I've been hosting two Americanblogger friends of mine over the past week or so and it's been so interesting to hear about my city second hand and from a new perspective. It's amazing what you take for granted when you live somewhere all the time. I've learned that electric kettles that automatically shut off are a new phenomenon where my friends come from; just because you think you know where you are going doesn't mean there are street signs to assist; non Guinness drinkers, if placed in the right hot house environment can become evangelists for the stuff etc. All joking aside it's affirmed for me the usefulness of having a different view on what we take for granted and most of the time that's what my work involves - turning something upside down or sideways to get a better view and to offer that difference to my cilent. 9 times out of 10 change works because the difference makes sense, and if we can approach that search from a position of curiosity then I believe that anything (including converting to being a Guinness drinker) is possible! Now whether or not that Guinness situation is sustainable change is a topic for another discussion.
Sometimes the worst situations offer the best learning. In a gathering of colleagues recently we shared stories of some challenging consulting assignments. Yes, there were difficult clients and some harrowing stories, but each of my colleagues had reflected on their experiences, learned some lessons and allowed the learning to inform how they are in relationship with clients subsequently.
I extrapolated some of my learning from reflecting on my own practice and from participating in the above discussion and here are some of the questions I ask myself when the going seems tough.
• How am I being “used” here?
• In the service of who’s truth and reality?
• How is what’s happening to me relevant to my client’s dilemma?
• In what way is this situation my client’s experience?
• What have I contributed to the situation?
• What problem did my contribution solve for me?
• What’s useful about my dilemma?
What kinds of questions would help you reflect on your practice?
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.
In another of the superb TED podcastsKen Robinson gives a riveting (and very witty) presentation on the value of creativity and how our western education system is teaching us how to use our bodies as glorified transportation systems for our heads. He advocates a shift in the education system that values creativity for its own sake and for its impact on innovation. A timely reminder perhaps of a general election looming in about a week or so? I would be very interested to hear what our public representatives would make of Robinson's thoughts..
Sometimes the worst situations offer the best learning. In a gathering of colleagues recently we shared stories of some challenging consulting assignments. Yes, there were difficult clients and some harrowing stories, but each of my colleagues had reflected on their experiences, learned some lessons and allowed the learning to inform how they are in relationship with clients subsequently.
I extrapolated some of my learning from reflecting on my own practice and from participating in the above discussion and here are some of the questions I ask myself when the going seems tough.
• How am I being “used” here?
• In the service of who’s truth and reality?
• How is what’s happening to me relevant to my client’s dilemma?
• In what way is this situation my client’s experience?
• What have I contributed to the situation?
• What problem did my contribution solve for me?
• What’s useful about my dilemma?
What kinds of questions would help you reflect on your practice?
If you are an artist, arts organisation or work in the creative industries in Ireland and are interested in blogging then sign up for the Poetry Ireland seminar on Tuesday 12 June, 11 - 2pm in Dublin where I'll be running a seminar on the arts and blogging. We'll be looking at why artists and arts organisations should consider blogging and podcasting as tools for production as well as promotion and there will also be time to talk about the basics - like "what's a blog?"; "podcasting??"and "how do I start?". I'll be joined in the endeavour by blogger and podcaster Conn O'Muineachain from Edgecast Media .
Admission is free and you can book by calling 01 4789974 or emailing management@poetryireland.ie. If you're going to be there drop me a mail or leave a comment.
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.
Steve Roesler googled "emotions at work" and came up with a list of topics that confirms something I've always known - that emotion at work is a fearful topic for many people. The assumptions are that
• Emotion happens at home i.e. it's personal
• Being emotional means being out of control
• Emotion is not masculine
• Emotion is negative
• Emotion is extraneous to everything the organisation stands for
The discussion on emotion at work invariably centres around the notion that emotion happens "somewhere else" and that emotion is destructive - nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Organisations are emotional and emotion generating environments and most of my work concerns working with individuals and groups helping them to understand what systemic intelligence is contained in emotional situations. Very often the emotional person (aka the scapegoat) is voicing a concern on behalf of a system - i.e. they are doing a job in the system that needs to be done..How many people do you know who roll home after a day at the office talking about the activity they did today as distinct from how they felt about the activity. Most "irrational" behaviour in organisations is very often a conscious representation of unconscious emotional issues that are repressed because of the "rules" that suggest that emotion is not welcome...
I'm one of those odd people who believe that we can't decide to be rational-only because let's face it, that's a fairly irrational request...emotion is a vibrant and compelling type of data that can really contribute to learning .. But then again, we have examples of rational only entities - they are called bureaucracies - and the individual equivalents? sociopaths...Allowing emotion a place to breath doesn't mean abandoning reason - it means allowing the whole person in the room and that can only be a good thing in my view.
One incident that’s stuck in my mind was an interview I had 24 years ago for a financial consultancy. The interviewer talked about money, about wealth, about owning yachts.
Then he began to talk about the losers, the [sorry, but I’m quoting] c**** who didn’t recognise money and its importance, that in five years you could walk away, that you could have other people doing the work for you. That the world had two kind of people - people like him and the “stupid c****” who didn’t understand. He went on and on. It was like talking to low-end devil.
Finally, he let me get a word in. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m one of the c****.” And I walked out. One of the more terrifying experiences of my life.
At an individual level, each of us needs to do the same. I have something of an email habit, clicking "refresh" on my inbox like a rat in a Skinner Box - but I don't have a PDA/Blackberry (which is a bit like a meth addict proudly claiming not to touch heroin). I have decided I need to have one email-free day a week. The computer will stay off*.
We also need to examine the relationships that are mediated through these technologies. Are we driving people crazy with our behaviour? How do we manage ourselves to get the best out of our interactions with others? For some of us, this might be too painful. Best get back to hitting them with emails/txts/IMs I guess - that'll learn 'em.
The Dublin Fringe Festival began on Saturday night and I and my blogger friend Dermod had great seats for La Clique at the Spiegeltent. Dermod has written a lovely review of the evening here but I wanted to throw in my tuppenceworth as well. For a couple of hours on Saturday evening I was enchanted and entertained by a series of fabulous performers (who were joined on the evening by the wonderful Camille O'Sullivan). And as I was sitting there at the front of the tent watching a double jointed man squeeze through a stringless tennis racquet and two "strong men" with unmatchable finesse and showmanship do unspeakably amazing feats I realised I was impressed. I was so very impressed. And I took great comfort in the fact that there wasn't a single person in that audience who could emulate what these performers were doing. There wasn't a moment of envy - just sheer admiration. And it got me thinking about how important it is to be impressed by other people in a way that's healthy and nurturing.
At one point the above mentioned double jointed man balanced precariously on a series of tin cans (4 to be precise) on top of a piano, the top one was the size of a bean tin...he then wrapped his legs around his head and wondered out loud with us that if he could follow his dream and spend his life doing this...what might we aspire to?
Well, tin cans and stringless tennis racquets aside for a moment, he had a point...and it was eloquently made and even more eloquently received by many of the people I knew there that evening. What if following our dream meant being the best we could be? What if waiting for the "right" thing to come along meant we were missing opportunities to be impressive in other areas of our lives? What if we had to learn to be impressive first and the dream might follow...and what if we allowed ourselves to be impressed once in a while without feeling threatened?
All that and more at the circus..and if you plan on going to the circus, using the piano as 12 o'clock, get a seat at 3pm...I can't tell you why but I do promise you'll be impressed.
Do you have an elevator pitch about your business? I have tried and failed (repeatedly) to invent one.
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 resistance
I've just started to read The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (more about why later in the month) suffice to say it has one of the best opening sections of anything I've read recently.
There is no mystery to happiness.
Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.
But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.
If too much choice leads to unhappiness then does scarcity lead to something more productive? I'm inclined to think it might after the past week or so. Mayo County Enterprise Board asked me to design and deliver a series of day long workshops for 16/17 year old students to encourage them to think of entrepreneurship as a career option after school. 50 students attended each of the four workshops we ran over the past 2 weeks and at the end of each day we had 8 new businesses complete with elevator pitches; unique selling positions and costings.
I designed the sessions to give the students resources including the services of consultants; some brainstorming exercises to get their creative juices flowing; space; time; there was an award for the members of the winning team and a clear task. Then I added some constraints. Consultants could be booked for a limited number of timed sessions. A lovely lunch was provided but we didn't have an official lunch break. A deadline was imposed for each of the 8 groups to present their pitch to their classmates. The students had to self manage time, resources and constraints.
The workshops were variations on similar bootcamp events I've run for business clients and I also structured the days around a set of principles I believe to be true in organisational systems.
• People (particularly teenagers) know much more than we give them credit for
• Real creativity happens when you connect people with their own unique truth and experience
• People are experts about their own experience
• When creativity dries up in the system start looking at who’s managing the process – blocked creativity is rarely located in an individual’s experience it’s always about the message individuals are getting about what constitutes the ‘right’ way of being creative
• Most of what constitutes consulting and facilitating is getting out of the way
• The other bit is learning to listen – which means not thinking about your response to what the person in front of you is saying
• Creativity can only thrive with constraints. Too much of anything is not liberating it's oppressive
• You can only manage at the boundaries - anything else is police work
The students came up with fantastic ideas, on time, on task and made creative use of all of the resources we put at their disposal. Claire Wilson documented the days and we were joined by a team of five consultants who worked closely with each of the groups.
If I've learned anything in the past week it's that teenagers know more about strategy than any MBA graduate I've ever met and trusting them to get on with the task is half of the work involved - let's not assume that because someone is 'younger' (in any sense of the word) that there's anything they need to learn from us oldies. These young people blew me away with their ingenuity, positiveness and ability to work with what was in front of them. I'm indebted to a wonderful 17 year old young woman (my niece) who has taught me a lot about respecting the wisdom of younger people - she deserves half the credit for the design of the day and I'm proud and honoured to have a wonderful consultant of this calibre. She has two younger sisters and I'm on standby for the life lessons they'll pass on when the time is right.
At the New York Regional Meeting of ISPSO on Saturday I shared some thoughts on the Cyber System in the Mind. I'm intrigued as to why there are so few psychodynamic practitioners (particularly those working with organisations) using social media applications to talk about the work. I shared my own experience of being invited to present on this topic (a relatively new one for this organisation) and the levels of anxiety it raised for me. At one stage it looked like the Aer Lingus pilots in Ireland were going to strike and there was a part of me that was almost relieved to have a legitimate excuse to cancel. If I'm honest, I was scared of being attacked, criticised and ridiculed - thinking through my emotional reaction to the invitation (and some subsequent email correspondence) I realised that I was having a similar emotional experience to many of the clients with whom I work. In some cases their fear of an attack on their expertise or artform area etc prevents them from sharing what they know in cyberspace. Sometimes it's easier and safer to talk to ourselves. But while talking to ourselves has its benefits it is also exclusive...I remember the loneliness and isolation of being out for dinner with friends after a week of working with therapy clients and knowing I couldn't share what happened to me in the office that week. I've learned to trust my emotional reaction to situations because it's the only thing I have when I'm working with a client. So thinking through all of the above led me to offer three hypotheses and a paradox to my colleagues yesterday:
There is anxiety about succession in psychoanalysis - the new replacing the old
The cyber system in the mind is not a virtual but a hyper-real place – a place of regression - where incestuous desire is potentially realisable.
The silence of psychoanalytic practitioners in cyber space is a defence against the potential murder/death of psychoanalysis from the oedipal attack of the new.
The paradox this raises is then
Creating & telling stories in cyberspace places us on an equal footing with everyone else – we become ‘ordinary’ potentially divested of authority and status – it’s easier to talk to ourselves
yet
The future of a psychoanalytic approach to organising and organisations may rest in how ‘ordinary’ it becomes
Here is the set of slides I used (minus the case study which was only relevant for members of ISPSO).
I've put up a page containing links to all of the sites I referenced and have also included a few more for background information - you can access that page by clicking HERE.
I couldn't find an appropriate place for Rives on the day but somehow he seems so relevant in hindsight!
Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize speech is a wonderful and impassioned plea for the importance of education and telling our stories. In her speech she talks about illiteracy and the lack of books in Africa and compares the passion for learning with our comfortable complacency here – which is particularly apt at this time of the year.
The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise ... but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill. It is our stories, the storyteller, that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, what we are at our best, when we are our most creative.
That poor girl trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education for her children, do we think that we are better than she is – we, stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in our superfluities?
She’s not a fan of the time spent surfing and wonders
How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?
But of course the irony is, that blogging and social media have become important ways of telling stories – and Lessing’s words will permeate many imaginations by virtue of bloggers picking up and sharing what she has to say. But I take her point – I love books - I love the kinaesthetic experience of holding a document in my hands – and while others herald paperless books – they miss the point. Reading is not a delivery mechanism, it’s an emotional and spiritual experience and that can certainly be enhanced by the digital revolution but not supplanted by it. Unlike Lessing I'm hopeful about the future of literature, and the book, and can only hope that digital and traditional ways of telling stories can continue to co-exist.
And we, the old ones, want to whisper into those innocent ears. "Have you still got your space? Your sole, your own and necessary place where your own voices may speak to you, you alone, where you may dream. Oh, hold onto it, don't let it go." There must be some kind of education.
Happy New Year. Broken any new year resolutions yet? Or maybe you’re the kind that refuses to make them – that way ensuring a 100% satisfaction guaranteed rating at the year’s end. Like so may people I think about resolutions at this time of the year – I sometimes act upon them, but often than not by the end of January I’ve quietly put them away for another 11 months. This year I’ve decided to take a different approach. For the past 6 months I’ve been thinking about change – personal and professional – and spending a lot of that time asking myself what’s useful and productive about not making the changes I say I want to make. What kind of satisfaction (or secondary gain) am I getting out of my stuckness that’s more useful than the imagined newer version? I invariably come up against comfort (with the status quo) and fear (of the unknown) not highly original but pretty real in my case.
I have a couple of major personal change projects for 2008 and instead of writing a ‘to do’ list and an action plan I’ve made a mental list of how I am feeling now and how I want to feel when I’ve achieved those changes. I’ve decided to make the emotional engagement with these resolutions the focus of my attention while also embarking on some practical actions. So often it’s the emotional stuff that derails our best laid plans and in my case I can revert to a comfortable and controlled emotional relationship which inhibits my progress with outward action. So far it’s working –I’m delving into the value of my fear and comfort and discovering all kinds of interesting insights. I’m taking on my inner saboteur and am going to make ‘her’ my closest friend for the next year and I know that by the end of January I won’t be consigning any ‘to do’ list to the back of the drawer for another 11 months.
How are you getting along with your resolutions? And what’s your plan to befriend your inner saboteur?
For a great article on New Year Resolutions head over to Escape from Cubicle Nation where Pam asks ‘what’s perfect about your problem?’
This lovely Ted Talk from Lakshmi Pratury is a love letter to the lost art of letter writing. She invites us to think about both/and - email and text messages as well as hand written personal notes both of which should be able to sit side by side. It's a timely thought for me. I've noticed that my handwriting is declining in clarity the older I get - while I can rectify my blurry vision with stronger lenses, the only way I can reclaim my penmanship is to take a pen in hand and practice more often. I tend to hand write envelopes even if the contents are business related and the only real notes I've written in the last year are either Birthday/Christmas cards or summaries of meetings I'm involved in that need to be decoded afterwards.. so a thought for the new year will be to create more opportunities for that personal touch. When so much of what I read is about creating better and more personal relationships it seems to me that a handwritten note might just be the most creative technology we have at our fingertips to make that happen.
One of the unchallenged tenets of consultancy is the concept of confidentiality. In the course of assignments I am often assumed to hold a confidential space and for many years I accepted this principle as a central hypothesis in my work. While the concept of confidentiality is always discussed in therapeutic relationships, I am finding myself more and more curious about why consulting clients are not as ready to have conversations about this concept in the same way. In more recent times I have also become more interested in the concept of confidentiality and how it is constructed as a mechanism for the distribution of power within organisations.
As a society I see an ongoing struggle between what is useful in terms of confidentiality and what is sacrificed as a result of it. The discourse here in Ireland surrounding the Catholic Church and the various tribunals etc – have all contributed to new interpretations of what confidentiality means and constructs. In each of these situations, power and confidentiality appear to sit side by side.
So I’ve been developing a series of hypotheses about confidentiality and consulting
1. The first is that my role as consultant is often defined by the confidentiality I offer – as though I “own” the concept and bring it “to” my clients. My credibility in the organisation can be defined by the way in which I manage and navigate the concept i.e. I retain sole responsibility for it.
2. The second is that the stories that are revealed “in confidence” are perceived to contain the “truth” of the organisation – those stories revealed openly as part of the lived experience of clients are merely one level of engagement.
3. The third is that those who reveal the most “dramatic” stories in a confidential setting can be perceived to be the most “honest” members of an organisation and maintain a powerful position as a result of their ability to “say it as it is”.
As a consultant I am often invited to hear the stories, be influenced by them and synthesise the meaning into something more objective and less personal. In many cases this may result in little sense of ownership and participation on the part of those interviewed in conversations concerning the co-constructed nature of challenges and more importantly the co-constructed nature of moving forward. This places the consultant in a powerful position within organisations, particularly as we continue to live in a culture that values information as currency.
So in recent times I have opened up this whole issue of confidentiality as part of the contracting phase with clients and begun to question what confidentiality means and how I am being used as a container for the client’s secrets. I have also begun to reframe the conversation about confidentiality by asking these kinds of questions:
• What are the limits of confidentiality?
• What would a ‘safe enough’ environment look like?
• How can we jointly create a safe enough space in which we can tell the stories that need to be told and heard in order to move forward?
• How is power distributed in this organisation and how does confidentiality contribute to that?
• How can we begin to distribute empowerment in this organisation?
Tracking and discussing the shifts in the power relationships with clients is a way of holding power ‘for them’ as distinct from ‘instead of them’. It may be necessary for me to hear and hold confidential content while at the same time exploring what confidentiality means for this client and how each of us are being made and re-made in each others’ presence. I now welcome a richer conversation about confidentiality – one that addresses content and context and hopefully one that challenges a few ‘taken for granted’ stories about the power of secret keeping.
Sometimes being in a familiar place can be an unfamiliar experience. I’ve been in New York for the past ten days and the place should technically look and feel the same as it always does. But it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m a regular visitor to the city now (at least twice a year) or maybe it’s that I’m taking it for granted – but I think it’s probably the people and relationships I am building here that makes the difference. I’ve always felt that I make more sense to myself in this city. The grass is always greener I know, but there’s a constellation of people, places and feelings that are evoked in me when I’m here that’s unlike anywhere else I’ve travelled. New York is the city that never disappoints – and technically it should. I know the city very well, the ride from the airport should be passé – but the Manhattan skyline takes my breath away every time, each time anew, each time a renewed beginning.
I’m thinking about this in terms of organisations and what would make going to work a renewing experience every day. With so much energy going into staff retention; work/life balance and work related satisfaction I wonder is it as simple as the relationships we build while we’re there? Work is a social place and organisations are networks of human systems. If, like me, you’re driven by curiosity and a need for conversation then the quality of those relationships make or break an environment. I can’t imagine not having my imagination fed through my work. I can’t imagine not having my heart stimulated by relationships.
I know I’ll look back on this trip and see it as pivotal in the relationship I’m having with myself – I look in the mirror each morning and see a difference - the difference is down to the people I know here. If the old cliché that home is where the heart is, is true then the fact that I’m feeling at home here and within myself has to do with that heart connection. I wonder how many of us can say the same of our work lives?
How to remain visible in the face of death? Bringing Nuala O’Faolain on her final wish to see Berlin before she died was a sad and memorable journey, but also one of fun and optimism. For the writer whose memoir in German translation was entitled Just don’t become invisible, this was a remarkable way of staying alive
Today’s newspapers in Ireland are infused with images and memories of Nuala O’Faolain. Her radio interview a month ago with Marian Finnucane brought me to tears. Her death, while I was in New York last week, reduced me to silence. The New York Times ran an obituary and an opinion piece in which she was described as ‘fearless even when she insisted she wasn’t’. Fintan O’Toole, in today’s Irish Times, appreciates her understanding of the personal as political and indeed the reverse..
She solved one of the most difficult problems a writer can face – the use of the word “I”. In journalism it can be used to create a comic, self-depcrecating persona, or to bear raw witness to an exraordinary event. …Only very rarely can it be used with sincereity and integrity on the one hand and a cool objectivity on the other.
‘..coming to terms with her life experience was turned into something more vociferous. She felt the need to change things, to fight not only for herself but for everyone else, to expose the damage done by society’
It’s always personal. Even when it’s business, even when it’s framed as something else – it’s always personal. And that’s why I loved her writing because she connected with the humanity of every topic, person and issue she talked about. You were never in doubt as to where her interests and loyalties lay. And perhaps that’s the invitation – each and every time – to see the humanity and the person behind the problem, the issue and the solution. Because if we don’t then we’re missing the point that to be in any kind of relationship means relating on a human level - and that requires feeling and emotion and allowing ourselves to be impacted instead of defending ourselves against the intimacy. There has to be room for love – where ever we are and what ever our task.
Business managers, whether they know it or not, commit themselves to a career in which they have to work on themselves as a condition for effectively working on and with other people. This fact of the business career is so often neglected that we would do well to reexamine the implications of the need to work on oneself as a condition for the exercise of power
Management of Disappointment
Abraham Zaleznik
Harvard Business Review, 1967
I have been having far too much fun with this new application which turns text into a word cloud. Just for laughs I inputted a 15,000 word document I wrote on my research topic of disappointment and Wordle created this lovely image - it's totally addictive - you can change colours, shapes, sizes...go on over there and try it..
The BBC are asking you to share your experience of costliest mistakes. Like Johnnie I was interested in the range and depth of emotion on display. I was also fascinated that although the example given by the BBC concerned an object and its monetary value many of the examples given by members of the public are about personal and relationship issues that sometimes cost in financial terms but not always. The primary cost was emotional.
Useful learning here about working with the emotional impact of 'mistakes' in organisations. We spend time learning how not to make the same mistakes again but it's doubtful if we spend enough time learning about the range of feeling and emotion evoked when we don't 'get it right'.
Dermod Moore has written a beautiful piece about recession. Apparently we're in one in Ireland right now - falling property prices, belt tightening, SUVs outside Lidl and Aldi and the list goes on. Dermod wonders if we might have a Great Idea for these straitened times - like the NHS in Britain emerging from the ashes of World War 2 - is there a grand project that we might apply our hearts and minds to now that we've more time on our hands and less money to while away the hours? He also talks about the value of loss and how it presents an opportunity to reimagine a different kind of future.
There's so much here that's rich and important about how we organise our lives; the stories we tell ourselves and the possibilities we imagine. There's a certain kind of 'recession chic' in Ireland right now .... Lidl and Aldi have terrific bratwurst after all and who'd have thought of shopping for that in Marks and Spencer? And let's face it, the 80s might have been grim, but the music was fabulous. Nowhere is there room for an acknowledgement of loss - of the dream of what things should be by now .. and the state we're in.
Great ideas emerge when we're dissatisfied - not when we're basking in the comfort of what is. Dermod writes eloquently about our personal and social response to recession - I wonder what the lessons for our world of work and society might be?
Why does the word ‘evaluation’ strike fear in the heart of many people I work with? As part of a training day with artists and community organisations last week I explored some of the myths about this seemingly powerful concept.
It’s done to us, not with us
It’s about and for funders
It’s a waste of time
It takes us away from the ‘real’ work
It’s negative
It’s retrospective
It’s costly
And on and on the list went – relentlessly negative and profoundly depressing. That’s of course if you are to take those statements at face value. The myths are all about disempowerment – as though evaluation were a bean counting exercise in justification imposed from outside. As Adam Phillips says
So it’s as though if we count, or measure, or notice or quantify we erase the power of the arts to impact on some deep level. And it’s as though there’s one version of events (and indeed one ‘report’) that must be agreed upon. But that’s not really the case. Many of those who attended the training day equated evaluation with description skipping the two important steps in between. Evaluation contains the word ‘value’ and in order to embark on an evaluation we have to connect with our own values – what’s important? Why are we doing this? What are we hoping to achieve? Then we have to take the values, take the descriptions and make some judgements about what happened and why, what didn’t and why and that leads us in the direction of evaluation. Ultimately evaluation is research in the service of learning – from disempowerment (a fear of erasing the power of the work) to reimpowerment (reframing evaluation as a creative learning experience for ‘us’ as well as ‘them’) in the knowledge that what works for one stakeholder may be very different from what works for another.
I was saddened to read of the death of Wexford teacher Eileen Flynn. In 1982 Flynn was sacked from her job as an English and History teacher at the Holy Faith Convent in New Ross, Co Wexford because at the time she was living 'out of wedlock' with a separated man with whom she had a child.
The 80s were a grim time in Ireland. Apart from recession, high unemployment and emigration we struggled to have coherent conversations about major social issues - remember the abortion referenda? and the attempts to get divorce legalised? (It took until 1995 for the latter to happen and it took until 1993 for the Irish government to decriminalise homosexuality). Eileen Flynn became a symbol of the struggle to separate church and state and was victimised for an act of bravery - albeit a very private one. There were others of course - remember Ann Lovett in 1984? a 15 year old girl whose dead body was found at a grotto in Granard where she had gone to give birth to a baby. Those stories sound like they come from a different era and yet, they are part of my history, my generation - I wonder how far we've really come?
When people vilify scapegoats it's often interesting to pause for a moment and wonder if there's a truth at the heart of 'disruptive' behaviour. Sometimes it's difficult to see beyond the taken for granted culture we're enmeshed in but very often there's the kernel of truth in there that deserves to be heard. Eileen Flynn was scapegoated for our inability or unwillingness to challenge the relationship between church and state in Ireland - how many other lone voices are being stigmatised in 2008 for truths we're unwilling to name?
I spent Saturday at a conference on Race. As the workshop was sponsored by the White Institute (and a declaration here - I was a guest of the WI on the day) I assumed that the topic would be explored from a psychodynamic perspective. As such the kinds of questions I have an interest in are – what problem does racism answer? What’s unsayable and unspeakable about issues of race? What do we mean when we talk about race? Why do race conversations become so competitive (i.e. who has suffered more?) When are race conversations a cover story for something else?
The workshop leaders invited us to self select into one of three groups – ranging from I’m relatively uncomfortable talking about race through to I’m very comfortable. Not really being clear what ‘race’ means (and wanting to explore some of the fantasies and realities surrounding the term) and finding myself in a ‘foreign’ country transplanted from what is still a fairly mono cultural place (Ireland) I self selected for the first group. It turned out to be a lonely station. I was the only person in the room who declared a degree of discomfort with this discussion. I was immediately identified as ‘brave’ and my ‘honesty’ was remarked upon. I didn’t feel brave and I certainly didn’t feel that I was an isolated voice in the room – the issue of collusion quickly raised its head for me – what on earth wasn’t being said here? Could I possibly be the only person in the room who was questioning their capacity to talk about this topic at a workshop about talking about this topic?
As the day progressed I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the content and process. There was a ‘race’ about race. No scheduled breaks were allowed (apart from 15 minutes to grab a sandwich) and the day was the most over structured learning event I’ve ever been to. By 11.30 I had indigestion and it wasn’t just because of the food. Psychodynamic understandings weren’t allowed in the room and I found myself colluding with the ‘rule’ that we keep going in a structured direction to find a way of talking about race which in my view was a defence against having a conversation about the topic.
But I didn’t say anything out loud. I told myself a number of stories
1. I’m a guest of the White Institute – I had better watch my manners and be grateful for the invitation
2. I’m a guest of the nation (well not literally in chains but you get the drift) and as such I probably have no idea what race means in the American context – who am I to challenge the dominant discourse (what race turned out to mean in the context of the day was black vs. white which is one very particular interpretation of the issue and again, not one that was given space for deconstruction)
3. I shouldn’t challenge the ‘rules’ of engagement here because they are pretty explicit and tight
In summary – I colluded with a particular power structure that kept me disempowered in the room – and I did it all to myself. It seemed to me that my experience – had there been room to share it, and had I created a space to share it, was explicitly linked to questions of power - which is essentially what the race dialogue is all about.
So, the learning?
1. Check out my assumptions about the kind of learning event I’m being invited to attend – my assumption about the link with White and psychodynamics (which I didn’t check out and simply took for granted) led to my disappointment and disaffection on the day.
2. Listen to my emotional self – even when it is risky to do so and learn (again, and again and again) that the inner wisdom is the only one that counts.
3. Learn from being the sole voice in any group – be that the ‘brave’, ‘honest’, grumpy, controversial or whatever person because they have wisdom to share and it’s usually a story that the group isn’t ready to deal with
4. Listen to oppression wherever it is located – be it internally or externally – it’s always information about the system I’m working in.
5. Silence is often a violent act and collusion can often be an act of oppression.
The title for the day was ‘Race: “Can We Talk?” What a productive race dialogue looks like and what keeps us from having it’– my answer was ‘not really’ – we can talk about ways of talking but we can’t have the conversation about what’s really going on – perhaps that reflects a societal issue here in the US about race – I don’t know. I hold myself responsible for not talking about what mattered to me but ultimately the loss is greater than mine – sometimes structure is a defence against learning and meaning making – I think Saturday’s workshop said more about the anxiety of the presenters around this issue than that of participants but then again – unless I/we take the risk to talk – how will we ever know?
I would want to promote the idea that it’s impossible to be misunderstood. That when one feels misunderstood, what you’ve stumbled upon is the fact that there are other people in the world. In a way that is the most interesting thing. The better world would be one in which I wouldn’t be sitting there feeling outraged and scandalised at being misunderstood; I would be thinking, ‘That’s really interesting’. I would be interested, in that moment, in seeing what’s coming through, rather than wanting to blow the system apart by my rage. There are affinities in this acknowledgement of difference that I think are better than the outrage if people don’t understand me. I think that rage is adolescent. We shouldn’t want to be understood, we should want to be redescribed.
..the thing we are likely to be affronted by is the thing with which we have some affinity. And there’s a loss of energy in the repudiation of the opposing view. Because your enemy, so to speak, has something profoundly in common with you.
Let’s imagine that disappointment is a useful refuge, so that once you feel disappointed you know where you are. This is one version. The other version is that there’s a life organised to avoid the possibility of disappointment. And then the question would be, what’s the big problem
with disappointment? You could think disappointment is integral to being human so you had better start learning about it in order to be able to take risks. I would not want my children not to do things for fear of disappointment. I’d want them to be attentive to the moments when they take flight into disappointment as an avoidance of something else. Because I think disappointment is extremely consoling.
There’s also a sense in which hope can be poisonous… I think it would be better to bring up our children, from early on, with the idea that there is a question whether life is worth living for any given individual at any point in their lives. For some people, it is a real question and one of the things we can do, thank God, is to kill ourselves. That should be a serious option built into our education. Why are you tolerating pain? I would prefer to start from the position of asking the question whether life is worth living, whether certain kinds of pain are worth suffering.
This is my contribution (or should I say Adam Phillips' contribution) to the current end-of-the-world scenario we appear to be in the midst of right now.
Whether or not there is a gene for worrying -- or indeed a gene for being a geneticist -- a psychoanalytic story about worrying would try to persuade people to see that by worrying they are doing a number of interesting things, many of which may not have even occurred to them.
First, worry is an ironic form of hope. It is a way of looking forward to something -- even if it's something awful -- and that implies a belief in the future. So worrying is a version of desiring; when we worry, we anticipate.
Second, each person has a very specific history of worrying that evolves over time. Each of us chooses certain things to worry about and chooses whom, if anybody, we will tell.
And the way our worries were received when we were children -- whether our parents seemed horrified or indifferent or only too keen to hear about them -- will leave us with a mostly unconscious set of expectations about what we can say and to whom. Worries, like secrets, are part of the essential currency of intimacy.
Last, but not least, worrying is a form of thinking. At one end of some imaginary spectrum, there is something akin to creative rumination. At the other end, there is the stalled thought of obsession. If worrying can persecute us, it can also work for us, as self-preparation. No stage fright, no performance.
In other words, if we can lop off the worry gene, what else might go with it? People without worries are people without self-doubt. And we know what people are capable of in states of ultimate conviction.
In this TED talk Philosopher Alain de Botton invites us to examine our fixed notions of success and failure and suggests that snobbery may play a part in our enjoyment (or lack thereof) of our work. It's a useful and interesting perspective on the current un/employment crisis. The comments stream is also interesting and there's a fascinating conversation on the merits of success as socially constructed, imposed, self-imposed, accepted or bestowed.
I listened to New York Times writer Barbara Ehrenreich speak at Barnes and Noble last week - her new book Bright Sided has just been published and it's a damming indictment of the cult of the positive that bedevils America. She spoke with wit and elegance about her diagnosis of breast cancer 8 years ago and the pressure to 'be positive' surrounded by a sea of pink ribbons and teddy bears. The first chapter of the book describes in detail her journey through 'supportive' fora online - each more insistent than the last that she 'must' be positive or else it would affect the progression of her disease.
It's about time....I'm all for positive thinking in moderation but when positive thinking has, as its shadow side, the implication that fear, negativity and other difficulties and ills that befall us are in some way 'our fault' for not attracting positivity to ourselves then it's time to question what's really going on. ?
But Ehrenreich is also interested in corporate life - from an interview in Democracy Now
I can't tell you how many times I have read people who have lost their jobs in this recession in the newspaper saying, "But I'm trying so hard to be positive." Well, maybe there's no reason to be positive. Maybe you should be angry, you know? I mean, there is a place for that in the world.
It does make you wonder - what exactly is positivity a defense for? Splitting feelings into good/bad is a useful defense sometimes but it's also a disappointing one. Maturity and a capacity to be in a healthy relationship (with ourselves as well as with others) depends on being able to manage the spectrum of emotions we experience. The more attached we are to one end of the spectrum the more interesting it is to wonder what we're avoiding on the other.
A very simple exercise designed to get a group of currently under-employed professionals to identify their current skill set generated a very interesting finding today. The first part of the exercise, conducted in private, yielded a skill set readily identifiable as a list of job related attributes - capacity to market, network, people manage etc. The second part of the exercise, conducted in pairs, set about inquiring further into the taken for granted skills that we often forget to mention. If something comes naturally to us we tend to think it's simple and not that important. Other stuff we have had to labour over and 'learn' tends to make it to the top of the list as something we've earned. In pairs, the participants interviewed each other, inquired further into fascinating stories and extended that list of skills. The extended list consisted of a broader and richer list of attributes - soft skills, interpersonal and relational expertise, in short - unrelated (in an obvious way) to a particular job but ultimately a compelling list of transferrable skills that can be used across a wide range of entrepreneurial activity.
The question it raised for me is why does an invitation to think about skills immediately evoke our last job as distinct from life skills and what we learn outside of that 9 to 5 existence?
What we find lacking in bankers is Magnificence. We are incensed not by the quantity of their wealth, but its quality and tone. Bill Gates is always clear he believes himself lucky. This makes him hard to hate. Footballers do something thrilling and beautiful to earn their money which makes them magnificent in our eyes. Rock star decadence is cool and warns us of the dangers of excess. Bankers, in contrast, appear only to have piles of money and the trinkets it buys them. If they could learn from Aristotle to be a little more magnificent they would be easier to love, or at least a little harder to loathe.
If genius, as Sartre said, is the word we use for people who get themselves out of impossible situations, what is the word for people who find themselves in impossible situations, or even seek them out? And why are fairytales so compelling that we don't think of them as stories from a particular place and time? The answer to the first question is "everybody", but the answer to the second question is that these stories are sufficiently hospitable - suggestive enough, puzzling enough - so that virtually everybody who can read can make something of them.
And then in an insight that is as much about the world of work as it is about the world of families he suggests...
There is a formative period in everyone's life when it begins to dawn on us that we can't get everything we want from the family. The one thing the family cannot prepare you for is life outside the family. The quest is always to find out if there is a place elsewhere that has the something else you want. Each of these tales intimates in different ways that all the family can help you do is live inside the family. All quests are quests for pleasure. Just as all riddles reassure us that there is something important worth knowing. So inevitably each of these tales is at once a story about curiosity, about how the miller's daughter, the princess, the hare, and the boy find out something they need to know; but also a story that only works by making us curious about curiosity.
And of course he's also writing about disappointment - and how difficult it is to do things differently - to stop what was working in the service of risking what might (or might not). How can we risk doing something differently if there is no guarantee of pleasure or positive results? Sometimes doing what we've always done guarantees us the pleasure of familiarity even if it is ultimately disappointing.
When it comes to creativity, it's easy to imagine that more is better. Creativity lies at the heart of science. It solves problems and drives innovation. Then there's the small matter of art and literature. Humanity's self expression and aesthetic explorations are born of our creative drive.
And yet creativity has its downsides too, say Stefan Leijnen and Liane Gabora at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Creative solutions can only spread if they are adopted by other individuals. These imitators play an important role in society. They act as a kind of memory, storing the results of successful creative strategies for future generations. But the time that individuals spend creating means less time imitating. Clearly we cannot all be creators all the time but neither can we all be imitators.
This reminds me of something I heard Adam Phillips say at a discussion to the effect that there is a fetish of originality as though that were the optimal state - an achievement of the fantasy of perfection. Perfection and originality are lonely states and I think there's something very interesting in Leijen and Gabora's contention that originality has it's downsides because it really is only in the adoption of ideas that they truly live - and let's face it - what act of creativity is a solitary one? I'm of the belief that creativity is a collaborative endeavour.
Come to think of it, this latter scenario bears some resemblance to the current state of play in the art world, where following in earlier innovators' footsteps is seen as a somewhat passé notion. Instead, it's all creativity all of the time. The Canadian researchers have drawn up a chart to find a productive mix of innovation and copying. Where would a healthy balance lie for the visual arts?
It's that time of the year again when newspapers do their end of year round up and we review the past year and hope for a better one next year. I've never been one for making new year resolutions preferring to look at every day as the beginning of a new year and therefore an opportunity to do things a little differently. Mark Vernon from the School of Life however offers a different perspective on living well in 2010, one drawn from the world of philosophy. Here's his list of resolutions - many of which are as applicable to the world of work as they are to our personal lives.
1. Diet, but not to lose weight. For there's a more interesting and enriching reason for eating less. Epicurus, who was known as a hedonist, wasn't like today's hedonists. He didn't argue that the pursuit of more was the key to happiness. Quite the opposite. He said he was as happy as Zeus when all he had to eat was a glass of water and a barley cake. Enjoying less, not more. Pleasure in small things. That's the real test for us in a consumer age.
2. Work to live, don't live to work. Cleanthes, who was a Stoic philosopher and also known as the water-carrier, worked by night so that he could do philosophy by day. He was clear that he would work enough, and only enough, to support his real passion, the thinking and writing. His story is timely, for in a year that will be marked by more job insecurity and credit crises, it will be even easier to work so hard that you miss what you want.
3. Meet a friend face to face, when you might have chatted online. Aristotle is our advisor on this matter. He argued that good friendship - soulmateship - is only possible when friends 'share salt together'. He meant that they sit down with each other, not just over the occasional meal, but frequently and often. Then, you see each other body and soul. Texting and websites are part of modern friendship, but alone, they are not enough.
4. Start each day by contemplating the worst that can happen. It sounds like a recipe for pessimism. But the odd thing is that it isn't. In fact, the day will never look better. Zeno, the Stoic, advised this practice. His point was that we spend too much of our time anticipating the worst, when mostly there's nothing we can do about it. So embrace the worst; it probably won't happen. And enjoy the day.
5. Take a technology Sabbath. Take a break from the relentless churn of emails, blogs and websites. They flitter in front of your eyes, and it's too easy to fritter your life away in front of them. So have one day off a week from IT. Read a book, talk to friends, go for a walk instead. Secundus the Silent is our advisor here. He vowed not to speak, realizing that words are typically wasted. And he found it made him wise.
6. Talk to a stranger. There is a source of knowledge and insight all around us, and yet we barely notice it's there. It's not Google. It's the strangers with whom share our world. Socrates realized this, and so started to ask people questions as he walked the streets of Athens - what is friendship, what is happiness, what is love? It was an extraordinary thing to do, and led to nothing less than the invention of philosophy.
7. Go on retreat. To take time out, away from the world, is an old religious practice. The pace of life is slower. It creates time for reflection. It should be easy to do, but actually it's slightly frightening, for fear of what might emerge. Which is what Onescritus discovered. He went to India, and sat with the sages. He came back a changed man.
8. Write a blog for one week. If there's one quality that you need not just to live, but to live well, it's curiosity. With that, you'll really see the world, and your life, and imagine it in a different light. This is what Sappho could do. Her verse changed the world because she gave women voice. Poetry is hard, so turn your observations into a blog. And see how you see things differently.
9. Do something that will surprise your friends, and you. One day, Diogenes the Cynic observed a mouse running about. He was shocked at how free it was, and how inhibited he was in comparison. Immediately, he took up residence in a barrel. His philosophy was that conventions trap us. So try breaking one or two, he'd say. A real taste of liberty will be yours.
10. Decide what you want at your funeral. We are different from other creatures, perhaps in several ways, but one must be that we often contemplate death. Some philosophers, like Plato, believed that death directly or indirectly shapes our every waking moment, and perhaps those during sleep too. But it can be tamed, by befriending it. To learn how to die, is to learn to live well.
Whatever you decided to do in 2010 I hope it's good enough and may I take the opportunity to thank you for stopping by Interactions in 2009 - I hope I will see you again in the New Year.
Quite a lot if this Newsweek article is to be believed.
In September 2008 English singer Billy Bragg performed at something called the Big Busk. After posting the chords of the songs he would play on the Internet, he invited all comers to bring their guitars. Some 3,000 did, strumming while a crew behind Bragg hoisted signs showing which chord to play. Now Southbank is hosting a nine-month Leonard Bernstein festival, which will culminate in a gala presentation of Bernstein's Mass next May 11 by 500 mostly amateur performers.
It seems that the recession is engendering a new spirit of participation in the arts driven by amateurism - and that's amateurism in its original spirit.
"The word 'amateur' comes from the Latin root for love."
What's interesting about this is that this kind of activity may challenge traditional notions of audience participation and the various (and sometimes) misguided attempts to connect with audiences and get them more involved in the artistic life of communities. If we could focus a little bit more on the expertise that all parties bring to the table and less about the marginalisation that occurs when we 'professionalise' then more magic might just happen....
About Learning
This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Interactions - Creative Strategies for Business in the Learning category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
