Transforming the “Other”: the Palestinian-Israeli Emerging Leaders Program

At a recent presentation, Shawn Dunning, Director of the Leadership Wisdom Initiative (LWI) at Search for Common Ground (SFCG), talked about an exciting leadership development program underway with LWI and SFCG Jerusalem, in partnership with Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding.

The Palestinian-Israeli Emerging Leaders Program engages leaders from a variety of sectors and from both sides of the conflict to jointly develop transformative leadership skills while simultaneously creating a mutually beneficial network for constructive engagement.

The program has gone through two cycles thus far.  The first cycle brought together six Palestinian and six Israeli social entrepreneurs for a nine month program. In February 2009, all twelve participants as well as two group facilitators traveled to Texas, where they spent ten days on a white-water canoeing expedition on the Rio Grande.  After their return home, two four-day group retreats were held in Cyprus and Turkey, respectively; one-on-one mentoring was also provided throughout the period.  The second cycle followed a similar formula focusing on emerging political leaders. Most recently, the participants from both cycles met for a joint retreat that explored their common interests and possible collaboration opportunities for the future. SFCG plans to expand the program to include business and religious leaders, with the goal of reaching nearly 50 participants by the end of 2011.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the program was the change in communication dynamics between the Israeli and Palestinian participants over the course of the initial outdoor expedition.  At the beginning, Shawn observed that all the participants took the opportunity to introduce themselves as an open invitation to take a stand and make their position known, regardless of whether the others were actually listening to them or hearing the meaning behind what was said.  The facilitators chose to step back and let the group figure out on their own what they did very quickly: they weren’t getting anywhere.  Israeli participants weren’t listening to Palestinian participants, and vice versa.  They were shouting from their own individual soapboxes, but they were talking right past each other.  Within a day or two, they had shifted gears, and were listening to each other—but only in order to debate or refute what the other was saying.

In another, everyday-type situation, this may have been as far as they were able to get in developing the communication dynamic between the two sides.  Indeed, in observing the tone and content of the ongoing Middle East Peace Talks, it seems as though many of the senior leaders and representatives get caught at this one point: listening only to debate.

Faced with prolonged shared experiences with the “other” against a backdrop of continuing physical challenges in a remote environment, however, a gradual curiosity began to develop, eventually leading to deeper questions and observations rooted in genuine interest about each other’s values, families, and stories.  While this change may not revolutionize the overall situation, there is a shift in how one sees the other across from him.  Indeed, when the participants came together for their joint retreat, the “other” had shifted from describing the ethnic divide between Israelis and Palestinians to the professional divide between the social entrepreneurs and political leaders.  This is the type of deep communication that allows for generating shared solutions to shared problems in the long-term.