From the draft archives 2012.
Why we are poles apart on climate change : Nature News & Comment. This post prompted me to make a few notes about how communities and networks could help reduce polluted science communications. How naive I was. We now know that troll farms assume the mantle of communities and networks and more efficiently pollute science, political and other domains of communications better than ever. I think revisiting my draft archives is making me sad…
From the draft archives, 2012. This post from Bob Sutton came out of his frustrations with an airline, and led him to consider factors of felt accountability. I loved rereading his post as it spoke to this time of strong individualism here in the US. Do we have any felt accountability? I’ve snipped in the four aspects of felt accountability, but go read the post!
Felt Accountability: Some Emerging Thoughts – Bob Sutton.
Authorship… That feeling that not only am I obligated to do the right thing, but that I am the person responsible for designing and making it as great as I can…
Mutual Obligation…David Novak, CEO of Yum! brands, argues that this should be the goal of a great leader, to create a place where it feels like you own it and it owns you. …there is palpable weight on people, they feel pressure to do the right thing even when no one is looking, as the old saying goes. And they pressure others to do so as well.
Indifference…Think of the average hair salon, where each stylist rents a chair. Or a group dental practice, where dentists share a common receptionist and a few services and little else. Some organizations are designed this way and can be quite effective. The mutual dependence is weak, it is a “we don’t do much for you, so you don’t have to do much for us” situation.
Mutual Contempt… everyone seems to despise everyone else. I hope I am wrong about this, but the awful stories rolled in from so many sources that it seems as if all the years of cost-cutting, all the battles with unions, all the management changes, all the stress that customers have endured over the years have conspired to bring the organization — at least most it — to this dark place.
Community Management is Not New » ManagingCommunities.com.
From the draft archives, 2012: It is just down right fun and funny to read this post by Patrick O’Keef from 2012. Some of you reading this know what I’m grinning at. ‘Nuff said.
Fresh Post! No Archive redraft!
Johnnie Moore pointed to a great LinkedIn post by Laurence Barrett that resonates with my current “fallow” project. It is no accident that Johnnie is an advocate of “unhurried!”
Laying fallow, I can reflect, observe and cross-pollinate ideas and experiences that surround me because I have the free time and head/heart space to do that. I am not fully confined by a large set of obligations. Yes, the grandkids are still #1 priority and that is a place for much of my energy, but the freedom from deliverables is quite intoxicating. I am available for reverie!
I’m pulling out two quotes, but it will make much more sense if you go and read the whole post! And don’t miss the P.S. at the bottom, which is fodder for even more reflection and blogging!
Mr. Barrett is talking in the context of coaching and the dynamic of “containment.” When I read it, I immediately thought about how a facilitator may try and contain human interaction in the well-intentioned service of the goal or purpose of a gathering. As group process folks, we have the opportunity (motive! means!) to create containers where people might do something different and more effective if engaged in something more free floating than overly structured.
The older I get, the more I sense that a lot of group process practices are about how we actually make a space less welcoming, “safe,” etc. Instead, Barrett reflects on another way that is less contained, and more “free floating.”
Here we may think of it as a dynamic, mutual and rather messy process of meaning making. Images and associations arise from the unconscious to be exchanged and evolved in what Wilfred Bion termed a ‘reverie’; a free-floating dialogue without defined goals and objectives.
In reverie both coach and client are ‘in’ and committed to the dialogue. Both can potentially be transformed.
And…
If our need to be ‘masterful’ or ‘powerful’ (words I see in some coach training) prevents us from entering a reverie we do not contain our clients, we just limit them.
A client is contained not by the coaches calm, rational, objectivity, but by our engagement and involvement, and both parties may be transformed by the encounter.
Pretending we are wisdom figures may fuel our narcissism or hide our anxiety, but it is definitely not containment.
I have worked hard through my professional life to show up not as some sort of wisdom figure and to engage in reciprocal work and learning. But there are old patterns in there that creep up in my head saying “I know what to do here.” Fully recognizing those moments, and choosing to let go, is something quite wonderful. And a door to reverie. (Using a “door” metaphor also reminds us there are many ways to think about space and containers. See this wonderful piece about other ways to think of space.
P.S. I love the four fundamental principles Mr. Barrett’s company espouses. I love them so much I took a screen shot. Mr. Barrett, if that is not OK, let me know and I’ll take the image down!
The blog link for this amazing quote from 2011 is dead, but Tom Atlee (Co-Intelligence Institute) continues his amazing work (you can support the Institute here.)
As I reflect on the quote, I think of the current high level of polarity that we so often seem to want to ignore, gloss over of simply avoid by not interacting with those who believe differently than we do. If we just focus on symptoms, we just make it worse. See a few ideas below the quote…
Just because some energy or activity ceases to be clearly and publicly visible, doesn’t mean it has died or gone away. Especially when you suppress it with violence, you almost guarantee it will continue, growing and evolving, surfacing with new energy and impacts in new times and places, often to people’s great surprise. Addressing symptoms of a disturbance seldom handles the cause, which will soon find other outlets to manifest whatever need is not being met.
Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence Institute
I appreciate a few of the Liberating Structures that help us step past our assumptions (the place of just focusing on symptoms and not causes?) such as Critical Uncertainties, Agreement Certainty Matrix and Ecocycle. When we offload some of the posturing and judgement and give some space for sense making, we can get closer to cause.
via What happens now with OWS? – Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge.