know, Jane and GLP, and the whole community of Dialogue Education.
CHRISTINE
Yeah, I currently work with RTI International. But a long, long time ago, I worked with Habitat for Humanity International. And that was where I first got exposed to Jane’s work, and Global Learning Partners. I attended a couple of courses, and then it just became so important and so fundamental to the way we did all of our learning work in Habitat. We took Dialogue Education quite broadly across Habitat, but became really fundamental to the work that I do in organization development as well. Like some of those things, I love the name of the podcast, Simply True, like there’s something fundamental about the principles and practices of Dialogue Education that just were simply true. So it became really a way that I see the world and a way that I see my work. That was maybe 15 years ago, I’m gonna say –
JANE
My goodness, wow. And I need to say, what you did, Chris, was just amazing. Because, Peter, I think it was the first time that a whole organization, an international organization, began to recognize the usefulness of this approach.
PETER
You know, it certainly was among the first and it was 15, or maybe even almost 20 years ago that we first began working with Habitat for Humanity. And I remember so well, Chris of course in Costa Rica
CHRISTINE
Costa Rica, yeah.
PETER
Where we were first exploring what this meant for Habitat. These days, sometimes we talk about an organization being a learning-centered organization. And indeed, Habitat was among the first to- to go down that path.
JANE
Wow. Imagine when we have a university. That’s a learning centered organization.
PETER
There’s one of your axioms, Jane. just the word “Imagine”, “Imagine when…”
JANE
Hey, hey!
PETER
Maybe you should change the title of this recording and make it a new axiom: “Imagine when…”
JANE
Imagine when. Well remember the beautiful line that I cherish so much. I still don’t know who said it. But it is “hope is a memory of the future.” I love that.
CHRISTINE
I like that too.
PETER
That’s another good one.
CHRISTINE
Yeah.
JANE
Because of what you did Chris, and- and you use the word “we”, and I want to say “you”. Really what you did tells me it can happen anywhere.
CHRISTINE
Yeah.
PETER
Isn’t that a fact.
JANE
So I can sit back and rock.
PETER
You can sit back and rock and let those axioms just roll off your tongue. The one that we’re here to talk about today is “affirmation is like oxygen – we all need it to survive.” So Jane, where does this axiom come from?
JANE
Well, I love this. I love the “like oxygen”. But when I used it initially, I use the word “lavish affirmation,” because this affirmation that says, “uh huh, yeah, that was okay. That was good.” No, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about what I just did to celebrate your work, Chris.
CHRISTINE
Yeah.
JANE
Because it’s got to be.. It’s lavish. It’s abundant. It’s part of this great abundance that we celebrate in creation. It’s spring time. My goodness. We don’t have to look far to see abundance.
CHRISTINE
Yeah.
JANE
And I love the word lavish, and if I may, of course, I have a story. A number of times when I was teaching, when I was doing the courses Peter, I would introduce this “lavish affirmation.” And very often, with all due respect, Greg and Peter, some guy would say, “Well, I don’t believe in that stuff. I tell it like it is.” And I’d say, “Okay, Charlie, I’m going to use lavish affirmation as part of this five day course. On Friday, I’m going to ask you what use that was, that experience was, in your learning.” And honestly, I can, I can remember – and I don’t remember much these days – but I can remember Charlie, saying on Friday, “You know, I’m gonna try that. I’m gonna try that in my work.” Because it had worked for him. What he had was the experience. And I think that’s what it’s all about, Peter. It’s almost simple.
CHRISTINE
There is kind of a paradigm that’s operating under that Jane that I think there is a sense that what is wrong, what is negative, and what needs to be repaired is truth. And what is good, what is valuable, what is useful, what’s working, is not truth. Right? There’s a paradigm that operates underneath that, even in that –
JANE
That’s a cultural– that’s a cultural thing.
CHRISTINE
Yeah.
JANE
Right, Chris?
CHRISTINE
Right.
JANE
Yeah, yeah, it’s not it’s that’s not true. That paradigm has to be questioned.
CHRISTINE
Right. Yeah.
JANE
And that, I think goes back to the issue of, are we living in a world of abundance? Or are we living in a world of scarcity? And as I say, it’s springtime!
PETER
That’s an interesting comment on this axiom. And it ties it to that title of Simply True – how an axiom is an expression of some deeper truth.
JANE
Yes.
PETER
What about you, Chris? What does it mean to you this- can you tell us more about what the axiom means to you?
CHRISTINE
Yeah. Well, you know, I work in, I think if I say broadly, my work is a lot around organizational effectiveness, right? We’re in the midst of conceptualizing or undergoing some sort of change, we’re moving from something to another thing, you can imagine that that is the space in organizations where we’re pursuing something better than what is. Which can be read or interpreted as “what is, is not good enough”. You know when you think about that kind of work, the importance of feeling affirmed and valued in what has been created so far as the platform to get to something better, right?
JANE
Yes. Yes.
CHRISTINE
I think affirmation for me is not just, you know, making sure somebody gets a “good job!” or you know, “Attaboy, that was great.” I mean, it can be that simple. But if if I say what it fundamentally means to me, I think, at a human level, we all need to be seen, and heard and valued.
JANE
Oh, Chris. Yes.
CHRISTINE
Yeah. When I think about affirmation, I think of it in that way. It can be praise. Like, “you know what you said, that was really insightful. I’m going to steal that the next time I have this- I have this conversation.” Right, like, that’s praise. It’s broader, maybe then only praise. It can also be acknowledgement, like, you know, “wow, that must have been really hard to say. That took a lot of courage to say out loud. I’m recognizing the value in you in saying a hard thing.” Or even responding with curiosity. You know, like somebody says something, and rather than move on to the next thing, you know – “okay, you’re done talking. It’s time for me to go next!” – to respond with curiosity. Say, “I want to hear more about what you just said. It sounds important.”
JANE
Beautiful.
CHRISTINE
These are just really small ways of demonstrating other people that they’re seen. They’re heard. They’re valued.
JANE
And if I may, it comes to me immediately. In Africa, I learned that when the baby is first born, the mother holds her baby for the first time. She says “nakuona”, in Swahili, and it means “I see you.”
CHRISTINE
Wow.
JANE
Oh, that knocks me out. There’s affirmation.
CHRISTINE
Mm hmm.
JANE
Calling people by name, Chris.
CHRISTINE
Yeah, or hearing your words repeated back.
JANE
Yes!
CHRISTINE
They’re small- they’re small acts.
JANE
Exactly.
PETER
Affirming resistance.
JANE
Beautiful. Yes! Yes, Peter. And I love the phrase I used one time: there are no small acts in this business. Every act is abundant in its possibilities.
CHRISTINE
Yes.
PETER
You know, I remember too that one of the critiques that I sometimes heard of kind of the facilitation work that we sometimes did, when affirmation was not genuine or wasn’t really authentic, was that, you know, we kind of maybe sounded a little bit like our own culture of just praising people, just because that’s something that you culturally do. But I think it’s so important for affirmation to always be authentic and to be genuine, to come from a real place inside of us.
JANE
Absolutely.
CHRISTINE
I love that. Yeah. Because it can be, and I have seen it, you know, where it’s almost like a tick. It’s use is to stop the other person from talking so that then I can go next. It may be subtle, but people will pick up on that. Or when we feel like we can’t tell people how they’ve hurt us as well, like, we don’t feel we have permission to say, “wow, that hurts my feelings. When you say that.” Right? It loses its authenticity. That being said, I think that there is kind of an – I love your word abundance, Jane – that I think frequently, we are quick, as humans, to criticize. We’re quick to say what’s wrong with something. And we can lose what’s good, and what’s valuable, because we leap so quickly to what’s wrong with something that we don’t acknowledge what’s working, what’s good, and what’s valuable about something.
JANE
Exactly.
PETER
You know, maybe we’ve really beautifully described this axiom. And we’ve even you know, painted some pictures of what it looks like. I wonder if we could get even more specific and just describe a time when you were leading a session or you were working on a relationship with someone or facilitating learning of some kind or another when this axiom really came to your- came to your side and not only rang true, but transformed in some way the situation.
CHRISTINE
Yeah. So I actually had been giving that a little bit of a think before we came and I landed on two stories, and one is actually not a work story, but a personal story. I just was, I was reminded of this, as I was thinking about this axiom, when my kids were little, and we would have a long car ride, my son Max, was a bit of a handful in a long car ride – it was a challenge to do a long car ride. And we used to have this game where I would just tell them, what I appreciated about them what I liked about them, and I would bounce back and forth between one and the other, there’d be one for Max, and then there’d be one for Jordan. And then there’d be another one for Max and another one for Jordan. And for as long as I could keep that going, you can’t imagine like how quiet and attentive and leaning in Max was. Like, if I could have made that go for a three hour car ride, he would’ve been like, completely, you can rap. And I think it speaks to, kind of like that sort of fundamental human need that we have, right. that we we were look for that. But yeah, that it is like oxygen in that regard. Like we do have a need for it. I was thinking about a recent work meeting. And it wasn’t even a meeting, it was actually bringing some data back to a group. They’ve been working really, really hard for a year and a lot of the ground had been shifting under them. And they knew it was time for a reset for their work effort for their- for this team that they were leading, they knew it was time for a reset. And they were feeling like we probably need to really get clear on what is our purpose. That’s what they were feeling when they first came to me. So I did kind of like the standard thing, you know, collecting some data. I did a survey with members of the team. In that data, we collected sort of the what’s working well, and what could be better. What do you suspect is our purpose, you know, kind of that sort of data collection to kind of hear from people what they were. And when they got the picture back, it wasn’t even a deflating picture, right. But the picture included both what was working well and- and what could be better. And the eye goes to the ‘what could be better,’ right? The energy goes to the ‘what could be better.’ And I could sense in the meeting – and this is all on Zoom, of course – I could sense in the meeting that they were starting to feel deflated. And that the work that they were doing was important, and you know, it’s gonna require energy to persist in this work. So in that moment, I did a little reframe, and the reframe was really simple: what if the energy and the persistence that you have applied up to this point, so far, has really been creating the platform for deciding what comes next?
JANE
Beautiful.
CHRISTINE
That makes sense. But the whole notion of looking backwards and recognizing that things could have been better in the past, doesn’t provide us as much energy to pursue the future. You really can’t fix the past. You can’t resolve it. But it does build the platform for where you’re at right now. And the questions you can pursue as you look forward. And I remember in that Zoom meeting – again, in a Zoom meeting – I could feel the energy shift in that, just that one sentence, because it made them in that moment, recognize that “Yeah, like our work has not been in vain. Our efforts are not for not. Our efforts have created a possibility –
JANE
Yes!
CHRISTINE
“– now, it’s our opportunity to define that possibility and move forward.”
PETER
Tell us again, what was that question you asked?
JANE
What if?
CHRISTINE
I guess it was a what if question.
JANE
Beautiful.
CHRISTINE
Yeah. What if what we have been doing is creating the platform for where we go from here?
JANE
Wow. Wow. Wow.
PETER
That sounds like that. Imagine that. You’ve mentioned earlier, Jane. The “Imagine” we talked about at the beginning. It invites imagination.
CHRISTINE
Yeah. Yeah. And there’s, there’s always the possibility of improvement, right? There’s always the possibility of getting better, of being sharper of doing more. Right. There’s that’s always a possibility. That is like the, the eternal question in all organizations, right? We were always in pursuit of doing better. But I think we do ourselves a disservice when in that pursuit of doing better, we ignore or undermine or under appreciate the good that exists right now, the value the valuable things that we’ve created.
JANE
Precisely.
CHRISTINE
And we need to study that as well.
JANE
Precisely.
CHRISTINE
We need to study what’s working, we need to study what’s good. And we need to notice it and acknowledge it out loud.
JANE
We got some history books that you can edit, Chris. We got a couple of history books. How about if history were written with that abundance paradigm? That’s wonderful, Chris, what an insight. I’m going to share a story if I may. Because the story comes before I ever thought of lavish affirmation. 100 years ago, when I was teaching in Tanzania, God help me. And I was doing community, some community work with the leaders of a community. They shouldn’t have let me in the village, but they did. And here I was. And I said, God help me. I said, somebody was not paying attention. I wasn’t getting the attention I needed from this group. And I said, “Please, let’s get to work.” Oh, God help me, I can remember this- this was really 50 years ago, if it was a day. And I can remember, every emotion, I’m in tears when I think of it, but it’s tells a story. And I said, “we have been working hard to get this to happen. And we have spent a lot of money.” Oh my god, and one of the leaders of the community group – there was quiet in the room, you can imagine. And one of the men stood up and said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get the 12 o’clock bus.” And he walked out, he started to walk out. And happily, my colleague came back. She had been out of the room, and she came back and she overheard what I had said, and she grabbed it. Did what Chris just talked about, very gracefully, saved my life. And the man who was heading to the door, said to the whole group, “Oh, I think I’ll stay. There’s another bus at two.” I’ll never forget that. And I guess that’s where lavish affirmation was born. If you don’t do it, if you don’t do what Chris, what you just described, you do something like that. I’m telling you the story because it’s- it was so significant in my own learning.
CHRISTINE
You know, I remember Peter Block has, I remember hearing him say this one time, and it’s always stuck with me, that we always enter every room from the back. We enter every room from the back, and we fill in from the back. There’s a- it’s metaphorical. But it’s useful that there is a fundamental question that we’re asking ourselves in every room that we go into, which is do I belong here? Am I enough to be here? And we need to create spaces where people recognize that whoever is in the room, that’s the right people to be in the room.
JANE
Yes.
CHRISTINE
And affirming what people say affirming their presence and letting them know, I see you. I hear you. I value you. It’s just a way of being in the world that I think actually creates a shift and makes the place- the spaces where we’re doing whatever’s the work that’s ahead of us, it’s making those places places of welcome.
JANE
Yes.
CHRISTINE
And places that allow people to answer that fundamental question of do I belong here with a resounding, “yes, I do belong”, right? I think that’s what you’re looking for, it’s what we need in our organizations, what we need in our churches, it’s what we need in kind of- kind of every space, where we exist. We frequently in our family setting, we get it right, like we get that. And we live in our organizations. We live there. We spend so much of our time there. And creating that experience for people in our organizations is, I mean, it’s really valuable and it keeps us energetic to be pursuing the better, to be pursuing improvement over time.
JANE
And Chris, too, I just thought of a word, one word that actually captures this whole- this affirmation is a paradigm. It’s an action paradigm. And the word is celebrate. I often in the morning, say, “what can I celebrate today?”
CHRISTINE
Yeah. It’s a great way to start the day.
PETER
With abundance.
JANE
It is dear. Exactly, Peter. And what I love about this, it’s our dear Karen Ridouts wonderful, wonderful theme: it’s all connected. You’re really talking, Chris, about respect. You’re talking about engaging people’s imagination, engage- you’re talking about all the principles and practices.
PETER
Y’know this has been an incredibly rich conversation.
JANE
Thank you, dear.
PETER
I wonder if I may ask your permission to-to close it off? Or what’s still at the tip of your time that you’re wanting to say?
CHRISTINE
The only thing at the tip of my tongue is when you invited me to do this, and I’ll just say that out loud, that was an expression of affirmation for me, just so you know. It’s like, “Wow, look at that. This is my first ever podcast!” And delighted to have a chance to chat with you, it’s been wonderful.
JANE
Celebrate, let’s celebrate. Thanks, Peter.
PETER
You know, that’s- that’s so great. You know, I know I won’t forget what you said, Chris, about, “I see you, I hear you. I value you.” I think that’s often the role of a facilitator is to express that. And I’m thinking that the role of a leader is to change that first pronoun to, “we see you, we hear you – Yes. “– we value you.”
JANE
Yes.
CHRISTINE
Yeah.
PETER
Thank you so much, Chris, for being with us today. You’ve been such a great friend and colleague over so many years. Really good to be with you in this way today. And maybe, you know, even though I asked you what’s still at the tip of your tongue, I want to give you one more opportunity to share something with us. Is there something that’s come up for you in recent weeks or in the past year that- one new axiom or a bit of wisdom, that’s that’s come to you, that you’d like to share with with the rest of us?
CHRISTINE
I guess for me, I’m thinking a lot these days around how to create meaningful connection, meaningful relationship, when we are connected through technology. Technology is something that it has the potential to connect us and has the potential to divide us. You know, a lot of it depends on how we use it. There’s been a lot of learning, for me, it’s been a year of learning a lot around how do I create that experience of, “You’re welcome in this space,” when the space is technological, and we’re looking at each other on screens. So if I were to say something that I’ve learned is that some of the fundamentals are still at play, even in a technologically enhanced space, right, some of the fundamentals are still at play. Finding a way to equalize. Finding a way to make sure that everyone who’s walking into the room, you know, instead of the Zoom Room, instead of walking into the back of the room in Zoom, we walk in with our cameras off. That’s our way of walking into the back of the room. And I think it’s more important than ever to telegraph that message, that you are the right person to be in this conversation. Your words matter. Your perspective matters. We need to find a way to use our technology for that.
JANE
Beautiful.
PETER
That’s great. Thank you so much, Jane. Thank you so much, Chris. It’s been wonderful to explore this axiom: affirmation is like oxygen – we all need it to survive. And to our listeners. Thank you so much for being with us. And –
JANE
Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Chris.
PETER
Wish you a good day. Thank you.
OUTRO (MEG)
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Simply True with Dr. Jane Vella. This podcast is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton, with music by Kyle Donald. If you enjoyed the show, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast player. To find out more about Global Learning Partners, whether it be our course offerings, consulting services or free resources, go to www.GlobalLearningPartners.com. We invite you to sign up for our mailing list, subscribe to our podcast and find us on social media to continue the dialogue.