Life On The Margins - Creation of a Learning Edge

The last couple of weeks I have encountered different writings and experiences that have heightened my awareness of the concept of marginality. As often happens, once something has captured my attention I begin to see examples in day to day life. So I have been thinking about paradigms related to marginality. Some of these paradigms include;

· marginality and power

· marginality and change

· marginality and community

· marginality and leadership

· marginality and learning.

Let’s start with marginality and learning. Within the practice of leadership coaching, reference is often made to the importance of working with the learning edge of the client. Often the primary focus of the coaching is to help the client identify their learning edge, help them explore the areas of learning that they want to work on and help support them in the learning and application process so that their learning becomes embedded into their internal ways of being and doing. What does `the learning edge’ mean? To me it is that place in my thinking and choice making that is being challenged by my context and environment. It is the `place’ where what I have known and what I have done just doesn’t seem to be working as well for me and I know that I need to explore new knowledge and understanding in order to continue to be effective or to be more effective. The margin or learning edge for me seems to be the place where I am open to new ways of seeing and being.

From the perspective of leadership, marginality would seem to be an oxymoron. We tend to think of leaders as people who are at the centre of things – certainly within organizational structures we rarely place positions of leadership at the bottom or the edges of the organization. And yet what can we make of the growing trend towards CEO’s going undercover in order to see their organization from a different perspective? There is a new or alternative perspective to be gained when a leader situates him/her self differently in relationship to the organization that can help them see a situation, problem or issue in a different way. Surely then new solutions can begin to emerge.

Marginality and community is perhaps a more common context for thinking about and understanding marginality. Every community carries a mental model of `the normal citizen’. Outside of the mental model of normal however, `other’ people are seen as being on the margins – the homeless, the poor, the transients, the mentally ill, the ethnic minority. In some communities there is an openness and desire to embrace and include people on the margins while in others there are entrenched systemic barriers between the established norm and the newcomers or minorities. An example of this would be the different outcomes we can see between Canada’s approach to multiculturalism and France’s segregation approach. Another example might be the move in the 1980’s towards integrating children with special needs into the mainstream school system. Today it is hard to remember that segregation based on health (physical and mental) was once the norm. The practice of inclusivity can remove barriers that we hold in our mind and open us up to possibilities that were once unimaginable.

Marginality and change? - interactions with the margin can only result in change and this is fractal i.e. for individuals and for large systems. I have recently been reading Naomi Klein’s collection of essays called `Fences and Windows – Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Movement’. Back in 1999 when protests were being held at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle, the folks in power were surprised to see the protesters and apparently unsure of how to handle things. It would seem that this was a re-start of a movement in which the centers of economic and political decision making were forced to encounter the people who were feeling marginalized in the decision making processes that were affecting their lives and the lives of people around them. (NOTE – this is not the first time in history!) In the 10 or more years since Seattle, those people who were on and representing the margins have had significant impact on the decision makers – and from this movement corporate social responsibility has been leveraged. The lesson would seem to be that the margin is where new priorities gain momentum and the place from which the impetus for system change comes. The center or the `establishment’ is rarely internally motivated enough to disrupt the status quo.

Power often resides at the center – the place of influence, decision making and control. The place where laws, regulations, and policies have created an infrastructure that perpetuates and holds power in place. This is not necessarily bad – systems and people need stability and we can all think of examples where instability has been incredibly destructive and horrific actions have resulted. However when power is centralized, a margin is created and for many people who live on the margins they are unable to feel connected, to feel that they can influence and to feel that they have value.

As leaders – whether in organizations or in our day to day lives there is value in increasing our awareness of the margins that exist around us. As I have tried to reflect above, the benefits of exploring the margins around us are:

· Margins create a place for greater personal learning

· Margins create a place for greater organizational learning

· Margins are a place of fresh perspective, innovation and new possibility

· Margins are a place to engage people and increase social capital

· Margins are a place to see injustice and to make conscious choices for justice

· Margins are a place from which change is coming whether we like it or not.

A friend of mine once said that sometimes we avoid having conversations because intuitively we know that we might be changed as a result and our first response is to resist being changed. Exploring the margins in our lives and in our world can be difficult – however the potential to experience new ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us opens us up to rich and diverse experiences that will make us wonder why we were so attached to the status quo in the first place.

And remember the margins are a place where all of us have spent time doodling and creating when what is going on around us is boring!

Within the world of CSR, Leadership, and Stakeholder Engagement margins are critical places to be. What margins are you avoiding in your life and which ones are you open to exploring? What parts of the status quo are you upholding because you are not exploring a margin?

This post was written by Penny Lane, Managing Partner at The Acacia Group, responsible for Community Development and International Relations

The Acacia Group’s mission is to offer transformative and unique leadership development for organizations seeking to live out their global citizenship. To do this we blend knowledge from Corporate Social Responsibility, Community Development and Leadership Development and Learning to emerge new opportunities for excellence for our clients. We help you find your margins!

Developing Personally – Thinking Globally - Moving Beyond McLeadership

In 2008, as my colleagues and I were exploring our concepts around socially responsible leadership, I had an opportunity to spend a week in northern Mexico serving in a community food program. The challenge we tasked ourselves with was to fully immerse ourselves in the culture and to contribute in a way that met the needs of the community with a focus on the development of capacity rather than aid. As we crossed the border into Mexico I realized that for the first time in my adult life I was the wrong gender and colour. I had no language, in fact I had little to offer other than a heart for serving and a desire to learn. What they taught me was the meaning of community. A lesson so powerful and evocative that even the smell of fresh cilantro sharpens both my senses and my memories and brings the experience rushing back.


Learning is a basic human function. We are primed to learn from our first precious minutes of existence. While babies are interacting with and learning about their environment they are creating new connections and pathways between nerve cells both within their brains, and between their brains and bodies. While physical growth and change is easily observed and measured, cognitive and psychosocial change and development is a little harder to determine as clearly.

The kind of learning that has the greatest impact on adult learners (and therefore the greatest possibility for transformation) is the kind of learning that takes place when an adult is fully immersed in the learning experience. When the individual’s heart, mind and body are fully engaged in the experience powerful and often transformational change occurs. Barbara K. Given in her book, “Teaching to the Brain’s Natural Learning Systems”, identifies five major systems: emotional, social, cognitive, physical, and reflective. The Greeks had a word that describes learning of this magnitude...metamorphoo. It is learning that literally renews the mind.

Most traditional training events fall far short of the five natural learning modalities. Warren Bennis addresses this in his seminal work, “On Becoming a Leader”. Bennis suggests that leadership cannot be learned in a weekend training seminar...”I’ve come to think of that one as the microwave theory: pop in Mr. or Ms. Average and out pops McLeader in sixty seconds.” Our most powerful learning experiences in life typically take place in a total immersion environment when all five of the natural learning modalities are present and we are able to gather information from ourselves, our colleagues/friends, and our environment.

Erik Erikson described a pivotal stage in adult psychosocial development as generativity vs. stagnation. A hallmark of this stage in adulthood is the growing desire to contribute to society and to guide the coming generations. Erikson postulates that as we work toward the betterment of society a sense of accomplishment and generativity results. Researchers claim that this stage of psychosocial development is actually the intersection of society and the human life cycle. Erikson’s theory teaches us that when this desire for generativity is stifled a kind of stagnation permeates our lives with a growing sense of alienation and disenfranchisement. It would seem that ongoing adult learning and development is as critical to our world as the glorious wonderment of our children’s first years.


Where do you turn for your generative conversations and experiences? Do you think there’s more to life than paying the power bill? Are you interested in thinking deeply about the developing world and developing communities and your place within it? If so, maybe an immersion experience is just what you’re looking for. Sure beats stagnation...

This blog was written by Christine Bonney, Managing Partner, The Acacia Group

Complex Challenges and the need to Transform our Thinking

As I read different materials for work that I am engaged in, I am often struck by how the different ideas complement one another. A friend of mine recently sent me some material from a book (Community Conversations by Paul Born). In an introductory paragraph, the author names a challenge: the issues facing communities and those at risk are complex - and yet the system yields simplistic solutions. In a textbook for executive coaches ( Ed. Fitzgerald and Garvey Berger, 2002 Executive Coaching Practices & Perspectives) an overview is given of Robert Kegan's adult development model and summarizes its essence as follows: "Kegan distinguishes between informational learning, which is new knowledge added to the current from of one's mind, and transformational learning, or learning that changes the very form of one's mind, making it more spacious, more complex, and more able to deal with multiple demands and with uncertainty...transformation occurs when we develop the ability to step back and reflect on something that used to be hidden or taken for granted and make decision about it....transformative learning happens when someone changes "not just they way he behaves, not just the way he feels, but the way he knows - not just what he knows but the way he knows". "
My conclusion is that transformational learning will prepare our minds for the complex challenges we are facing. To address the complex challenges that exist in our world, in our communities, and in our organizations, I need to be open to transformative learning experiences. The question then becomes how do each of us do this - find and engage in transformative learning experiences. The imperative certainly seems to be present!