Peter Laughter

Background

About Peter Laughter

In 2008 I had an experience that changed my life – I was on the Board of Directors of an organization that had a (seemingly) intractable problem with its community. It was really contentious… people were yelling and name calling in community meetings. I didn’t think there was a solution that would make everyone happy. I was wrong. And the solution wasn’t easy… as it turned out, finding the solution was in fact it was really easy. We did it by doing something revolutionary… We listened. We listened to the people who were yelling at us. Listening not to convince or find flaws or information we could use to cajole or convince. We just listened to understand. And in doing so, the people we started off yelling at us, stopped yelling and in turn, listened to us. Together we saw a bigger possibility. A possible solution that advanced the interests of all people involved. I will never forget the meeting when we presented the solution – people who months earlier were yelling insults, were grateful and appreciative. I knew that the insights we developed by listening to people who opposed us were greater than anything I could have come up with on my own. And that is the moment I realized that there was a better way and dedicated my life to bringing it to the world. It became clear to me that centralized hierarchal way of making decisions misses the essence of transformation – the revolutionary process that results from accepting conflict and struggle and allowing it to transform us. All of us have boundless capacity for contribution and are deeply and profoundly connected to each other. As a result, my purpose is to elevate the ways in which we are connected and make those connections visible and valued in our daily lives.