Initiators and sustainers

I am part of an Auroville Task group that prepared governance goals for the recent Retreat. The group was very dynamic for the first phase of its existence but now that it has entered the next phase, that of fulfilling its post-Retreat responsibilities to materialise these goals, it is finding it hard to revive that former energy and commitment.

There are many possible explanations for this but one thing that strikes me is that the energy required to initiate a project is very different from the energy needed to sustain it. Initiators, for example, tend to be one-pointed, focused on specific goals, and highly creative in suggesting pathways towards it. Sustainers are those skilled in keeping a group together or a project running long past its initial ‘glamorous’ phase. Where initiators tend to be creative in ideas, the creativity of sustainers lies in their interpersonal skills, in finding ways of getting diverse individuals to work towards a common goal.

A group made up only of initiators will tend to be high on energy but also high on conflict as initiators tend to be more focused on ideas than on the wellbeing of others. Such groups tend to be short-lived, either because conflict cannot be handled or because initiators quickly run out of steam when the work no longer interests them. Typically, they get bored easily.

A group made up exclusively of sustainers may tend to process each other’s issues and problems endlessly rather than pushing ahead with new ideas. They may also immerse themselves in analyzing the trivia of an issue as a way of avoiding difficult choices that may jeopardize the unity of the group. Typically, such groups last longer than initiator groups, but they tend to be held together by inertia and habit rather than by a shared inspiration.

Clearly, for groups or projects to succeed, both energies are needed. But it is rare to find one person embodying both – the narrowly focussed energy of the initiator does not easily mix with the more inclusive energy of the sustainer – and often groups that begin with both initiators and retainers tend to end up as a monoculture of one or the other.

This is largely because each does not understand the role and value of the other, so they frustrate each other or drive each other apart. Initiators stereotype sustainers as being people more interested in maintaining the status quo than in taking risks and making progress. Sustainers see initiators as simply ideas people who are incapable of understanding or taking up the daily challenges and responsibilities involved in bringing something to fruition.

Such stereotypes are sustained because people embodying a certain energy tend to gravitate to the same groupings, where they support each other’s perceptions. Nevertheless, when the respective energies get unbalanced there is a grain of truth in these views. Initiators can become dogmatic, narrow and uncompassionate in the pursuit of an idea or ideal. Sustainers can become attached to the way things are, suspicious of change, and attached to precedent and bureaucracy.

At the risk of huge oversimplification, I think that in Auroville sustainers are over-represented in the bureaucracy and services and the commercial units tend to attract more initiators. And here we may even perceive a subtle status distinction. For the fact that initiators tend to be better communicators and that the work of sustaining is often less visible accounts, I think, for the fact that the work of sustainers tends to be undervalued.

Does it really matter that this energy demarcation and mutual misunderstanding exists? After all, don’t the different energies balance each other out on a community-wide basis just as couples in a good relationship find ways of balancing out and complementing each other’s different energies?

I’m not so sure. My sense is that the perennial tensions that run, for example, through so many discussions between the services and commercial units, is partly due to the fact that they inhabit, to a certain extent, different energy fields. The familiar accusation that the services are inefficient and adverse to change, or that the commercial units only exist to improve the lifestyle of those who work in them are parodies of the truth, but they dimly reflect this energetic demarcation.

My concern is that as long as these differences are not recognized and valued, they will continue to act as invisible fault-lines that drive us apart and hinder our progress. For the reality is that each needs the other. Initiators are strong on ideas and overcoming inertia, but they are weak on the wider and more humble work needed to sustain momentum, while sustainers tend to be weak on new ideas and less willing to take the risks needed to escape the gravity of the known.