If I’ve been asked that question once, I’ve been asked it a hundred times in the last few years. In an age of the “sound bite” trying to talk about the complexity of human relationships that make up business life doesn’t quite lend itself to co-operation.
All of my work comes to me structured as a “problem” that needs to be “sorted out”. That “problem” may be a plan that needs to be written, a consultation process that needs to be designed and rolled out; a “difficult” person or team in an organisation that needs to be “fixed”. While the framework around which my invitation is phrased can often look quite generic – the underlying issues are always about people and relationships. What I “do” is design processes for engaging people in dialogue. What happens as a result of that is that we create plans that are owned, consultation processes that are genuinely dialogical/meaningful and solve human resource issues.
My toolkit consists of questions – rather a lot of them at times. I work from the perspective that there are no “taken for granteds” and my starting point is generally trying to explore the assumptions and hypotheses around which the particular problem or issue is constructed. One approach I use is Appreciative Inquiry.
I like working with problems. I see them as solutions. By that I mean that a particular kind of behaviour – whether it is bullying, excessive praise, stubbornness, stuckness etc… - is the only way at this moment in time that an individual or a team can give voice to an issue. As such, I approach problems from a benign, curious position. I don’t begin my work by assuming that this problem is a bad thing (which can be challenging for my clients sometimes!). In fact, it may be a very useful thing. It may contain rather a lot of information about how the whole system is communicating. That way, I avoid falling into the trap of blaming and I hope that I can approach each member of a team or organisation from an appreciative position. It gives me, and the organisation, a richer understanding of how this issue is relevant to the broader organisational system.
As well as working appreciatively and asking questions about what is going on overtly, I’m curious about what’s not said – the unconscious processes that contribute to organisational life - and more interestingly – the emotional climate in organisations. Because like it or not – we don’t leave our emotional selves at the front door and enter into a rational entity that is “organisation” even though there is a dominant discourse that organisations are “rational” entities. Organisations are emotion generating environments and asking people to be rational only is a fairly irrational request when you think about it.
Approaching consulting to organisations from this perspective means I offer insights that address the overt “problem” while also addressing the “covert” issues that may be informing it at a deep and unspoken level.
There are over 80 participants at this conference, complemented by a team of ten “staff”. All are drawn from the four corners of the earth. I’ve met people from France, the United States, Peru, India and every place in between. The working languages of the conference are English and French and for many neither of these languages is their mother tongue. To compound matters there is no formal translation service.
What this does is challenge us to look at dominant discourses. How does one language (vernacular) get privileged over another? Who requires interpretation? And who offers to supply it? Each of these challenges evokes a response in participants. There are more than three languages. There is French, there is English and there is the interpretation in the middle. Those who offer to facilitate understanding hold a key position in the discourse. Often times, the consultant holds that position in organisational life. Today, I deliberately sought out a group in which everyone was an English speaker. I wondered what it would be like not to hear the negotiation of translation, not to have to wonder what was being said in a language with which I have a passing acquaintance.
I was surprised by my responses.
Today I felt more misunderstood and I think I, in turn misunderstood my colleagues in a group that, on the surface, offered more possibilities of what we had in common than not. As soon as we had negotiated a “sameness” (language of communication) other differences emerged – nuance, intention, conscious and unconscious projections and inferences. I realise that not understanding the language also offers a respite from the words and offers the possibility of playing with meaning, non verbal and symbolic communication. I ask myself – how is the discourse affecting me? Is how I am being affected useful in terms of what is transpiring? The advantage of exploring this in a group relations conference is that is precisely the kind of exploration, reflection and learning we are invited to participate in.
The learning for leadership is to challenge the assumption of common languages. What and who does it include? What and who does it exclude? When I say that I assist organisations to review, evaluate and strategise I am assuming a familiarity with the terminology. I assume that those I speak with understand my vernacular and when they approach me, they assume I understand what they mean. But there is also the possibility that the interpretation of each of these terms is contingent on what each brings to the table. And that’s where negotiation and reflection step in.
When a client approaches me to assist them draw up a plan or a strategy I can’t afford to assume we are talking the same language. Their need and my offering may or may not be congruent. Unless we explore the taken for granted starting points we may end up having misunderstandings as the process evolves.
When I am consulting with clients I build in time for reflection. How has this been working from both our perspectives? Do we need to challenge our assumptions? What value do our assumptions hold for the piece of work we are engaged in?
Sometimes talking the same jargon is a barrier to effective communication. Sometimes how that jargon makes me feel and invites me to respond can be a more authentic starting point for more meaningful connections.
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).
“In terms of clarity, strategy has become an ever more obtuse art” (Micklethwait J and Wooldridge A, 1996, pp159).
We are regularly invited to assist organisations in the generation of strategic plans. The generation of a document or report is very often seen as the “end product” of a process and in some cases the plan itself then needs to be “sold” to the organisation. Increasingly we find management teams wanting to approach this task in a more creative way. The following are some thoughts, garnered from conversations with our clients about how it might be done differently.
Controlling the future
Why do organisations strategically plan? This question is rarely asked because of the dominant discourse in business that suggests that not to plan is somewhat reckless. Banks require plans in order to release funds. Marketing departments require plans in order to position the company or product. Most business engagement with state or central government requires a written plan that serves to reassure the parties that some kind of certainty exists as to who the primary actors are. Plans and strategic plans in particular are a primary map and compass of the business world. This raises one of the fundamental aspects of strategic planning – i.e. the hope that in producing a plan, uncertainty will be controlled and the future predicted.
Many strategic planning processes are predicated on the assumption that the “future” exists as a separate tangible place and the role of the strategic planner is to identify which aspects of the organisation’s mission and activities can be made to “fit” with that expected arrival. This can sometimes set up a defensive pattern within organisations that may turn a strategising process into one which seeks to prevent the organisation from experiencing any risk whatsoever, thereby protecting it from uncertainty and potentially from growthful risk and challenge.
The Paradox of Plans
The paradox can often look like this:
Increasingly I’m working with clients to create strategic planning processes whereby the strategising is fluid and evolving while at the same time visible and tangible. A plan is delivered but it is the result of and beginning of strategic thinking. If we are fixated on “one” future, then any unpredictability or deviation from that future can leave us feeling unprepared which is what we’re supposed to be addressing by doing a strategic plan in the first place!
Strategising vs Strategy
The contracting phase is now a time when I work with clients to re-frame the possibility of strategising and planning as one where the future is co-created in the present and is seen as a plurality rather than a single certainty. As a consultant I assist clients create safe enough spaces to imagine a different way of working, and more importantly, a jointly constructed future that embraces change, challenge and uncertainty.
Graetz draws a distinction between strategic thinking and strategic planning.
“..Planning concerns analysis – establishing and formalising systems and procedures; thinking involves synthesis - encouraging intuitive, innovative and creative thinking at all levels of the organisation”.
Hypothesising, de-constructing, re-framing etc are all tools for creative thinking and strategising which fit within my consultancy tool kit.
“So long as contrasting right versions not all reducible to one are countenanced, unity is to be sought not in an ambivalent or neutral something beneath these versions but in an overall organization embracing them” (Goodman, 1978, pp5).
In revisiting some of the work I have undertaken with clients strategising has been a way of asking creative questions with a view to generating new possibilities and new futures. The other insight of course is that we strategise all the time – whether how to sneak out of the house in our teens or securing additional finance for a business venture – strategic thinking comes naturally!
The Challenge for Consultants
The primary challenge to those of us involved in assisting organisations to strategise is the co-creation of a secure enough environment in which to envision a future that is insecure.
An un-attributed quote states – “Martin Luther King did not say, ‘I have a strategic plan,” he said “I have a dream’” – and has a lot to offer those of us in the midst of strategising. The dilemmas about outputs become secondary to the strategising itself and business plans, marketing material, bank proposals etc become obvious ways of developing contextually situated conversations that can only enhance understanding.
Goodman, Nelson, (1978), Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Company
Graetz, Fiona (2002), Strategic Thinking Versus Strategic Planning: Towards Understanding the Complementarities, Management and Decision, Volume 40, Number 5, pp456 - 463
Micklethwait J and Wooldridge A, (1996), The Witch Doctors, Heinemann, London,
As I mentioned in the previous post, I use a process called Dynamic Participation as a methodology for consulting and facilitating. Increasingly we live in an age where "participation" is thrown around like snuff at a wake - what exactly does it mean? and more to the point, what does it look like? Here are some of the principles that I work by:
- Always work in the “here and now”. Who said what to whom a week ago; a month ago or a year ago is rarely useful in terms of moving a situation forward. Working with what is going on in the room right now is.
- Always work on a live issue. Role plays and case studies can be really interesting ways of getting a group to work on a task, but they rarely result in that group applying the learning in their work environment after the workshop/session has finished. Working on something that is a live issue for everyone in the room is one sure fired way to ensuring that learning sticks.
- Context is as important as content. How someone decides to "put something into the room" is always as important as what they say and is a huge source of information about how this group works together in helpful and unhelpful ways.
- Making a difference starts with being in the room. If people can’t understand why you have invited them together then the process is pointless. If however, you can show people by the way in which you interact with them that their presence and view is essential then you create immediate buy in.
- Keep the process public. Have the conversations about why you are there, what is expected and hoped for, boundaries around time etc out loud and with those you invite into your process. Take a risk and produce notes of the meeting that summarise what has been discussed and distribute these openly to all who attend.
- Dialogue, not monologue. Are you sure you are consulting/facilitating? And not disseminating? A real dialogue involves myriad views…are you open to changing yours on the basis of what you hear? If so, then a real and genuine dialogue can yield exciting results. If not, then you are engaged in a monologue and people will rarely come back for a second lecture.
- Roles come with responsibilities and that goes for everyone in the conversation. Dynamic Participation offers a space to ask each participant – what is my role? And what is my responsibility? Taking the blame culture out of organisational life can only be done if both of these questions are asked and answered by everyone in the room (including the consultant).
- Attend to boundaries, not rules. By attending to the boundaries of the process you leave room for difference. By attending to rules you impose conformity.
- Ask those who present with negative statements to offer positive alternatives, thereby focussing on what is possible as distinct from what is not.
- Defensive people are usually trying to protect something important. Instead of getting frustrated with the defence try asking “what is so important here that it needs this kind of protection?”
How much responsibility does a facilitator take on for what happens in a room with a group with whom he or she is working? This is something I think about quite a bit depending on the kind of relationship, the longevity of it and what the task in hand is.
I am a believer in keeping the planning conversations about the process in the room and out loud. Any other approach infantilises clients and results in the facilitator having more control than s/he needs to. If the ultimate aim of the process is to generate action then this set up can stifle that before you even begin.
The “difficult” or “angry” person in a group is the place where this approach is really tested and I’ve worked with this in myriad ways over the course of my consulting career. Now if I’m working over an extended period of time then I can process what that hostility may be communicating on behalf of the group. You need a good working alliance and time and space to do that kind of work. If I am in a situation where I have a short amount of time and a clear piece of work the group needs to engage with then my approach is more direct.
If someone is “interrupting” the task of the group by complaining (usually about a deficit of some kind) then instead of dealing with them directly about it I put the following into the room.
I appreciate the fact that people feel comfortable speaking freely about what they wish to talk about
However, the context for the meeting is that we are here to discuss the following items – and then I refer to the invitation or agenda.
There are resources available to the group including my facilitating skill, time, physical resources etc and they need, as a group, to make a choice about how they want to do that. We can talk about what’s “not” happening or we can talk about what is….They can choose to change the agenda and focus on other items and I will willingly go with them there and facilitate that discussion. What I am not willing to do is make a decision for them and then find out that many people in the room are disappointed that we didn’t talk about the agenda which was agreed.
I generally find that putting that out into a group does several things
- It respects the diversion from the topic at hand, and the person who is brave enough to say out loud what some people may not be able to articulate.
- It puts responsibility for the content of the conversation where it belongs – with the group
- It puts responsibility for the context and boundary of the conversation where it belongs – with the facilitator
- It engages with the participants as adults, with choices about how they use the resources available to them
- It requires action on the part of the group, which if the outcomes of the meeting are to be successful will require the same kind of action.
The alternative is for the facilitator to take all the responsibility which in turn means that you prevent a group from learning how they choose to include and exclude.
So far I’ve never encountered a group that hasn’t been able to engage with that task and make a decision about how to continue to work together.
For years I’ve fooled everyone around me into believing I think in straight lines. My academic and business writing makes “sense” and I can follow the rules if I’m pushed to it. But I’m a secret mind mapper…it’s the only way I can make any kind of sense out of complex ideas and concepts while doing them justice before re-framing them for consumption elsewhere.
Over the past few days I’ve been reflecting on my France experience with a view to writing up those reflections in the form of a paper. As usual, it took me ages to get going on the computer to actually write it up. But I kept a mind map open and as thoughts occurred to me I added them in to a branch here and there so I had the paper plotted before I started writing.
In all honesty this isn’t a real mind map because there is far too much writing and not enough single words and images. But the thing with mind maps is that each one is individual. I’m guessing that no one would be able to figure out what the final document looked like from this diagram and that suits me just fine – they don’t need to – I need to!
I have used mind maps over the years to capture the content of books, plan presentations, to think through complex meetings and I’m amazed at how it aids retention of information. If, like me, you take notes at meetings and never read them again then you’ll breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to mind maps. They’re creative, playful and indulgent in all the best senses of those words.
The thing about mind maps is that each of the branches really doesn’t need to connect to the others when the idea occurs to you. The connection is with the middle. And that’s the way I work in groups also. I’m not that concerned when seemingly random comments or branches of conversations happen that on the surface, don’t seem to link up. My job is thinking about how they link to the middle, or the big picture. When conversations “wander” there’s always something interesting happening in the room. Sometimes it’s an avoidance of difficult issues, other times it’s free association, but ultimately it’s all related to the middle. Who enjoys being in groups where it all works in linear and straight lines. If you're like me - then the big picture is where it's at.
I refer to myself as an extroverted thinker. That's shorthand for - I haven't a clue what I know until I start talking to someone - that's why you'll see frequent references here to "conversations". Conversations are my key strategy for understanding myself and I’ve also found in my consulting experience that conversations are the most important strategies in my toolkit. If I can't be in a conversation with someone - how can we work out what we know? And if we can't work out what we know, how can we work out the bits that we don't know?
Following on from
yesterday's post it occurred to me that once we move into the unconscious competence domain it is increasingly difficult to work out what it is we actually do know. We take it for granted, and we often take for granted that other people also know..
One way in which I am generating data for my PhD research is via interviews....nothing new in that I hear you say. But one of the primary interviewees is me. Over the course of the next few years I will ask colleagues, my supervisor and various others to interview me about the research and my findings. I am totally convinced that it will be during those conversations, as distinct from sitting at my computer writing, that I will really get an authentic sense of what it is I know. Something will happen when someone asks me a question I haven't considered before and I will answer from a place I don't normally visit - somewhere in the middle will land an insight that's new.
When I'm working with clients I place a huge value on conversation, interview and informal chat. It's in those moments that we collectively work out what we are struggling to know and also affirm what it is we are certain of. Unconscious competence keeps the show on the road but from time to time we need to take a moment to reflect on how we managed to make it all unconscious...and more importantly, the "it" that we do unconsciously.
Interviews are a fantastic way of doing that and I never fail to me amazed at what happens in the space "between".
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.
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.
I contributed to a comment stream over at
Creating Passionate Users recently and meant to come back to it to post something here in response.
Kathy posted a really interesting article on criticism. She says
The tricky part is that the criticisms aren't always wrong. It really might be all hype. It might be BS. It might be just a fad, or the same s*** with a new name. But things are rarely that black and white. Where there is passion (not just fad or fashion), there is something real there. Something that some people see and feel. But the key point to keep in mind--and the one that offers a simple solution--is this:
People will sometimes diss things they know very little about
In my response to a really great article about the value of passion (in all its forms) I said:
Sometimes the uninformed criticism is a reaction to being patronised and I think advocates and evangelists for various products/services need to be careful that they don’t cross the boundary between enthusiasm/passion and being patronising. Ultimately, we have to make it possible for people to say “I don’t like that” or “I don’t know” without imposing a value judgement. I’ll never get golf…I don’t think my life is in any way diminished as a result…the more I can admit that then the less I am likely to take a cudgel and bludgeon golf lovers to metaphorical death!
I sometimes come across this situation with client organisations which are so enthusiastic to promote the value of what they do that they sometimes forget that not everyone sees it the same way. Take golf for example (and I apologise in advance to any golf playing readers). I don’t play it, I probably never will and I remember feeling distinctly patronised by a friend on one occasion who suggested that I was missing something by not trying it out. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything and felt then that I’d never walk onto a golf course because it would be proving him right, me wrong and as a result I haven’t entertained the notion since. He made it difficult for me to see the value of it by assuming a high moral ground about the value and I made it impossible for myself to see the invitation by reacting to it.
I agree with Kathy that passion comes in all shapes and sizes and needs to be attended to. I also believe that creators, consultants or whomever need to moderate our enthusiasm so that it comes across as an invitation and not the potential sound of a door slamming.
May is creative industries month here at Interactions because today I’m in Dundalk where I am running a training workshop for the County Louth Enterprise Board. The workshop has been developed for creative industries in the region who want to upskill in the area of applying for commissions. While some of my content will be similar to the presentation I made last week, today will be focussed around practical advice, case studies and drawing on participants existing knowledge of how this process works. Commissioning is a lucrative market for people working in the craft and creative industries area and with the advent of the one percent scheme (where one per cent, up to a total of €63,500) of public capital development projects can be spent on art, the amount of work that can be commissioned in Ireland is steadily growing. The guidelines are here. Most of the public art you see dotted around the country side has been commissioned using this scheme and increasingly it is being used in creative ways to commission artists in other disciplines (other than the visual) and temporary as well as permanent work. Applied artists are beginning to realise that there are opportunities here for them to make an impact and be included in the pool of artists who are making work in this way.
Following my presentation in Kilkenny I was struck by a couple of things. Research presented at the conference indicated that many people think of craft as “amateur”. I shared an anecdote that many professional actors over the age of 40 in Ireland could be considered “amateur” as most have never formally trained and many have entered the profession via amateur companies. We have no formal training for directors here either. The point I was trying to make is that professionalism is an attitude, not something that is awarded by others. So if you want to be taken seriously as a professional you have to start by taking yourself seriously.
Many of the conversations I had with crafts people centred on their “objects” and much of their promotional material contained fantastic visual imagery of the finished pieces. The commissioning process may (or may not) be concerned with a finished piece, but in the arts world, it is the artist’s ability to respond to the context and need of the commissioner first, as distinct from looking for a market into which to sell a piece of art that is the defining difference. In many instances working with communities; responding to complex social, political or cultural contexts; building relationships with professionals such as architects and engineers and genuinely thinking beyond the physical limitations of space and materials are key skills required in order to be successful.
People working in the creative industries bring much of that knowledge albeit shrouded in different ways. They are already skilled at marketing and managing businesses. I’m hoping to do some more work this year with people who want to explore the commissioning process from the perspective of the public commissioner where the outcome is not necessarily pre-determined. A first step in that direction will be work with the group today (and again next week) where we can apply what they already know, add in some stuff that I know and maybe between us we’ll emerge with something that isn’t as pre-determined as either of us thinks!
Edit: I had a superb day in Dundalk with a great group of people. It was a pleasure to work with you all and it confirmed for me again that most of the real learning at these events happens between the participants and not between the person with the power point and the "participants". My thanks to you all!
I was recently asked to participate in a survey by a by post graduate student who is investigating blogging. It involved me ticking a series of multiple choice answers in response to around 30 questions. I’m always keen to offer what ever wisdom I’ve picked up after nearly 3 years of blogging so off I went with my cyber pen in hand. After getting thorough about half of the survey I found myself getting tense and agitated.
“It’s only a survey” I kept telling myself – what’s the problem?”
The “problem” was the way in which the questions were framed. Closed questions, limited pre-ordained answers and no context.. My agitation arose from feeling like I was being channelled in a direction that had nothing to do with my experience and everything to do with the interests of the researcher. (I hasten to add this was all in my own mind and not a criticism of the individual researcher).
I’m currently doing my own PhD research which is predicated on qualitative interviewing i.e. lots of open questions and data that I will have to hand code and interpret. No computer programme is going to do the work for me. My open questions are generating the most extraordinary insights from the people who are graciously giving me their time. After comepleting the survey above, I wondered what kind of impact a closed questioning approach would have on my research participants, if my experience of the online survey is anything to go by. My hypothesis is that they would have felt agitated; limited in their ability to reply and less generous in their responses. I know that’s how I felt 50% of the way through the survey. I felt as though “I” didn’t matter but whatever data I might have gathered would. All in all, a depersonalising experience.I can’t emphasise enough the importance I place on personalising my engagements with clients, research participants and others…If it’s not about what happens between us – then we should just “Phone it in”. There’s no point in being in a room with someone, or asking them to participate in something we’ve originated if we’re not that interested in making it possible for them to shine.
I didn’t “shine” in the online survey, but it’s given me a good lesson in how to ensure my research participants do.
I spent a great day yesterday delivering a training seminar for a group of crafts people from north and south of the border. One of the interesting issues that emerged at one point in the proceedings was the difference in how men and women deal with money. Most of the people present were solopreneurs and working independently, the quality of their work from the brief tour of websites I undertook is superb. Yet many of the women in particular professed a degree of discomfort when negotiating face to face with clients about fees.
We talked about some practical strategies for dealing with the very real issue of getting paid for your work but there seemed to be something more profound going on that reminded me of my training as a therapist. There comes a point when you have to feel comfortable asking for a suitable fee for the work you have done – particularly when that work is personal – and can only be undertaken by you. It’s a paradox. You are charging for a service, but you are also valuing your particular view, craft, skill or way of doing business. That’s why someone is standing in front of you asking you to do something for them. In a large corporation there’s a department that deals with the mucky stuff of invoicing and credit control. Many creative types have agents and managers…then there are those who have to manage both the creative stuff and the mucky stuff together – it’s hard to separate out the personal from the professional. The men present yesterday seemed to have no problem whatsoever in charging for their work, placing a value on what they do and asking for money.
There is a cultural discourse about women asking for money for “personal” service that inevitably plays into this whole discussion. The fine line between prostitution and therapy has been written about extensively and when there is no external “object” around which a discussion takes place it can be deeply uncomfortable for some people. As I have mentioned before, I don’t have a bag of tricks or a “thing” I sell. What I bring to a client is myself, my experience, my wisdom and my skill. It is personal – it has to be. But it can only work if there are good boundaries and I am a fond fan of that cliché that good fences make very good neighbours.
Some of the strategies we discussed that might be useful for crafts people yesterday included:
Writing up a “terms and conditions” document, framed in positive language about what you can and will provide and how you expect payment – post it on your website so people can see this before they contact you. The chances are they won’t bat an eyelid about payment terms if you’ve outlined it in advance.
Follow up “informal” discussions about commissions or work with a friendly email – put your understanding of what the client is looking for in writing, this will serve to clarify your own thinking and prompt some similar thinking on the part of the client. It also serves as the starting point to the assignment.
Keep a log or a diary of a project from the outset and include in it the time you spend thinking about a client and designs as well as the time you spend making – you’ll be surprised at how much work you are actually doing and how little value you may be attributing to it.
Sometimes small interventions can be the most meaningful of all and I hope that some of the people who came to the workshop yesterday will find those three suggestions useful in creating a boundary around what needs to be protected – their personal skill and ability and what can sometimes be eroded – their sense of worth and value.
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?
I spent much of the last few days working on a number of interview transcripts for my research. One of the challenges when trying to put together a paper is how you carve up the space between those who are “experts” i.e. published authors, and those who are “applied experts” i.e. those who reflect on their experience of theory in practice when invited to participate in research projects such as my own. When I submitted my Masters dissertation I wrote a chapter on that dilemma and made a decision to give equal weight to the published and non published experts. Both complimented each other very well but I do remember weighing up that decision very carefully.
I suppose the reason it is popping into my mind again is that on several occasions over the last week or so I have found myself in conversations where the issue of “expertise” and who owns it has arisen. I often ask myself – what am I an expert in or at? And how can I see the expertise in those I work with even when it’s a challenge to do so.
Increasingly I am looking at “difficult people” in organisations as “experts” about a certain type of organisational intelligence. Sometimes the story they tell has to be shouted loudly and inarticulately for those who have “authority” to hear. Perhaps I’m deluding myself but I do think that there is an expertise at work there…there’s also an expertise involved in decoding and hearing it and I think the real challenge is finding a way in which someone’s expertise can shine instead of asking them to modify that expertise into something that fits a preordained box which denudes them of their expertise in the first place. In my fantasy life recruitment processes would be full of questions about how a candidate’s expertise could shine, what their suggestions for modifying or adapting organisations to fit them might be and what they themselves could contribute to the emotional temperature of a system…maybe someday!
I left a comment over at Johnnie’s blog about empathy. It’s a fairly essential element of a psychotherapist’s toolkit and there is much writing to substantiate the position that regardless of orientation, a therapist’s ability to empathise with a client is a key factor in the success of the working alliance.
Johnnie's take on it is interesting
I think empathy is what gets left out of many narratives about how change happens
In business I see an enormous anxiety about being empathic because there can be an assumption that to be empathic means I have to experience the other’s pain and if I do that then I will become as incapacitated as they are - out of control. It's a false assumption of course and it inevitably leads to the insincere empathy where everyone is "understanding" of everyone else’s pain. The false empathy then becomes a defence against our own feelings and ultimately destroys any chance of an authentic encounter. If we can't walk in someone else's shoes for a moment and try and understand what their world view is - then change or any kind of difference becomes academic and not authentic.
I’ve been invited to facilitate a short session as part of the final day of the Matrix programme at Common Purpose here in Dublin. I am a past graduate (2003/2004) of the programme which seeks to bring leaders from all sectors together over the course of a year to explore their sectors, and to also explore how they can lead outside of their “authority” or organisations.
The session I am going to facilitate is called “Creative leadership” and part of the task is to invite the participants to reflect on their experience over the past twelve months. I’m playing with a way of working that might invite them to consider three things: How they have taken on their leadership; How they have awarded leadership and how they have followed….We’ve only a short amount of time (an hour and a half) and I’d love to get some input from readers as to how we could use the time creatively … I’m open to throwing my lens out the window – any takers? I will of course come back and let you know what happens…
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?
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
Referencing Fast Company, Shawn over at Anecdote comments:
Andrew says we should be more comfortable with not knowing and I have to admit I don’t entirely know what he means.
I also have real issues with the way in which the benefits of "not knowing" are bandied about sometimes. In fairness, the Fast Company article is interesting and the following suggestions are offered:
Practice admitting when you're stuck or don't know what you're doing (perhaps in safer environments at first)
Open up to others to help you begin to find answers to your challenges.
Begin to notice the sense of freedom that can come from not having to "know" all the time.
For me, the issue is less about being comfortable "not knowing" but more - can I manage the anxiety of not having the answer? It's a bit like our relationship with silence. Most of us find certain kinds of silence uncomfortable - there's an expectation of dread; something awful might happen; I am expected to come up with an answer and if I don't then I'll get into trouble etc. Most people will rush to fill that silence because it can be an awkward place to be. So adopting a position of "not knowing" is, in fact a sophisticated response to managing my own and others' anxiety. My own suggestions for managing those moments are:
- Talk about the pressure to know - if you are experiencing this the chances are others are too. Naming the pressure to "know" can relieve the tension of "not knowing"
- Adopt a position of curiosity about the stuckness - what's the useful information contained in the dilemma that is related to the question we can't answer? Very often they are related
- Stand back from the dilemma and wonder what a stranger looking in at this conversation might see
- Pay attention to the emotional temperature of the discussion - if necessary, use imagery to describe what's being felt but not being said in the moment
- Ask yourself - if I don't know the answer - what is the question that is causing us to feel stuck? What is it about the way in which we're asking the question that's evoking "not knowing"?
So far from "not knowing" - those moments offer a creative way of engaging with what we
do know - we just need to pay attention to different kinds of communication.
Another great post from
Kathy has sparked my thinking about creative process,
“not knowing” and all that stuff that’s a challenge to certainty and control. This has been particularly relevant for me in a recent project – the overt task was the creation of a strategic plan which went well but the covert task was managing the anxiety of my client about outcomes. Each time we’d take a break of a few days from the process my client would redesign the task and focus on the outcomes and actions to the detriment of the high level thinking we needed to stay with. The images in my head were of me physically pulling her back.
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..."
There's often an assumption that if you're not controlling the outcome it will slip away. I beg to differ - I hold the outcome but I don't attempt to control it because if I do that I miss the evolving processes that make that outcome authentic and rooted in real experience. At the end of the day it's that balance between authenticity and task that gets plans owend and acted upon
Photo credit
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).
He then goes on to talk about the initial interviews he set up to find the right coach
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.
I know many people who have had a similar experience and many others who have had the same kind of experience when trying to find the right therapist. I think it becomes even more complicated if you are a therapist and a coach and you're thinking of hiring someone to work with you. I know all the tricks, the jargon and have seen a lot of empty promises - I am not sure I'm coachable at all or if so I think I'd need a really special kind of coach - one that wouldn't put up with my smart alecness :) But seriously folks - are there coaches out there who are coachees? If so, how did you find the right coach for you:?
Later this evening I'm participating in Enterprise Offaly Week. I'll be in the Tullamore Court Hotel, Co Offaly running a workshop entitled "A Slice of the Pie?" aimed at helping people in the creative industries identify and maximise opportunities for commissioning. Increasingly Enterprise Boards in Ireland are looking outside of mainstream business for ways of helping their clients achieve success and with the range and amount of commissioning opportunities now available in the public sector it's a timely seminar.
Stop by and say hello if you're about.
Do you have an elevator pitch about your business? I have tried and failed (repeatedly) to invent one. I sometimes think I need to be in a very tall building where the lift occasionally goes to the top floor.
I’ve written here previously about Dynamic Participation – the principles that inform how I facilitate and consult and I’ve refined those 10 points into a 3 point plan for working with groups
1 Keep the process in the room
2 Consult with curiosity
3 Respect the resistence
Will that get me to the top floor?
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.
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.
Managing the relationship between a board of directors and CEO of a charitable organisation can be challenging at the best of times. In my experience difficulties arise when both parties are clear about their individual roles are but are unclear about the overlap and relationship between their role and that of the other. Common questions I hear are:
How does an agenda get constructed for a board meeting? and who has responsibility for this?
Who is responsible for making sure that the relevant compliance material is lodged with the authorities?
How much say does the board have in the day to day work of the organisation?
I generally try to work with CEOs and board members separately and then together to firstly clarify their role and secondly draw out their understandings and expectations of the other's. Taking real life examples of dilemmas and challenges is a great way of testing the theory in advance of having to manage a crisis when there's little time for thinking.
Here's a brief outline of the primary roles and responsibilities of the Board and CEO which can be used to start those conversations about role, responsibilities and the relationship between.
(You can download a PDF copy Here.)
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.
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 don’t believe in tricks when it comes to facilitating and consulting. At the end of the day it’s me and my client(s) in a room trying to figure something out together. Yes, I have a toolkit, but it’s pretty bare in terms of stuff I can take out and wave around…I don’t do “off the shelf” solutions and I’m rarely in a position to talk with any degree of freedom about previous work, primarily because so much of it comes to me as “confidential”. It’s a dilemma…
One of the things I do bring to the table is my ability to listen and more importantly, my ability to hear. Why differentiate I hear you ask? Well there’s a critical difference from a client’s perspective in being listened to and being heard and the ability to move between one and the other is what makes good consulting and facilitation work.
I recently worked with a client who ranted and raved for a full 45 minutes “at” me about the “uselessness” of a manager in the system. He listed out the deficiencies in this manager, quantified the losses accruing as a result of his inadequacies and was blistering in his personal attack on his peer. He wanted me to “sort this person out” so the company could get back to doing what it needed to do. His preference was for me to take this manager out of the system and give him a “bloody good talking to”.
I didn’t do as he asked…and about a week later both the manager (above) and the vilified manager were back at work, getting along better than they ever had been and productivity was on the rise again.
Listening can be a tough station. For a full 45 minutes I listened to this manager’s anger. It was clear, unambiguous and in the service of some kind of action – any kind of action….
I heard a number of unspoken things while listening to his anger. I heard the anxiety in his voice, his escalating tension as he spoke, the lack of resolution as he “dumped” on me…his insistence that I “get rid” of the problem and also his isolation in dealing with it. If only I could make this problem go away then everything would be back to normal. I was being warned not to let him down. I heard his fear that the department would be vilified by head office if he couldn’t make this department perform its task and get the staff to work better together.
So I had a choice about what to respond to, knowing that how I would respond would dictate how we might progress together. If he didn’t feel “heard” then I was going to be as vilified as the manager I was expected to “fix”.
In this instance I took a risk and responded out of an empathy with his fear and anxiety. The look on his face was one of – “how did you know that?” but he couldn’t deny that I had heard him. He felt met, seen, listened to and heard - out of that meeting we managed to do some productive work together looking at his isolation in the system and also the expectation being piled on the new manager – most of which this new manager wasn’t aware of and couldn’t possibly respond to. Our work developed into a coaching relationship which was significant for this manager as it was the first time he had availed of any kind of professional support. I also coached the new manager helping to negotiate deliverables and ongoing professional support for him in the system. Each manager had felt unheard and was feeling pressure to respond to "unreasonable" demands from a "senior" in the organisation. Attending to what I was "hearing" allowed us to use the emotional content of the meeting to look at what was going on in that wider context. Once we'd established a relationship of trust it was possible for the situation to be resolved in a way that allowed each to hold on to their truth and their integrity. The tension in the relationship diminished, a better working environment was created and targets were met. The fact that I had heard as well as listened was a key factor in building a working alliance.
There’s a delicate dance between listening, hearing and the point at which you make an intervention to feed back what you think will make a difference. I see this as an intricate balance and this diagram goes some way to outlining the process from my perspective where the outside circle represents what I listened to and the inside what I heard.
Note: some details have been changed to protect the identity of the client and this piece has been published with the client's permission.
So much of the art of facilitation is simply getting out of the way. The more I get out of my client's way, the more they generate the content they really want heard. I'm sure there's a mathematical formula or a two by two of some kind to quantify the relationship between the facilitator's activity and the creativity of the group. I'm learning this more and more every time I work with a client group. I'm also realising that the real role of the facilitator is about minding three things
Task
The big picture and the overall reason for the gathering. I have this in my mind as the day goes on. My role is to make sure we achieve the task we have set ourselves.
Time
There's a finite amount of time available to us and within that there are choices about how that time is managed and used. My role is make sure the time boundaries are adhered to and the use of the time is consciously acknowledged. If a group decides to use the time in a different way then they need to take responsibility for that in the moment.
Territory
Making sure we have a safe conceptual space and a good enough physical space in which to work (and ensuring both are respected) is a key part of my role.
Essentially I'm minding the boundaries of the conversation and getting out of the way so that my clients can have the conversations they want to. It's amazing what happens when you simply get lost!
I don’t believe you can do any kind of authentic work with people unless you name (and tame) the elephant in the room. On several occasions over the past week I’ve worked with groups where someone has been brave enough to name what’s not being said and the depth of the discussion has substantially changed for the good. I think it takes a huge amount of courage to name the unnameable and I think it’s part of my role as a facilitator to make it safe enough for the naming to take place. It’s also part of my job to make sure that the naming is done in a respectful way and is owned by all of those present. I see the courageous one as doing a service on behalf of all. When someone is brave enough to name the shadow and is supported by a group who are brave enough to see their part in it - that’s where real change and transformation takes place. You simply can’t not know what you know. You can make a choice to ignore it or act upon it, but “reality” is forever changed and hiding can’t ever be an option. “I didn’t know” or “nothing to do with me” won’t work in a system where the elephant has been named and ultimately tamed.
I frequently 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" or "away days". 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 of mine is the fantasy board game. In this, each person picks 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 the group by whom they suggest). It's easier to pick a fantasy person than name someone you might know in a personal capacity because it removes the emotional awkwardness and allegiance difficulties. 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 l"ogical" 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. 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
and thanks to Anecdote for the archives picture idea
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 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.
Matt Moore continues to write really engaging posts and his latest one The Technology of the Secret really piqued my curiosity. He's writing about the process of telling and keeping secrets and how much of his work (and indeed my own) revolves around secret keeping.
Simply hiding something makes it more desirable to others. We may hide it for any number of reasons. It may be shameful, boring, illegal, hurtful. Whatever it is, we don't want people to know about it. We manage & maintain our identities and the exposure of a secret threatens that. Our secrets make us vulnerable. And because they are a part of ourselves that form us that we cannot publicly acknowledge, they can be a heavy burden. Many cultures have developed rituals & roles for the entrustment of secrets to others. The catholic confessional, the psychiatrist's couch.
Secrets (of ourselves & also of others) are powerful tokens of exchange. The secrets of others might be exchanged for material gain but our own secrets are offered to people to build trust between us. We often start with little vulnerabilities and then move on to the bigger things. And in a world where random connections are increasingly common, we sometimes fell happier giving our secrets to complete strangers instead of those close to us.
In my experience there are 4 reasons why someone "tells" their secrets to someone else.
1. I’m telling you a secret because if I say it out loud in the presence of another person then I can begin to hear it myself for the first time.
2. I’m telling you a secret because I feel lonely holding this and I want some company in my isolation.
3. I’m telling you a secret because you can then have the worry about what to do with it and I can absolve myself of that responsibility.
4. I am telling you a secret because I need you to “mind” this for me until I can work out what to do about it.
I'm ambivalent about secret keeping primarily because there is an assumed contract around confidentiality which is rarely negotiated. It's fairly clear if someone is breaking the law but outside of the legal requirements to disclose what about the moral or ethical issues?
I remember one consulting assignment where 10 people revealed their (competing) views about the organisation and made it clear that they expected me to keep their stories confidential. At the end of the few days they were relieved to have told someone and I was burdened with the content and the expectation that I would miraculously come up with a “solution” to a problem nobody was prepared to talk about.
In the end, I gathered the group together, told them I’d maintain confidentiality around their stories but I wanted to talk about the formal and informal ways in which communication was conducted in the company. The assignment turned out ok in the end because my interpretation of the balance between container and contained was a good fit and we had a very meaningful discussion but what I learned from that assignment was never to take confidentiality for granted so now it’s an ongoing part of my contracting with clients.
My work as a therapist brings up all sorts of issues about secret keeping but at a macro level I wonder why psychotherapists are so absent from public discourse when doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists appear with regularity in the media. One of the stories therapists tell themselves is that they have to maintain the confidentiality of the clients’ stories. Yes and no. Keeping secrets is also a way of colluding with the powerlessness of being unheard. Is it ethical to “fix” clients to return them to wider social systems that may have contributed to their distress in the first instance? Is it “ethical” to maintain a vow of silence about family life; relationships; abuse and all of the other secrets we are entrusted with? Who does secret keeping really benefit?
So you could say I’m ambivalent about secrets and my instinct now is to wonder what’s behind the giving of a secret to a secret keeper and how are we both being made and re-made in that process.
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.
