Soulful leadership at knifepoint (audio)

Diaz, photo courtesey of www.StoryCorps.org

How can you exercise soulful leadership at knifepoint?  Are there ways an ordinary person can stay grounded and defuse a violent situation? 

And what about violence that hasn’t escalated to the point of knives or guns, such as verbal abuse, both abuse directed toward oneself and abuse directed toward others?  What does soulful leadership look like in these situations?

Earlier this year, Julio Diaz, a New York City social worker exercised soulful leadership at knifepoint when he stepped off the subway and a teenager pulled a knife on him and demanded his wallet.  After giving the teen his wallet, Diaz engaged him as he began to walk away, offering him his coat and inviting him to dinner.  The would-be robber accepted the dinner invitation, and the conversation over dinner, through Diaz’s masterful engagement with the teen and the teen’s openness to listening, resulted in the teen returning the wallet and giving up his knife.

When they heard about the incident, many readers of the story asked themselves what they would have done, judged themselves as incapable of rising to the challenge in the way that Diaz did, and left it at that.  Diaz became a hero, one who practices unattainable heroics that ordinary mortals can never expect to perform.  It was easy to put him in the category of heroes like Desmond Tutu and Aung San Suu Kyi.

But treating the story in this way misses its most important lesson. There are hints in the story of Diaz’s practice, practice, and more practice.  People like Diaz and Tutu and Suu Kyi have been living this way for a long time.  As Walter Wink points out in his book, Engaging the Powers, in a world that teaches fight or flight, those who want to practice a third way, the way of encountering violence with compassion and transforming it, must rehearse that third way.  We need groups of people who gather to talk about situations they face every day, small and large, subtle and not so subtle.  We need opportunities to brainstorm and role play “third way” responses.

We may not be able to start with soulful leadership at knifepoint.  On a scale of 1-10, the situation in which Diaz found himself was a “10.”  Only because he had been practicing “1’s,” “2’s,” “5’s,” and “8’s” over the years was he able to rise to the occasion when he encountered a “10.”  Fortunately, most of us don’t encounter robberies at knifepoint regularly.  But we do encounter “1’s,” “2’s,” and “5’s” frequently.  How do we respond, for example, to an angry driver in traffic?  Or to an angry neighbor or co-worker or teen-age son or daughter?  Do we intervene when we see a bully in the office or on the playground, and if so, how?  How do we respond to a racist joke?  And where do we get support for responding differently from the usual ways?  What are our opportunities to gather with others and practice “third way” responses?

We may not have the wherewithal to exercise soulful leadership at knifepoint if we are confronted with it today.  At the same time, with the help of other like-minded people, we can begin to practice that “third way” in the myriad situations we encounter every day, and begin to build up our “third way” muscles.  And in the unlikely event that we are ever confronted with a “10” situation, as Diaz was, we just might be able to rise to the occasion.
 

Audio:
http://www.storycorps.org/listen/stories/julio-diaz

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Aung San Suu Kyi honored before trial: soulful leadership in Burma (Pt. 2)
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Soulful leadership in the healthcare debate

 For more info: Margaret Benefiel, Ph.D., author of Soul at Work and The Soul of a Leader, works with leaders in healthcare, business, churches, government and non-profits to help them stay true to their souls. Visit her website.