To change a "difficult climate" -- that was the purpose of a series of conversations that engaged nearly ninety participants, including employees, managers and executive leaders. Language describing the climate was highly-charged. Patterns of alienation and division had made it nearly impossible to work on complex issues affecting business. It seemed no one was spared from blame for the "difficult climate". The climate was also obvious to outside observers.
"Climate" might sound like a nebulous term, but it's something that everyone is sensitive to, like the air we breathe. In an organization, a difficult climate is created by spiraling circles of judgment. It gets worse when nobody talks about it. The people in this particular organization had waited a very long time to talk about the difficult climate that everyone was breathing in. By the time our conversations started, their opposing judgments were colliding around thirty-six identifiable polarities.
For the sake of confidentiality, I will mention a few generic polarities they experienced that are fairly common in organizations enduring a "difficult climate". You will see nuanced overlaps:
appreciation for the past vs. drive for the future
transformational change vs. incremental change
autonomy vs. accountability
independence vs. collaboration
simplicity of the past vs. complexity of the future
top-down vs. bottom-up.
One tool we used is
The Ladder of Inference. *
Using the ladder created safety for people to speak up; everyone can identify with racing up the ladder, if only to jump to innocuous conclusions related to everyday situations. Sometimes we laugh if we catch ourselves making an assumption that has no bearing in reality.
We took a little time to "play" with the ladder using common and humorous examples of racing up the steps. Everyone could easily share a simple belief they had, a conclusion they had drawn, or assumption they had made and take it back down the ladder to "observable data and experiences".
After some practice using the
Ladder of Inference, we began to talk about the polarizing beliefs, conclusions and assumptions causing the difficult climate. Here is one example. The employees believed that leadership of the organization was changing from participative to hierarchical. Going backward from that belief, down the ladder, we could make their thinking visible. They had
- concluded that their new leadership did not fit their culture
- assumed that their systems and structures for collaboration
would be destroyed
- taken offense at what they considered a lack of transparency.
At the bottom of the ladder, it became clear that the perceived lack of transparency was linked to some executive decisions that had been made without consulting the employees.
In truth, these decisions did signal changes in the organization, but not the changes the employees assumed. When the executive leadership supplied information about how and why the decisions were made, the offense over a lack of transparency was softened. The air was cleared of erroneous assumptions and misguided conclusions. The polarized thinking began to crack open. The climate became more desirable with an air of trust, enthusiasm
and inquiry.
Within a group, using
The Ladder of Inference requires making our thinking visible with two kinds of inquiry:
1) SELF-INQUIRY, e.g. something like: "I concluded that . . . I wonder
why I came to that conclusion."
2) INQUIRY OF OTHERS, e.g. something like: "I wonder if you are
assuming . . .? Can you tell me why you are assuming that?"
This kind of inquiry takes time and practice -- investments worth making to change difficult climates into healthy climates.
