Article - Hong Kong’s Resilience Tested Again. Trade War, Democracy Protests, Corona Virus. What’s been happening?
Hong Kongers are resilient because they have been through more ups and downs than most people. Now is no exception. Seated in my studio in Hong Kong watching the steady stream of bad news cross my media feeds stresses the importance of experience. Only experience can keep people from worrying, while looking for opportunities within a crisis, so as to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks related to the situation. Trust, dialogue and negotiation are central to the resilience demonstrated by Hong Kongers. I address each of these topics below.
Since moving to Hong Kong 30 years ago I have experienced one crisis after another. A week after signing my contract, the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident caused the Hong Kong economy to crash and sent 40,000 Hong Kongers per year emigrating to Canada and elsewhere until the 1997 handover to China.
The feared crisis of China’s takeover never materialised and many Hong Kongers returned with their foreign passports to profit from the opening up of China. Until the Asian Financial Crisis following handover it was all one could do to keep up with the growth. A lot of people lost a lot of their savings in the 1997-98 crisis but they got to work and experienced remarkable growth until the next crash of 2008 which was both economic and bird flu related.
The world economy was close to collapse in 2008 but coordinated efforts and significant government investment kept economies afloat. Hong Kong went sideways until social inequities and China’s influence led to the 2014 Occupy movement and another crisis for local businesses. Time eventually pushed the underlying causes of Occupy underground until they resurfaced in 2019 as full-fledged protests. The economic downturn has been fuelled by Trump’s self-imposed trade wars and China’s Coronavirus which has shut down Hong Kong this time.
Recent Dialogues
Dialogue Gap is a Healthcare Crisis at HKU Faculty of Medicine School of Public Health
My last talk of 2019 was Dialogue Gap as a healthcare crisis done on-line (for 150 students) as classes were cancelled due to the democracy protests. Little did we know at the time the public health authorities in Wuhan had discovered a new virus and were not talking about it. This dialogue gap led to the global health crisis we have now and is another sad example of my suggestion dialogue gap is a healthcare crisis.
HKU Faculty of Medicine School of Public Health - https://sph.hku.hk/en/
After a nice family Christmas break, 2020 started with three stimulating sessions which I describe below. Unfortunately, the virus shutdown has cancelled all my February sessions so instead of speaking with these groups directly I share my remarks in writing below to stimulate on-line dialogue.
Thought Leadership & Social Media at LinkedIn
This highly attended event was a great start to the year. My biggest takeaway (and the basis for my next supplement to my Business Developer’s Playbook) is that 2020 on-line (e.g. social and traditional media) and offline (i.e. in-person events) business development activities have to be integrated and reinforce each other or they aren’t worth doing at all. The heart of this is dialogue between digital natives and their “digital lite” seniors who built their success in the offline world. We need both digital natives and digital lite bosses to dialogue. It is easier to learn digital skills than interpersonal skills but both are trainable and those who master both will succeed in the 20/20 world. Not surprisingly the success of this event was the integration of a largely in-person event management group (The Entrepreneurs Network TEN) with the highly successful on-line company LinkedIn. Comments are still trending from this event weeks later.
TEN - https://www.linkedin.com/company/ten-hk/
Event dialogue - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peter-nixon-50ab8218_tenhk-thoughtleadership-personalbranding-activity-6626329524109918208-l4r4
2020 Strategy to improve Diversity & Inclusion in Asia
This session highlighted the reality of declining budgets and evolving priorities inside the large corporates as their need to attract and retain talent morphs from accommodating gender diversity to accommodating thought diversity. The gulf in values and beliefs between the largely younger and older working populations is affecting everything from recruitment to consumer behaviour and causing political, environmental and social activism. Work is underway to complete the latest version of our Dialogue Gap App which helps opposing parties move beyond conflict and hostility into dialogue of the underlying issues leading to concession making and taking and eventual resolution.
Link for Community Business - https://www.communitybusiness.org/about-us
2020 Strategy for Youth Support at We Work
One of the most compassionate, experienced and articulate boards that I have ever worked with shared their perspectives on what’s needed to overcome Hong Kong’s generational divide hurting Hong Kong’s youth, parents and families. Just beyond the protests (which have occupied global news sites covering Hong Kong in the last year) lie the hopes and dreams of the majority of Hong Kong youth which have tried every way imaginable to express their discontent with the direction of the society they call home. As history tells us no society can afford to lose its youth and yet the local and central government are giving little response to the five demands of the protesters preferring instead to call them gangsters and criminals. Whichever side you agree with, the problem of a fractured society remains, and the solution is in the dialogue. "This group is exploring overarching values that can strengthen the emotional resilience of youth in this generation as well as unify families and communities broken by the current dialogue gap."
Link to KELY Support Group - https://kely.org/about-kely
Cancelled/Postponed Dialogues
Coaches 4 Christ at The Vine asked me to share how my dialogue work might help this large group of coaches improve their help for their coachees and church contacts. Coaches 4 Christ is a fairly evangelical group and they found me through a mutual friend who knows of my work. I had planned to commence my talk by explaining my Christian background and Buddhist foreground.
I was raised in the United Church of Canada, a Protestant Church that formed in 1925 when most of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches in Canada merged with the Congregationalists to form Canada’s second largest church (first is the Catholic Church of Canada). My specific congregation, Mount Royal United Church, was then and remains today known for its charismatic leadership, musical tradition and strong community feel. It was here that I got to know several leaders of the church personally and learned the importance of working together to handle the ups and downs of life whenever they are thrown at you. Like all great traditions, the United Church’s success stands on shared beliefs, relevant scripture, and solid community. Likewise, when one of these three legs shift, the Church can wobble and Mount Royal United was no exception. Despite this I return annually to reconnect with neighbours and friends and pray in the “sinner’s corner” that has welcomed my family for generations.
Link to MRUC - http://www.mountroyalunited.ca/home
Since leaving Canada in 1988 my spiritual journey has taken me to the great Cathedrals of Europe, the amazing Mosques in the Gulf states, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia and other parts of the Islamic world. I have visited the major sites in the Holy Land as well as Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist temples in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea, China, and South East Asia.
My quest for spiritual understanding has introduced me to leading monks and their root temples including those of HH the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India; Thich Nhat Hahn in Hue, Vietnam and Pope John Paul (bishop’s residence and Cathedral) in Krakow, Poland. I even attended the Pushkar Mela where millions of pilgrims have been congregating for thousands of years because it is said you achieve salvation if you step in the lake during November’s full moon which I did. I have also sought out numerous hermit huts on mountain tops in various parts of the world to gain a greater understanding of this side of spiritual connection.
I have gained the most from reading and meeting Western authors discussing Eastern traditions, particularly Buddhist philosophy. This journey and these teachers have enabled me to understand life’s basic truths which are pretty much the same in every religious tradition. As HH the Dalai Lama likes to say, “whichever boat gets you across the river is the right one”.
So, you ask, what advice can I share that might help Coaches 4 Christ? My work in dialogue is centred on the dialogue puzzle. The dialogue puzzle teaches that optimal outcomes are achieved by getting the right people (i.e. the key stakeholders) to talk about the right issues, in the right way, at the right time and in the right space. As outlined in my book Dialogue Gap this requires learning and using dialogue skills and dialogue methods. Dialogue skills include presence, respect, expression, suspending and absorbing. Dialogue methods include everything from parliamentary procedure through to World Café, Open Space Technology and coaching. I prefer a dialogue method called Challenge Mapping which was invented by Dr Min Basadur of Canada and has been largely adopted by Stanford’s Design Thinking practitioners.
Link to Basadur - https://www.basadur.com/
I integrate dialogue methods with dialogue skills and one of my favourites is a skill I call speak their dialect. Dialect is a big thing in Asia where China and India can both count dialects in the thousands in their countries. I teach three underlying dialects based on the work of Erich Fromm and Elias Porter and I help my groups understand how their motivations interact with those of others both when things are going well and more importantly when in conflict.
In an early version of my Dialogue Puzzle I defined optimal outcome as either money, innovation, success, happiness, sustainability, wisdom, peace or Being. The emphasis on being might be of interest to coaches and spiritual seekers who ask the question, To Have or To Be? This is the title of a book by Erich Fromm which reminds people to identify and realise their potential rather than accumulate things. Surely helping people realise their potential is the work of a good coach, especially someone calling themselves a Coach 4 Christ?
To Be requires getting the right people (including yourself), to talk about the right issues (including those most dear to you), in the right way (think dialogue skills and methods), at the right time (think life changing moments), and in the right space (think spiritual spaces). There is a lot of detail in the above paragraphs for coaches to consider so let me stop here and invite questions. How can you further your success being a Coach 4 Christ?
Coaches 4 Christ - https://c4chk.wildapricot.org/
Link to Erich Fromm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm
Peace Talk for Encompass Hong Kong at The Garage Society
Another great event planned for February but cancelled due to the Corona Virus was a Peace Talk where I was asked to share my thoughts on the importance of trust, especially as it relates to the lack of trust between societal groups caught up in the Hong Kong protests. Societal groups considered include Hong Kongers vs Mainlanders, Hong Kongers vs Police, Hong Kongers vs HK Government, Pro China vs Pro Hong Kong, etc.
I accept all invitations to speak because I enjoy the challenge presented by thinking of things in new ways. Thinking explicitly about trust interests me. Trust is a recurring issue in my negotiation work because it is very hard to reach agreement with others when we don’t trust them. In negotiation we say “don’t trust, verify”. In other words when you do what you promised, remind others that you are trustworthy. Likewise, verify others have done what they promised and thank them when they do so (or follow-up if they don’t).
I was raised in an environment of trustworthiness where integrity and honesty were pounded into us at every turn at home, in Church and in the Boy Scouts. Obviously as I grew older, I realised trustworthiness cannot be taken for granted and like others, whenever trust was breached big life lessons were learned.
How do we develop trust between conflicting parties when the trust has been broken? For example, what to do when you trust your employer, your partner or even your government representative is acting on your behalf but you find out the opposite is true. What do you do?
Our normal reaction is blame them (it is their fault), followed by arrogance (we are trustworthy but they are not), followed by delusion (breach of trust can be survived), and eventually destruction (of self, relationship, organisation, or community). So really the question becomes how to revert to a position of trust to stop the slide into destruction?
As suggested in the graphic below rebuilding trust requires a strategy (think dialogue puzzle referred to above). Then you need to manage your emotions to achieve equanimity (inner calm). This isn’t easy and takes some people a long time. Practices include meditation, compassion, yoga, strenuous exercise, dialogue etc. I’ve collected dozens of activities leaders use destress because until they do nothing else works effectively.
Buddhists talk of four prized emotions or mindstates that give us a framework to cultivate positive behaviours and minimize harmful ones. They are called the “divine abodes” the “four immeasurables” or “four limitless ones” because they represent love and goodwill toward all sentient beings, without limit. The four are: loving-kindness (Pali: metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), equanimity (upekkha).
Once you have a sense of emotional equilibrium you can venture into dialogue. Here again mastering dialogue skills and methods is important because of the difficult subjects that will inevitably arise and the conflicting positions people take on these subjects. Two things you need to know at this stage is that people like to simplify when they are upset and the solution is in the detail. This inherent conflict between wanting to simplify when in fact details are needed is just part of the problem today.
Bringing people together to dialogue on the issues that matter doesn’t mean they need to trust each other but it does mean they need to trust that if they invest the time in dialogue, beneficial outcomes will be achieved. In Hong Kong the Chief Executive gave up after one attempt at dialogue both in 2014 and then again in 2019. It is important to realise dialogue takes time and problems are not solved quickly. The dialogue phase needs to last long enough for everyone to feel heard and for all the important issues to be understood.
Once the conflicting parties have a good understanding of the issues they can begin trying to sell their vision of the future, a vision that has to take into account the needs and positions of the stakeholders (otherwise the process will slide back and conflict will resume). Individual stakeholders cannot achieve optimal outcomes without addressing the needs of others. Once people see opponents taking heed of their demands, they will begin to trust they are being listened to.
Once both sides have done their best to sell their vision of the future to the other side it is time to negotiate. You can’t get everything you want and some give and take is necessary. Trust becomes important here because if you agree to swap concessions, you need to trust the other party will keep their word. But as mentioned before, don’t trust, verify.
The final hurdles to success involve working together to achieve the vision agreed upon earlier and it is only then that parties might agree to trust each other enough to do another project together. It would be great if we could blindly trust others but in our complicated world today competing and rapidly evolving objectives means we can’t trust blindly, we must verify.
A few examples applied to the situation in Hong Kong include:
don’t trust protesters will stop destroying public property, verify.
Don’t trust government will keep their word, verify.
Don’t trust police will not use excessive force, verify (and be prepared).
In all examples, until people keep their word, the process towards resolution cannot begin. As global experts have told Hong Kong’s leaders, a process of reconciliation is needed to enable the disputing parties to engage with each other. Until this is established, the problems will continue. In the absence of effective leadership by the Hong Kong Government, Hong Kongers now appear to be pinning their hopes on Beijing’s leader parachuted into the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office i.e. the new Governor of Hong Kong, to begin the process. I make a different recommendation however as you will read below.
Link to Encompass Hong Kong - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/encompass-hk-peace-talk-trust-/2592759051047886/
Negotiation for Rotary at HK Golf Club
My final talk for February is rescheduled to April. I am asked to talk about Negotiation to members of one of the Rotary clubs here in Hong Kong. Their interest revolves around the Hong Kong protest situation and what can be done to solve this. Rotary is also a big supporter of public health and dialogue globally and have interest in my ideas of dialogue gap as healthcare crisis. Given how the current Corona Virus is overtaking the democracy protests in Hong Kong, the intersection of dialogue gap and negotiation is a great place for Rotary to want to start the discussion.
Should the Hong Kong Government choose to continue their dialogue with Hong Kong’s various stakeholders (e.g. business leaders, international banks, investors, mainland representatives, youth, public servants, foreign chambers of commerce, etc.) they will learn the issues needing to be addressed and be in a position to put forward proposals for negotiation.
Once the Hong Kong Government (or Central Liaison Office) proposed reforms are made public, stakeholders will be able to negotiate. At present everyone is waiting and losing patience as we watch problems escalate and the economy fall. It is a classic lack of leadership.
One of the most common questions I am asked is how to get the other party to dialogue (or negotiate) when they don’t want to. The time piece of the dialogue puzzle is a very important one. People will dialogue once the situation requires it. People often refer to the donkey analogy and the carrot or stick. You can entice them with a carrot (e.g. we’ll stop trashing the MTR), or a stick (e.g. negotiate or we’ll move investments out of Hong Kong) but at present the carrot and stick aren’t big enough to even be visible.
Another way to get the donkey to move is the path because donkeys like to walk some paths more than others. One thing we can do is for civil society to help the HK and Central Liaison governments onto the path of dialogue and negotiation. It is clear from history they have little if any experience resolving societal conflicts with anything other than force. As the international experts told the assembled audience at the HK Convention and Exhibition Centre back in November, world experience tells us Hong Kong’s problems can be solved and it simply needs civil society to show the way.
Link to Forward Alliance - http://www.hongkongforward.org/
What do I recommend be done? Hong Kong’s richest investors should all contribute resources to set up the Hong Kong Dialogue Centre to lead the process for dialogue and negotiation between Hong Kong’s various stakeholder groups. This is possibly the greatest risk management approach they can make to resolving the endless issues facing Hong Kong as we embark into the year of the rat and the decade of decisions.
Link to Rotary - https://www.rotary.org/en/institute-economics-and-peace
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