Part 6 of 6: Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. — MLK

On Tuesday, May 18, I gave the opening Keynote at the 2021 AIGA DotGov Design Conference entitled “Prioritizing Empathy to Achieve Lasting Change,” and shared lessons learned from my three years working between two White House Administrations. This is the last installment of a six-part series that follows along with the keynote that addresses the challenges ahead for us for lasting change in the world.

To bring this series home, I make my final case for empathy, and illustrate how and why it goes a long way in making organizational, societal, and systemic differences. As we evolve and emerge through this pandemic in an ever-changing world, we’re finding it necessary for the people in our lives to feel included and valued, and for us to understand before being understood.

In our fourth story we heard from Monica Curca, the now Director of +Peace, a community, a campaign platform, and movement incubator that makes peacebuilding known, accessible, and actionable. “I don’t see institutions leading social change,” she says. “If something is working for somebody, they won’t change it. These people will keep the status quo because they personally benefit from the way things are.” Her life’s work is to create movements that model the change we wish to see: “we have to disrupt the cycle in a parallel universe or competition where it models what is not working anymore.”

In part five of this series we went deeper on a conversation around how we can shape and shift power to shift ourselves from Old Power to New Power dynamics. New Power is open, participatory, peer-driven, and power is directed to the right people in the moments that they need it. Another kind of power: power within, taps into our “creative human capacity to act and change the world,” says Just Associates. This power has laid dormant and yearns to be awakened.

The Relationship Between Power and Love

As we discussed in our last article, power is the main thing holding us back from creating a more empathetic world. Our social systems, built on years of discrimination and oppression, reinforce existing power structures. And, as those in power don’t want to give it up, they confuse the ideas of power, love and the justice needed to overcome the systems they’ve created.

Both power and love are necessary as we navigate the waters ahead, as said so eloquently by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

We’ve been told that these two words (power and love) are incompatible and impossible to both be true when one holds influence. As we think about a more empathic and understanding world, we need to believe that these truths can and must exist together.

Towards the end of this quote, Dr. King states that “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.” Because I want to be precise here, I decided to look up a definition of “justice” to make it more plain language:

Justice is a concept in ethics and law that means that people behave in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone.

So, if we combine the quote with the plain language definition we get this:

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of [behaving in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone.]”

This sounds like the word that we’ve been using a lot recently: equity. It’s a common theme throughout the research on empathy, and it could be seen as the new “buzz word.” This requires us to reach into the power we have within ourselves to be the change around us, and not hoarding power but sharing it. It includes justice for the wrongs that have been created from our past transgressions.

The last part of the quote states that when justice thrives our love is “correcting everything that stands against love.” In other words, our role is to reject everything that does not point in the direction of love, and towards the concept of building “beloved community.”

Dr. King popularized this concept that the King Center in Atlanta says:

“…is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

Key to the belief in Beloved Community is “agape love,” which Dr. King described it as “understanding, redeeming goodwill for all,” an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative”…”the love of God operating in the human heart.” He said that “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins by loving others for their sakes” and “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.” It is through the constant co-creation of love and power where we are able to reach Beloved Community. This is the work: to tackle everything that stands against love, beloved community, and justice.

Love, Power, and Justice Today

As we trod further into the 21st century and beyond, there are three tenets that are absolutely essential:

1. Empathy: Feeling with someone instead of for them; or as I define it in my book, Empathy for Change: “Empathy is responding to the thoughts and emotions of others with the purpose of meeting each other’s needs.” It’s a whole-body approach where we’re taking each other’s perspective, feeling their emotions with them, and then finally moving to act if needed.
2. Equity: Antionette Carroll, CEO, President, and Founder of the Creative Reaction mentioned that “Equality is equal access and equity is equal outcomes.” It is through equity only that we reach the justice, love and power combination that Dr. King speaks of and for us to reach “Beloved Community.” So the approaches we design must be focused on outcomes.
3. Experimentation: We don’t have the answers, only assumptions of what we think will work. If we make a promise to start laying down our assumptions and hypotheses, then testing with experimentation, it will produce evidence that will lead to equal outcomes and justice. It’s not a problem with one solution, as we’ve thought, it’s multiple problems and multiple approaches to those problems. We can’t be wedded to our approaches

The first parts of these tenets show up many times in my book, and the third came up in conversation with my friend and mentor, Heather Hiscox from Pause for Change. When you’re standing at the precipice it’s so hard to take that first step, and it’s helpful to ask for advice. (She will also be publishing a book on this same topic soon!)

These words are at the forefront of my mind as a new, exciting client and project has appeared with significant impact if we do our jobs right. We’ll be in the business of systems change — to break apart and dismantle these larger systems and policies that keep us from forward progress. This will involve showing up differently than I have in the past — to integrate what I’ve learned. I have to trust that I’m going to keep showing up and push me and the team to question and excavate more.

Redesigning Systems of Oppression

In the world of designing the future, we must examine how we’re engaging with those we serve (the customer), but also the people for whom we’re doing the work with (the workplace/team). The more power you share, the greater empathy, greater love, and shared power and justice you have for one other.

Antionette Carroll often states that systems of oppression have been designed, so we can restructure them with new mindsets. She and the Creative Reaction Lab (CRXLAB) have great resources and a framework to design with lived experience.

We have to be specifically aware of the assumptions and biases we have to set the right intention. And then reflect on how we’re showing up in the world. This way, new structures will be sure to account for all of those who have been, and continue to be, marginalized by current systems. I’ve written before about CRXLAB’s superb Equity-Centered Community Design.

The design world has also evolved through a collaboration between Tania Anaissie, David Clifford, Susie Wise, and the National Equity Project [Victor Cary and Tom Malarkey]. This process is called “Liberatory Design.”

Liberatory Design is both a flexible process that can be used by teams and a set of equity leadership habits that can be practiced daily. It can be used in a variety of ways and by a variety of actors, including innovation efforts, strategic planning, community-driven design, and collaborative teams. Through the Liberatory Design process, we can both set the right intention and own the impact we make by creating our interventions.

Empathy in the Workplace

In the workplace and between employees, these principles of intention and impact are also important, and it’s a bit nuanced. In my research, I did not find an existing framework that I liked, so I created one:

The Heart, Hand, and Head Framework and Canvas allows us to co-create or redesign a company’s culture steeped in empathy. This evolved from my work building cultures of innovation in various sectors.

So all of these conclusions point towards creating more empathy and understanding in the world, and then putting our learnings into action. This is the challenge of our time: to insert more empathy and to put it into action towards better outcomes.

Beyond Empathy

This quote by Mari Nakano sums our destination up quite well:

“We must go beyond empathy. We should stretch ourselves to be actual allies that can transform insight into real action that can redesign systems and provide better outcomes.

After all, we aren’t here just to let people know we’re listening. That does very little on its own.

What we, as designers, are here for is to show and make real change that can be seen and felt by our residents and measured by our skeptics.”

Because if we can always be on the side of and distribute power to those most affected by the change, we win almost every time — we’ll be responsive to their needs instead of the needs and whims of our leadership.

So we can move to a place where we can say the following:

“You’re thinking of everything right, because you’ve lived the experience. You fit in, and are heard and seen. I want you to be your authentic self. I am here to listen. I work for you, and I meet you where you are, guide you. You can trust us.”

That’s far more generative and relational. So my question is now: What do you think it will take for us to get there? Please let me know your thoughts on what it’s going to take to get there in the comments below.

This post is the last of a six-part series that follows along with a keynote I recently gave at the DotGov Design conference. Links to the Other Articles:

1: “You Work for Me, and You Work for this President”

2: The Hard Truths of Change

3: Empathy Rising

4: Empathy in Action: The Fight for Equity

5: Acknowledging the Elephant in the Room

Check in next week for our final step in this series on Empathy in Action. If you like what you read above, more stories can be found in my book: Empathy for Change: How to Create a More Understanding World.