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    Power shifting

    Posted November 6, 2023
    Source
    Land Trust Alliance
    Author
    Mikki Sager and Livia Marqués, Food Driven Strategies
    About This Document

    Power shifting is a process to understand the power you have by virtue of privilege, founders’ syndrome, delegating, sharing and shifting power. While there are no formulas for shifting power, there are many things you can do to start the process. This document outlines a few of the ways you can think of this from a “working with community” perspective.

    © 2023 Land Trust Alliance, Inc. All rights reserved.

    Power shifting is a process to understand the power you have by virtue of privilege, founders’ syndrome, delegating, sharing and shifting power. While there are no formulas for shifting power, there are many things you can do to start the process. From a “working with community” perspective, you should:

    • Don't make assumptions or judgements.

      Research the data on communities before you go, but don’t make any assumptions or judgements, and don’t come with any preconceived solutions.

    • Respect community members’ time, connections and resources.

      Respect community members’ time, connections and resources. Countless low-income communities and communities of color have been “studied,” with researchers asking local residents to coordinate meetings, arrange for meeting spaces, get people to come to the meeting, feed them—all for free. As one rural resident said, “We know what we need but no one ever asks us that question. They all have some theory about why our community is like it is and they write a paper about it but never come back with the resources to help us address the issues. If we had even half the money that’s been spent studying us, we could have fixed everything that’s wrong and then some!”

    • Let go of your ego, let yourself be vulnerable and listen, listen, listen.

      Let go of your ego, let yourself be vulnerable and listen, listen, listen. Many land trust jobs require us to act as an expert; keep in mind that local residents are the experts on their communities and their own lived experiences.

    • Build relationships of trust.

      Build relationships of trust. This requires time, patience, showing up in good times and bad, being honest, asking open-ended questions and listening, listening, listening. Make sure you carry through on anything you say you’ll do.

    • Share power.

      Think about building new, community-centered tables. We often think in terms of “bringing others to the table,” without acknowledging that it’s our table, with our priorities and ideas. We need to let go of those tables, bring our resources with us, and partner authentically with communities to collaboratively build new tables on a foundation of shared values, shared interests, shared outcomes.

    • Look at the power you do have.

      Look at the power you do have — access to donors and public/private funding, political or social connections, etc. — and figure out how you can share and shift the access and power with others, through introductions, helping partners connect and build relationships, including community partners in grant budgets at meaningful funding levels so they can do the work and build connections with the funders.

    The same principles and values apply to our personal relationships, our relationships with peers and colleagues, as well as our relationships with communities. The trust has to go both ways. We have to let go of the power and access we have so others may grow. We have to be humble and vulnerable, relinquish control, learn from others, strengthen our skills in empathy, hear and respect others’ experiences, others’ realities, others’ truths.

    Change will not happen overnight. We are human so we will make mistakes and we need to be able to learn from them. We need to be intentional and thoughtful, recognize that the sum of us is much greater than the individual parts and that, together, we can accomplish so much more because our individual power will be multiplied.