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Dr. Scilla Elworthy: A Business Plan for Peace

Author:
PCDN Global

June 26, 2018

Dear Subscribers,

Birth is a powerful metaphor for the creation of just about anything.

It’s a good one for me right now as my kids have flown the coop and motherhood is no longer the big part of my identity that it once was.

I’d say I’m about 4.5 to 5 months "pregnant" with birthing the new gender intelligence part of my collaborative intelligence business. 

I have a number of emerging offerings that I feel super excited about and will tell you about as they are ready.

One that is fully formed and being delivered is:

Gender Conversations for the 21st Century – a facilitated dialogue between men and women. In the wake of #metoo, we need space inside organizations and within communities, for men and women to talk to each other. Dialogue is NOT a debate but rather a safe container designed for deeper conversation and shifts in understanding. It can end, if desired, with some creative strategic thinking together.

Another offering in the oven and soon to be baked is Crazy, Sexy Jiu Jitsu: Powerful Negotiation Skills for Women. This is a re-working of the negotiation skills training that I have delivered worldwide for three decades – but re-designed just for women globally, to build on the special strengths we have, and to re-wire the predictable traps we can fall into.  So stay tuned for this and let me know if you are interested in my customizing something for your organization.

We need to shake so much up in the world.

Inside ourselves

In our relationships

In our organizations

And planet-wide

My next guest on the podcast is shaking the globe up – in a big way.

Dr. Scilla Elworthy Ph D. is a three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Oxford Research Group, which she founded in 1982 to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. Scilla founded Peace Direct in 2002 to fund, promote and learn from local peace-builders in conflict areas. She has been an adviser to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson in setting up“The Elders”, an independent body of global leaders working for peace, and her TED talk on nonviolence has been viewed 1,400,000 times. Her latest book, The Business Plan for Peace is a clear and very readable how-to to create a world beyond war. Scilla also co-founded Rising Women, Rising World in 2013 and Femme Q in 2016 to establish the qualities of feminine intelligence that are so needed by both women and men to build a safer world.

For me, this guest, more clearly than anyone, links to my passion of connecting gender and peace. I could think of no-one better than Scilla to speak to women of the world about why it’s time to step into our leadership on the issue of war and peace.

 “We have research-based evidence that indicates that preventing war is not difficult,” Scilla tells us. “We know what we can do and we know what we shouldn’t be doing in order to get the war to stop--we just haven’t done it. The first thing we need to stop doing is spending $1,686 billion annually on militarization. $30 billion would eliminate starvation worldwide and $10 billion would bring clean water to every child on the planet. Many people haven’t noticed how enormous this spending really is and how much it is costing society.”

Scilla describes how in the last 20 years or so grassroots peacebuilding organizations worldwide working within their local communities have sprung up like mushrooms through the cement and grown in number from 350 to 1600!  She tells the story of a woman named Gulalai Ismail who lives in Northwest Pakistan –perhaps the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman, and the same place from whence came Malala. Through her conflict prevention efforts, Gulalai has been able to dissuade hundreds of suicide bombers from their mission -- conflict prevention at its finest.

In the interview, Scilla observes that ironically she has realized that the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are also the biggest arms sellers in the world. Let me repeat that -- the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are also the biggest arms sellers in the world. This is a situation that must change if we want to create a planet where wars are a phenomenon of the past.

Susan and Scilla talk about the amazing example of Leymah Gbowee and her Nobel award-winning work to end the civil war in Liberia. Scilla has gotten to know many grassroots organizations globally who are working to prevent war in their regions and has found that the organizations that are woman-run are having a greater impact. She provides an example of a violent episode where a crowd was about to lynch someone. A trained woman would enter the mob and raise her hand, palm forward and shout, “Stop this. Go home. Your mother would be ashamed of you.” There would be complete silence and the crowd would disband.

Dr. Elworthy does not use the word “patriarchy” much because she believes that both men and women are capable of embodying what she calls “masculine intelligence” and “feminine intelligence.” The reality of the history of the last 3000 years is that most, if not all, major decisions have been made using masculine intelligence and what we are left with is a series of wars.

Scilla talks about her early childhood and the seeds that were planted in her to become a peacebuilder, as well as the inner critic she has had to face to do her best work. She advises that, when you combine what breaks your heart with what you’re skilled at, you will be most effective and ultimately full of hope and joy instead of anguish and anxiety. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa is the most joyful person she has ever met and he has experienced some of the most brutal things in the world.

Click on the button below to listen to the amazing work of an amazing woman. Also, please go to my new Collaborative Intelligence Store, a curation of useful books and tools to build collaboration, if you would like to purchase a copy of A Business Plan for Peace.

Listen Now!

My warm regards,
Susan

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