## Resilient Koan 19 - Acceptance and Agreement ### _Koan_: If you haven't got agreement, can you at least get acceptance? ### _Discussion_: In Edgar Schein's process consultation and Peter Block's contacting process the presumption of the equalisation of the psychodynamics of status imbalance means that to gain agreement to co-operative development, there must be an equality of understanding. Where we 'do' development to something, there is no problem with this. The only problem is if we confuse their needs with our own. The need to do something for, in the absence of agreement in equality, is really a need to do something, or to do something to. Mistaking this is usually ineffective (which is lucky because the act is possibly unforgivable). ### _Inquiry_: The challenge comes from this where the other party does not have the capacity to choose (i.e. they do not have the question you are asking). The challenge also comes where we do not have the capacity to ask (i.e. where acting for the benefit of the whole, but there is no one person to ask). What happens then? ### _Insight:_ Nothing changes in these circumstances. You cannot move past agreement, just because you have acceptance. What is required is greater sophistication of practice. One might have to wait two years for agreement by continuing to hold and frame the questions space, doing the development needed to get to the point to begin or not begin the work that begins at that point. One might also have to develop an inquiry practice for the desires of the whole, if one seeks to look to the health of the whole. ### _Resolution_: When I misspelt the word 'consensual' the other day, meaning to provide consent in agreement, by writing instead 'consentual' I had to inquire into the difference. Consentual is a word, and is used to imply not non-consentual, being agreement in a dubious situation of mutual consent. It is a circumstance where there is not really a choosing, only no choice. This highlights that circumstances can be created to gain consent, but one is mistaken if they believe there is a consensus. The resolution to the koan is what appears to make it easier to precede, simply makes it harder to achieve. ### _Practice_: Walk the only path there is, continuously in engagement, and not seeking 'the engagement'. --- This is one in a series of 25 'Resilient Koans' documenting "an apithologue into the koans of practice discovered while creating resilient sustainable communities", in 2010.