Few would contest that in business the soft stuff is the hardest stuff of all. As Paul Allaire, former CEO and chair of Xerox once said, "We are trying to change the total culture of the organization. When you talk about that in general terms, everybody's for it. But when you talk about it in terms of individuals, it gets tougher. And yet, if individuals don't change, nothing changes."
The problem, it turns out, is that we are human and being human we have sides of ourselves -- soft sides -- that we choose to protect even when the obvious need for growth and change is right before our eyes. This is our hardness, our shell, our mask. We do need to be able to defend. That's essential, but without genuine vulnerability it is also very difficult to learn. It behooves all of us to know and be able to sustain our vulnerability as part of a basic practice of self-esteem, respect, learning and at times, reconciliation.
In a season when we often are encouraged to hold love in our hearts but also know that stress and conflict are common, Pema Chödrön's words help keep us to the practice.
Leadership Conversation
Eric Svaren Helps Us Name, Own and Address What's On Our Plate
Eric Svaren is a Seattle, Washington "system change agent" whose work focuses on the social sector, including government, non-profits, education and healthcare. He facilitates organizational, team and individual development based on the deep conviction that "if we unleash the passion of people in the social sector, they, in turn, will change the world."
This conviction began when Eric was in college, working as a volunteer in disaster relief for the American Red Cross. He was astounded by how an organization with such a powerful and positive mission could also be so dysfunctional. He experienced "cognitive dissonance" so strongly, he switched majors to focus on small group dynamics and organizational sociology. He says that he has been on a "thirty-two year quest to try to understand exactly how such dysfunction could happen" to organizations with such important missions. In the 1990's, he worked "deep in the belly" of the bureaucracy at the City of Seattle. There, he first personally experienced the spirit-killing realities of a large, bureaucratic working environment. He was so moved by these experiences he started an underground newsletter, "The Philosopher Bureaucrat," largely a commentary on the toxic problems of his public sector organization. He also started doing organization development consulting in city government.
Today he is an exceptional coach and facilitator with his own consulting practice, Groupsmith, centering on renewing the people in danger of burn-out or disengagement and organizations where performance on mission needs to be strengthened.
To find out more about Eric, see his website at www.groupsmith.com or contact him directly at svaren@groupsmith.com, 206-352-2400.
Eric, what do you see as the main causes of organizational dysfunction?
I would call it "under-leadership," a pattern that keeps people very much trapped. There are many specific things a leader needs to do to enable strong performance. These include setting a clear direction; identifying "side-boards" such as clarifying the givens, scope and boundaries of a project; providing resources, ensuring accountability, and establishing clear roles, among other things. In almost every situation where dysfunction shows up, there are gaps in these core areas. A leader might be doing 60% of these tasks, but very few are doing 85% or higher.
It's very hard for people to understand the full impact under-leadership has on them--their motivation, creativity and commitment. Under-leadership's effects can be quite caustic, demoralizing, and emotionally detrimental. In my view, people need strong leadership (from others and also from themselves) in order to organize their effort and energy to make something happen. And, if we do not feel effective, that we have a positive impact, we start to decline in our view of the world and of ourselves. While people might recognize that their leaders aren't providing all that they need to, they often do not see the full impacts of under-leadership on them as individuals.
Where there is under-leadership, people work mightily to compensate, but they are working uphill. There's only so much you can do. I have a lot of empathy for the people in these situations and appreciation for their strong commitment to their critical missions. We need social sector organizations to be very effective in order to have a healthy society, yet many of these organizations are not healthy themselves.
These environments are filled with highly-committed people, and yet the environments can wear them down, draining their commitment. People get hurt, and it scabs over. Then, it happens again, and then again. Nobody starts their career in their twenties planning to "just get by" until retirement. They are enthusiastic, but by the end of the careers, they are just barely holding on.That internal flame is almost extinguished. People are wounded along the way and learn to withdraw in order to protect themselves.
So how can we start the process toward renewal and healing in such places?
The first thing is to look to the structure that people are working within. Do they have clear direction, roles, boundaries, and so forth. Are leaders doing all they need to in order to optimize performance? Usually, my first focus is on the leaders, because that's where the biggest leverage is. If leaders make adjustments, it can produce rapid, profound improvements in morale and performance. Work at the leadership level has the greatest ROI.
Once clear leadership is established, there's usually work at the group and individual levels. People usually need to reclaim the emotions and interpretations that they have been projected on others. They may also need to address the ongoing, embedded conflicts that are often a pattern within dysfunctional workplace environments.
When I get people together, the first step is often to simply rehumanize other people and themselves. Sometimes, this is surprisingly easy; it's also very satisfying. Dehumanizing others takes a lot of energy and effort. In rehumanizing, they have a chance to detach from that habit. Rehumanizing is about creating conversations and connections that haven't been present - for example, about non-work topics of interest, remembering and appreciating what's actually positive about the work or the mission, or what's been a peak experience for you as an individual. At the highest level these conversations begin to reawaken what people truly care about.
Unfortunately, our culture is focused on ego -- toward being smart, in control, not a sucker - which translates into a bias toward adversarial views and relationships and no real support for collaboration. Part of rehumanizing is discovering that we actually agree on way more than we think we do. As it often turns out, people care a lot about the same things. It's as if there is a large aquifer of agreement that sits right beneath us while we spend our time focused on diametrically opposed positions. We break through that dehumanizing, conflict based culture when we begin to tap the aquifer and the extent of our agreements becomes conscious.
Are there specific tools that help bring people toward this awareness?
One that I especially favor is the metaphor of a plate, as in "What's on my plate today?" This image, a variation of older "wheel of awareness" concepts, helps people focus on the what's going on for them in four areas: Facts, Stories, Wants and Feelings.
A complete conversation visits all four quadrants of the plate. "What are the facts I'm dealing with?" is a question I can ask myself. "What are my stories? What do I really want? How do I truly feel?"
In some organizations some of these quadrants are discouragingly dark as a cultural norm. For example, many folks still think emotions have no place at work. Actually, without emotions, people can't make decisions or feel motivated. The feelings part of the plate may have been traditionally dark and less easy for people to
talk about.
There are lots of stories floating around in less functional organizations. Opinions, interpretations, judgments and assumptions masquerading as facts. Many stories are built on very few facts, like an inverted pyramid. It's in the rampant, untethered storytelling that most organizational dysfunctions are manufactured and sustained.
Getting people to talk about their plates and take responsibility for them, show them to others, and look into those dark places for the first time can be vital to renewal.
I also use some some inventories, such as Myers-Briggs or Social Styles to help illuminate those cultural layers - for instance the common bias toward analytic and driver preferences.
This brings up a great point. How do you help people begin talking about their emotions, especially in organizations where that negative bias about feelings is present?
I like to begin through coaching individuals - listening carefully to them and helping them notice their own feelings, teasing out their own emotional realities. But it actually works best in some sort of dialogue, as in a mediation of some kind or just a conversation that needs to happen. It's all quite clinical and theoretical at first, but at some point it gets very real. It is hard work, and it is heart work. I have to say, the time I am working the hardest as a facilitator is when I am helping people understand what is on each other's plates while keeping the plates separate, helping people not take stuff off their own plates to fling at each other.
Discussing emotions also comes up when people are contracting with one another. We consultants are used to setting up contracts with our clients, but this is actually a useful skill for everyone. We need to be able to contract our "wants" and our "offers." Like emotions, we may not know what we really want. Yet, we need these things in order to be effective in our work. We all need information, access to people, resources, etc., to do our jobs. But asking for those things can feel quite dangerous in dysfunctional environments. Our flame of intrinsic motivation starts to flutter whenever we think we are not supposed to feel or to have any needs or wants at all.
When you are guiding such renewal work, how do you keep it uplifting and not exhausting for people. These days many feel that such efforts may be depleting too, as in "We don't have the time or the energy to deal with our emotions and needs. We've just got to keep going."
They are right. This is a hard time. It's true that the expectation is to constantly perform at higher levels, as if we are constantly at the Olympics. Just so, I find myself encouraging people to eat healthy, get sleep, get exercise. I encourage connecting with colleagues and to form communities and practice area networks to support each other - that's where truly sustaining feedback can come from. I encourage people to build other support networks, too, made up of family and friends. Bill Grace, the founder of the Center for Ethical Leadership, once told me that leaders need to have three practices to sustain themselves: take time for reflection, connect with others on a similar path, and read "sacred texts.". My bookshelf is full of what I call my "sacred texts," which are volumes on organization development work, brain science and sociology that inspire me. All of these strategies are all about maintaining and reclaiming perspective. Alan Kaye, developer of the graphical interface at Xerox PARC and ultimately adopted by Apple, said that perspective is worth 80 IQ points. I believe in that.
Finally, as a consultant leader, I try not to pretend. I know I am not immune from the very depression and disengagement I see in my client organizations. I keep in mind that as a helper I must do my own interior work. That's part of my motivation and is linked to my empathy and passion, and I know I cannot afford to become just another part of the burn-out system I am trying to help.
If the kind of trust-building and renewal work you do is an art form, what would you say has been your "masterpiece" so far?
That would be helping two warring departments at the Port of Seattle a couple of years ago. The departments had been at war for ten years, and it was personal, divisive, and costing a great deal of money. I was asked to facilitate a cross-departmental team to resolve the problems. We did what I've described in this conversation - rehumanize people, sort out what was on peoples' plates in terms of facts, wants, stories, and feelings. We developed excellent sponsorship from two Port executives who really stepped up. With a relatively modest investment (1/3 of the original project budget), we got results that blew the sponsors and members of the team away. No one expected these results.
There were at least a dozen key turning points. One of the most important happened early on when a conflict erupted in front of the team between myself and one of the other team leaders!
That night, I found myself examining my own plate and considering what was on the other leader's plate as well. I wrote it all out on a single sheet of paper that I now keep posted in my office. In the moment, it was very hard to appreciate the other leader's words and his accusation that I had hijacked the meeting. As I reflected, however, I realized I actually appreciated the new facts and feelings he had placed on the table. After I did the plate evaluation, I called him and we talked off-line and cleared the air. The next time we were both in front of the group we jointly apologized for our behavior and that propelled the group forward more than I expected.
This was a key breakthrough (and my masterpiece) because it modeled for the group for the first time how two people could in fact be genuinely honest with one another in the midst of conflict - and still maintain their relationship. Although I had not initially responded well, I learned I could catch myself and not let myself get derailed. In an almost magical way, I realized later, the process of rehumanizing this cross-departmental team would never have been complete without this kerfuffle, this moment of real conflict and then genuinely collaborative repair.
MY LEADERSHIP BINDER
More Resources to Foster Reflective Learning
