I am now writing on the Capacity Evolution blog

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Thanks for visiting and for your interest in my interests as I opened and closed this very brief blogging event.

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On Integrity

There are a number of models for integrity: honesty, fairness, being faithful. They honor standing for truth, standing for justice, standing for and keeping a promise.

Fundamentally it is a matter of unity. Do you do what you say? Do you say what you mean? Are you walking the talk? Do you say “yes” and mean it? Do you stand for what you believe?

People with integrity are those we feel we can trust, those people who (we believe) aren’t going to bad mouth us when we leave the room. They stand for something and we believe in them.

There is something about integrity that grounds a person for us, makes them dependable, makes them someone we want to follow. There is something about a show of integrity that moves us. Remember this:

Another example is this stirring recount from Old School by Ellis Amdur of Kino Shizue, then head of the Higo-ryu naginata, a true warrior on the floor of the Tokyo Budokan stopping the “show” for her match with Abe Toyoko, head of the Tendo-ryu (another naginata school):
It was 1982, at the All Japan Seniors Competition, featuring kendo, jukendo, and naginata. Kino Sensei fought first with an eighth-dan kendo teacher. Using Higo Ko-ryu techniques, her stances were low and solid, and she aggressively attacked throughout. Her most effective attack was to fake a cut to the head, then sweep into a cut under her opponent’s arm when he responded to the feint. Though this is not considered a “point” in either kendo or atarashi naginata, it was one of the few unarmored places open to attack in ancient warfare. At one point, her opponent cut at her head. She sidestepped. In a move typical of modern kendo, he continued his movement past her, exposing his back. She simply turned and struck him three times before he could turn around.

At the end of the shiai, the announcer decided that enough time had been spent on the “old folks” matches, and tried to move the program to it’s next segment, an exibition of atarashi naginata done in unison to music. However, there was another individual waiting to engage Kino Sensei, already dressed in protective armor. The announcer breezily apologized for the lack of time over the loudspeaker.

Kino Sensei shook her head and walked out to the center of the Budokan, a huge performance hall, perhaps a third as big as a baseball park. All alone she stood at the center of the floor, with the butt of her weapon planted firmly on the wooden floor.

Silence.

The young women who had fluttered onto the floor to do their performance, looked at each other and drifted back to the sidelines in small groups. Nervous laughter went through the audience.

The announcer rather patronizingly said that “…we all appreciate Kino Sensei’s spirit! We have to move on now!”

She ignored him.

Finally, he and two officials of the kendo federation went out on the floor to remonstrate with her. She ignored them for five minutes, standing there, a warrior holding a bridge to a more glorious past, all alone. Finally, the officials went back to their seats, and the announcer grudgingly stated that there would be one more match. The hall erupted in cheers, and Abe Toyoko Sensei walked onto the floor.

To lead you don’t need integrity. People will follow or settle for much less. But as a leader, I encourage you to ask where do I stand? What do I stand for? If you can answer the above, someday you’ll know, like the people above, when and where to make your stand.

Two key words. Five questions.

Awareness and Ownership.

Improving business, improving relationships, improving communication all require learning.

To learn you must be aware, become aware, be made aware that there is some reason to learn.

Upon learning you must have some reason to incorporate, integrate your learning into your life.

As a manager, leader, trainer, teacher, facilitator, consultant a large part of doing your job well is breathing life into those key words. Creating an experience for your clients that opens up a new level of awareness from which they have an opportunity to learn. Importantly it is the quality of the learning context, the experience of the client that matters.

Just tell someone something and a few days later the effect fades; the experience was shallow.

Get them to experience it–deeply–not just cognitively but emotionally and physically, and there is a pretty good chance it will stick. There is a much better chance of ownership.

Next time you are planning a coaching or strategy session, training or class, intervention or presentation ask yourself are you doing it for you or for the client? If it’s for the former, maybe think about a different line of work. If it’s for the latter, ask yourself what kind of experience are you planning? How will your client experience it? Will it build awareness? Will it inspire ownership? What could you do to make the experience more compelling?

Two key words. Five questions. A good start.

Nexus for Change

Interested in large group methodology, participative change or just hanging out with a lot of very switched on people? Check out the Nexus for Change conference. To quote:

Our focus will be on leveraging the power of more than 60 approaches being used to transform organizations and communities as they tackle 21st Century challenges. These approaches are broadly referred to as large-group methods/interventions, whole-system change, or large-scale change. What makes them unique are two foundation assumptions: high involvement and a systemic approach to improvement. At this conference we will be working side-by-side to:

Address critical needs at local and global levels
Expand the reach of the methods around the world
Design significant field research projects
Invent new tools, techniques and applications
Incorporate technology to leverage existing methods
Connect with others to form joint ventures
Innovate educational programs and courses
Craft a common language
Articulate a platform for this body of work

I’ll be there!

So what you’re saying is…

Image from Ten Bills

Attended a great workshop with Charlie Badenhop, the originator of Seishindo yesterday. We focused listening to the “ meta model of language” a person uses to describe a problem or concern. Meta models occur when, in trying to describe a problem, we frame it in such a way that may delete, distort, generalize key information or we end up treating an ongoing, complex process as a nominalized entity. For more information check out the wikipedia entry on NLP or a shorter, simpler version here at the Change Management Toolbook.

An example might be “Things just aren’t going my way.” In this case we have a statement that generalizes “things”, and deletes any agency: “things” are described as “not going” placing the speaker as passive observer of his problem. This clearly presents barriers to understanding as the listener is not sure what these “things” are and who or what is causing them to go the way they’re going.

The role of the coach or facilitator is to help the speaker reframe the problem through a clarity generating dialogue that gets at the “somatic-emotional” drivers that produce the description. The language used provides clues, some of which lead us astray–into deepening spirals of complexity while some, when explored, can help us better understand and appreciate the mental models or world view of the speaker.

As we work with our clients, coachees, loved ones, “enemies” or adversaries across the negotiating table we have the chance to be much more effective in our communication and relationships if we are able to listen for, recognize and, when appropriate, engage the speaker (compassionately!) to surface what she is really trying to say (which may be quite different from the initial message!)

I believe the best place to start is with yourself. Notice your own language. How could you be clearer? How do you feel when you describe a problem? When you make a statement, once in awhile, ask yourself, are you saying what you really mean or feel? What do you mean or feel?

Take some time, reflect on what you’re learning and then, next time, when you’re working with someone on an issue-if you feel like you can and if appropriate-help them to learn too.

Why we don’t see eye to eye…

Imagine a work team of five people responsible for domestic marketing. Things are going well and then, suddenly, they learn that in 3 months their responsibilities to include regional and global roll-outs.

Two people respond by angrily declaring that the team is under siege by corporate. They declare that we must fight back, possibly even subverting the change.

One person says almost nothing at all, he seems to be waiting for someone else to make the call.

One person starts to worry aloud that she feels confident in her expertise for domestic roll-outs but that global or even regional projects are a concern.

One person, gets excited. She sees this as a challenge and opportunity and has long wanted to have more influence at the global level. After all, they’re all part of the same system, she says to her preoccupied colleagues.

Most likely this sounds familiar. If pressed we could probably come up with a much wider range of responses to the situation.

The question is why, why do we respond differently? The answers are, of course, numerous but, to some degree, our responses are based on what we see. What we see is based on what we are able to-what we have the capacity-to see.

Thus, if I live in a world in which everything unknown, different or new is a potential threat, I may react as the first two people did. If I pride myself on my expertise, I will naturally be worried when placed into situations where I am not the expert. If I can see “the big picture” and the interconnections, dynamics and systems at work therein, I am more likely to welcome a chance to engage that bigger picture.

It is a matter of awareness and perspective. The more limited our awareness the less we can accept or handle. Our vessal is small, narrow like a vase. The broader and deeper our awareness the more flexibility we have in dealing with change and complexity. Our vessal is larger, broader like pond, lake or ocean. The essence of capacity building is to help the vessal “hold more.”

For an interesting developmental perspective check out this article on the Leadership Development Framework by Susanne Cook-Greuter. It can be downloaded here

Some Quick and Dirty Definitions

Culture: the way things get done ’round here.

Managers: the people who get things done.

Leaders: the people who make things happen.

Thoughts?

Welcome to the Beginning

of the blog. Some questions to start things off:

We are used to thinking of things having a beginning (a middle) and an end. First an exercise in limitation.

Take a deep breath, notice it coming in–notice it going out. (Keep breathing) Ask yourself,

Where do I begin? Where do I end?

At what point, in space or time, are you separate from that and they which surround you? (Keep breathing)

After you get tired of going round in circles and spirals try this, (keep breathing)

ask yourself how far can I go? How far can I extend? How much can I be aware of? How deep, how wide am I aware?

What is the quality of that awareness?

(Keep breathing)

Hang on Loopy

I’ve been reading Argyris’s book On Organizational Learning. Dense but good stuff. Particularly interesting are the discussions around “espoused theories” and “theories in use”. To boil it down, Argyris says we are skillfully inconsistent in the way we live and participate in organizations. Simply, we say one thing, do another and it doesn’t seem to bother us all that much.

What’s even more interesting is that we then organize systems in which the inconsistencies are undiscussable. For an example, look at the collaboration between managers and subordinates in some 360 degree evaluations. The stated and agreed upon goal is to evaluate all parties honestly and constructively to ensure mutual and organizational development. All sides agree that it is a good idea and that it should be beneficial to the organization.

What happens? The managers don’t want to upset the subordinates and vice versa. Both sides carefully create evaluations which satisfy the 360 requirements and don’t “rock the boat”. What they create is a collaborative system that invalidates the evaluation system and contradicts their stated beliefs. They don’t actually communicate about their collaboration. It happens and is never discussed. Both sides agree that the 360 degree evaluation is a good thing, both sides act to undermine it and life goes on as usual. Upper management can also abet things by both publicly supporting and privately discounting the effectiveness of the evaluation system simultaneously. But again, life goes on.

So what’s going on? To quote the Pixies, we’ve got our “feet in the air and head on the ground.” But, instead of any “collapse” from the inconsistencies, we deftly ignore it and move on. We don’t examine or discuss the inconsistencies much less discuss why we aren’t discussing the inconsistencies.

According to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. What happens if we aren’t even examining the fact we aren’t examining our lives?