Interactions - Creative Strategies for Business: Creative Strategies for Business

emotion as systemic

What happens when you have 80 people in a confined space over 8 days?

Emotions start running high, that’s what. And in some cases – very high and I include myself in that description. It’s interesting to find myself in an institutional setting experiencing much of what my clients experience when they invite me to work with them to “solve” the problem.

Many organisations fear emotion. There is an assumption that to be emotional = out of control and to be out of control = inevitable chaos. Often the point at which someone starts exhibiting emotional behaviour in an organisation the three Cs will be called for – the Coach, the Consultant of the Counsellor. Taking the “problem” out of the system is seen as a way of containing and controlling the situation.

Here in Paris there’s nowhere to go. The hotel is about 25KM from the centre of Paris, there’s little outside the hotel in terms of distraction, (in fact the location has all the charm of an industrial estate on the edge of nowhere) there are limited circulation spaces and many people are sharing rooms. From an outside perspective it looks like a recipe for disaster. But we’re being challenged to look at, experience and understand emotion as a systemic manifestation. Why is it that people get “set up” in organisations to be the carriers of emotion? In my own experience, many of the trouble makers in organisational life are expressing what the rest of the system is too afraid to say. Here in Paris there is a lot of emotion – frustration, anger, intimacy, sadness etc and we are exploring how the relationships in our temporary institution create carriers of emotional messages. Both how we accept the invitation to act on behalf of the group and how we assign that invitation and responsibility to others.

Increasingly I’m becoming more interested in keeping the learning about this kind of systemic interaction within the organisations with whom I work. If I can help the organisation understand why particular kinds of behaviour speak on behalf of the organisation then the intervention can be appreciative as distinct accusative. That’s not to suggest that people don’t have choice about how they behave in organisations either – not everything can be blamed “on the system”. Systems can generate emotion but individuals make the choice about how to express it. Coaching and consulting can work hand in hand to bridge the gap between the individual and the organisation and when I’ve been privileged to have access at both levels the results in terms of organisational learning are impressive. It takes bravery to contain rather than control emotion and then use the wisdom to advance the learning of the entire organisation.

The difference between coaching and therapy

I am very regularly asked about the differences between coaching and therapy. I frequently read marketing blurb that suggests that therapy focuses on the “past” and coaching on the “future”; that therapy is about “resolving issues” and coaching is about “improvement”. Therapy is also accused of not offering “tools” for action thereby distinguishing it from its coaching cousin.

The similarities between both are important to note:

• All individuals who work with a coach or a therapist are interested in a “better” future
• Therapy and Coaching offer skills and possibilities for that future – the methodologies employed are different
• The quality of the relationship is the essential mechanism by which change is effected
• Self awareness on the part of the coach and therapist is essential for successful work with clients
• Unconditional positive regard, empathy and a person-centred approach are key to both approaches

While I apply psychodynamic thinking to my coaching relationships the key difference is about the permission sought to inquire into a client’s personal story and how that information is worked with in the coaching relationship. There are times when it is helpful to know more about family of origin – it may help to understand a dynamic being played out in organisational contexts. But unless a coach is trained to work with this material they run the risk of opening up emotional responses that may be difficult to contain. It’s also essential to know when to refer a coaching client to a therapist. Very often this is when a repeating pattern of unhelpful behaviour, rooted in unresolved personal relationships in the past, is unhelpful in the present.

Clients are not referred (self or other) to a coach because of an academic difficulty – it’s generally a behavioural one and as such a coach needs to meet a client in all their humanity.

As a therapist and a coach I bring distinctive skills to the client relationship that are based on my psychodynamic training and which allow me to:

• Meet a client in an authentic person-to-person encounter.
• Process my own feelings in the coaching relationship and to use them as constructive interventions.
• Spot a client who may need a therapeutic relationship and to refer on appropriately.
• Translate psychodynamic insights into powerful work related interventions that impact on work performance and behaviour.

The Management/Leadership Conversation

I spent part of this morning with a colleague who wanted some feedback on a presentation he is giving to a leadership development organisation. He’s been short listed for inclusion in an innovative programme and part of the selection process involves the inevitable power point presentation on why he’s the best candidate for the limited spaces.

As he began to run through his presentation I began to think about the hundreds and thousands of books and blogs that have been written about leadership. It has been elevated to a science and I for one, feel overwhelmed at times by my apparent lack of knowledge and qualifications.
That feeling of being overwhelmed by detail turned out to be useful in our subsequent conversation.

I know this man’s work. I know he’s a leader in his field. Why then was I drowning in the detail of his presentation? The one thing leaders need is followers and I couldn’t follow (literally and metaphorically) him. I realised that he was demonstrating his ability to manage rather than his capacity to lead. He also realised that he was defending rather than demonstrating and once we got our heads around the detail we threw it out and started again.

Leaders are managers with vision. I don’t need to know a leader can manage - I want to take that bit for granted. What I want from a leader is a demonstration of why I should follow and an invitation to join them. In order to follow I need to know “why” and once we’ve worked out the “why” I want to know what the implications are. Lots of people can manage, but leaders do things in their own inimitable way. Too many “leaders” are really managers who are preoccupied with the “how” and the “what”.

Our conversation then focussed on why this man is passionate about what he does. We talked about his vision of the world when he creates the opportunity to unleash that passion. We talked about the changes that unleashing brings about. His energy level came rising up. I couldn’t not be engaged by his enthusiasm and interest. He stopped trying to defend doing what he does and began to invite me into the world as he sees it.

He’s already a leader – it’s just he didn’t know how to tap into that bit of him because he was overwhelmed by the detail of project managing his career and his work. I never fail to be amazed by how much we already know if only we’d take the time to trust ourselves. When you find the right conversation, it all makes sense.

This great graphic is from a post over at Headrush, a blog that's become a daily read for me.

The Fetish of Change

Johnnie Moore has an interesting post on the Fetish of Change where he references a fascinating article by Christopher Grey

Grey’s article is a

critique of the current orthodoxy that the world is changing at an ever faster rate, that organizations must adapt to this change in order to survive, and that change management techniques enable organizations to do this. There is no basis to evaluate the proposition that thewe face unprecedented rates of change, and change is not something to which organizations must respond, but is instead an outcome of organizational actions. Change management initiatives are largely failures, and the usual explanations for these failures are inadequate.

He goes on to talk about change management in these terms:

change management rests upon the conceit that it is possible systematically to control social and organisational relations, a conceit shared by the social sciences in general

The article is a great read and Johnnie offers his own take on the change process at the end with which I completely agree.

too often, conversations about change treat it as something done to other people at another time; as something that people must be talked into.

I’d offer an additional perspective which is that (a) we are always resistant to change and (b) we are always changing. So many managers and leaders I work with are grappling with having to implement or deal with the fallout from change. They enter into the relationship feeling scared, utterly inadequate and hiding in their academic understanding of the “value” of change. I have moments when I genuinely think they’ve been brainwashed into believing that it should be simple and straightforward. Which of course it’s not. How could it be when we are grappling with that paradox?

Ask anyone about the value of an academic approach to fitness, weight loss, saving for a rainy day and see how effective it is to talk at people about something they are willingly losing or giving up by not doing things the “new” way. It simply doesn’t work. Most of the time people are scared about what they are losing – sense of self, dignity, finance, position etc…our identity is completely challenged by change processes and yet…

We all change

• we recover from relationships that don’t work
• We learn to move on from the death of significant others
• We adapt to being in relationships with others where our sense of self has to evolve and accommodate difference
• We deal with our children leaving home

And somehow, at the end of it all we survive. Change processes that tap into what we already know about change, our capacity for both hating and managing together with our ability to survive and move on are the most meaningful change interventions I have seen work. I’m privileged to have been part of designing some of those processes also and like Johnnie I believe in the power of open spaces (using that technology and others) for genuine and meaningful connections between people. Safe places that address and manage power relationships are they only ways to effective real change in my humble opinion.

Ambivalence in Amsterdam

I'm currently in Amsterdam where I'll be attending a symposium at the end of the week.  I decided to take a few days off to spend a little time being a tourist and I can safely say right now I'm overwhelmed by ambivalence.  This morning as I sat in the garden of the magnificent turn of the (20th) century canal house that I'm staying in, I couldn't say I wanted to move out of my seat to experience all the goodies that the city has to offer. There's a little voice in my head suggesting that this isn't quite what a holiday in Amsterdam has to offer and wouldn't I be better off getting my act together, my walking shoes on, guide book in hand and getting out and about.

I'm not normally stricken by ambivalence, so of course I'm curious about what's going on and it occurred to me that I'm overwhelmed by the choices on offer....There's simply too much to choose from and I don't feel adequately equipped to make the right choice so "hiding" in the back garden seems to me, right now to be the most adequate choice I can make.

It reminds me of working with a coaching client recently who, likewise, was faced with a number of (far more important, it has to be said) choices in her work environment.  No matter what kind of work we did together - she kept presenting me with her ambivalence.  Nothing was good enough so nothing was acted upon.

After a while I realised (as I did with myself a few hours ago) that ambivalence is the choice not to choose and in circumstances where people are overwhelmed by the choices available, choosing not to choose is the right response.  So when we're faced with clients or colleagues who seem to be "stalling" on making a decision there are times when it's appropriate to inquire into how challenged they may be by the projected outcomes of their decisions.  In my case I'm faced with "wasting my time in Amsterdam" by choosing the absolute "wrong" way to spend my time or choosing to re-frame the situation as doing myself a favour by sipping another glass of white wine in the garden and refusing to choose how to spend the time outside the front door.

Choosing not to choose is sometimes the last recourse of perfectionists who fear making the wrong choice and having to deal with the attendant fall out.  Those of us who are recovering perfectionists re-frame the situation as "any choice is good enough" and we then go to the Rembradt exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, followed by some retail therapy.  Oh that life were filled with choices that are that taxing! 

It's not helpful to be helpful

One of the lessons I learnt from working as a therapist (and something that this post from The Relaxed Therapist prompted me to think about again) is that it isn't always helpful to be helpful. It's a lesson I have taken into other areas of my work life also. And before you say "Huh?" let me explain.

When a client demands my attention - be that a reasonable or an unreasonable demand I have to ask myself the question - who's pressure is this? and "what is the request contained in the demand?" Sometimes a client can't tolerate an unbearable pressure emanating from without and will seek ways to alleviate that pressure by passing it on to me. I've seen this quite a bit in my coaching practice. The request contained within a demand for a shorter/longer/revised meeting is generally "make what is intolerable go away". Now there are times when it may be appropriate to step in and take action. But more often than not "helping" in this instance isn't helping my client address his or her need to acquiesce to their pressure. If I jump and say "yes of course" then the pressure is just passed down the line and learning leaves with it.

It's really important to hold a boundary when a client is pushing against it. This isn't the same as saying "no" but it's more to do with hovering on the edge of the boundary and trying to use it as a learning experience. Here's what I've learned about being helpful:

1. Any request for help from a client that comes with a hidden tinge of pressure should be questioned. The chances are they may be unable to tolerate their own pressure and want you to alleviate it for them.


2. Holding the boundary between an immediate "yes"and an immediate "no" is a very uncomfortable place to be. The chances are that uncomfortableness is the same feeling a client wants to get rid of.


3. Checking in with our own need to "help" from time to time is a useful way to stay on top of unconsciously colluding with clients.


4. When we feel the uncomfortable urge to "help" ask yourself - "what am I trying to get rid of here" the chances are - it's the same thing that the client wants to get rid of.


5. If you can tolerate the pressure a client brings to your relationship then you can teach a client how to make sense of their own pressure instead of removing what may be a powerful symptom of a more profound issue.

Great Questions

I came across Come Gather Round (via Management Craft) where there's a great post about questions (and you know me and my questions by now!). In it Dirk Richards says

What is the most significant question that you have ever been asked, or have ever asked yourself? My quest for great questions continues. These are questions that may be life-changing because they somehow address the soul. I am unsure what the exact criteria are for inclusion on my list. For now I can only say, “I know it when I see it.”

Here are the questions that so far have met my fuzzy and entirely subjective criteria:

Is my genius on pupose?

What kind of me is my work creating?

For what has my life been preparing me?

Am I making good use of my life?

Who needs my gift now?

The 3 month review

It's just over three months since I started the interactions blog and last week I penned the last entry in a personal blog I've been writing for three years so it's about time for some review and reflection I think. I suspect that the things I've learned from blogging (reading, writing and commenting) are lessons that will continue to stand me well in all areas of life. But for now, here's what I think I've learned so far:

Find your voice - It takes time to find your voice. It took me the guts of a year to settle into the personal blog - I'd experimented with all kinds of ways of telling my stories and decided at the end of it all that I was writing for myself and if someone else found me interesting then they would listen in and chat back. I'm still struggling with this space in that regard. I guess it's a bit like starting a new job - you know where the desk and water cooler are but you have to sit it out a bit to find out when and where to make a contribution!

Stay connected - I realised that at the end of three years with the personal blog I had said what I wanted to say and I didn't want to continue filling in blanks on a web space just because that's what I'd always done. It was a tough decision to make but ultimately the right one. Likewise with this space - I'll write when the muse strikes and if I find that I've nothing more to say then I'll re-invent myself or move on.

Talking to yourself is a good thing - that's effectively what I did on the personal blog and I guess to a certain extent what I'm doing here. It'll take a while to build a readership (and I'm delighted to say that's growing so thank you to the faithful regulars who stop by). But if I'm not interested in what I'm writing about - how can I expect anyone else to be?

Be yourself - this is connected to all of the others but it's particularly relevant in the world of business blogging. I'm very conscious of audience in this space...much more than I was while writing a personal blog. What happens if I screw up royally in public here? How the heck can you hide? And of course this is precisely why I started a business blog - so I can actually be and show myself (Believe me I have the suit and formidable glasses for the other occasions as well!).

It's all about the space between - regardless of whether I'm consulting, training, coaching, having lunch or reading the newspaper - life happens in the spaces between people and blogging is my way of creating a mechanism for more in-between spaces. For now I'll stuggle on with the other stuff but every time someone comments or takes up something I've said in another forum or offers me the opportunity to do that here I count my blessings.

So that's the current list of learnings...continually being added to of course but not a bad way to start the second trimester of business blogging?

Is the ability to dream a pre-requisite for coaching?

The disclaimer at the beginning of this piece is that I coach – I work primarily with people in business contexts, I have also worked with people in a personal capacity and as a psychotherapist, I’ve seen another side of what I’m about to write about.

So many coaching services are predicated on helping people achieve their dreams – be they wild, moderate or down right sensible. There are lots of approaches, tricks, methodologies etc – but at the end of the day it’s largely about one thing – achieving the dream. I’m sceptical…and the reason I’m sceptical is that many, many people don’t know how to dream. And if you don’t know how to dream – how can a coach or a strategist be of use to you? How can you progress your life if all around you you are getting two messages (1) You are responsible for the choices you make (2) You can make a dream come true –if you have one, that is.

I grew up not knowing how to dream. In my case it was the result of living in a household where one parent suffered from depression. My survival mechanism and what I learned early on was that to dream meant disappointment so it was better to modify that disappointment by not dreaming – therefore I could be in control of what was going on around me. And it worked very well for me. Until I realised that all around me people were achieving, and targeting, and dreaming and promoting and getting help with progressing themselves – I simply didn’t know how to step into that world. I hired a coach at one point who simply tried to bully me through what he thought was my resistance – but I simply didn’t understand how to take that next step and he didn’t have the skills to help me. So I get it when people say they don’t know how to dream.

The desire and expectation cycle looks something like this. When there’s a depressed atmosphere (and this doesn’t have to relate to clinical depression it can be related to a “glass half full” kind of position) there’s a modification of expectation (like I outlined above). It’s simply pointless to want so you have to make alternative arrangements. Then there’s a reluctance to dream anything at all because…well, you never really know if this is going to fall through again. This leads to an ongoing absence of desire – people become self contained and can sometimes end up with a depressed or glass half empty sensibility themselves (thankfully, in my case I avoided this!). Possibilities become limited – have you met those people who no matter how often you make a suggestion can come back with a “that’s not good enough” answer? And as a result you learn that there is no point in dreaming and to live without desire. Now that’s a pretty bleak picture and a cycle like this can be broken but it means a going back to basics approach and not a “here’s an action plan” approach. In many cases people feel guilty for desiring – because they feel they “shouldn’t”.

Helping people dream means giving people permission to “live”; to “succeed”; to “stand out” and ultimately to rediscover who they were before they started to put someone else’s emotional welfare before their own. In business contexts it’s working with underachievers; the anxious and neurotic; the worriers; the perfectionists - holding a space for them while they work out how to connect with their inner sense of “good enough”. It’s poignant and very meaningful work and each time I meet someone who’s confounded by trying to dream someone else’s dream I smile because I know what that feels like and I know how much work it takes to connect. So I don’t offer magical solutions to achieving goals in the absence of inquiring into how it might be that my clients don’t know to dream. It’s only starting from that point that we can move forward together.

Roping clients in

Thankfully we have a great working relationship so I moved into coach mode (with her permission) and we looked at what the gaps and the attention to outcomes was about. A complex political environment, uncertainty about her own position, a distrust of how well the consultation process we had designed was going etc all conspired to make her cautious about trusting her own and my instincts and processes for getting the outcome in the end. The process we designed was based on my rules for dynamic participation and was effectively about listening to the conversations with participants and modifying our consulting approach in response – allowing the process to unfold organically if you will. Cathy talks about this and quotes a section from Getting Real which really speaks to me about the value of holding back:

It's a Problem When It's a Problem
"Don't waste time on problems you don't have yet. Do you really need to worry about scaling to 100,000 users today...?"

Just Wing It
"Bottom Line: Make decisions just in time, when you have access to the real information you need."
"Real things lead to real reactions. And that's how you get to the truth."

Work in iterations
"Let the app grow and speak to you. Let it morph and evolve. Instead of banking on getting everything right upfront, the iterative process lets you continue to make informed decisions as you go along. The result is real feedback and real guidance..."

Photo credit

This post needs a snappy headline

I have discovered in my travels through cyberspace that my blog is breaking all of the rules…I don’t offer “ultimate” solutions; “rules” for getting things done right (apart from this entry which in fact happens to be they way I do work with groups); I can’t come up with too many bullet pointed “top tips” entries and I rarely spend enough time trying to compose sure fire headlines that work. Is this rush to certainty purely an American phenomenon? I say this because I see stark differences between the ways in which many American and European business bloggers approach their craft. We appear to be less comfortable offering certainty on this side of the pond – it’s a bit more conversational, less hard sell. What happens when you are so used to being offered the ultimate, no holds barred, sure fire, guaranteed solution to every problem? Do you become immune? What does the more conversational – let’s co-create something together approaches evoke? Do we look touchy-feely in a world that demands certainty? I don’t know….I have found it interesting to explore various voices on this blog but ultimately I don’t believe in certainty. I don’t believe there’s a 10 step plan to achieving anything you want to achieve that is simple to execute and follows in a logical progression.

The bit that is always missing in these foul-proof plans is emotion. Emotion is a no go area in business for a good reason – it’s the thing that makes or breaks plans. Our decisions, while they may look on the surface to be rational and planned are fuelled, contextualised and informed by emotion and there’s no 10 step bullet pointed approach to putting manners on how we feel. It requires work, it requires bespoke interventions; it requires listening and storytelling, it requires expertise; it requires process, it requires courage. That’s if you want the solutions to stick.

If emotion didn’t matter then we’d all be fit, slim, non-smoking, world travelling, happy camper workers and family people with not a care in the world and a bullet pointed map to get us there. Does that sound like anyone you know?

I don’t live in a bite sized world and while I would love to believe that there’s a bullet pointed list out there with my name on it I simply don’t buy it….My world is richer, more complex, operates on myriad levels, attends to conscious and unconscious processes, is rational as well as emotional. I assume the worlds of my clients are equally sophisticated. And yes, I do get results and yes I do get asked back to work with clients so something works about an approach that doesn't offer false hope.

So now I need to go away and write a snappy headline for this post that will get me noticed ..any ideas?

Is a coach coachable?

Over at the Fast Company Michael Docherty is looking for a coach and he's facing some challenges that are ringing bells for me because I've been thinking in the last few months that perhaps I need to work with a coach myself but I keep procrastinating - Is a coach coachable?

So it was with great apprehension that I've just undertaken my personal search for a 'business coach' to help me regain focus and take my own business to a higher level....Yet while I've faced a lot of challenges in my career (including some corporate business turnaround experience), this time has been different. I've personalized it, become so obsessed with it that I've become fearful of the inevitable failures along the way. I've let my perfectionism get the better of me and it's slowed me down even more. So, that's why I'm willing to give this business coaching thing a try. And besides, I'm the CEO, so if I'm not coachable, I still don't have to fire myself (but maybe the coach will have a different opinion).

First interview: a sympathetic ear, a clinical background and philosophy of purpose-driven life (vs. goal-driven life). All in all sounds like a good fit, reasonably coherent and practical. But $3600 for 3 months of weekly 45 minute phone calls?? Ouch.

Second interview: Here's a walking example of 'if you can't do, coach'. Proud of the fact he's getting coached right now, and he's just back from a coaching conference. Ready to spew out all of the buzzwords and quick-fixes he just learned. Only $500/month, but no thanks.

Third interview: Scheduled a time, then moved it. Twice. Scolded me for by email for not confirming the final time (which I had). I re-sent my response. Sent me another note claiming to have found my original, but not acknowledging my re-sent note. Now hasn't responded with the time. I haven't heard the fees yet, but perhaps I can bartar for the help she needs in client management and time management. No thanks.

Consulting to Consultants

I met up with a consultant colleague of mine last week for lunch. We were discussing the dilemmas presented by the initial client encounter and the (sometimes) "impossible" tasks we are asked to perform. In his case he'd been asked to solve a dilemma he knew, and they knew, couldn't be solved. He seemed a bit stressed out by the impossible task and wasn't sure how he was going to proceed.

We kicked around the dilemma for a while until I asked him - what's your dilemma telling you about the client, the client's system and their dilemma? That seemed to be a lightbulb moment for him becuse his experience of dealing with them, was in fact, their own experience transferred on to him. While I'm glad the conversation was useful for my colleage it did get me thinking (apropos a previous post on whether coaches are coachable) as to whether consultants are consultable to (am I still speaking English??). I would love to run some workshops for Consultants - particularly those working on their own, where we could explore our innate intelligence and how working with our emotional reactions to clients tells us more than we imagine. I' not sure of the format right now - online? offline? Or whether consultants would be interested in this kind of intervention. I would love some feedback from those of you who work on your own as to how you reflect on your practice? and whether you would be interested in a workshop designed to help you capitalise on your emotional intelligence about clients?

Barbara Ehrenreich and the cult of coaching

One of my holiday reads was Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch in which she spends a year researching America's working poor. She goes undercover as a white collar worker looking for a job and one of the first chapters in her book is about her search for a career coach - it makes for shocking reading.

Fortunately there are about 10,000 people eager to assist me - "career coaches" - who, according to the coaching websites, can help you discover your true occupational "passion" retool your resumé, and hold your hand at every step along the way.

She meets with a variety of coaches offering watered down counselling and new age religion. Others are in need of severe coaching themselves; one in particular invites her to "design me as your best coach". They are a sorry bunch and most of them seem to have stepped into coaching as a way of avoiding the very thing that Ehrenreich is looking for - a job.

Not all of us who coach are as disconnected from the real world as the people Ehrenreich met but I've met a few dodgy practitioners in my day (both as client and peer). No amount of trickery, circle of life drawings or re-engineered Ennegram frameworks can compensate for expertise about human systems and a real idea of how the world of work is constituted. Most of the people Ehrenreich met seemed to be afraid of developing a working alliance with their clients, more interested in peddling their own view of how the world should be rather than listening to what their clients needed. A working alliance is an absolute necessity for any kind of successful coaching - if it doesn't exist then how can a coach or therapist or consultant say the challenging things at the right time in order to help a client?

I wonder about the amount of "coach training" out there - it seems to me that the people making money out of coaching are the ones running training courses. I'm unsure as to whether the coaching "industry" has a long term future - populated as it is by so many people who turn to the profession as a way of reinventing themselves and in the absence of any real kind of regulation. (There's a touch of locking the door after the horse has bolted about most accreditation schemes I've examined and I'm sceptical of any accreditation scheme that can accredit people who have "trained" over and above people who have practised) - but that's a rant for another day.

More coaching kicking from the Washington Times

More depressing coverage on coaching from the Washington Times. The piece offers some tips for the newly elected Democrats.

Whoever wins, they're all going to need to find some way to work together, because nobody's going anywhere soon. They will need some kind of referee -- the sort of pragmatic, dark- suited creature you find gliding through the halls of massive American corporations. They'll need a workplace coach.

"I'd get them in the room and say, 'Okay, people, we've got a bad situation,' " says one of these workplace coaches, Douglas LaBier. " 'Let's take a step back.' "Imagine it: Nancy, Steny and Jack in what LaBier calls a "safe environment." We see a room with lots of couches. There might be some talk about common goals and "trust," LaBier says. There might be a little yelling. We imagine one of them might, in a fit of frustration, bite a corduroy pillow. This may sound fanciful, but consider that Fortune 500 types are sometimes reduced to this sort of thing. Just because one has a brisk, professional appearance does not mean one is immune from the uglier human emotions. Heather Bradley, who co-founded something called the Flourishing Company, said she once had a "four-hour discovery session" with two feuding top-level executives. (Workplace coaches are fond of a particular sort of lingo; they talk about "discovery sessions" and about "sub-optimizing" and being "change-agnostic.")

Ouch!

The Art of Possibility

I've been enjoying Creativity at Work and found this story there about the authors of The Art of Possibility. It's a nice variation on Appreciative Inquiry.

Ben Zander, conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, was faced with the same problem every year for 25 years: Teaching students who were in such a chronic state of anxiety over the measurement of their performance, they were reluctant to take creative risks. One night, he sat down with his partner Roz Stone Zander, a therapist, to try to find a solution. They decided the best approach would be to give everyone an A, at the beginning of the course. The A was not intended as a way to measure someone's performance against standards, but as an instrument to open them up to new possibilities.

This didn’t mean students could slack off for the rest of the semester. Students were required to write a letter that began with “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…” and they had to describe in as much detail as possible, how they came to achieve this “extraordinary grade.”

In writing their letters, Zander said students must “place themselves in the future, looking back, and report on all the insights they acquired and the milestones they attained during the year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past. Everything must be written in the past tense. Phrases such as ‘I hope,’ ‘I intend,’ or ‘I will’ must not appear.”

Zander asserts “the A is an invention that creates possibilities for both mentor and student, manager and employee, or for any human interaction.” The A allows teams to accomplish what is possible, and reduces “the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development.”

Zander doesn’t say what happens to the A when his students don’t pull their weight. His point here is to help people we work with to remove the barriers that block achievement--and to embrace the mindset of giving an A, by letting go of rigid mindsets that keep people pegged.

Zander applied this kind of thinking to his conducting and it transformed him from being a dictator, to an orchestrator of collaboration. This approach opened the door for musicians to speak more freely with him about their concerns -- about the way a piece of music ought to be played, for example, and he discovered that "the player who looks the least engaged may be the most committed member of the group." This new openness in communication had a huge effect on the morale of the orchestra, improving the performance of both conductor and players.

Edit: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander will be at the Burren Leadership Forum on 21 and 22 July 2007.

Wishful Thinking

I've just come across a superb blog from Mark McGuinness called Wishful Thinking. Mark coaches creative professionals and his blog is a fabulous resource of articles, posts and insightful thinking about management in the creative industries. Mark is undertaking a Masters Degree and he has posted a lot of his research material (interviews etc) here and it's a very generous resource waiting to be tapped.

I particularly liked this quote from Mark about why he works with creative professionals:

So if the special “creative person” is a myth, why do I focus on working with creatives? Having worked with professional artists and creatives for over 10 years, as well as with many other types of client, I would say there are basically three differences between them and many other people.

1. They think of themselves as “creative”. I’ve come across many people who are perfectly capable of coming up with original ideas - but who keep blocking themselves by saying “I’m not creative”. Even when it is pointed out to them that they have done creative things, they resist the label, and clearly feel uncomfortable with it. The “creatives” on the other hand, are quite happy to think of themselves as creative, and don’t create this kind of internal obstacle to their natural creativity.

2. They love doing creative work. Because they enjoy creative work more than most people, they spend more time doing it. Which means they get better at it. Which means they enjoy it more. Which means they do more of it… and so on. This is not to say they don’t enjoy money, status, recognition or other rewards, but these are not as important to them as the pleasure of creativity itself.

3. They put themselves in an environment where creativity is encouraged. I once ran a seminar and set a group of managers the task of finding the “second right answer” to a question (based on Roger von Oech’s excellent creativity book A Whack on the Side of the Head). A couple of minutes into the activity, I noticed they were looking very uncomfortable. When I asked them what was wrong, they said it felt very unsafe, as they were constantly told by senior management that mistakes were unacceptable and they had to get things “right”. No wonder their creativity was inhibited! Creative types on the other hand, gravitate to situations where creativity is not only encouraged but expected of them - art schools, ad agencies, design studios, artists’ quarters, writer’s colonies, film sets and ‘clusters’ of creative businesses. By surrounding themselves with others engaged in creative work, they immerse themselves in the latest ideas and developments in their field - and some of that creativity rubs off.

These three factors help them develop their raw creative talent into accomplished skills. This is not to deny that some of us are naturally “gifted” with more talent than others, but this is a matter of degree rather than kind - and talent is nothing unless you put it to work.

I plan on being a regular over there..

On coaching and counselling..

Over at Wishful Thinking Mark is pointing out the differences as he sees them between Coaching and Counselling. He's making the traditional distinctions but I would take issue about the assumptions on which they are based and have posted here about this difference before (I’ll repeat some of it in this post). Mark says:

Counselling and therapy deal with personal problems - Coaching addresses workplace performance.

The idea that our personal and professional lives are separate and distinctive is not something I agree with. Organisations don't exist - they are networks of human relationships and as such are emotional and emotion generating environments. We don't come to work and leave our personal selves at the door and I don't know about you - but I have rarely heard someone come home from work talking about "the bottom line" - if they do they are expressing their feelings about the bottom line. Workplace performance is interconnected with personal issues and problems and vice versa. When I am coaching I am always observing why someone brings this problem (personal and professional) to me at this time. The permission I seek to inquire, and the level at which I work is what differentiates coaching from counselling and psychotherapy.

Counselling begins with a problem - Coaching can begin with a goal or aspiration

and

Counselling is sought by people having difficulties - Coaching is used by high achievers as much as beginners or people who are stuck.

People can often come to counselling or therapy with a goal that is framed as a problem. Nobody I have ever worked with has come to therapy to purely talk about problems - they are there to understand and resolve that problem. I have also worked with people who come to counselling and therapy to gain a better understanding of themselves - not just when a problem manifests. And I have also worked with coaching clients who have come and been referred because there is a problem with their workplace performance, so this distinction doesn't stack up for me.

Many (but not all) forms of Counselling focus on the past and the origins of problems - Coaching focuses on the future and developing a workable solution.

Many forms of counselling and therapy seek to understand the past as it impacts on the present. It's essential (in my view) to understand transference - living the past in the present - if you are going to change the future. You can't come up with a 10 point plan and expect it to be implemented overnight if you don't understand what is driving the behaviour in the first place. If this were doable then we'd all be rational only entities with no bad habits.

Mark's differences are the standard ones I have seen when coaches want to differentiate themselves from therapists and it speaks to me of the anxiety many coaches have about the training therapists undergo to understand the unconscious and how that impacts on the present behaviour both in and out of the workplace.

The similarities between both are important to note:

• All individuals who work with a coach or a therapist are interested in a “better” future

• Therapy and Coaching offer skills and possibilities for that future – the methodologies employed are different

• The quality of the relationship is the essential mechanism by which change is effected

• Self awareness on the part of the coach and therapist is essential for successful work with clients

• Unconditional positive regard, empathy and a person-centred approach are key to both approaches

While I apply psychodynamic thinking to my coaching relationships the key difference is about the permission sought to inquire into a client’s personal story and how that information is worked with in the coaching relationship. There are times when it is helpful to know more about family of origin – it may help to understand a dynamic being played out in organisational contexts. But unless a coach is trained to work with this material they run the risk of opening up emotional responses that may be difficult to contain. It’s also essential to know when to refer a coaching client to a therapist. Very often this is when a repeating pattern of unhelpful behaviour, rooted in unresolved personal relationships in the past, is unhelpful in the present.

As a therapist and a coach I bring distinctive skills to the client relationship that are based on my psychodynamic training and which allow me to:

• Meet a client in an authentic person-to-person encounter.

• Process my own feelings in the coaching relationship and to use them as constructive interventions.

• Spot a client who may need a therapeutic relationship and to refer on appropriately.

• Translate psychodynamic insights into powerful work related interventions that impact on work performance and behaviour.

Organisational Interventionists

Over at Disorganizational Behaviour Travis has an interesting post about interventions:

One of my favorite shows on TV is called "Intervention" on A&E, which is about the struggles of people dealing with addiction. On the show, families stage interventions with the addicted member of the family in order to get them to seek help and change their ways. One of the principles that is encouraged is not only that the person is willing to change and get help, the family needs to come together in order for the change to work.

I haven't seen this particular programme on this side of the pond but am familiar with the concept - Travis applies the thinking to organisational change processes and suggests that there needs to be a healthy "family" and a desire for change if this process is to work effectively in organisations. He goes on to say:

The dynamic of the workplace, whether it be a team, group, division, or whole organization, has to be in a healthy state for the organization to undergo serious and permanent organization change. It is almost a paradox that in order for change to be successful, there must be some level of stability in terms of relationships, communication and culture before the instability of change takes place.

This got me thinking about the way in which interventionists are used - the 3Cs Counsellors, Consultants and Coaches. Very often (not always) the 3Cs are called in when an individual is perceived to be "unhealthy"...the 3Cs are marshalled in the service of keeping the organisation healthy by splitting off the unhealthy individual to be made more healthy externally and reimported once s/he is sorted out. To take Travis's example above (and addiction is a great example of a systemic approach) there are other questions to be asked about what work the individual does on behalf of the system and how the system itself contributes to and informs how the individual behaves within it. Increasingly I am working with client organisations to feed back into the system the dynamics that emerge within the coaching relationship and this is having significant impacts. The contract with the individual respects the content of the discussion but also makes space for the overall themes to be explored in the context of the whole system and as such is fed back as organisational intelligence.

The power of interpretation

I'm taking the opportunity here in New York to catch up with some colleagues who practice in a similar way to myself (not a lot of us back in Ireland!). Over lunch this week I had a fascinating conversation with one colleague about how consultants (particularly those of us who are psychodynamically inclined) participate in listserves. The impulse if you're a psychodynamic consultant is to wonder about the question or dilemma rather than answer a question. Very often in business settings it's that ability to step back that generates interesting material - don't take the obvious for granted etc. But when a group of consultants gather on a listserve there is often more energy devoted to exploring the question rather than offering an answer.

This got me thinking about the power of interpretation. A consultant is given, and accepts tremendous power in organisational systems to interpret what others can't make sense of. How that interpretation is done can be a very creative endeavour - but ultimately it's the interpretation that a consultant is being hired to offer. The permission that is sought and received to interpret is a delicate negotiation. When a group of consultants gather in virtual space to converse it can be a different matter - the jump to interpret is somehow assumed rather than negotiated and this makes me rather uncomfortable because I think this needs to be made explicit. I may ask a question of you as a colleague but that's not the same as inviting you to interpret as a consultant.

Ultimately this is a boundary issue which arises all the time in work settings - am I interpreting from a coaching? counselling? consulting? perspective? Am I throwing my weight around to show how smart I am? Am I endeavouring to close down any difference in the discussion by using my interpretative authority to say it "as it is"?

The lunch time discussion offered so many interesting perspectives that I'll be ruminating over them for quite some time to come - but it has made me consider the explicit and not so explicit ways I negotiate with clients and colleagues and the assumption of authority which each brings.

Where does real power come from?

This is a reprint of a post I published on 25 May 2006 and I think it has a real resonance for many of us attending the Irish Business Women Conference in Mayo later this week the theme of which is Thinking bigger - what are we waiting for?

A number of Irish business people who blog will be attending the event including; Frank Fullard (co-founder of IBW and CEO of Mayo CEB); Finola Howard (co-founder of IBW and CEO of The Marketing Table); Keith Bohanna; Conn Ó Muíneacháin and GingerPixel

One of the central themes at the workshop I ran recently was the issue of self confidence and self worth. The room was full of bright and talented people and most spoke at some point during the day about the crippling plight of low self esteem and how, even with inputs from people like me and others, it gets in the way of taking action. Where this really emerged was around the issue of charging for work. Now this is something I have grappled with myself – how much is enough? How much is too much? And more importantly – how much is too little? All the market research in the world isn’t going to help if, at the end of the day, we don’t think we’re worth what we think we should be charging for what it is we have to offer.

I spent a lot of time during my training as a therapist grappling with this issue. How could you charge someone for being with them? Wasn’t that akin to prostitution in some way? And then, as a client, I would have gladly paid twice over for the insights I received along the way...so the paradox was very live for me about how we value worth.

I think the conclusions we came to were that if we are waiting for someone else to assign worth to us then we’ll be waiting for ever. In the inimitable words of Dr Phil “we teach people how to treat us” and I’m total agreement with him (even if he is cognitive behavioural and I’m not!)..but somewhere along the line we have to draw some boundaries around how we value ourselves and how, in turn, that is translated into value for a client, a customer or a commissioner. We need to communicate our value system first and hope to attract people with whom it resonates, or say “no” to people with whom it doesn’t. And all of that takes self confidence and courage.

Looking back over my coaching career in particular I’m struck by how much of the time I have spent with people has been around helping them take a step into the unknown…helping them to garner the courage to take just one step. So much of that work is acknowledging fear - and being scared (regardless of what word you use to describe it) is something that affects everyone. If we're not scared then that means we're happy with the status quo. Being scared means we're hovering on the edges of change and any kind of "next step" will take us out of that comfort zone.

If we can trust ourselves to manage ourselves instead of fretting about how someone else will see us, then that’s real empowerment…and real power comes from within, it is never awarded from without.

Faking it

Can you fake being personal?

In our rush to offer solutions to clients’ problems we often (too often in my opinion) eschew the personal and embrace the professional. We really don’t get the value of being “ourselves” because somewhere along the line we’ve learned that to be ourselves is to not be good enough. I’m of the firm belief that there are no differences. What there are – are boundaries. People hire people because after they’ve assured themselves that you have the skill set to do the job, they want to be in a relationship with someone they like, feel comfortable with and ultimately feel safe with. All of that requires a large degree of self awareness and an ability to manage boundaries. It also requires that we be ourselves. You can try faking being personal but it won't work. It never does.

I have a number of questions I ask myself when working with clients to make sure I’m “being myself”.

• What’s my emotional response to this client and to undertaking this assignment?
• Would there come a time in this relationship where I could share that understanding in the service of the relationship?
• Whose authority am I drawing on to make this client feel confident about working with me? My own? Or someone else’s?
• How do I feel about “not knowing” in the presence of this client?
• What is my motivation for working with this client? Money? Learning? Creativity? All three? something else? i.e. what's in this for me?

Those basic questions help me to keep connected to myself and more importantly, they ensure that I bring myself to the relationship. Tricks and tools are great and important sometimes, but if I’m not sure of what I’m feeling and when, I can’t reach for what I need in the service of my clients. Unlike the customer in the advertisement above, I want to feel personally connected to my clients and it’s only in that frame of mind I can grasp how best I can give them value for their money.

Just say "No"

I teach my clients how to to say “no”. Many are simply overwhelmed by the task of managing and leading to garner the resources to tell others that they are simply not available. So many managers I know feel guilty about saying “no”. I think it’s one of the most liberating words in the English language and used effectively it’s one of the most empowering.

We’re so conditioned in business to saying “yes” - to being available 24/7 to meet the client’s needs that saying “no” evokes anxiety and fear. But what does constantly saying “yes” set up?

• Exhausted and worn out executives
• Excessive demands from clients
• A never-good-enough culture
• Lousy boundaries

Saying “no” on the other hand fosters

• Empowered and sane executives
• Good boundaries
• Realistic expectations and deliverables

So saying "no" in this instance is really saying "yes" to something that's defined by healthy boundaries

Think for a moment about small children. At the age of 2 they discover the “no” word and apart from the frustration it causes, it’s a pivotal moment in a child’s life when they realise they are empowered to get what they want. It creates a negotiating position and forces parents to be more creative about their demands. “Pick your battles” is the advice from those who have been there before. And it’s wise advice. If you can’t use the word “no” then every demand and expectation assumes the same importance as every other. Using the “no” word judiciously invites others to choose what’s important and approach accordingly.

Good boundaries make good neighbours and I encourage my coaching clients to examine what they are setting up for themselves by constantly “being available”. Sometimes we have to take responsibility for the demands we place on ourselves before we look to those being awarded by others.

Technical Support - the personal touch

Ah yes, reminds me of many a technical lesson..

hat tip Conversatations

The Arts of Possibility

I've been enjoying Creativity at Work and found this story there about the authors of The Art of Possibility. It's a nice variation on Appreciative Inquiry. I've just bought the book and am looking forward to settling down with it one of these days.

Ben Zander, conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, was faced with the same problem every year for 25 years: Teaching students who were in such a chronic state of anxiety over the measurement of their performance, they were reluctant to take creative risks. One night, he sat down with his partner Roz Stone Zander, a therapist, to try to find a solution. They decided the best approach would be to give everyone an A, at the beginning of the course. The A was not intended as a way to measure someone's performance against standards, but as an instrument to open them up to new possibilities.

This didn’t mean students could slack off for the rest of the semester. Students were required to write a letter that began with “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…” and they had to describe in as much detail as possible, how they came to achieve this “extraordinary grade.”

In writing their letters, Zander said students must “place themselves in the future, looking back, and report on all the insights they acquired and the milestones they attained during the year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past. Everything must be written in the past tense. Phrases such as ‘I hope,’ ‘I intend,’ or ‘I will’ must not appear.”

Zander asserts “the A is an invention that creates possibilities for both mentor and student, manager and employee, or for any human interaction.” The A allows teams to accomplish what is possible, and reduces “the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development.”

Zander doesn’t say what happens to the A when his students don’t pull their weight. His point here is to help people we work with to remove the barriers that block achievement--and to embrace the mindset of giving an A, by letting go of rigid mindsets that keep people pegged.

Zander applied this kind of thinking to his conducting and it transformed him from being a dictator, to an orchestrator of collaboration. This approach opened the door for musicians to speak more freely with him about their concerns -- about the way a piece of music ought to be played, for example, and he discovered that "the player who looks the least engaged may be the most committed member of the group." This new openness in communication had a huge effect on the morale of the orchestra, improving the performance of both conductor and players.

Paying It Forward

Synchronicity is at work once again - Finola Howard is doing something I've been thinking about for a while - Paying it Forward. It's a simple idea - you do three good deeds for people unknown to you in return for each good deed done for you. Lots of people (many of them complete strangers) have gone out of their way to help me over the years whether it’s been in business, personal or blogging life and this is a nice way of saying thanks to them and offering something back to others who might benefit from some of my accumulated wisdom.

I’m offering free executive coaching sessions or consultation time on one day a month (starting on Friday 3 August) to anyone who wants a space to reflect on their role or on relationship management issues at work. The three hour-long sessions will be free of charge and your only commitment is to pay it forward to three people you don’t know after we've finished. We can work in person (in Dublin), via Skype or phone.

Finola is a marketing consultant based in Carlow and she is offering a free clinic on the third Friday of each month. If you have a marketing question, dilemma or issue, phone her on +353 59 9183206 and book in for one of the three hour-long slots. IT consultant Colm Whelan of Rockfield IT has also joined the movement and he can be reached at colm.whelan@rockfieldit.com (he’s based in Carlow also) and if anyone else is taken by the idea to sign up then let me know and we can start building a community of practitioners interested in paying it forward.

When showing up isn't enough

I spent a couple of days last week with a group of highly creative and artistic people assisting them think at a strategic level about their sector. Like many people in the arts they are passionate, committed, enthusiastic and are not afraid of moving between their personal and professional selves in the service of the task. One of the things I noticed from the outset was how long it took some people to “arrive” both physically and psychologically. Some were late for our sessions and others were on time but not on message. I guessed that many mobile phones were on vibrate or silent and not many had been switched off entirely. (As it turned out, I was right).

This was a really experienced group of practitioners who were interested in the dilemma I reflected back to them about being in the room. I wondered what was going on that made it challenging for people to be really connected in the task. We worked through those challenges and emerged at the end of our work with a manifesto of responsibilities each was willing to sign up to in order to work productively in the future. They recognised that there was important information in not turning the phones off and being psychologically “outside the room”.

Physically “showing up” isn’t enough. The key question is – are you present? Being present requires a psychological and spiritual connection to the work that is happening in the moment and to the people with whom you are working. It requires intimacy and connection and it also means dealing with the fear of being connected. Being connected brings responsibilities and commitments and if we’ve left the phone on or are making ourselves available somewhere else it means our sense of commitment is also somewhere else. Agreements about tasks and decisions will then fail to deliver because that bullet pointed list may be a way of avoiding something deeper.

There was a time at the early stages in my consulting career when this kind of dilemma would have bothered me and I would have tried to “fix it”. These days I see it as a rich opportunity to introduce more of the shadow into the room – if people are willing to have their “resistance” seen then it’s a clue that the time may be right to have a look at what’s important about that resistance.. So it’s not only the participants who need to show up, it’s also the consultant or facilitator who needs to pay attention to what’s actually going on in front of them rather than what they think should be going on. In my own case, the less attention I pay to the detail of the discussion and the more I pay to the context and tone of the discussion the better I am able to work between the levels to create a space where everyone can be present. I can’t make them show up but I can wonder out loud about the quality of presence.

The Problem is the Solution

Every problem is a solution to a set of circumstances – so you could say that the problem is both the problem and the solution.

One of the things I try to do with clients is help them “appreciate” the problem they are having. No, that’s not some new age methodology that doesn’t deal with the issues. It’s more a case of asking them – is there any way in which this problem has truth to it? Most particularly if it’s a problem person we’re talking about. I try to encourage my clients to look at the “job” this person is doing for the organisation first before we talk about what to do about it.

Here are some examples of the work problem people have done in organisations I have been invited to consult to.

• A technical director in an engineering company made the working life of the sales department “hell” (their words) by refusing to co-operate with them. He withheld his staff, demanded more appropriate briefing, took the sales requests back to his department and sat on them for days holding up the closing of business. When we actually looked at what was going on here, this technical director was seen to be protecting his division and team from an increasing set of demands by all departments that were impossible for his technical team to meet. The technical director was, in fact, offering leadership to his team by protecting them from being overwhelmed by demand. By helping the sales team appreciate the problem they were able to articulate the real problem which was an unrealistic set of sales targets that had been imposed by senior management on both the sales and technical teams and not negotiated with them.
• The manager of a cultural organisation was increasingly vilified by her board of directors as being “useless” and having “terrible” communication skills. The board never knew what was going on and more to the point this manager wouldn’t take their calls when they phoned. On closer examination it emerged that the way of communicating in this company was informal. The 10 directors on the board would frequently phone the manager at all hours of the day and night sometimes requesting the same information. The manager was in 10 different relationships and each director was comparing notes with the other. It was a fact that she was “useless” and had “terrible” communication skills when you looked at it from this perspective – who wouldn’t be? The organisation had transitioned being a voluntary organisation to a company limited by guarantee with a board of directors. While they had hired a professional manager, the board themselves were still operating like a voluntary group – which meant that the company business was done informally and out of traditional business hours. The director was trying to run the business during the business day and the directors hadn’t settled in to their new roles. By helping them look at the “problem” as the “solution” they were able to openly negotiate a way of working that resolved the tension and achieve what they really wanted.

More often than not, problem people are articulating something in organisational life that others refuse to do. When you’re on your own you sometimes have to shout louder to make yourself heard – the louder you shout, the more problematic you are and the more isolated you become. “Problem” people can emerge for lots of reasons and the person who carries this role may have a personal back story that makes them the perfect candidate for the job. A person’s back story may also be where the intervention is required so knowing when to refer someone on for more personal work is a key part of any consulting in this area. The working environment and context for the issue is of course an essential part of the story as well.

Building a good working alliance with a client is essential if we are going to have that kind of conversation. Organisations have an unconscious life. Because it’s unconscious it’s unseen and difficult and very often threatening to look at and my clients have to trust in my skill that I have some idea of what I’m talking about. But if you can have an appreciative relationship with the problem, then that’s a really great place to start the conversation.

dis-stress management

I haven't had a lot of time to blog this week but one thing that's going around in my mind is "stress" management and how that actually works? I'm thinking that before you get there you may need to engage in some "dis-stress" management which is really what people present with and then maybe you get to "de-stress" management....But "stress" management..I don't know...I don't think I've ever been useful helping anyone to manage stress...live with it yes, manage it? I don't know...any thoughts anyone?

Talking about what we do?

Johnnie's asking some great questions this week. On Friday he asked:

Obviously, this is too simplistic.

But I have this question for anyone who's got some process to manage human beings in organisations. You know the sort of thing... a process to set and manage coaching; a format for efficient meetings; a form for 360 feedback, an assessment "tool" for interviews.

Does this process bear any resemblance to how you actually relate, in your own life, to anyone whom you love? (eg how you chose your spouse, how you treat your children etc etc)

And if not, why not?

And he followed it up today with:

I think a lot of organisations create complicated processes in an effort to systematise human relationships. These processes generate what a friend calls a "corporate nod", the kind of assent that really means "yeah, I'll play along" and not "yes, I love that idea".

Of course, any organisation needs its procedures but there seems to be an impulse to create too many of them, and too complicated. A personal peeve of mine are "evaluation forms" at the end of events. These seem to encourage an evaluative rather than participative mindset - where people are invited to assess whether it "worked" (on a 5 point scale) instead of engaging live in making it work at the time.

One fine day, I'll announce that I won't read those feedback forms - to emphasise how much more valuable it is to get live engagement from people taking risks to make things work in the here and now. Probably on the same day I'll kick off a creative thinking meeting by saying, "Could we all embrace the possibility that nothing useful may come of this meeting? That way, we can all stop trying to control what happens, relax and probably create an atmosphere that's actually more likely to see something useful emerge."

The comment stream is just as interesting and to the latter one I added the following:

I'm with you on the evaluation forms for all of the reasons you outline, and because they take no account of the responsibility people have to participate or not - as if it is all in the hands of the facilitator/trainer to produce the goods. However those of us who are process consultants/facilitators have to be able to talk about what we do in ways other than just 'trust me' which I see a lot of consultants reverting to in the absence of something more robust...I am thinking out loud as I write this but there has to be something in between 'trust me' and '10 sure fired ways to control anything that moves so you can guarantee certainty' kind of approaches...

I've been having this conversation on and off with several people in the last few weeks - the certainty/uncertainty paradox..clinging to a defined outcome rarely delivers what it promises because most of the time the problem isn't the problem. Then how do we talk about what we do if we're not talking about what our clients want to hire us for? All of a sudden I feel the need to talk to a Knowledge Manager.

Three models of consultation

Most of my work in the past year or so has been designing and managing stakeholder consultation processes. In my experience, there are three types of consultation methods

The first is what I call the Defensive Model where the organisation consults with stakeholders out of a requirement to do so. The process is designed to 'tick boxes' and it is invariably created for the purpose of optics.

The second is the Persuasive Model where the organisation has made its mind up about what it wishes to do and the consultation process is a sophisticated publicity and marketing exercise designed to get 'buy in' for an already established idea.

And the third is the Discursive Model where the organisation is seeking the stakeholders' help to 'think out loud' about changes or a new direction and the process is created as an inquiry.

I favour model number three because numbers one and two are effectively monologues not dialogues. Number three creates the possibility that the organisation can answer 'yes' to the only question that really matters:

Are you willing to change your mind on the basis of what you hear?

I've been fortunate to work with clients in 2007 who have jumped at the challenge presented by consultation with stakeholders, designed in a spirit of inquiry and conducted as conversations. What kinds of consultation processes have you been part of in 2007? Monologue? or Dialogue?

questions, more questions

I like questions. I like them more than answers. Very often when I’m pitching for a piece of work I’ll ask questions as well as offering solutions. Sometimes, the questions we ask say more about us than the answers we provide. Here are 10 questions I’ve used in organisational contexts. I’d love to hear some of yours. Or, I’d love to hear questions you wish you’d been asked.

1. If you could appoint anyone – alive or dead, fictional or real to the board of directors who would it be? And why?


2. If this organisation was a religious group – what would constitute a cardinal sin?


3. What’s the most exciting experience you have had in this company? What were the characteristics of it? How can we create more experiences like that?


4. What are we not allowed to talk about around here?


5. How would your favourite TV personality describe this organisation?


6. If you could pick one person to give you feedback on how you manage in this company – who would it be and why?


7. If this organisation were a film what would it be called? Which actor would play you?


8. What would it be like to work for a company that’s the exact opposite of the one you work in now?


9. Where do the real decisions get made around here?


10. If you could give yourself a new job title that reflects the actual job you do, what would it be?

Poetry, passion & measuring value

I had a conversation with a poet this week about how the value of something like poetry (which, in comparison to many other art forms is a relatively niche area) is captured. Our discussion centred on the ways in which we value experience and how increasingly, that is through quantitative measures. A poetry festival can never compete in terms of numbers with a music festival and a music festival can never compete with a soccer match. So if the numbers are the only way in which we can attach value then we’re losing before we start.
Our discussion evolved into one of how to capture the quality and value of experience. In our social and personal lives we can speak to this with ease and comfort but we find it difficult to attach a value to it when we get “organised”. Of course, this is relevant in the world of consulting and business as well. How can I add value to what it is I do in a way that is meaningful to me, to my client and to what happens as a result of our time together? My poet colleague remarked on the feedback he hears each year which is about the intimacy of the surroundings, the quality of the engagement between readers and audiences and the informal way in which conversations evolve out of the formal task of the enterprise.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not always possible to know what you know. That space in between is where the real added value happens. That real added value isn’t something that can be sold or promised. It’s something that’s created when the quality of the experience is significant. So the relationship is the thing – and tending to that means

• Listening as well as hearing
• Knowing when not to talk
• Taking time to reflect on what each brings to the relationship as well as what each takes away
• Knowing what baggage as well as luggage is carried
• Knowing that it isn’t the client’s responsibility to make up for previous bad experiences I have had with others
• Knowing that it isn’t my responsibility to prove to the client that I won’t repeat the same damage as a previous consulting experience has

• Knowing who I am and what I want out of this relationship

Working spaces

Photographer Saul Robbins takes photographs of chairs. Therapists' chairs - from the viewpoint of the patient.

For many, the role of the psychotherapist holds significant weight, and the importance given to him or her is one of great influence in many people's lives. By examining the empty therapist's chair, I encourage viewers to consider the place of power it holds, quite literally, in so many people's lives, as well as the person who sits in it, across from them, on a weekly basis.

Robbins' photographs grace an article in the March 6 edition of the New York Times in which Penelope Green asks What's in a chair? The article is an exploration of the physical spaces in which therapists work and she asks a number of interesting questions - what is the impact on a patient's therapeutic process when the sessions take place in a therapist's house? or when the decor or arrangement of the room gives something away about who the therapist 'really is'?

Few therapists today would contend that it’s possible or even desirable to present oneself as a true blank slate, with an office and treatment style utterly free from personal influence. And so the conversation now centers on degrees of influence and revelation: is a family photograph too much? What about the family dog?

The real question that's not addressed in the article is - why are some therapists (and for this read consultants, coaches etc) so grandiose that they think they can control the patient/client's transference? There's a difference between flaunting one's personal life in the face of clients and bringing oneself fully into the room/relationship. The physical presence we create says as much about us as practitioners as the psychological and emotional one. What's absent from a room says as much about someone as what's present. I don't have a lot of time for practitioners who angst about controlling clients' emotional and unconscious lives with the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) inference that the therapist or consultant's 'real life' is somehow split off and unimportant in building a working alliance. A therapist's life is not a contaminating quality. As a therapist and consultant I work with who is in the room and with what is presented in the room - consciously and unconsciously. I am not and neither do I believe I have the right to attempt to be in control of the client's experience of me. I wonder how many therapists and consultants are really comfortable in a space where the free reign of a client's unconscious is unleashed in the room?

Co-incidentally? Psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips is the subject of the Guardian's Writers' Rooms series in which he talks about the physical space he has created in which to write (his consulting room has been photographed many times for various interviews).

when is enough enough?

When is enough enough? San Francisco based Psychoanalyst Dr Owen Renik says

The profession is in a great decline, and I predict the decline will continue. The reason for it, and the reason a corrective is needed now, is that although psychoanalysis began in a spirit of open-ended inquiry, with an orientation above all to be helpful to the patient, it took on a self-perpetuating guild mentality that was its ruin. The possibility is still open to reverse the decline, but it will be necessary to escape the clutches of an establishment that, unhappily, has increasingly gotten away from the original scientific enterprise.

He goes on to say

There is a tendency among psychoanalysts to pursue self-awareness as a goal in itself, rather than a means to an end. Originally, the idea was that the self-understanding that arose as a result of psychoanalysis was unique and impressive and valid because it afforded relief from symptoms that were otherwise impossible to treat.

If you don’t require that self-awareness be validated by symptom relief, there are two destructive consequences. The first is scientific. You have no independent variable to track; you set up a circular situation in which it’s the analyst’s theory that determines what is found in analysis. Many critics of psychoanalysis have recognized this.

The points he raises are interesting in themselves, but they also relate to any kind of inter-personal and professional relationship – when is enough enough? And what kind of methodologies do you use to determine if you your intervention is (a) appropriate? (b) working? or (c) past its sell by date? There is always the temptation to keep clients wanting more. I don’t see coaching in particular as an endless process. There comes a time when you have to say goodbye – often times it’s the coach who has to determine that if a client appears to be too reliant on their coaching process and reluctant to move on and it's sometimes the case that a client is ready to move on long before a coach or consultant is willing to let go.

Renik goes on to say

You should have a criterion for judging whether the outcome is satisfactory, which leaves you free to judge by trial and error. If the treatment seems sufficient, you stop. You can always resume the therapy when and if there’s a need. What might also happen along the way, you might become aware of other things that then you define as symptoms, and you want to address those. Let’s say you have trouble dating, for example. We discover when we look into it that you have trouble asserting yourself, and that applies in a number of areas, including your work life. So we go on, until you are able to make progress there. If you’re not having symptom trouble after that, there’s no reason to keep analyzing stuff. That’s it. You’re done.

I think the same is true of any kind of coaching or consulting, particularly if it’s a one to one relationship and where the identity of the consultant gets tied up with the assignment. If the job is done, it’s done and it’s time to move on – dealing with the personal nature of ending and rejection is something that consultants need to integrate into their practice. I know when I was working as a therapist I had regular supervision where I addressed endings and beginnings on a regular basis. Now that I’m consulting I try to build in some kind of formal ending process with clients – be that a review or other – to mark the transition.

But as Renik says –

there’s no reason to keep analyzing stuff. That’s it. You’re done.