Beijing Dreams- Fragment 1.
Fragments of my experience of visiting China after a 30 year gap, and Directing an experiential leadership event in Beijing.
This short series of fragments or notes, hopes to capture something of my experience from my recent visit to Beijing. I was last here was 30 years ago. Since then China has been on my mind, and I have watched the changes with great interest from afar.
China was at the early stages of its great economic and social transformation back then. In Beijing, skyscrapers had just began appearing and the roads were still filled with bicycles and motorbikes.
From 1978 to the 2010s, China achieved double-digit GDP growth rates
Lifted over 800 million people out of poverty (according to the World Bank).
Became the world’s second-largest economy by GDP, and is regarded as the world’s second global power to the USA.
Predicted to be world’s leading economy in 2030’s
This transformation is often referred to as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, a unique blend of political centralization and economic liberalization. The social and economic changes have been almost unbelievable, the fastest urbanisation and modernisation project in history.
So I arrived with great curiosity. I was invited to China as Director of a Group Relations Conference (GRC). This means I will lead an experiential learning event that works with conscious and unconscious group dynamics, an approach initiated by the Tavistock Institute in the 1950s. In this event we utilise our Eco-Leadership approach, to develop collaborative leadership, to deepen self-understanding and to gain insights into wider group and social dynamics. Our underpinning ethos is to develop collaborative leadership. We have run similar group relations conferences online and more recently in Northern Ireland, with charity leaders from both sides of the Irish border, together with NGO leaders from Ukraine and Poland.
To undertake this type of experiential learning work in China is both a real challenge and a real privilege. By working at depth with individuals and the group, I hope to gain insights into Chinese ways of being in a fast changing world. I am particularly interested in their relationships to work, individualism, collectivism, subjectivity and to be open to deepen my understanding of a culture which is not easily accessed from a westernised perspective. I am very aware of the biases and stereotypes that can be projected onto China from the west. In my co-authored book Global Leadership Perspectives, Insights and Analysis we commissioned a chapter by Chinese scholars and practitioners, which challenged these polarised perceptions. I have no naive expectation of gaining any breadth of understanding from such a short experience. Yet fragments of insights from working with individuals and small groups offer micro-understandings that stimulate further curiosity, and some rich and ‘thick’ data, the emotional experiences, that larger scale research doesn’t get to.
Another aim is to build empathy and understanding across the east-west divide, (hence these writings) which is under pressure in these politically volatile times.
The title of these blogs, ‘Beijing Dreams’ reflects my aim to post short dreamlike fragments, sharing what provokes curiosity and what unsettles or enchants me.
In the initial fragments I will post focus on my immersion into China, then I will share experience from the experiential conference.