Conversations With The Top

We can predict the strategies that those who are operating as the top of a hierarchy will use in a personal conversation. Hierarchists will:

• Expect us to be tolerant of, listen to, and incorporate their perspectives. However, they do not feel the need to listen to us.
• Filter whatever they hear through their stereotypes, judgments, and/or a lack of real information.
• Push suggestions for plans or solutions without a second thought, even if their ideas may be inappropriate or even dangerous for lower groups.
• Take over and try to stray off track by switching the focus away from the main topic or issue. Once the conversation moves to a small piece of the entire picture, they will pounce. They will demand explanations that they then easily dismiss.
• Treat illustrative examples as isolated instances and conclude that the person giving the information is overreacting.
• Want simple answers because they are clueless about systemic cause and effect.

We can easily lose ground the longer our conversations continue when the hierarchists maintain control.

People at the top take challenges to their positions very seriously. They act quickly and forcefully to confront threats, especially frontal attacks. The rules of hierarchies allow those at the top to justify using any and whatever tactics keep power at the top. Even the smallest question can feel like a threatening attack.

People who must maintain their hierarchy often have bigger guns than the rest of us. We can expect hierarchists to pull them out when provoked. If we push frontally against the power of the hierarchy-conservators, they will react.

In an effort to be fair, we often view top-of-the-hierarchy perspectives as personal opinions, and think we need to compromise, even if the top sees no need to compromise with us.

But when comments and actions concern both higher and lower people, the situation is not about “only differences of opinion.” An unequal playing field is being established or perpetuated and that dynamic should be the topic of our discussion.

To switch the conversation to hierarchies, we can use the CLUES or the Typical Top Behaviors. When we seize the narrative, we can avoid getting sucked into a conflict on a hierarchist’s turf.

Very important — play it close to the vest when dealing with hierarchists.

We hurt our cause when we give away our facts or perspectives to hierarchists that will help them appear less clueless, or offer information that will provide them a place to hide. Instead, we can set them up to shine light on their hierarchy, or use other strategies to expose their motives.

When people from two or more lower groups in different hierarchies stick together, the customary rhetoric and blame from the top becomes less effective. Tactics that previously worked to silence and discredit one isolated group fall short when we change the discussion to general hierarchical roles and privilege.

For example, Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM) is a grassroots organization focused on empowering communities in the coalfields in Tennessee. Their former president, Howard White, notes, "If we can show the politicians that we are a multi-race of people fighting for the same cause, it scares them to death." 
—Hope Magazine, J/A 2003, p. 47