Leadership with Compassion in Indonesia

Positions and interests demonstrated by spicy food. (Hearts and peppers added later)

The conflict was simple, she liked spicy food and her husband did not. But the iceberg principle, a fundamental aspect of the common ground approach, could not leave it there. The principle compels people to looks beyond positions (the tip of the iceberg) to get to interests—the things that are satisfied when the position is met, and the ingredients for collaborative problem-solving.

Shawn Dunning, Director of SFCG’s Leadership Wisdom Initiative, recently conducted a training workshop for women Indonesian trainers and facilitators. They began with an exercise to illustrate the iceberg theory, using real examples from the women’s lives.  Soon they were talking about the culinary conundrum of one woman’s desire for a little kick on her palate. Getting beyond her position (the desire for spicy food), she went into the reasons for her preference: It increases your appetite, she said, and makes you more productive. It’s good for health…and then she blushed and giggled. “What?” they wanted to know; what was the next reason? She shook her head coyly, “secret,” she said. The rest of the women burst into knowing laughter.

This playful learning environment and the comfort shared by those involved helped to facilitate discussions of the serious issues that the training tackled.

The project is a transformational women’s leadership program, focused on building the capacity of women leaders in Indonesia. Shawn and Serena Rix Tripathee, SFCG Nepal Country Director, led the seven-day training of local trainers (TOT) who will go on to coach women leaders at the national and state levels, with a particular focus on women parliamentarians.

Shawn Dunning facilitating a training on the 2nd day, focused on media messaging.

A wider goal is to transform Indonesian attitudes about the role of women in democracy, governance and leadership. A national public awareness campaign is planned to work in tandem with these trainings. A radio drama, followed by local call-in talk shows, will provide Indonesian women with practical ways to address gender challenges and create positive attitudes toward women as leaders and decision makers.

Many women eschew participating in the political or formal judicial systems altogether, lacking confidence that these systems will work on their behalf.  The idea that domestic violence is a crime, for example, has yet to reach widespread acceptance, and police are reluctant to get involved in domestic cases.

Women’s representation and political participation is often restricted under the guise of religion and is condemned by some religious leaders as anti-Islamic. Although women’s names appear on ballots to satisfy gender quotas, they have little or no influence in male-dominated parties. Because they have been long restricted from public office, they often lack the experience and training to be effective leaders. Furthermore, their only examples of leaders are men, many of whom actually provide poor examples of leadership.

Although the number of women leaders has increased, there is intense pressure for them to succeed and quickly, because failure validates the stereotypes of those who say women are unfit to lead.  This can limit their future opportunities.

To address these issues SFCG worked with experienced trainers from local women’s organizations, Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia (KPI, The Indonesian Women’s Coalition) and Yayasan Jurnal Perempuan (YJP, Women’s Journalism Foundation).

One of the biggest challenges during the TOT was transforming the mindset of the trainers, away from a position of advocacy to collaboration; where they could see their role as supporting the female leaders to reach and better understand their own goals. The trainers are all highly educated women, experienced in advocacy around women’s issues and were originally very eager to coach the female parliamentarians because they saw it as an opportunity to influence high-level leaders on women’s issues, almost in the way of lobbyists. But for the purposes of this program, their role was not to advise on issues, advocate or impose goals.

There is somewhat of a disconnect between those who work for women’s issues and women leaders. Many female leaders resent being seen as women’s issues leaders, as if their concerns must be primarily concern women and children. They often have wider-ranging goals, like getting on the defense committee, and it is the coach’s role to help them achieve these. Because LWI’s direct involvement was limited to the initial training it was very important that the trainers understood their role clearly if the project was going to be sustainable.

For Shawn, the biggest achievement came when the trainers realized that they did not have to compromise on advocating for women’s issues in their coaching role. By helping to make women more effective leaders, they ultimately do affect the roles and status of women.

One trainer came to Shawn and Serena about her realization that common ground does not mean compromise, with a book idea: “I want to write a book about advocating in more peaceful ways,” she said.

The group celebrates a successful training

When the coaching of female parliamentarians begins next month, the trainers will bring the Common Ground approach with them. An experienced facilitator from the US will co-facilitate this next step with a national trainer who participated in the TOT. While the  trainers and leaders are women, the approach is not gender-based but rather aims for facilitative leadership where everybody is important, not just one party, one tribe or one gender. The CG approach to leadership aims for authenticity, leadership for the whole and leadership with compassion. Our theory of change in this program is that if women are more empowered across the board, they can make wider shifts in thinking and culture.

Learn more about our initiatives supporting women and our other programming in Indonesia!