Olivia: Most people think collaboration fails because of bad attitudes or difficult people. That's wrong. The real problem is that we're only given two terrible options for how to work together: dictatorship or chaos. Today, we're exploring a third. Jackson: A third option? I’m intrigued. Because I’ve definitely lived through both of those. The meeting where one person talks for an hour and everyone else just nods, and the meeting where everyone talks for an hour and absolutely nothing happens. It’s a special kind of workplace purgatory. Olivia: It really is. And this whole idea comes from a fascinating and highly-regarded book called Facilitating Breakthrough by Adam Kahane. Jackson: Kahane… isn't he the guy who's worked with literally everyone, from Shell executives to Colombian guerrillas? That’s a pretty wild resume. Olivia: Exactly. He's a Director at Reos Partners, a Member of the Order of Canada, and has spent decades in the trenches of the world's most complex conflicts. Nelson Mandela himself praised Kahane's earlier work. And in this book, he argues that the key to solving our toughest problems isn't about finding some perfect middle ground, but something far more dynamic and, frankly, more challenging. Jackson: Okay, so he’s seen it all. What are these two terrible options he says we’re all trapped in? I need names for my pain.

Olivia: He gives them very clear names. The first is Vertical Facilitation. This is the dictatorship model. It’s top-down, hierarchical, and driven by a leader or an expert who has the "right answer." Think of a classic corporate strategy meeting where the CEO lays out the five-year plan, and the goal for everyone else is just to align with it. Jackson: Right, the "get on board or get out of the way" approach. It feels efficient, I guess. Things get decided. Olivia: They do. The upside is coordination and cohesion. Everyone is marching in the same direction. But Kahane points out the huge downsides: rigidity and domination. It stifles creativity because there's no room for new ideas. People feel disempowered, and if the leader’s "right answer" is actually wrong, the whole ship goes down together. Jackson: That sounds familiar. So what’s the other side of the coin? The chaos model? Olivia: That’s Horizontal Facilitation. This is the "buddy-buddy" approach. It’s all about equality, autonomy, and making sure every single voice is heard. No one is the boss. Everyone is encouraged to contribute their own perspective and act on their own initiative. Jackson: Ah, the endless brainstorming session with a thousand sticky notes that ends with, "Great chat, everyone! Let's circle back next week." Olivia: Precisely. The upside is that it encourages self-motivated action and a diversity of ideas. But the downsides are massive: fragmentation and gridlock. With everyone pursuing their own agenda, the group can’t move forward as a whole. It becomes a cacophony of good intentions that leads nowhere. Jackson: Wow. Okay, so you’re telling me we’re just stuck choosing our poison? A soul-crushing dictatorship or a completely unproductive free-for-all? That’s a bleak picture of teamwork. Olivia: It is, and it’s a trap most organizations and groups fall into without even realizing it. They either lean towards control or towards collegiality, and both end up constraining the very breakthrough they’re trying to create. Jackson: So what’s the escape hatch? This mysterious third option?

Olivia: The escape hatch is what Kahane calls Transformative Facilitation. And here’s the counter-intuitive part: it’s not about finding a happy medium between vertical and horizontal. It’s about learning to cycle between them. Jackson: Cycle between them? What does that even mean? You can’t be a dictator one minute and a free-for-all facilitator the next. People would get whiplash. Olivia: It’s more subtle than that. Kahane uses this brilliant analogy. He says trying to move a stuck group is like trying to dislodge a massive boulder that's blocking a stream. You can't just push it from one side—that’s the vertical approach. And you can't just ask everyone to find their own way around it—that’s the horizontal approach. Jackson: So what do you do? Olivia: You rock the boulder. You push from one side, then the other, back and forth, building momentum until it shifts and the stream can flow freely. Transformative facilitation is the art of rocking the boulder—of strategically cycling between directive moves and collaborative, open-ended moves. Jackson: Okay, that analogy is clicking for me. It’s about applying pressure from different angles at the right time. But that sounds incredibly difficult. How do you do that in a real, high-stakes situation? Olivia: This is where his experience becomes so powerful. He tells the story of the Mont Fleur Scenarios in South Africa in the early 1990s. Apartheid was ending, Nelson Mandela was free, but the country was on the brink of civil war. The future was terrifyingly uncertain. Jackson: I can't even imagine the tension in that room. Olivia: Exactly. He brought together 28 leaders from across the spectrum—ANC members, business leaders, academics, activists. People who were, for all intents and purposes, enemies. A purely horizontal, "let's all share our feelings" approach would have gone nowhere. And a purely vertical, "here's the solution" approach would have been rejected instantly. Jackson: So they had to rock the boulder. Olivia: They had to. They made a vertical move by mapping out four starkly different, logical scenarios for the country's future. This was a structured, directive exercise. It forced everyone to confront possibilities, from a negotiated settlement to all-out chaos. It was a map. Jackson: That’s the "pushing from one side." What was the other? Olivia: The other was the horizontal move of accompanying. The real breakthroughs didn't just happen in the formal sessions. They happened during the breaks. He tells this incredible story of Johann Liebenberg, a white Afrikaner negotiator for the mining industry, going for a walk with Tito Mboweni, a young, brilliant leader in the ANC. Jackson: People who would have been on opposite sides of a violent struggle. Olivia: Completely. And on that walk, they just talked. Liebenberg was stunned by Mboweni's open-mindedness. He realized he'd never actually had a real conversation with a Black leader of that caliber who wasn't an adversary across a negotiating table. That informal, human connection—that horizontal move—was just as crucial as the formal, vertical scenario planning. They were rocking the boulder, and it started to move. Jackson: Wow. That’s a powerful story. It makes the idea of "cycling" feel very real. But you also mentioned something that sounds even bigger... love, power, and justice. How on earth does that fit into a facilitation model? That sounds less like a business book and more like philosophy.

Olivia: It is, and that’s what makes Kahane’s work so profound. He argues that to facilitate a true breakthrough, you have to remove the obstacles to three fundamental human drives. And he draws on the work of thinkers like Martin Luther King Jr. to define them in a very specific way. Jackson: Okay, I’m listening. But I’m skeptical. Let's start with 'love'. That word in a professional context usually makes me cringe. Olivia: I get it, but this isn't about sentimental, "Kumbaya" love. Kahane defines love as "the drive towards the unity of the separated." It’s the force that pulls us to connect, to find common ground, to see the humanity in our opponents. The Mont Fleur walks were an expression of love in this sense. It's about bridging divides. Jackson: Okay, that’s a definition I can work with. It’s about connection, not emotion. What about power? Olivia: Power, he says, is "the drive of everything living to realize itself." It’s the drive to have agency, to achieve your purpose, to pursue your own interests. It’s not inherently good or bad. The problem is when it's disconnected from love. Power without love is abusive and reckless. Jackson: And love without power? Olivia: It's anemic and sentimental. It’s all talk and no action. You can have all the connection in the world, but if a group has no power to actually do anything, the collaboration is meaningless. Jackson: That makes a lot of sense. You need both the will to connect and the ability to act. So where does justice come in? Olivia: Justice is the structure that allows love and power to be expressed fairly. It’s about removing the systemic obstacles that prevent people from contributing, connecting, and having agency. It’s about ensuring the game isn’t rigged. In South Africa, that meant confronting the legacy of apartheid. In a company meeting, it might mean making sure the junior employee’s idea gets as much airtime as the vice president’s. Jackson: So, let me see if I have this right. The facilitator's real job isn't just to manage the agenda. It's to be a guardian of these three forces. They have to create a space where people can connect (love), where they can act on their goals (power), and where the process for doing so is fair (justice). Olivia: You’ve nailed it. That’s the core of transformative facilitation. It’s not a checklist of techniques; it’s a deep practice of paying attention to these forces and constantly working to remove the barriers that block them.

Jackson: This is a much deeper way of thinking about collaboration than I expected. It’s not about finding the right icebreaker or using the right software. It’s about these fundamental human drives. Olivia: Exactly. And Kahane argues that our biggest problems—socially, politically, even within our own companies—are often a result of these forces being out of balance. We have immoral power colliding with powerless morality. Transformative facilitation is about bringing them back together. Jackson: So for someone listening to this, who is maybe leading a team or part of a community group that feels stuck, what's one small thing they can do to start 'rocking the boulder' in their own world? Olivia: Kahane outlines ten specific "moves," which are really five pairs of opposites. The most fundamental pair is advocating and inquiring. Most of us are good at one or the other. We’re good at advocating for our own idea, or we’re good at asking questions about others'. The transformative move is to do both, consciously. Jackson: How so? Olivia: State your view clearly and forcefully—that's advocating. Then, genuinely and with open curiosity, ask someone who disagrees, "Help me understand your perspective. What do you see that I don't?" That simple act of cycling between asserting and inquiring, in one conversation, can begin to rock the boulder. Jackson: That’s actually something I can try in a meeting tomorrow. It’s simple, but not easy. It really makes you wonder: in the most stuck situations in our own lives, are we trapped in a vertical, 'I'm right,' mindset, or a horizontal, 'let's just keep talking,' mindset? Olivia: And what would it look like to start rocking the boulder? Jackson: A powerful question to end on. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.