Tomorrow morning I head for Paris where I’m participating in my first Group Relations Conference. It’s not a traditional conference where papers are presented, workshops convened etc. Group Relations conferences are about the study of behaviour in organisations. To that end managers, consultants, students and psychotherapists from all over the world will converge in Paris to spend 7 days working together to more closely understand how leadership and organisations work and more importantly, how we contribute to the task of organising. The temporary organisation that we create over the course of the week will be the context and the purpose of our work.
There will be a number of organising tasks – as yet unknown - and as we gather and organise together over the course of a week we will be invited to look at
What roles we take up in organisations
How those roles are “assigned” through the organisation itself and by our personal stories
What authority looks like
How learning is constructed and integrated in organisations
How what is not openly acknowledged influences action
The emotional life of organising and leadership
I have a variety of feelings about participating in this conference – I’m anxious in case it descends into “group therapy”, I’m stressed because there is a strike scheduled for tomorrow so by the time I arrive at the Conference it will have already begun – will I be left behind? Will I be able to catch up? I’m excited about networking with colleagues many of whom work from a systems psychodynamic perspective as I am. The conference will be bi-lingual and I'm a bit nervous that I'll end up in the wrong working group where my French won't be adequate.
My point is that working in organisations is influenced by more than what happens when you walk in the front door – we bring a lot of stuff with us and the task of organising creates its own dynamics. Conferences such as this are structured around the process of reflection and reflexivity – two activities that I place very high on my list of essential consulting tools. The process of reflection will be the key tool for organisational learning, planning, review, evaluation and strategy.
Reflection and reflexivity mean more than navel gazing – they present a challenge to act on the basis of what is discovered. Leadership is an act, not a job title.
I’ll be attending with three hats on – as consultant, as psychotherapist and as PhD researcher and I’m looking forward to contributing and learning from each perspective. I’ll keep posting as the week evolves.
For more information on Group Relations Conferences, click here.
I'm delighted to announce that Interactions has won the contract to design and manage a consultation process for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to inform the first strategy for arts development in the county. We'll be working closely with the Arts Office and I'm looking forward to meeting artists, policy makers and audience members over the course of the next few months as we wonder out loud and draft a plan that speaks to the priorities for arts development in the county over the next 3 - 5 years. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is a new client for Interactions and we're very excited to be their chosen consultation partners for this assignment.
We're also looking forward to rolling out a creative approach to the consultation using our Dynamic Participation model. We've already used the Dynamic Participation model in our work with The Arts Council in 2005 where we designed and rolled out a national consultation process involving over 1000 people, 100 meetings and many geographically disparate locations to inform the national plan for arts development. Set against significant consultation fatigue in this sector, the consultation process was widely hailed as a successful model of public consultation and resulted in the recently published Partnership for the Arts (available on The Arts Council's website).
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.
I’ve embarked on a PhD programme this year which is throwing up all kinds of challenges and delights (so far, in equal measure). I’m in that beginning phase where as each day goes by I realise what I don’t know. There are times when it’s incredibly dispiriting because I know it is going to be a long time before I can speak with any confidence about what it is I do know.
I’ve found this little tool useful in the past in helping me position myself in relation to learning and newness. It’s generally outlined in a matrix but I prefer a circular model because there’s never a point at which learning “ends”. We’re always at some point in this circle in relation to something.
Right now I’m in the unconscious incompetence phase of learning and it’s uncomfortable beyond belief. However, I‘m in the unconscious competence phase in relation to the process of learning – I have been here before and while I can experience the uncomfortableness of it, I know it will shift and abate somewhat when the time is right.
When I’m working with clients I refer to this model to help people position themselves in relation to what they “do” know. There’s so much of what we do in organisational life that we take for granted and by taking it for granted, we often dismiss it. When a learning opportunity arrives we then feel inadequate in some way instead of seeing learning as a cyclical process. Often, taking the time to sit with what we take for granted can lessen the anxiety about “starting over” with something new.
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.
David Maister has an interesting post about whether or not blogging is "dead" but more critically he's talking about blogging as a relational activity also (one of my key reasons for blogging!). He asks a great question at the end of the post
Let me ask all of you out there a question: based on what you tell of my interests by reading my blog, what other blogs should I be reading regularly? It's like those reviews in music magazines - if you like this CD then you'll probably like that one. Help me out here, folks!
And I'm sure he won't mind if I ask the same question here..on the basis of what you are reading and what fires you up when you read - what blogs would you recommend that I read?
Edit: If, like me, you often lose track of where you've been commenting and when (not to mention with whom!) then this gizmo will change your life! Co-Comment is a comment aggregator - you sign up for an account then it automatically tracks and saves the comment feeds (your comments and others) and shows them all on one page...you can run it in the background and add a firefox extension...So while I'm technically asking for your recommendations of what I should be reading consider this an offer in the other direction. Thanks to Amy for the link.
On Thursday I’ll be giving a presentation at the Crafts Council of Ireland’s Information Seminar on professionalism and best practice. I’ve done several training sessions for visual artists on this topic and Thursday will be a new opportunity to meet and talk with crafts people about a similar area.
I haven’t had much of an opportunity to do “presentations” as distinct from training so I’m trying to put together a power point presentation that’s devoid of the dreaded bullet points. I’ve been taking counsel from Presentation Zen and all the great links on that site and the thing I’m realising is that a picture, not only says a thousand words, but probably says more about me than bullet pointed text.
Why I’m surprised about this shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is. I frequently work with images in my coaching and consulting practice. I’ve a fondness for metaphor and images (be they verbal or non verbal) because they reveal so much of what isn’t available to us in language.
So I have the presentation down to 13 slides, I have 20 minutes and I’ve also produced a set of notes (yes, they do include the bullet points!) for distribution afterwards. I’m surprised at how long it took me to choose the images I want to use and it’s making me realise that words are not only the default setting but the depersonalising setting sometimes as well. I’ll post both here on the blog on Thursday after I’ve made the presentation. Perhaps some clever consultant can then do a deconstruction of my choice of imagery and give me some well needed feedback!
By the way, Gareth Morgan’s book Imaginization is a great introduction to the power of image and metaphor in organisations.
Some of the bloggers I read include a "links for the day" posting where they link to four or five sites sometimes with little or no information about why those links have been chosen. I guess if you like a blogger's fare then you're likely to understand why they've chosen this particular selection.
I'm also a member of a number of listservs in relation to my research and occasionally someone will link to an article or a site and ask others what they think about it, without saying why they have selected what they have and what interests them about it.
Sometimes, depending on what mood I’m in – I’ll get a bit grumpy and say to myself “why are they posting links? Isn’t that just lazy? Expecting me to do the finding out?”
I think of blogs as curated spaces…the selection of what we choose to talk about or link to, says something considered about who each of us are. In much the same way as walking into a gallery space, there’s the individual art pieces and then there’s the selection together – what does this say about the artist’s body of work? What does it say about the curator who gathered together this particular selection of work?
I work with a lot of arts and cultural organisations and come up against the “what does it mean?” comments frequently. I’m lucky to work with people who want to make it possible to make connections between the work, where it is shown, who makes it, what it means, and how people can make their own meaning from the experience. Part of my work is to create thinking spaces for people to say “I don’t understand that” and for it to be acceptable to do so.
While I’m initially confused by the links many bloggers post, I can choose to engage with them, follow my nose (and theirs) and maybe discover something interesting for myself. I don’t need to be spoon fed the whole way. If I know something of the blogger’s interests and work then the selection tells me something more about their interests without them having to spell it all out for me. The list is an invitation – and likewise when someone is confused in a group I’m working with, their confusion is also an invitation to curiosity.
In fiction, the most powerful weapon the writer has is suggestion. I think that nearly all good writing is suggestion, and all bad writing is statement. Statement kills off the reader’s imagination. With suggestion, the reader takes up from where the writer leaves off (John McGahern 1934 - 2006)
I’m reading
Saturday by Ian McEwan at the moment. Shamefully I have to admit that I only “discovered” McEwan seriously over Christmas…prior to that I was buried in non-fiction,
Jane Austen and
John McGahern (my two favourite writers) and even now, when I should be reading organisational theory I steal away for an hour or so to spend it with Ian...and I’m rationing our time together. The words are so eloquently and densely packed that I relish the engagement so I can read and re-read his intention, extracting from it myriad meanings depending on my mood. I don’t want our time together to end too soon.
What I love about his writing is the word-smithing. The prose is extended poetry where each word counts. His attention to the detail of each syllable, how it works with the one next door and how they add up to paint a picture of what i is precisely he wants to convey. He doesn’t accommodate; he doesn’t talk down; he doesn’t make it easy. He just “is” – comfortable with his choice of words; extending an invitation to participate (or not); confident in his own space and the consummate story teller. It’s compelling stuff.
The man has authority, it’s heady, and it is a privilege to share the space with him…and I wonder sometimes if in our haste to be all things to all people – be that “on call” 24/7 or trying to word-smith the web blurb or compose proposals do we lose the essence of who we really are? I struggle sometimes with entering into the grammar of prospective clients wondering if they will have any real idea of what it would be like to work with me. And then I take a risk and say it as it is and hope that it might fall on the right ears. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t – but taking my own authority is something that I make a decision about. Authority is sometimes awarded and sometimes taken. The delicate dance between when and how is the complex one that only experience informs. In McEwan’s case, he’s a master and he knows it – so do I and I’m happy to follow. Time now, for another chapter.
I generally work on my own with groups and while it’s always great to get feedback at the end of a session or in subsequent days it can be difficult to get critical feedback that can help next time out.
This week, for the first time, I invited a colleague to observe my training work and I was very interested in how I responded. I was nervous before the session (I’m generally a bit nervous but this was off the scale!), left my office without part of my equipment and had to improvise and it took me a good hour or so to forget he was in the room. As the day progressed I settled into myself a bit more.
When the session was over there was an opportunity for the participants to offer feedback and I also had some time with my colleague. Both sets of feedback focussed on different aspects of the day and I was curious to see what my colleague had made of the work I was doing. I won’t go into the detail of his comments - but what struck me as really interesting was his ability to see me working in a way that I take totally for granted. He observed me “remembering” what had happened earlier in the day and bringing it back at a relevant moment. He also watched me restructure a segment of the day when something more interesting came along and the energy of the group went there etc. These are all standard things I “do” with a group and it was so helpful for me to have them noticed.
Asking my colleague into the room is part of a series of interventions I am making around languaging and describing what I do. More recently I asked a group with whom I had worked to write up their experience of the “problem” and the “intervention” as feedback for me and again, it was huge learning and a reminder that when I move into a comfort zone I tend to “forget” what it is I’m doing – I’m in that unconscious competence place.
It takes a risk to ask for feedback because so much of what we do is personal…but so far I’ve learned a lot about how I work in ways that would have been inaccessible to me. How do you know what you do? And how well it’s working?
Maybe it's just me, but I find myself sighing when I read about "time management"...so much of what I read appears to be predicated on two things (a) there's limited amounts of it (yup, I get that bit) and (b) it's possible to operate in a linear way within a given time frame (here's where I have problems)...
My life simply doesn't work in straight lines. I can't start the day with at "to do" list, work my way systematically through it, while ignoring all other interruptions so that I can feel a self satisfied glow at the end of the day with that line of "ticks". i just can't do it!
I remember attending a talk by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips a couple of months ago. He was talking about how psychoanalysis 'works" and he described it as the theory and practice of side effects. He talked about how people come into therapy with a list of things they want to talk about and/or resolve and then something happens to derail the process and it's in attending to the derailment that the real work begins. I laughed heartily at that description because in some way it describes my approach to consulting and getting things done. I am not in the habit of missing client deadlines. My work is done on time and on budget. I get the stuff done. But I rarely get up and work though my list systematically. I wander around, I think out loud, I allow myself to be distracted, heck I even day dream. And sometimes when I'm pottering about the most interesting insights will land in my lap. I know they wouldn't arrive as fully formed if I was on a schedule and waiting patiently for them to materialise by 3.04pm.
I'm all for time management, but it needs to be congruent with the way in which we actually work and how we allow ourselves to be open to derailments that fuel our creativity and don't close it down.
I came across the following quotes from Adam Phillip' book Monogomy. I think each of these statements are as applicable to business as they are to our personal lives, particularly the idea of promiscuity..who are we loyal to in our work lives? Is it something we demand and expect of people we work with? Do we promise to be faithful to clients? Isn't the idea of "competition" a way of legitimising promiscuity? Wonderful and interesting stuff...
Profoundly committed to the better life, the promiscuous, like the monogamous, are idealists. Both are deranged by hope, in awe of reassurance, impressed by their pleasures. We should not be too quick to set them against each other. At their best, they are both the enemies of cynicism. It is the cynical who are dispiriting because they are always getting their disappointment in first.
At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused.
In a society without scapegoats there would be more conflict. People feel too vulnerable without someone else to blame and punish. Similarly, a society without sexual infidelity -- or without the promiscuous going their wanton way -- could be dangerous. Who would we be fascinated by, who would we persecute?
After all, a couple without a third party are radically unprotected from each other. And when people are unprotected from each other it can go either way.
Via
Salon
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?
Ooo they're great questions and I'm particularly taken with the second one "what kind of me is my work creating?" Apart from being a great coaching question it seems to me that it's one we should all be asking regardless of role, job or outlook. I'm not sure I could offer a coherent answer to that right now...I'm sure I could share an aspirational one, but one based on the reality of my work...now that's a tough and very interesting challenge.
I was thinking of writing something soulful about meaning and value - you know the difference between what we say we value and what we actually value and how that translates into relationships at work etc? Anyway, between thinking about it and hitting the keyboard I managed to devour Freaknomics (a couple of train and plane trips provided ample opportunity). Apart from being one of the smartest and funniest books I've read all year, it's also one of the most relevant. And lo and behold on page 82 Levitt and Dubner do just what I had been planning to do but in a much more readable and witty way. They're talking about internet dating and the differences between what people say they want and what they actually want based on advertisements placed and emails sent:
For instance, men who say they want a long-term relationship do much better than men looking for an occasional lover. But women looking for an occaasional lover do great. For men, a woman's looks are of paramount importance, For women, a man's income is terribly important. The richer a man is, the more e-mails he receives. But a woman's income appeal is a bell-shaped curve: men do not want to date low-earning women, but once a woman starts earning too much, they seem to be scared off. Men want to date students, artists, musicians, veterinarians, and celebrities (while avoiding secretaries, retirees and women in the military and law enforcement). Women do want to date military men, policemen and firemen (possibly the result of a 9/11 Effect....), along with lawyers and financial executives. Women avoid laborers, actors, students, and men who work in food services or hospitality. For men, being short is a big disadvantage (which is probably why so many men lie about it), but weight doesn't much matter. For women, being overweight is deadly (which is why they lie). For a man having red or curly hair is a downer, as is baldness - but a shaved head is okay. For a woman, salt and pepper hair is bad, while blond hair is very good. In the world of online dating, a headful of blond hair on a woman is worth about the same as having a college degree - and, with a $100 dye job versus a $100,000 tuition bill, an awful lot cheaper.
Food for thought eh?
I do a lot of work with boards of directors and management committees wanting to take time out to review where they are and where they are going. Sometimes this involves organising and facilitating "retreats" (I use that word advisedly because in Ireland 'retreat' has religious connotations!). But I digress.. A recurring theme is often that of board composition - Who do we need? What skill base are we looking for? Do we need to think of retiring and asking others to step in etc? When it gets down to thinking about real people groups can often get stuck. Loyalties, allegiances, politics and favouritism sometimes get in the way of the task at hand.
Increasingly I'm using other methodologies for getting at what's needed and a favourite technique I use is the fantasy board game. In this, each person in the room gets to pick a person - real or imagined, alive or dead to place on the board. It's a fun brainstorming session and the more it is played the wilder the suggestions get (and you can tell a lot about someone by who they suggest!). It's easier to pick a fantasy person than name someone you might know in a personal capacity. I then do an exercise with people about why they picked the person they did - and the list of attributes and qualities simply flows! We then have a list of all of the skills and qualities needed to populate the board that will look to the future and it's not a difficult task at this point to compare that list with the skill base of people currently sitting on the board. Augmenting, changing or moving around tends to be a much more logical task once the illogical one of picking fantasy people has been completed.
There's a lot to be said for playfullness in consulting - I really enjoy these sessions, and for what it's worth Katharine Hepburn is always on my list (for everything now that I think of it). Why? She's independent, sassy, not afraid to call it as she sees it and can stand up to Humphrey Bogart in a boat while at the time being a four time academy award winner and remaining fabulously feminine. Now I wonder what that says about me eh?
Photo courtesy of rest-in-peace.info
Mark Hollander writes something that resonates with me:
It is interesting that for a field as collaborative as ours just how much time we spend in complete isolation. I look at my weekly time sheets and am amazed at just how much time I am alone, staring at a computer screen. Writers are confronted by a taunting empty document waiting to be filled. The editors I work with can spend as much as 60 hours a week alone in a dark room working on their AVIDs. Directors break out scripts in isolation. And even Producers with the million phone calls that must be made to get one simple shoot set up are still isolated. Long term happiness (not to mention mental health) requires a steady diet of human interaction. We are by nature social creatures... and when denied interaction by the demands of work or the allure of email, it takes it's toll.
I spend a lot of time alone - thinking, writing, planning etc and there are times when I'm in one of those contemplative moods that I have to remind myself to reach out and make contact. Solitary periods are a necessary part of my work but I contrast that with being an extroverted thinker - which means that I rarely know what's on my mind until I start talking to someone.
I don't experience solitary times as lonely but they can sometimes be isolating so my rules (for myself) around this when I know I am going into one of these phases are:
- Make plans to meet friends or colleagues for lunch on a regular basis
- Pick up the phone and chat with a friend or colleague either about the work or about a social matter at least once a day
- Make sure to get out of the office for a walk, coffee or some other "outside" activity during the working day
- Recognise the difference between needing to talk to think and needing to talk to forget!
- Mind the boundary around time because it often blurrs when there's nobody to remind me the working day is over
Do you experience working on your own as isolating or lonely? How do you manage social context in oe of those phases?
I’m a bad blogger and before I go any further I want to issue a generalisation alert – you have been warned.
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?
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?
Are creatives really all that special? Mark seems to think so and has a post outlining the top 10 characteristics of creative personalities. Looking through the list each of the ten have one thing in common – an ability to manage ambivalence. Now before I go any further, I am one of those people who believes that everyone is creative – it’s a matter of finding out how your creativity manifests itself that’s the tricky bit (and that’s also very doable). So many people spend their lives working at creatively draining pursuits which reinforces the stereotype that there are certain professions where creativity lies and others where it doesn’t.
Put it like this – a successful bank robber is a pretty creative individual in my humble opinion, as are obsessive and neurotic people who have to choose an outlet to express themselves in that way. But I digress.
The point I was attempting to make before I got side tracked is that the ability to manage ambivalence i.e. recognise that perfection doesn’t exist – is a central characteristic of maturity. Think about it for a minute – perfectionists are only perfect at one thing – being imperfect…the rest of us muddle along making decisions; weighing up options; managing the fantasies and realities – all of that is a creative edeavour and I would venture so far as to say that maturity is an expression of that creative ability to be in the multi-coloured pieces between the black and white edges. The real trick is finding an outlet for that ability and that’s where coaching can be really helpful. Mark coaches creative types and I wonder if he’d ever admit to meeting non creative types in the creative industries? I know I have, and I’ve also met amazingly creative and resourceful people in the “non” creative industries. Our creativity doesn’t have anything to do with what we “do” – it can do, but aligning personal and occupational creativity is the real challenge and one that I love when working with clients. How many people do you know that live between the black and white edges?
PS: Speaking of creativity I've added a link to my Flickr photos in the side bar!
Apologies for the light posting this week - I've been juggling a quite a few different types of work in a variety of locations. I spent today in Castlebar running a workshop for the Mayo County Enterprise Board. Soon to be blogger and Chief Executive Frank Fullard invited me there to meet with artists about the commissioning process and I thoroughly enjoyed the day. 16 artists from a variety of disciplines put me through my paces, the conversations were vibrant, the questions were challenging and I'm hoping at the end of it all it was useful for those who participated. I was amazed at the generosity of the participants in sharing their experience (both good and bad) which really contributed to the success of the day. Frank Fullard is also one set of brains behind Irish Business Women - it's a fantastic resource for female entrepreneurs and I recommend heading over there for some good advice and support.
I’ve beens spending time with artists over the last few weeks and one of the conversations we’ve been having concerns skills deficits – particularly in the practice management area. So may artists I meet have an anxiety about managing money, others don’t want to involve themselves in administration because they feel they don’t have the skills and others would love to buy in professional administration support but can’t afford it. But why buy when you can barter? Many colleagues of mine regularly barter or trade their skills with other professionals and it can be really liberating to take money out of the equation and place a value on the work for its own sake. I’ve recently worked for a colleague on an assignment he is engaged in and some time in the future I’m sure I’ll call on his skills. I know arts administrators who will trade their professional skills for work from artists who are interested in working with them – in the latter case neither may be in a position to afford the creative output of the other.
I’d love more opportunities to barter instead of buy – I wonder how many of you have created those kinds of relationships?
Paige's comment on my last post reminded me that sometimes we have to look for good news stories rather than focussing on the ever present bad news ones. A young person of my acquaintence once said to me that she wanted to be like Posh Spice when she grew up - I replied by asking her why she would set her standards so low? If we expect little in return then maybe we get what we ask for? So in the spirit of asking for more and seeking the positive, I wonder (apart from Paige and me) how many of you have had a good business experience recently (be it customer support or something else) that you'd care to share...let's get the Christmas spirit up and running a bit earlier this year.
Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart. If we could just remember this, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world
I've become such a lurker over at Post Secret. It's a community arts project where people mail in a secret on a home made postcard to the author. Some of the images and sentiments are extraordinary. Coming, as I do, from a predominantly Catholic country, and as a therapist, the confessional nature of both is familiar to me but there’s something so powerful in the visual representation of unmentionables...more powerful than words alone, more creative than confession and absolution.
Hat tip Psychoa
Funny how cyberspace is no different to real life when it comes to silence. In cyberspace silence is often construed as absence – if I don’t post then perhaps I don’t exist? I, like many other bloggers, rush in to explain the absence, to remind my readers that I’m still here, to reassure myself that I’m still here.
Life offline is no different…silence can be persecutory. It’s invariably construed as “absence” as “not paying attention” or as some kind of negative…yet offline I love silence. I feel more connected when I have the space and time to reflect and more often than not I do that on my own or in a way that might look like I’m “not there”.
I wonder what the world of work would look like if we built in more silence, more reflection and more time to be and to think rather than the busyness of constantly doing?
Over at Anecdote there's an interesting post about Organisational Stories and how organisational myths are a great way of understanding the culture of the system.
Finding an organisation’s myths helps you understand the boundaries and constraints for any new interventions you might have planned. I’ve discovered that myth discovery is simply a matter of asking for stories that lots of people know.
I've shaped many of my interventions and consulting assignments on the basis of unheard organisational stories which have been generated in informal contexts. Sometimes it's important to find a way of telling those stories more publicly but in a way that's respectful of the content and context. I've found that working with professional actors - particularly those who are skilled at devising - is a fantastic way to present those stories back to groups in a way that generates very significant conversation.
In presenting a theatre piece, devised by actors, I'm hoping that the group I'm working with will know that their concerns have been heard and as a result we don't have to open up a difficult conversation that may close down the work rather than open it up.
To date the feedback I'm getting is really positive and clients have spoken about how significant it is to have their "reality" reflected back to them in a dramatic way. I'm looking forward to developing this methodology further and creating more bespoke interventions in organisational contexts.
Hat tip to Johnnie for finding the following in Phil Dourado’s free book chapter for February:
Tim Collins, a career soldier, rose to prominence when an impromptu speech he gave to the Irish regiment he commanded in Iraq ended up in newspapers all over the world. Collins says…that “to lead effectively, you have to love people”. Collins goes on to explain ‘love’ as knowing and caring about what motivates people and what is important to them, and helping them fulfil those aspirations at work. This, he says, is a foundation of leadership.
Sharing knowledge, looking after employees’ wellbeing, giving people your time and attention, respecting and acknowledging the contribution of others, all are incontrovertible aspects of good leadership. It only becomes controversial when the ‘L’ word is applied.
"Leadership is emotional. Leadership deals with feelings. Leadership is made up of dreams, inspiration, excitement, desire, pride, care, passion, and love. The areas of our lives where we show the strongest leadership – including our communities, families, organizations, products, services, hobbies, and customers - are where we're most in love." (Jim Clemmer)
Happy Valentine's Day
Ever wondered why hiring the wrong consultant is very often the right decision for organisations? There may come a point when you know that the task you’ve been hired to do or facilitate simply isn’t the task that needs to be done – what on earth are you going to do? How are you going to manage the mounting pressure to deliver when all around you the signs are telling you that failure is on the horizon?
Change processes evoke anxiety – whether it’s at a personal or professional level – that’s one reason why the change industry is outsourced to consultants. Anxiety is difficult to talk about or deal with at a conscious level but its presence is felt everywhere in what may look like irrational behaviour and illogical decision making.
You’d imagine that choosing a consultant to manage the change process and deliver on the strategic goals would be important? After all, this is an important stage in the organisation’s development isn’t it? All well and good with our rational hats on. Unconsciously it may be more important to choose a consultant who can’t deliver, thereby protecting ourselves from the anxiety of change by blaming the consultant for not being good enough.
Consultants can be “not good enough” in various ways. They may not have the right people skills to work with the emotional issues that change presents. The IT system will be up and running in no time but people won’t have a clue what’s happening and where they may end up next week. A consultant may simply not have the professional experience to engage with the task at a strategic enough level. The project will be micro managed, take enormous amounts of time and may be discontinued due to excessive costs. The consultant may not have the authority in the system to roll out the changes that have been agreed – s/he may be de-authorised by the board from actually delivering on the task.
In all of these scenarios the consultant will absorb the organisation’s anxiety by feeling unwelcome, not good enough, set up to fail, disappointed, confused and angry etc. Very often, the consultant will be scapegoated for failing to deliver while not knowing that they were hand picked to fail.
When the wrong consultant is picked it may be the right decision for an organisation not ready to deal with change. A ritual sacrifice is often required and on many occasions the consultant is that offering. In this instance failure isn’t failure it’s a strong signal that there is other work to be accomplished before change is actioned. Very often that other work is finding a safe way to address the underlying anxiety that all change evokes. If a company is brave enough it may look to its “failures” as rich learning about the need to connect with the very real and very human fear of change.
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.
Saturday’s New York Times (subscription required) carries a story about the 102 year-old Louis Padnos Iron and Metal Company a family owned business who have come up with their own unique solution to the sucession challenge.
The problem for the Padnoses is an age gap. Third-generation members who run the scrap metal company, which employs about 400 people and has annual sales of about $300 million, are in their 50s. They want to work less. But the fourth-generation Padnoses who might someday want to run the place are still only in their teens.
The company hired a philosophy professor to help them
groom six hired managers to become, well, more Padnos-like.
The article goes on to outline the differences between the founding family (politically liberal, middle class and Jewish) and the managers (conservative, working class and from Protestant backgrounds) and the policy adopted by the Padnoses to encourage the new managers to be “part of the family”
The managers were assigned readings of Thoreau, Sophocles and a recent essay on Freud. They spent a long weekend in Chicago seeing plays, touring exhibitions of art and architecture and eating at fancy restaurants. And in recent weeks they have debated how to give away $40,000 of the Padnoses’ money, an exercise in becoming philanthropists.
The article also goes on to say that although the managers are encouraged to think more like the family they are also denied some of the financial information that would give them more of the family’s power and this is where it becomes really interesting from my perspective.
Family businesses are complex places – you can’t avoid the personal because, well family is personal. On one level this looks like a sensible and somewhat philanthropic gesture on the part of the Padnoses on another it could be a way of them never letting go of the family’s way of doing business. How can you act like an owner if you are not an owner? How can you take the responsibility if you’re not given the authority? Family businesses are fascinating places because the sometimes underlying personal relationships that inform all businesses are much more visible - particularly those that affect competition and leadership. It will be interesting to see what happens in this company when the elder generation have truly moved on and that teenage generation are ready to take over..
Mayo County Enterprise Board are holding an event on Achieving Your Potential to mark International Womens' Day on 8 March. The location for the event is Pontoon Bridge Hotel. I'll be one of three keynote speakers and the focus of my presentation will be on the emotional factors that help (and sometimes hinder) our ability to achieve our potential. The other two speakers are
Darina Loakman, who runs I am a WHAM who will talk about: Achieving Your Potential: Working From Home
and
Aideen Kane, Television Producer, of GMTV, who will talk about: Achieving Your Potential: The Working Woman
There's a nice video piece here promoting the event created by Darina and the Western People picked up the event this week also.
If you are interested in coming along to the workshop you can contact Nicola Fitzpatrick on 094 9047597 or at nfitzpat@mayococo.ie. Don't forget to say hello if you are there on the night!
The latest edition of the Blog Carnival of Management tips (to which I've contributed this post) is over at Mabel and Harry - there are some great posts and I'm realising what a great idea carnivals are for gathering like minded bloggers around communities of interest. Carnivals are where
someone takes the time to find really good blog posts on a given topic, and then puts all those posts together in a blog post called a "carnival".
There are Carnivals for every conceivable topic and the site is a great place to meet new bloggers, gather creative ideas around a specific topic and hopefully have some good conversations along the way.
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..
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.
Welcome to the March 19, 2007 edition of emotion at work. (The first edition in fact) and thanks to everyone who submitted a post. I'm fascinated to see what a topic like "emotion at work" has evoked - there are really interesting and different approaches to the topic here that echo much of the management discourse around emotion as something that needs to be valued in its own right (my own view) or controlled in the service of organisational harmony. I'm also curious about the fact that no women submitted posts around this topic and wonder what might be going on there that's interesting.
Mark McGuinness presents 7 Ways to Tap into Enthusiasm posted at Wishful Thinking. Mark talks about tapping into your natural enthusiasm and how reconnecting with your curiosity is a critical first step in banishing procrastination and keeping the creative juices flowing.
Erik Mazzone presents Deciding to Quit your Job posted at Erik Mazzone's Blog. Erik advocates tapping into your feelings as distinct from your rationale when you have to make a decision to stay in or quit a job.
Alan presents There is always a way posted at Made to Be Great. Alan advocates stillness as a way of connecting with the sense of what’s possible and he also talks about reframing problems as potential solutions (something I’m a huge advocate for).
Charles H Green presents Trust Tip 35: Reciprocity, Sales and Suicide Hot Lines posted at Trusted Advisor Associates. Charles talks about the centrality of trust and how active listening is a key part of developing it. Something I've written about before.
The Positivity Blog presents 5 life-changing keys to overcoming your fear posted at Henrik Edberg. Henrik offers some strategies for overcoming fear which are useful for work and personal life beginning with a non-judgemental approach.
Noel Kuhlman presents How To Destroy The Lazy Drones In Your Team posted at Self Help Can Be Fun. Noel offers some no nonsense approaches to co-dependency in the workplace. The title is challenging but I think he’s addressing the way in which we enable people to adopt less than helpful roles in the workplace and he asks us what our part in that is.
Craig Harper presents A Letter to all Blokes.... posted at Renovate your life with Craig. Craig invites blokes to reconnect with their emotions in a witty and “bloke-friendly way”. I'd like to hear Craig's view on the relationship between blokes, their emotion and the world of work as I imagine he'd have an interesting take on that subject.
The Silicone Valley Blogger presents Work Place Drama Ends In More Money at The Digerati Life which is an interesting piece on how the organisation in the mind (or the boss in our mind) is very often out of kilter with the external experience and how our emotions are central to that experience.
Scott Young presents Introduction - Emotional Mastery (Series) posted at Scott H Young. Scott offers an introductory blog post on the "secrets to emotional mastery". The rest of his series focusses on the issue of control and emotion.
That concludes this edition. Thanks to everyone who submitted an article for this first carnival. Submit your blog article to the next edition of emotion at work using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
I am reading Creative Management and Development (edited by Jane Henry) right now and loved this quote from Guy Claxton's paper Beyond Cleverness: How to be smart without thinking (p. 47):
There is a stupid rumour going around that intelligence is essentially rational, and that hard problems are invariably best tackled as explicitly, clearly, logically and articulately as possible. It's not true...logical clarity is one form of intelligence, but to assume that it is always the best, and the more of it the better, is as daft as to say that running is always the best way of getting aound, or a screwdriver is always the best tool. The rumour is stupid because it makes you less intelligent, mistaking one useful faculty of mind for the whole repertoire of useful mind states and modes. People who are good at being articulate and analytical, but who confuse this with being all-round intelligent are, we might say, 'clever' - but clever is not the same as smart.
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.
Taken in a pizza store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
I attended a Tribeca Talks panel discussion this week on Cinema 2.0: Me, Myself and iPod – essentially a discussion on the impact of social media on the production of art (notably cinema and literature). The line up of panellists included
Jonathan Lethem (Author)
Brent Weinstein (Head of the Digital Media Dept. at United Talent Agency)
Jerry Paffendorf (Futurist with The Electric Sheep Company and his blog is here)
Charles Leadbeater (a leading authority on innovation and creativity, ex Financial Times and Independent. The wiki for his current project We Think - The Rise of Mass Creativity is here ) - great TED talk here.
Kathleen Grace (Director and Producer of The Burg a web based drama set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
and moderator Georg Szalai (NY bureau chief and business editor at The Hollywood Reporter)
There were a lot of pertinent points raised about the relationship between the old, the new and the vast space in between.
I can’t do justice to the 90 minute discussion (and subsequent questions and answers) but I did capture a few points which I think it’s worth mentioning here – particularly in the context of Irish arts and cultural organisations – some of whom are out there using social media, many others of whom are ambivalent about the impact on the production of their artistic artefact.
The panellists addressed the issue of giving work away for free, particularly if you’re struggling to make a living in the first place. Kathleen Grace and her crew have created a soap opera about Williamsburg which is viewable free and online. They decided to forget about pitching to the studios at the outset and are hoping that it will be picked up (before they drown in credit card debt I imagine). It’s given them a direct outlet for the creation of their art and an instant audience for the work.
Novelist Jonathan Lentham created The Promiscious Materials Project which was specifically designed to distribute his work (at the cost of $1).
I like art that comes from other art, and I like seeing my stories adapted into other forms. My writing has always been strongly sourced in other voices, and I'm a fan of adaptations, apropriations, collage, and sampling.
Lentham described his online activity as an “analogue gesture in a digital cloak” because he is very clear that he creates the artefact and then allows it to be discussed, modified, mashed-up etc once that creative act has taken place.
Leadbetter posted 11 chapters of his book online and sought feedback and comments – he is incorporating some of those into the final draft and will credit those whose work he includes.
The panellists were in general agreement that creativity is a collaboration, and while the origination of the artefact (book, sculpture, video etc) may be the work of one person – the conversation that surrounds it (both before and after) is the way of entwining both spaces and expanding on the relationship between artist and community.
There was a lot of discussion about the future of the business of social media, particularly from Futurist Jerry Paffendorf (whom I could have listened to all evening and who focusses on ROA Return on Awesome rather than ROI..) on how online worlds are evolving and changing (virtual worlds are increasingly “opt in” and the mantra is “Don’t have sex with Google”) and and notably Brent Weinstein who heads up a division at United Talent Agency that specifically handles artists working in/with new media. There is money to be made and business models are evolving but Paffendorf described it well when he said
The currency we are using doesn’t know how to quantify what we are making
I really enjoyed the discussion, it got my own creative juices flowing and I came away with the following which I think are going to be pertinent issues for Irish arts and cultural organisations.
1 There’s no going back. An active, updated, interactive online presence is a must if you are a creative and it’s about driving traffic to where you will get paid even if in the short term it’s unlikely that you are making money.
2 Circling the wagons and adopting a defensive approach to creativity is self defeating. In the old days (6 months ago as Weinstein suggested) retaining and restraining may have worked – in this new era of social media community is where it’s at.
3 As one producer (in the Q & A) described it - people are in control of their ipod screens, their computer screens, their TV screens and ultimately their cinema screens. This model of drag and drop cultural consumption is only going to increase and impact on all other areas of media/cultural production. If creatives aren’t driving that traffic then they’re going to get stuck in a traffic jam that’s going nowhere fast.
4 There are no residuals on the internet so new ways of creating work and more importantly commissioning opportunities for this medium are going to have to evolve, particularly in countries like Ireland where we have a grant-aid culture.
5 Commerce, community and creativity co-exist in an internet age – the challenge for many creatives is how to make that relationship work for them.
The Tribeca Film Festival broadcasts a daily webcast on Youtube
Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips was interviewed by Paul Holdengräber at the New York Public Library last week. I am an admirer of Phillips' work and he has just published a new book entitled Side Effects. (Also a title of a book written by Psychoanalysis’ greatest patient, Woody Allen). Phillips’ contention (and one I agree with) is that therapy works by attending to side effects – the stuff we are not paying attention to while we’re trying to attend to the problem at hand.
Both the patient and the analyst are the recipients of these side effects, of all the things said and implied and unintended and alluded to as the patient speaks as freely as he is able, and begins to understand the ingenuities of the censorship he imposes on himself…Psychoanalysis, essentially, is an attempt to redescribe the whole notion of concentration (Side Effects, p.xi).
Phillips’ suggests that you can only be distracted if you have a plan and in attending to the distractions our plans (ones we may not even be aware of) are revealed. So when people ask me “how I work” and “what I do” I refer them to Phillips because his accessible interpretation of psychoanalysis (and indeed, pscychodynamic approaches to working in general) make sense of the ways in which my interest is captured by “oddness” and incidents and issues that somehow “don’t fit in”. Working below the surface of organisations and with people, means drawing clients attention to their plans – the ones that are unspoken and unconscious. Very often those unconscious plans derail the conscious ones and getting to the heart of that difference (very often exposing it for the first time) is the key to unlocking blockages in the system.
If I am working with a group then there’s the “group” plan; the conscious plans of the individual members of the group and the myriad unconscious plans of the group that nobody may be aware of. Add to this the consultant or coach’s plans – conscious and otherwise and there’s a lot going on. All of these agendas are organised in different ways depending on the life stories of participants and the organisational system in which they work. It’s complex work and finding the right time for a client to hear an interpretation of what’s going on is also an important factor in the mix.
So distractions and interruptions are very welcome intrusions into my work space because they help reveal the agendas and plans of a group and as such are such fantastic resources to work with. Phillips also talked about anxiety – and how anxiety leads people to try and engineer pleasure – distractions may be part of that coping mechanism…so attending to distractions generally means we are getting closer to the issue at hand. But pleasure is such an ephemeral thing – can we engineer pleasure? Phillips doesn’t think so – at one point he talked about dinner parties and how we can’t engineer the perfect dinner party – we can only create the context in which it might happen - therefore anxiety – the calcuation of pleasure is the bridge and negotiation between pain and pleasure and as such a wonderfully rich place to begin to understand our fears and desires in a business context.
I’ll leave the final word on this one to Phillips:
If someone were to invent a drug – say, in this context, a psychotropic drug, one that is designed to improve people’s mental health - and to say that the point of this drug, the whole value of it was its unpredictable side effects, there would be a public outcry. (Side Effectrs p. xii)
The full interview with Adam Phillips (in which yours truly is heard asking about collusion among psychoanalysts and about Woody Allen) is available as an audio download at the NYPL website. Pic of Phillips and Holdengräber from NYPL.
I was invited to contribute some thoughts on the value of social media to Poetry Ireland's bi-monthly newsletter Poetry Ireland News. The paper is also available here as a pdf download. I will be running a workshop on this area for arts/cultural organisations in June - stay posted for details.
There are 71 million blogs and a new Blog is created every half second. 499, 760 of those blogs (at the time of writing) mention or refer to poetry. All over cyberspace poets and poetry lovers are engaged in passionate conversations about the work. Why is it that so few Irish arts organisations and artists currently recognise the centrality of an online presence as part of their development strategy?
If you are an artist, then you want an audience. If you are an artist working in a niche art form area then that audience may be small and diminishing. No amount of investment in marketing strategies, audience development, outreach and education initiatives will impact on the size of that audience in the short term. How do you start conversations about your art form? How do you get critical feedback about what works and what doesn’t? How do you talk to your peers? Meet new ones? Make a living?
You give your work away. Yes…..you heard me correctly…Blogs and other social media platforms such as Wikis and Podcasting are essential tools for artists wishing to connect with an audience. Blogs are curated and conversational spaces designed to share ideas, expertise, creativity and opinion with a community of interest. Blogs are based on giving stuff away. If you can’t bear the idea of sharing your ideas then blogging isn’t for you. However if you imagine for a moment that the audience and community for poetry is global and not geographically bound by the rim of this island then blogging starts to make complete sense as a way of developing the conversation. Online life is full of great writers, fabulous opinions and now, a mechanism for publishing. Blogging puts you in a conversation with people who (a) have something to say and (b) care about what you have to say. It’s a totally different relationship with peers and audience than can be created in any other static medium.
Blogging, like all conversations, requires commitment. You need to show up, you need to participate and critically you need to have something to say. Publishing your thoughts and ideas is one side of the conversation – making space (through a comments thread and commenting on other people’s blogs) is the other. The technology provides simple ways (through RSS, Tagging and Aggregators) for you to be found and to find others with whom you want to converse. Of course there are questions and issues – copyright, freedom of speech; time spent reading and commenting; technical stuff about how to get online/maintain a Blog and not to mention the dreaded “Blogger’s block”.
In a media savvy society – shouldn’t you be aware of what people are saying about you? Shouldn’t you contribute to or start that discussion? Here are 10 ideas to get you started.
1. Release podcasts presentations of poets reading and presenting their work
2. Release the soundtrack for a show as a download (as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company did in 2006)
3. Start a discussion about contemporary art in advance of exhibitions as a gateway for newcomers to the art form
4. Create podcasts by experts to assist audiences engage with your work
5. Let a picture do the talking
6. Allow audiences into the art making process with regular posts about the rehearsal process from the perspective of various members of the company e.g. designer and choreographer etc. Record conversations, make transcripts available—trust that this will increase curiosity about your work.
7. Publish your work online and get feedback as the process progresses
8. Create word of mouth on a performance by asking readers the only marketing question that matters “would you recommend this to a friend?”
9. Use the virtual space as a gallery or curatorial space and commissioning/presentation arena for artists of all disciplines and practice areas
10. Ask readers how they want to engage with your work – online discussions with artists? Advance notice of booking options? Use the medium as an idea generation space.
A version of this paper was published in the May/June 2007 Poetry Ireland News by Poetry Ireland.
I've just created a Library page on the site that includes PDF copies of papers that I hope will be useful to clients and readers. You can reach the library via the link in the sidebar or from the main page of the website. Enjoy!
