by Walt Frasier
I have been using YES AND… improv to deliver powerful training for corporate teams, colleges and k12 schools. We promote developing creativity, critical thinking, public speaking, listening, focus, self confidence, self awareness and more. We promote Psychological Safety for all. In short, I teach, “can’t we all just get along?”
In short, we can, we could. This requires great leadership and individuals to team up with a better future in mind.
Consider a room of 20 getting along nicely, productively, when a negative influence enters, we need to make a choice. This provocateur chooses short cuts to wealth and power by degrading the competition. This virus is a dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance. You personally would not hire them for the mail room, but somehow they got through the HR process. (Or got elected to political office)
If the team is strong, with great leadership and community, together we say NO to the garbage. We do everything we can to bring this individual into the team but sometimes we have to bluntly say, “Get with the program or get out!”
A weakly lead team results in tribalism. Individuals choose how to deal with the new factor. Do we ignore it, compete with it or shy away into the corner? Anger, hate, resentment and fear grow, eventually the team falls apart. No one is happy. And that garbage probably gets promoted to management, right? The HR department that can’t see the problem values their “spunk”.
When you start a new class or team, you can set up parameters of psychological safety. You can weed out the ugly early. Most, once they see your vision, will drop the games, realizing this time, they are part of a team that is different. EVERYONE on the team has value. EVERYONE has agency. EVERYONE shares in the team success!
The problem is, the world never gets a true reset. We can’t simply say, “OK, the past 2000 years and beyond don’t count. Starting today, it’s a new ballgame…”
Well, we could, but too many are entrenched. Too many live with fear and hate. And too many feed that anger to their own personal ambitions for wealth and power.
Too many don’t see a path to peace for themselves. A combination of actual personal experiences, generational divides and many new provocateur widen the gorge.
YES BUT….
I was inspired to write this after watching an interview on MSNBC. A pro-Palestinian woman made some very good points.
- Millions of Palestinians were displaced in 1948.
- Millions of Palestinians continue to be victims of current situation (before 10/7)
- Terrorism exists in the world as a result of the disenfranchised.
The liberal interviewer , I won’t name names here, pretended to take the Israeli side, but obviously was setting up easy lobs for a slam at the net.
What really caught my ear, was both using the words YES BUT…. to start every retort of this fake debate.
- YES 10/7 was horrible, BUT Palestinians have suffered
- YES Israeli forces are bombing civilians, BUT Hamas hides behind them.
YES BUT… = NO
I say this at every corporate workshop. “YES” is an empty word if followed by “BUT”. You did not mean YES. You are not truly listening with the willingness to change. You are merely waiting your chance to speak, and say YES to appear congenial.
YES BUT… truly means I DON’T RESPECT YOU, YOUR OPINIONS OR YOUR TRUTHS.
YES BUT… is the modus operandi of most debate. It is not the path to WIN WIN solutions.
YES AND… Two Things Can Be True!
There are no easy answers. In fact the easy answers usually lead to worse conditions for the populace that needs the most help.
In the 1990s, America responded crime and gang violence by creating a police state, signed into law by many Democrats and Republicans. The war on drugs put thousands, perhaps millions, of drug users in jail, creating criminals.
I propose shifting YES BUT… to YES AND… in our talks.
Sadly, admitting you did anything wrong is perceived as a weakness. It’s a GOTCHA moment for the ignorant and arrogant that usually lead the political process and the so called PRESS giving the blowhard a platform.
It’s easy to YES AND… those you like/love. The challenge is embracing the “enemy”.
THERE IS NO ENEMY
I have those that have made my life challenging for their own benefit. I have had adversaries in my life, but I don’t consider anyone my enemy. I am driven by the will to succeed, not the hate and destruction of another. Small kinds think they can only succeed if another fails.
The path forward requires BILLIONS to fight instinct, to reject a lifetime of hate and angry and fear and to accept OTHER as being more similar than different from SELF.
- YES Jewish AND Palestinian mothers want what’s best for their children.
- YES you AND others equally deserve life without fear.
- YES you AND others can succeed, supporting each other, cheering each other’s success.
I have momentarily felt success when I beat another in games, business, etc but I have had so much more long standing JOY from building up others, whether or not it benefited me.
YES AND… could solve world peace BUT this requires all sides to drop their arrogance and ignorance in favor of empathy. This would require billions of humans to reject the false leaders they blindly follow (in free society) or are forced to obey (dictators).
Any zero sum game solution will lead to future war.
Destroying Germany after WW1 lead to WW2. We learned after World War 2, we needed to prop Germany and Japan up. Sadly, at the same time, we set up Palestinians to fail. In many ways we got WW2 like results on 10/7 due to the how the west handled 1948. Hamas in 2023 is akin to the Nazis of 1930s/40s. Pure evil, but we had a hand in creating it!
The best way to depower the garbage, is to support the whole team, all the people, those that you disagree with even more.
