Overview

Barry Oshry has a lifetime's experience of working with social and organizational systems. Here he explains how we can understand - and avoid - the ""catastrophes"" that continue to occur when one culture meets another - when demagogues sell us messages of superiority or purity in the face of cultural difference. Algeria Armenia Bosnia Cambodia Congo Darfur East Timor The Holdomor TheHolocaust Myanmar Palestine Rwanda... He explains how the two conventional solutions to encountering the ""other"" - Purity and Tolerance - both exact a terrible cost on the oppressed while diminishing the humanity of the oppressors. And he offers us a third possibility, one that requires a fundamental transformation in how we see and experience one another. This transformation requires us to understand that the interaction patterns we fall into shape the way we see and experience one another. Change the pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will change... The possibility of ""Power and Love"", working together and tempering one another, will emerge.

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9781911193487

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Reviews

“This writing is a gift! Encounters with the Other must be placed in every teacher’s and student’s hands beginning as early as 6th or 7th grade, woven into their history and social studies programs to help future generations recognize the signs that keep repeating themselves around the world and in our own communities.”; Lily Bowen, VP Leadership & OD at Travelers Insurance, USA; “Thank you so much for this. I read it all and it moved me to tears. There is so much that needs to be done and sometimes the task seems hopeless, but we need to keep striving and, in the process, making small changes that will hopefully grow into a powerful wave of ‘humanity.’”; Salman Ahmad, Lecturer at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; “At the end of this little book, Barry Oshry says there’s a middle way of building community −- not pure power or love, but mutual self-awareness. That’s been the core theme of his work ever since Seeing Systems: watching people shift roles from Top to Bottom to Middle to Customer. They see their own behavior shift accordingly, and that’s the first step. Barry has been a prophet of systems awareness for all his career.” ; Art Kleiner, Author of The Age of Heretics and The Wise Advocate; “Wow, what an inspiring and much needed project.”; Kara Penfield, Center for Creative Leadership, USA; “Clear, moving, sad and hopeful all in one!”; Simon Allen, Principal Lumina Consulting, UK; “A moving thoughtful perspective on how we create the ‘other,’ by blindly falling into patterns that negate our and their full humanity. We need this wise reminder of who we are and what we individually and collectively can become…and that it is a choice.”; Don Jones, Founder and President, Experience It, Inc., Canada; “[A] beautiful piece of work. So crystal clear, so enlightening, and infused with so much humanity. A call to arms for all of us.”; Paul Mitchell, Founder at The Human Enterprise, Australia; “A wholeness resulting from a cycle of Love and Power, which allows us to see both the similarities and differences with others as they really are, is a profound insight. Balancing the forces of Power and Love is the most important work we can do as individuals and as a society.”; George B. Forsythe, Ph.D., Brigadier General, U.S. Army (retd.); “Oshry’s beautifully crafted thesis sheds light on a path forward. It is a hard path, a path many will not choose to see, but for those of us seeking community, love, and learning, the path he illuminates is the journey of our lifetimes.” ; Helene T. Roos, Psy.D, Founder/President HAD Consulting; “Written in the style of an epic poem, this is a lament for what ails the modern world and, in particular, the way we treat each other as means and not ends; and it is a moving elegy for a world yet to be created, where love matches power.” ; Jules Goddard, Fellow, London Business School; “A brilliant and creative piece of writing. I like the format because the key points are easily ‘digested’ and organized in a coherent and logical flow.”; David Altman, COO, Center for Creative Leadership, USA; “Oshry describes so simply, so clearly, core dynamics of being in relation with others − the dynamics that are just as relevant in one-on-one relationships as between two cultures. The power in revealing these patterns is that once you see them, they are hard to forget.” ; Naryan Wong, Network Weaver, Toronto, Canada; “This may be some of Barry Oshry’s clearest and most insightful writing. It has a precision and subtlety of how ‘encounters with the other’ often go that merits careful study and digestion.” ; John Watters, Managing Director at Living Leadership, UK; “A masterpiece. A visceral journey to a new place of understanding. Its time is now.”; Deb Travers-Wolf, Founder/ CEO I LEAD Consulting, Sydney, Australia; “This is so elegantly written. Love it.....Congratulations on so many levels.....Truly inspiring clarity and vision.”; Kevin Purcell, USA; “A wonderful way to see the patterns that drive us individually and as communities. It is also uncomfortable reading, seeing ourselves naked, shorn of our coverings of justification and self-righteousness. The list of ‘catastrophes’ at the end is by no means exhaustive and should make us sick to our stomachs. If anything will shock us into using the energy of Love not Power this must be it.”; Nick Smith, UK; “Extraordinarily important”; Bob Stilger, Founder at New Stories, USA; “I really appreciate the parable/poetry/essay/social science Encounters. Nicely done.” ; Bill Kahn, Professor at Boston University, USA; “Barry Oshry, despite his esteem in certain circles, is perhaps the most under-appreciated thinker of our times with regard to human organisation and society. I have often wondered why this is the case, and my conclusion is that this is because he has gone deeper and found a purer essence than most. So, I have only one exhortation for those lucky enough to read this: see this prose poem not as perspective or opinion, but as a scientific project; an attempt to divine a deep human truth, through observation and theory. See the dynamics he identifies as fundamental building blocks, as a true paradigm of human behaviour. To do so is illuminating and empowering.”; Benjamin P. Taylor, Managing Partner, RedQuadrant, U.K; “Barry Oshry is one of those rare and intriguing characters: an actual original thinker. For years he has done groundbreaking research on what makes us tick. The answer, it turns out, is that our personalities are shaped far more than we might like by the systems we live in. The challenge, then, is to understand and master these conditions to live a healthy and productive life.”; Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief, Harvard Business Review; “Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful and powerful work! I just read it and have to confess that it ignited a fire within me…”; Alexandre Costa, Director at Integraal, Brazil; “The poetic language takes the reader to a deeper level of understanding of power AND love…Oshry displays an impressive ability to simplify complex and abstract theories…Humbling and inspiring. Many thanks for your dedication to solving our broken systems.”; Nancy Haller, Ph.D., Organizational Psychologist, San Diego, California; “A delightful way of conveying emotionally charged topics that enables the reader to let down one’s guard.” ; Mitchell Karp, USA; “In … Encounters with the Other, Barry Oshry offers us a framework to think about how we connect with “the other”. It’s a timely offering, given how much conflict and suffering there is, and has been, in the world over the 20th and 21st centuries. His thought-piece is a moving “cri de coeur”, calling on all of us to examine our beliefs about “the other” and how we dehumanize them − to get beyond simple tolerance and to open our hearts to them. Oshry invites us to look inward and to examine our projections based on fear and desire, to put us on the path to getting to know “the other”. It is not just that our solutions often diminish the oppressed, he argues, but that they also “diminish the oppressors (us), corrupting and de-humanizing them (us), as they hang their self-worth on the fragile thread of the diminished worth of the ‘other’”. This appeal to our higher selves could not be more urgent”. ; Abby Yanow, President, Boston Facilitators Roundtable

Author Information

Barry Oshry is a pioneer in the field of human systems thinking. His life’s work has been to empower individuals and organizations by transforming system-blindness into system-sight. The educational programs he has developed include The Power Lab, the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, and the When Cultures Meet Workshop. In 2013 he launched The Worldwide Week of Partnership, during which Power+Systems trainers across the globe conduct pro bono partnership events for educational, charitable, advocacy, and service organizations in their local communities. In 2015 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Organization Development Network. Barry is the author of The Systems Letter, Seeing Systems, Leading Systems, In the Middle, and The Possibilities of Organization. He is also a playwright whose stage productions include “What a Way to Make a Living,” “Hierarchy,” “Power Play,” and “Peace.” ​In 1975 he and his wife and partner, Karen Ellis Oshry, founded Power+Systems, Inc. whose worldwide network of trainers continues the work of empowering individuals and organizations by transforming system-blindness into system-sight.

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