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onceandfuturecity Feb. 21st, 2026 09:38 pm)
onceandfuturecity Feb. 21st, 2026 09:38 pm)I swear to God, I thought it was going to be about our overall policy agenda. Silly me.
This morning the Council held its first-ever "retreat," which was four hours in the terrific offices of Holyoke Media, looking out giant windows at snow-coated trees. It was optional, but 11 of the 13 of us were there counting me, and the ten were the councilors I consider friends. By sheer happy accident, the world has given me a set of colleagues who I respect and enjoy spending time with, individually and collectively.
But. As I said: I had the impression we were there to talk about what the Council wanted to get done over the next six months. Only there were intimations of what was to come: a couple of days ahead of the event, we'd all been circulated an article about, um, leadership. And being trustworthy. It was all, "Look at yourself in a mirror, spend some time with it and be honest about what you see there. It's probably not good enough, consider being better by employing the following strategies!" And, "Consider making deposits in your bank account of trust!" (If this reminds you uncontrollably of Eric Adams -- "My haters become my waiters when I sit down at my table of success!" -- you are not alone.) It was ghastly, but it was only two and a half pages, and I figured we'd maybe spend ten minutes on whatever it was supposed to represent and move on.
LOL no.
The damned thing was the whole retreat. That, interspersed with little table exercises asking you to tell those seated with you about your hopes and dreams, and to recite back your colleagues' spiels to prove you were listening, and and and. I tried, I swear I did. But in spite having two of my favorite people in all the city at the table with me, when we were asked to highlight sentences that spoke to us from the Table of Success document, and then to talk about why we found them meaningful, I cracked. I didn't even think: I threw it down forcefully on the table, proclaiming that I could not do this, the document was platitudes and gibberish, leapt to my feet, and found striding back and forth across the rather large room, taking deep breaths and persuading myself not to walk out of the event and not come back.
Which is all background to the question that I've been asking myself ever since. I'm not ordinarily governed by anger. I don't like being angry, and will do a lot of work to avoid it. So what set me off so? On paper, as it were, it shouldn't have made me so angry I couldn't stop and think. A few wasted hours, in a pleasant room with people whose company I enjoy. What on earth was my problem? And, not unconnected: what is this supposed to accomplish?
And I think I may have an answer. Sometimes, in the normal course of work, you may find yourself with a project that pushes you and the people you're working with beyond the normal closeness of a shared office and working day. You're filing a critical brief with the 2d Circuit at ten tomorrow morning, and the paralegals are going over what you and your team hope is really the final version right now, and it's 2 AM and you could go home, but you'd only need to be back again by 4:30, so you're all staying put. You have a giant hearing on the zone change package you've been working on for the past year, the whole team's checking it one more time for errors, ditto.
Whatever. Nobody's slept, everyone's a little punchy, you were colleagues who respected each other before, but this is the time when you find yourself telling each other about your inner life, and why you're doing this, and that thing that happened in school that meant so much to you, and how even though everyone in your family was a nurse, you wound up as a poet who does this planning thing as your side gig.
After that, things are different. This team is bonded, and while they had each others' backs before, in a reasonable and professional kind of way, now they've leveled up in real, measurable ways.
So my hypothesis is that the bonding exercises, with their demands that we talk to each other about our motivations, and how the Deposit in the Account of Trust makes us feel, and all the rest of it, is an attempt to re-create that organic bonding experience.
Only the thing about the organic experience is, it is organic. It arises out of real adventures together in the real world. This Council is already seeing that happen: if you were watching us, you'd have been able to see it in the giddy happiness among councilors leaving our last full meeting, where we worked together with a harmony and an ability to rely on each others' strengths without even thinking about it that at some points seemed almost magical. You get that through shared experience and real mutual respect, and the kind of attention to your colleagues that gives you a sense of who they are and how they'll respond. I don't think you can get there through artificial bonding exercises.
And I don't think demanding emotional intimacy in a brightly-lit space at 10 AM really works either. Furthermore, I don't think it's appropriate to ask for it. I suspect that was at the root of my anger. You don't ask work colleagues for intimacy on any level, and you certainly don't demand that people offer it to one another. It will grow out of a good work setting or it won't; you can't and shouldn't try to force it. And that's what it felt like to me: being tossed into a situation where what was being asked for was something I was not willing to give, should not have been asked for, and should not even have been asked to explain why not.
I don't want to be unkind to the facilitator, who was only doing her job, but okay, fine, I'm still kind of peeved. Less on my own behalf, though, than on behalf of city staff, who we're probably forcing to do this stuff, and who don't have my ability to refuse next time. Plus, the city is probably spending money we don't have on this, in the name of "professional development" or some damn thing.
Peeved, but also curious. I can't help wondering now who these protocols work for, if they work for anyone, and whether I'm completely off base about what they're trying to do.
This morning the Council held its first-ever "retreat," which was four hours in the terrific offices of Holyoke Media, looking out giant windows at snow-coated trees. It was optional, but 11 of the 13 of us were there counting me, and the ten were the councilors I consider friends. By sheer happy accident, the world has given me a set of colleagues who I respect and enjoy spending time with, individually and collectively.
But. As I said: I had the impression we were there to talk about what the Council wanted to get done over the next six months. Only there were intimations of what was to come: a couple of days ahead of the event, we'd all been circulated an article about, um, leadership. And being trustworthy. It was all, "Look at yourself in a mirror, spend some time with it and be honest about what you see there. It's probably not good enough, consider being better by employing the following strategies!" And, "Consider making deposits in your bank account of trust!" (If this reminds you uncontrollably of Eric Adams -- "My haters become my waiters when I sit down at my table of success!" -- you are not alone.) It was ghastly, but it was only two and a half pages, and I figured we'd maybe spend ten minutes on whatever it was supposed to represent and move on.
LOL no.
The damned thing was the whole retreat. That, interspersed with little table exercises asking you to tell those seated with you about your hopes and dreams, and to recite back your colleagues' spiels to prove you were listening, and and and. I tried, I swear I did. But in spite having two of my favorite people in all the city at the table with me, when we were asked to highlight sentences that spoke to us from the Table of Success document, and then to talk about why we found them meaningful, I cracked. I didn't even think: I threw it down forcefully on the table, proclaiming that I could not do this, the document was platitudes and gibberish, leapt to my feet, and found striding back and forth across the rather large room, taking deep breaths and persuading myself not to walk out of the event and not come back.
Which is all background to the question that I've been asking myself ever since. I'm not ordinarily governed by anger. I don't like being angry, and will do a lot of work to avoid it. So what set me off so? On paper, as it were, it shouldn't have made me so angry I couldn't stop and think. A few wasted hours, in a pleasant room with people whose company I enjoy. What on earth was my problem? And, not unconnected: what is this supposed to accomplish?
And I think I may have an answer. Sometimes, in the normal course of work, you may find yourself with a project that pushes you and the people you're working with beyond the normal closeness of a shared office and working day. You're filing a critical brief with the 2d Circuit at ten tomorrow morning, and the paralegals are going over what you and your team hope is really the final version right now, and it's 2 AM and you could go home, but you'd only need to be back again by 4:30, so you're all staying put. You have a giant hearing on the zone change package you've been working on for the past year, the whole team's checking it one more time for errors, ditto.
Whatever. Nobody's slept, everyone's a little punchy, you were colleagues who respected each other before, but this is the time when you find yourself telling each other about your inner life, and why you're doing this, and that thing that happened in school that meant so much to you, and how even though everyone in your family was a nurse, you wound up as a poet who does this planning thing as your side gig.
After that, things are different. This team is bonded, and while they had each others' backs before, in a reasonable and professional kind of way, now they've leveled up in real, measurable ways.
So my hypothesis is that the bonding exercises, with their demands that we talk to each other about our motivations, and how the Deposit in the Account of Trust makes us feel, and all the rest of it, is an attempt to re-create that organic bonding experience.
Only the thing about the organic experience is, it is organic. It arises out of real adventures together in the real world. This Council is already seeing that happen: if you were watching us, you'd have been able to see it in the giddy happiness among councilors leaving our last full meeting, where we worked together with a harmony and an ability to rely on each others' strengths without even thinking about it that at some points seemed almost magical. You get that through shared experience and real mutual respect, and the kind of attention to your colleagues that gives you a sense of who they are and how they'll respond. I don't think you can get there through artificial bonding exercises.
And I don't think demanding emotional intimacy in a brightly-lit space at 10 AM really works either. Furthermore, I don't think it's appropriate to ask for it. I suspect that was at the root of my anger. You don't ask work colleagues for intimacy on any level, and you certainly don't demand that people offer it to one another. It will grow out of a good work setting or it won't; you can't and shouldn't try to force it. And that's what it felt like to me: being tossed into a situation where what was being asked for was something I was not willing to give, should not have been asked for, and should not even have been asked to explain why not.
I don't want to be unkind to the facilitator, who was only doing her job, but okay, fine, I'm still kind of peeved. Less on my own behalf, though, than on behalf of city staff, who we're probably forcing to do this stuff, and who don't have my ability to refuse next time. Plus, the city is probably spending money we don't have on this, in the name of "professional development" or some damn thing.
Peeved, but also curious. I can't help wondering now who these protocols work for, if they work for anyone, and whether I'm completely off base about what they're trying to do.
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