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sent by Carolyn M. Byerly
As a guest participant at the NWMI meeting in
Bandra, I was interested in meeting members of
the Network, learning more about last year's activities
and seeing the dynamics of the group. I noted
three particular features of the meeting with
interest.
The
first concerned the structure of the meeting,
which I thought was very conducive both to open
sharing and (in some cases) to decision making.
By setting aside 2-3 hour blocks of time in sessions
with identified themes, members were able to talk
at length about issues and to explore possible
approaches to dealing with them without being
hurried. Thus, in each such session, there seemed
to be a start-up period in which one person after
another would bring up whatever she had to say
on the subject, almost at random. This resulted
in a series of non-sequiturs, with messages often
seeming to have no connection to each other. But
I then realised this was my misperception —
people had actually listened quite closely to
each other, because eventually they began to respond
to each other, reflecting back on something an
earlier speaker had mentioned. There was eventually
cohesion around several major issues, such as
how NWMI should handle individual cases of sexual
harassment it received, whether the website should
be continued, and what new issues the group should
take up next year.
The
second feature of the meeting I noted was that
members were forthright with each other, often
noisily disagreeing in their views, but at the
same time never personal in their disagreements.
In two days, I never once saw a NWMI member make
a snide remark to another or resort to personal
criticisms about what someone said. There was
a genuine sense of care and respect throughout
the meeting that seemed both effortless and natural.
This ethic of care so strongly at work will surely
help to sustain the organisation over time.
The
third feature that intrigued me was that there
appeared to be an intentional system of shared
leadership. The meeting had been planned by a
small group in the Mumbai area, with no one particular
person in charge of the whole two-day event. Instead,
various members had coordinated specific events
— the getting of the facility, the arrangements
for the press club party, etc. Even session facilitation
rotated during the meeting. In the matter of the
NWMI website, which seems to have fallen to four
or five members to keep up, members agreed to
do a better job of sharing the writing and posting
of notices. Since the website gives the group
a way to communicate among its members between
meetings, and also present a public face for its
work (thereby setting forth the issues that Indian
media professionals are concerned about), I found
myself especially hopeful this sharing of work
would happen.
Carolyn
M. Byerly
University of Maryland, USA
cbyerly@dsdial.net
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