[00:00:00] Introductions
[00:10:25] Building Coalition is Harder than Building Home.
[00:14:58] Clarifying Purpose & Processes for Coalition Building
[00:29:17] How to Handle the Territoriality & Fears that Come with Coalition-Building
[00:36:48] Tracking the Little Wins in Your Coalition Building
[00:43:06] The Power of Precedent-Setting in Coalition Building

[00:00:00] Introductions

Katherine Golub: Welcome, Christine. I’m really glad to have this conversation with you today,

I love to start by acknowledging there’s a lot of different aspects to the work that you do, and I’m curious what, called you to this moment. what brought you to this moment of having this conversation about coalition building?

Christine Petit: yeah, it’s interesting to think about what brought me to this particular moment.

I think from a young age I had a strong sense of justice and, Identified as a feminist at a young age where it didn’t really make sense in a small town that I grew up in. just my experience growing up a girl in this world and experiencing that, moving through the world as a girl.

But then when I moved to California in particular, I for the first time was really interacting with people from all different backgrounds all over the world. different perspectives. And [00:01:00] so along with meeting people. My education helped me understand where I carried penalty, where I carried privilege as someone who is white, who grew up middle class, who is cisgender.

Straight, And so my educational background, which ended up with a PhD in sociology, my work background, which has been, at the Women’s Resource Center at Cal State LA to union organizing to community work, nonprofit leadership. now leadership coaching and consulting organizations, all of that has been.

Just kind of an unfolding of where my experience and values have taken me. And in particular, I think about just weaving a lot of different influences, but weaving a commitment to social [00:02:00] justice, to creativity and to mindfulness into my approach in working with people.

Katherine Golub: And can you share a little bit about your personal experience in organizing coalitions or leading in coalition?

Christine Petit: definitely in moments in my work in college and as a union organizer, I was in coalition work, but I didn’t really understand the intentionality behind it until I did community based coalition work, and that’s where I really learned more. And so in Long Beach, California, where I live, I’ve done coalition work and kind of was introduced to coalition work around hotel worker organizing, and the community side of that, supporting community organizing for living wages for hotel workers and fair [00:03:00] and safe working conditions.

And then through my leadership and experiences, I became what was called a hub manager or executive director for. A coalition based initiative. It was funder driven. It’s called Building Healthy Communities, funded by the California Endowment, 10 year, investment into 14 communities across California and Long Beach was one of them.

And what anchored the work were multiple coalitions around housing, around youth organizing, around education and schools and much more land use. and so there, I got to be part of. Either as a facilitator of, or a member of, or a [00:04:00] support of a lot of different coalitions. And so, I learned a lot.

So the good, the bad, the ugly. Mm-hmm. for coalition building through those experiences.

Katherine Golub: can you tell a story about where things went challenging, difficult, when conflict came up in a coalition that you were working with and what happened and what you learned from that?

Christine Petit: as part of the Coalition for Good Jobs and Healthy Community, we really built up civic engagement infrastructure in Long Beach and started doing power analysis workshops so people would understand how decisions are made at the city council level, at the school board, at the community colleges. really just.

Helping people get that understanding and language of how decision making, happens. And then also doing things like organizing community forums, the people’s state of the city, doing voter engagement and voter guides. [00:05:00] And that work was largely anchored by the coalition, that I mentioned initially related to hotel worker organizing.

But you know, they really wanted to support, and both of the lead organizers were in Long Beach. They wanted to support organizing more broadly in Long Beach as well. The funder initiative, they kind of replicated, Civic engagement infrastructure that Long Beach Rising was doing. That was what we called the civic engagement work.

there was a lot of overlap, but a few folks who were not part of Long Beach Rising who then came to this other civic engagement table, and you know, at a certain point we were kind of like scratching our heads, like, we’re doing this work over here. Why does it need to also happen over here?

What’s going on? And it [00:06:00] turned out, I mean, there were a few things going on. There was, you know, I think in a funder driven initiative, there’s a desire to, control, for lack of a better word, just make sure certain things are happening. and then also there were some partners who. Didn’t necessarily feel trust with the coalition that was anchoring the other civic engagement work.

And there was a skepticism, you know, I know people are probably listening from all over, but in Long Beach we’re like the shadow of la. So if you have an LA based organization coming into Long Beach, there’s questions about, you know, is this organization going to, just get what they want and leave sort of thing.

And I think, you know, that had happened before in Long Beach, not necessarily with that organization, but trust needed to be built. And so, eventually what happened with that work is that that [00:07:00] tension was named. It’s like we don’t wanna be, sitting at two different tables doing roughly the same work, when maybe 80% of folks were already at the other table.

And so it was like, well, what would need to happen in order for trust to be built here. And through that process, it was looking at, you know, what are we doing together? And agreeing on that, agreeing on the roles, being clear on decision making, being clear on funding. Those are, you know, just some of the key things that help to shift to that dynamic, in that particular case.

Katherine Golub: And so what ended up happening? Did you continue to work in these two different groups or did you build the trust to, to come back together as As one group or what?

What ended up happening?

Christine Petit: So what happened was it ended up strengthening the infrastructure that was in place already and formalizing it and helping [00:08:00] to formalize the space around Long Beach Rising. And I will say, this is where it’s not necessarily neat and put in a bow. One of the partners who was really pushing for an MOU and understanding.

Once we got to that, they decided not to participate anymore. Mm-hmm. And that’s fine. You know, it was clear what was going on. But, yeah, we ended up dealing with the issue of kind of replication and decision making by formalizing it into one space by actually bringing up the tension, working through it, and then people elected whether or not they would participate.

Katherine Golub: Okay. So you ended up strengthening what was already there and coming back as one space, and the one space ended up being stronger than it was initially.

Christine Petit: Absolutely.

Katherine Golub: I think that’s really key. I think that often it’s hard to tell stories [00:09:00] about our organizing work, about really anything about any work because.

It’s not like we tie it up in a bow and it’s like, oh, then everyone was happy. All of, occasionally that happens, but real reality is often far more complex than that.

Christine Petit: Yes.

Katherine Golub: And often when we do reach an understanding of what our agreements need to be, what our purpose is, who we are together, often that clarity means that somebody ends up leaving.

Mm-hmm. Like that is often what happens,

And I’m curious, was that partner able to leave on good terms? Did you keep organizing? was it hard? How did that ending happen?

Christine Petit: Yeah, there are some organizations, I will say that there cultures are more collaborative than others and.

Or they choose different types of collaboratives. And so yeah, I would say in that case, like we’ll talk about later, coalition isn’t always home. There are times where we’re gonna come together and agree there’s times when we’re not [00:10:00] and that’s okay. But that clarity about what each space is was really helpful.

So certainly that particular organization that decided not to participate in the civic engagement work in that way, they were doing their own civic engagement work. They were working at other levels as well, and they were very much part of other coalitions in the community. And so there was overlap in other ways.

[00:10:25] Building Coalition is Harder than Building Home.

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Katherine Golub: it’s like sometimes it’s like organizations have their own personalities. Yeah. And their own tolerance for. Trade-offs because, you know, to be part of a larger whole, whether it’s an individual being part of a group or it’s a group or organization being part of a coalition, there’s always trade-offs when we decide to be in relationship with a larger collective.

and some of us are more tolerant to those trade offs. And some of us, you know, we all have different purposes and sometimes those trade offs are more, worth it than others And, and then we have different personalities and different [00:11:00] proclivities to working with a larger whole.

so you just said that coalition isn’t always home. Can you talk more about that?

I really pull that idea of coal Coalition and home from the writing of Bernice Johnson. Regan, you know, she has a really interesting history. Dr. Regan. She is a civil rights activist.

Christine Petit: She’s a singer. Song composer. Scholar, but I remember reading her. it was initially a speech and then it was turned into, it was in a text in Homegirls, a black feminist anthology. But she wrote coalition politics Turning the Century,

She says, you don’t go into coalition because you just like it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up with somebody who could possibly kill you is because that’s the only way you can figure you can stay alive.

she goes on to talk about how coalitions are uncomfortable. There are trade-offs. Not everyone is like you. You’re coming [00:12:00] together for a common purpose, but. There’s gonna be difference and disagreements, different tolerances, but you agree to come together because you think it’s worthwhile.

You think that you’re stronger together. Home, you know, it’s the place where people are, it’s comfortable. People talk like you, they agree. There can be disagreement there too, but, that’s where you find more comfort. That’s like the folks who really see things like you or maybe share identities with you.

and it’s where you, I think, go to get fueled up to get taken care of, to get inspired. Those things can happen in coalition too. I mean, I think coalition work is amazing and beautiful, but it is harder than home.

Katherine Golub: I’m curious what you would say to someone who’s with a group or an organization who’s trying to decide whether or not to stay in a coalition in which [00:13:00] they’re experiencing conflict or tension or friction and trying to discern whether or not it’s worthwhile to make those trade-offs.

I imagine you might have steps or questions that you would ask them to discern. Whether those tradeoffs are are worthwhile.

Christine Petit: Absolutely. Yeah. I would think about what is the overall purpose of being part of this coalition. You know, what values kind of brought me there in the first place, or brought my organization there in the first place? What are we trying to achieve? But I would also think about what is the experience now?

Can I influence the coalition? It’s not that I get my way, but is what I have to contribute and who I am, or the organizational perspective that I’m bringing is that respected? Are we [00:14:00] having principled conversations about it? And, you know, I would encourage somebody to not just exit a coalition ’cause it’s uncomfortable, but, really try to go back to, well, was there a foundation set about, our norms, how we’re wanting to interact with one another?

I would also look for, like relationship building outside of a meeting space and building understanding outside of a particular meeting space. but looking to see, If it feels like, you know, we’re still trying to meet the purpose that we have and it’s tolerable. it’s hard to say, but I think like you shouldn’t just go in expecting like the way your organization does things or the way you think about things.

That’s the way it’s gonna go. Like there needs to be some principled struggle in that too. I think

[00:14:58] Clarifying Purpose & Processes for Coalition Building

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Katherine Golub: you named a [00:15:00] lot of things that I agree. That they’re all really, really important. And the first one that you named was purpose. What practices have you found effective for helping coalitions

To get clear enough about their purpose at the beginning. And also when they come to conflict, there’s often a time where it’s like, oh, wait a second. Are we on the same page about our guiding purpose? Because if we disagree about what we’re doing together, then that’s a key question for deciding whether or not we stay together.

So what have you found is helpful for clarifying purpose, either at the beginning or in the middle of the arc of the work?

Christine Petit: I’m thinking about two different types of coalitions I’ve been part of. the campaigns eventually emerge.

usually you come together around. A general idea, maybe it’s improving housing in your community or [00:16:00] improving the conditions for workers in your community. And I think what has been helpful, in coalition spaces that I’ve been part of is doing things where you are looking at the issue together, where you’re sharing the kind of different organizational perspectives, and doing things to reinforce why we’re doing this work together.

Like, why can’t we do it alone? Or why are we not electing to do it alone, you know? What would happen if one just tried to do it alone? I think that’s part of it is like, but it’s, what I found is it is important upfront to look at like, what are the different people or organizations’ perspectives on this issue?

How is it impacting the people that they represent [00:17:00] or them, or that they care about? And doing things together that just help everyone get their peace in. and then seeing what resonates with folks and kind of building on that, clarifying on that. so it, to me it’s that work up front of really hearing each other’s perspectives.

Why folks are connected to the issue and what they’re hoping from the work there. That’s the foundation building.

Katherine Golub: And how much clarity do you find is necessary around purpose? it’s one thing to say that we value housing justice. you know, things that are happening in Massachusetts right now, there’s a statewide campaign for rent control.

Right. There’s a coalition that’s working on that to pass this rent control law in Massachusetts, or on the municipal level in my town, we have 17 and a half thousand people. So coalition looks like a couple of individuals from different, like [00:18:00] home homegrown, like town groups.

it’s often the same people, but right now folks are working to pass a rental registry in town. So all landlords need to, need to register with the city and be inspected by public health. And it’s a lot less formal the decision making process that’s needed. When it’s a couple of people who know each other from town, it’s like, okay, this is the thing that makes the sense for us to pass it.

But when it comes to devoting the resources, like to a rent control, campaign. that requires a whole other level of dedication. And so I’m curious how much clarity you’ve, you’ve found the groups need in order to be in generative coalition together?

Christine Petit: I think sometimes it doesn’t have to be, everything is crystal clear.

but that’s where I was, what I was thinking about initially. It’s like sometimes it really is [00:19:00] like, this is the issue. We’re trying to pass this ballot initiative and this is your piece, this is my piece, whatever. You know? Yeah. And sometimes it’s like we care about this issue and we know something needs to happen and we wanna figure that out.

and I think both are, you know, wonderful and can be generative. It doesn’t need to all be clear upfront. but sometimes. That clarity is really helpful when you’re like, yes, we’re all moving toward this thing, right? Versus like, we’re building that clarity and sometimes you need to go back to it. or like you pass the, maybe you pass the referendum, you pass it.

Now it goes to enforcement implementation analysis of how it’s actually going. How do we build on this? And I have a example in Long Beach around language access, and how that was, you know, a multi, multi-year campaign from winning the [00:20:00] basics of language access at our city council meetings and city to actually getting funding several years later Yeah.

To, you know, improving upon it. And so each iteration needed clarity as well.

Katherine Golub: And in order to get clear to the extent that is necessary about what we’re doing together, we need to have clear decision making processes and an understanding of what the power dynamics are in, in the room. And I’ll share to listeners that we, wrote back and forth about some of the questions we would ask.

And, I had asked you, what do people engaging in coalition work need to get clear about, to engage in difference effectively? And you said that the most important thing was purpose. and you said that the second most important thing was power dynamics, decision making, funding recognition.

And I’m thinking about, okay, there’s these different inflection points, whether that is we’re starting off [00:21:00] together or we’ve won something and what do we do now? Or it’s a conflict, or it’s like in those moments, really big decision needs to be made.

How that decision gets made is about power and process. And so I’m curious what you found works to make decisions effectively in coalition and to distribute power effectively.

Christine Petit: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think developing coalition agreements together is helpful. Some of it, again, is that like process work, but having people, even if someone’s coming with a template or like someone’s coming with a suggestion about decision-making, making sure that there’s space for people to talk about what is our roles?

How do we, you know, wanna make decisions together, where’s the funding coming from? All of how does that influence [00:22:00] things? So sometimes it’s. Just agreements about how we’re working together. Sometimes it’s more formalized memorandums of understanding MOUs. that can be really helpful in just, you know, setting that foundation.

I just think the more that folks can think together, doing team and relationship building, doing activities together to help to develop a shared analysis and plan that helps to move, it helps people move together. It doesn’t mean that, you know, everyone’s gonna think exactly alike, but it gives that shared framework to move from.

Katherine Golub: Do you have any examples of organizing structures or processes that you’ve seen work well in coalitions? In an organization, there’s, there’s usually some type of codified [00:23:00] hierarchy, right? There’s some type of, this person is this person’s boss and these are the teams, and this is the team lead.

And there’s that type of structure when it’s individuals representing organizations coming together to make decisions often who holds what roles are not as codified. sometimes they really are, if there’s a lot of backing and, and funding and there’s, it’s laid out and then it becomes easier. But often it’s, it’s not as codified.

And so there’s the loudest person in the room, or, they may be bringing different resources, from their organization or different personality styles or working d differently together. And so. Laying out how decisions are made can be really important.

And yet it can also take a lot of time and effort to write all the agreements and the lay out the norms.

and it can, it can drain our energy before we actually [00:24:00] engage in the work and see the processes that emerge and are actually needed.

Yeah. So I’m curious, do you have examples of coalitions that work well and what decision making process they’ve relied on?

Christine Petit: some examples that I think of are, for example. The youth organizing work in Long Beach where there’s an organization that is like the anchor organization.

and in this case they’re funded to be the anchor. I think that’s something that’s really important to just name, is that all of this is work to set meeting times to pull people together, to plan agendas. All of that is work. And sometimes it’s volunteer work. but you know, when you have organizations that come together, there needs to be some.

Recognition of, and I think funding of that work where possible, and that could be, we all think this is important, we’re [00:25:00] gonna chip in, you know, this much money together to do it. Or like, you know, if it’s a kind of a few people, like you’re talking about in your community, these smaller organizations, at least some agreement, are we gonna do rotating facilitation and we each have that role?

or is there someone who’s gonna really anchor this work? And you know, there’s just kind of that like infrastructure piece. And I know that’s not decision making, but it impacts decision making. Oh yeah. Who is, you know, who is anchoring the work or who’s helping to organize it. definitely there’s going to be some weight there in terms of decision making as well.

But, um. The model that I really like in Long Beach is, where they really value youth voice. And so it kind of goes through a few iterations of decision making. It starts with [00:26:00] young people, talking about the issues that they care about and what they want to focus on.

And then there’s organizational leads that help to kind of distill that and bring that back to the broader coalition and go from there in terms of, moving the work forward. But it has these kind of different points of like, who’s most impacted by this? How are they laying in on it and shaping it?

Then how are we offering support and making decisions from there? I think it is worthwhile to name things like. Do we need to have consensus? or is it a majority rules? I mean, I would say most coalitions are not majority rules, but also do we have to have a hundred percent consensus? We did a hybrid voting model for steering committee, that I helped to facilitate.

it was like five different [00:27:00] options,

like they could say like, oh, I am absolutely opposed to this, or, I have some reservations, but I would support the majority. I am neutral, or I’m enthusiastically supportive, you know, and if it was. We got a certain threshold then that would be, you know, then we would move the decision forward even if there was some folks who felt a little uncomfortable.

I appreciate you naming that this work is work and that it needs a certain foundation of support in order to be effective. And you named recognition as a key piece. Can you say what you mean by that and a little bit

more? Yeah. I think,recognition is interesting because just also going back to the youth organizing work.

Yeah. I thought what was really interesting there is that different organizations play different roles and some organizations had. More, like more [00:28:00] of a direct line to the school board or to the school infrastructure. And so they were going to use those relationships and be supportive of the campaign, but their logo wouldn’t necessarily be on a flyer or they wouldn’t necessarily be recognized as the anchor.

And that was okay because it was named, it wasn’t like, oh, we’re just like, you know, hiding our involvement here. It was like, no, we’re gonna use this strategically. but we are committed to what the coalition is doing. And, yeah, I think also it’s just really important to, if you are leading an organization or coalition.

to think about everyone who is contributing to it and not just further your own organization. And when that [00:29:00] happens, that’s where I’ve seen, friction as well. I think everyone should be recognized in some way. but not one organization needs to take credit for everything.

And that’s something to be careful of when you’re, in a leadership role too.

[00:29:17] How to Handle the Territoriality & Fears that Come with Coalition-Building

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Katherine Golub: I’m curious about that situation of one organization trying to be at the head of things. It makes a lot of sense that that territoriality happens. Like, of course it does.

We are living in contrived, manufactured scarcity of capitalism, especially now with so many threats to nonprofits and organizing groups and so much funding being cut. So, it’s very common for an organizational leader to feel like, I really want to be in relationship with this other organization.

I really value the work that they do. But what if the funds that we have gotten go to this other organization? We may [00:30:00] cease to exist. And so there’s like, this double bind of, oh, to be effective, I need to be in relationship. But oh, if I am in relationship, and they get credit for the work that I’m doing, then I might cease to exist.

That’s just one of one cause that goes to that territoriality or that jockeying for resources. There’s many others. I’m curious what you see contributes to that challenge and what you’ve seen helps make it better.

Christine Petit: Yeah. I mean, it is a totally normal thing organizationally and on a human level to feel like, oh, if they’re getting recognition I’m not, or whatnot.

and sometimes our funding systems reinforce that. I’ve also seen them in really encourage, like some funders really encourage [00:31:00] collaborations and in some cases it’s like folks aren’t ready to collaborate or like, the collaboration doesn’t, isn’t as supportive. But I do like this recognition that collaboration is important and that, that has been rewarded in some funding spaces too.

But I think we just need to. Also get better at talking about different contributions. You can, if you’re part of something, like you can do more if you’re partnered with another organization. You can talk about what you’ve done with the other organization and what you’ve done on your own, and they can talk about what they’ve done with you.

I understand the reservations and why like organizations get pit pitted against each other and things like that. but what I’ve seen in reality is the way that collaboration actually strengthens organizations and you can do more when you’re in relationship as well.

Katherine Golub: [00:32:00] two things come up for me.

Christine Petit: Mm-hmm.

Katherine Golub: When you say that, and I’m gonna name them together and then ask you to dress them one at a time ’cause they’re different. Sure. One is that, yes, like, I really agree with you. We need to get better at talking about contribution. We need to get better at shining light on what, what works for so many different reasons, especially when it comes to relationship building, right?

Mm-hmm. So I wanna ask you about that in a minute. Like what? What works for that? I wanna highlight that. Mm-hmm. But before we go there, that. Even if cognitively, we may know that coalition makes us so much stronger emotionally. It we, if we’re in a fear place and we’re in a place of like, our survival is at stake as an organization.

I might have staff members and they may be depending on me for their jobs, or I might have community members who really care deeply about my work and I [00:33:00] don’t wanna let them down, or my own family, my own survival. The, even though cognitively we may believe that collaboration is better and we need to get better at focusing on contribution, if emotionally we’re in that fear place, it can be really hard to do.

And so I’m curious, what you found is helpful when. We’re noticing, okay, I’m getting territorial. Maybe that’s the first step is that noticing, but we, we notice the territoriality in ourselves what to do then. Like what do we do about that?

Christine Petit: it’s so hard. I’m not gonna like silver line it and say, oh, it’s easy. And just like, think good, think positive thoughts or whatever. Like, it is hard. Okay. It’s hard. Mm-hmm. And I actually just did an episode where I was, I’ve been doing my own leadership coaching and I’ve been working with a part of myself that feels a little competitive.

Katherine Golub: Mm-hmm.

Christine Petit: And feels a little worried about being left behind or thrown away. [00:34:00] And you know, organizationally we are made up of individuals and I think doing that work to recognize what’s going on inside ourselves to get support from others. I just, I found as a leader that I really needed my peers, other people who knew what it was to run an organization and to find them, whether they’re in your.

Community or spread out across the US or whatever, but to really seek out relationships so you can talk through some of these things and you know, strategize with folks where you’re not stuck in that fear place. And then, you know, I’m a big proponent of coaching or therapy or whatever too. You know, like we need to do the internal work as well to support how we wanna show up.

And of course, people are scared right now. Why wouldn’t they be? But actually there is a [00:35:00] lot of evidence that connecting with people can help us too.

Katherine Golub: I appreciate what you said a moment ago about working with this coach and noticing the competition arising in you.

It makes me think about a couple of Group Relations Conferences. It’s systemic psychodynamic work. Basically it’s this three or seven day event where there’s like small groups, large groups, different structures. And there’s no agenda. You go in, the consultant is very like stone faced.

It’s just sitting there and people start talking about like what’s coming up for them in relationship with the people in the room. And so it’s shining light on all of these things that are below the surface, all of the different projections and all of the stuff comes up that when we’re talking about the work that we’re doing at work. It’s still there below the surface.

In one of the conferences that I participated in, people talked a [00:36:00] lot about competition. And I like to think of myself as collaborative.

So it was really a wake up for me about how competition was in my shadow. When we take those things out of our shadow and we recognize that, oh, there’s my competitive part, we can use that awareness to so much more consciously choose how we interact with it so it’s not running the show from below the surface.

So I appreciate you, you naming that.

Christine Petit: Yeah, absolutely. of course there’s competition in our shadow, like look at the society we live in. Right? So it’s this like recognition and unlearning and sometimes when it doesn’t even make rational sense to us to unlearn. Right? Because you’re like, no, but things are scary.

Katherine Golub: Yeah,

Christine Petit: yeah,

Katherine Golub: yeah.

Christine Petit: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:48] Tracking the Little Wins in Your Coalition Building

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Katherine Golub: Yeah. So that self-awareness is, is incredibly important. And then to go back to, you said, we need to get better at talking about contribution.

Can you share what comes up for [00:37:00] you around that?

Christine Petit: Yeah. I think when. I’m imagining being in a coalition space right now where we’re talking about turnout for an event and the organizer or the, person who’s anchoring or facilitating right then is asking, okay, how many people can you commit to? How many people can you commit to? How many people can you commit to?

I’m thinking about all the ways that we, different folks show up and, whether it’s turnout to an event, whether it’s leveraging a relationship that they have, you know, whether it’s their artistic skills. just finding ways to one name that it’s not, even if it’s done under the banner of a particular coalition.

these are all the folks who are involved in it,You need to pause and celebrate. You said something earlier about like coalition work. You don’t [00:38:00] always, I think we both talked about tying it in a bow. The other thing is that the work that we do, it is ongoing.

My partner is an electrical engineer. When we first started dating, he was like, how do you know when your work is done? Like, you don’t! But you do choose moments along the way to celebrate, to recognize, to pause, and reflect. And I think that’s the other thing. When you pause and reflect, you’re always learning and growing, and strengthening your work as well.

Katherine Golub: and any advice for people who are listening who are like, yeah, that makes sense, but that’s really hard to do right now because I’m working to, whether that’s passing a policy or they’re working to get funding, or they’re, they’re working on something that just feels like the wind are few and far between.

Any advice about how to find the wins in the midst of the [00:39:00] policy fails and they’ve put so much resource into that. Any advice for folks who are like, I, I don’t know exactly how to do that when things are so hard.

Christine Petit: Yeah. Well, I think one is to not move too quickly to learning. Mm-hmm. But to acknowledge, like, oof! This is hard. There might be grieving in the loss, disappointment, and it’s okay to make space for that. Even doing that together can be incredibly healing and important. So, I don’t wanna be so quick to jump to celebration. But I do think we need to hold on to those little glimmers, the hope that we find, the connective conversation that we have, what we learned along the way.

The person who spoke out at city council for the first [00:40:00] time, who knocked on a door for the first time, the relationship that got stronger, the insight that you got. Looking for those things, and paying attention to them is really important because it keeps us going. And it’s real. And you know when things are so hard in the world and things are so overwhelming, the thing I always come back to is do what you can where you are.

Is that how you showed up for your kid? Is that the smile you gave your neighbor? Whatever. Like those things are important too. And the things that we do in relationship with each other to make the world better, to make our communities better, doing those things even when they’re not successful. We didn’t get the big win.

There are little wins along the [00:41:00] way. And so just, I encourage people to go back to those.

Katherine Golub: when you talk about the ongoing nature of the work and we never know what we’re building toward, it makes me think about the work on city council right now. It’s not like we’re in some official coalition, but yeah, I’ve been there almost four years.

In June, it’ll be four years, and there’s many things that I’ve wanted to pass for a very long time throughout that time and. We haven’t been set up to do that yet, but we have a new council and now is the time, like because of many, there’s many new people on council and, and because of a lot of relationship building that we’ve done over time and those little wins of those different relationships and those different elections, and now we’re poised to pass many precedent setting ordinances in our town with the aim that in some, in some distant relationship with other towns and cities in the state and in [00:42:00] the country, we can create something that other people can then replicate.

And were those wins along the last four years? Not in terms of passing policy. Like we’ve had a couple tiny ones, but they were, in terms of laying the groundwork for us to do this now, which is really, really exciting.

Christine Petit: yeah. I can say that for Long Beach as well. The city council that we had when I first moved here, 2008, you know, the,

And on the city council level, like it’s a totally different ball game,

And yeah, I mean, not everything’s perfect. There’s work to be done for sure, but like. All of that also lays the foundation, and I totally agree with you. I think what happens at the local level, it can inspire change in other levels.

It gives people examples to pull from. And so it’s important for your community, but it’s important for other communities as well. And I’ve seen that researching policy, we researched [00:43:00] what happened in other communities and use those in as examples, brought them to the city attorney, all of that stuff.

[00:43:06] The Power of Precedent-Setting in Coalition Building

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Katherine Golub: Yeah, I learned a lot about precedent setting when I was working in Tucson with the Hotel Workers Union and they were planning to build a convention center hotel. It never happened because it was late 2007, and then the financial crash happened.

But,they were issuing a request for proposal for their new convention center hotel. And our ask to them was to integrate card check neutrality, which is a fair organizing rights process for hotel workers.

And we shared with them, look, all these other cities throughout the country have integrated this language, this fair organizing rights language, into the request for proposals to hotel companies, building convention center hotels. We didn’t let them know that we had never passed this specific language and that this was the most cutting edge language that existed.

And it wasn’t dishonest to say car check neutrality had been integrated [00:44:00] into other request or proposals. And they were like, okay, this has been done in other, in other places we’ll include it too. And they did. And like the next day, Hilton and Starwoods and, and Hyatt and all the major hotel chains were calling up the hotel workers Union to create those contracts so that they could have an opportunity to build their hotel there.

And so that, from, nearly 20 years ago. Really shapes my worldview now, like our responsibility in such a relatively progressive area is to set precedent for other places.

Yeah. And was it a win? I think so. Even though the Convention center hotel was never built. Like, I think it was still a win. Yeah.

Christine Petit: Mm-hmm.

Katherine Golub: Yeah.

any other words of wisdom or support that you would want to share with people who are doing coalition building work right now and are grappling with conflict?

Anything else you’d want them to know?

Christine Petit: I think [00:45:00] it is important to go back to the why. What prompted you to join? What keeps you there? and also to be aware of your style and conflict. are you somebody who tends to shy away from conflict? Do you lean right in and argue your point?

I think being aware of our responses to conflict too and thinking about what our values are, how we wanna show up, and just taking some time to do that, is important. So that inner work as well as going back to revisiting. Any agreements that you have as a coalition or, or bringing something up about how do we want to move forward?

I encourage folks to remember that coalition is not home. It’s okay if it’s a little uncomfortable. That’s how we [00:46:00] learn. That’s how we grow and change and make change. And it shouldn’t be unbearable. I encourage folks to be brave in looking at what’s going on too internally

I do have a, resource guide on my website. It’s a free difficult conversations prep guide, and I use some of my favorite resources from organizing, from communication and things like that to help you prepare for a difficult conversation or speaking up in a meeting.

I have one version that’s for like an interpersonal relationship and one that’s more organizational. and that’s in the guide, so that’s a resource I’d like to offer to folks as well.

Katherine Golub: That’s, that’s fantastic. I will include that in the show notes. And. Yeah, what you just said about knowing your style or your [00:47:00] proclivity or your habit nature or your preferred strategies.

Like do you lean back? Do you lean in, do you lean on other people? And I think that the things that you’ve talked about already about anchoring in, like anchoring in purpose, acknowledging what’s hard, acknowledging what’s good. All of these practices can help support us to be aware of our habit nature, and then come into a more centered, responsive place.

So we’re not just always leaning in or leaning back or leaning on others, but we can be much more upright and centered in how we’re engaging with other people. So I really appreciate that. Yeah.

Christine Petit: Thank you.

Katherine Golub: Yeah.

Christine Petit: Like the way you synthesize that.

Katherine Golub: Thanks. So I’m gonna link to the resource guide in the show notes.

Anything else about how folks could benefit from working with you or reach out to you or find you?

Christine Petit: Yes, I would love to connect with folks. I do offer [00:48:00] leadership coaching, organizational consulting, and occasionally interim executive leadership as well.

But also, I’d just love it if you said hi, my website is dr christine petit.com. That’s DR christine petit.com. And you can find a link to my podcast, the Resource and Resourceful Leadership podcast, sign up for emails, and download the guide there.

also would love to connect with you on Instagram or LinkedIn and I’ll make sure Catherine has all the links for those.

Katherine Golub: And I will include them. Well, thank you very much. I know we’re gonna have a, do an exchange and we’ll have a conversation. And I’m really, really looking forward to this.

I feel like we just got warmed up and just started. So thank you for this time together.

Christine Petit: Yes, thank you. This was wonderful. And I’m looking forward to our conversation too.