I happened on a copy of “Good Communication That Blocks Learning” by master business theorist, Chris Argyris. Originally published in Harvard Business Revew in 1994, I wanted to see if I still agreed with Argyris’s perspective about how organizational leaders impede the empowerment of their managers and employees. While I found that my respect for his insights was still very high, I was also disquieted by the article. Only fourteen years old, and written in the middle of the Total Quality Management movement, the article gives a clean, no-nonsense assessment of the old paradigm that organizational improvement should be based on employees “educating management” about problems and management responding with fixes. No doubt about it, Argyris is on point with his observation that this is an old and ultimately disempowering pattern based on the dysfunctional, parent/child mindset of employee satisfaction surveys. But I also felt some distress with Argyris’s judgment that leaders should focus less on solving the problems that surfaced in the surveys than on questioning employees about their own behavior, especially challenging the employees’ own accountability: why hadn’t they brought up these issues before? Why hadn’t they done something about these problems in advance of the survey?

These observations by Argyris threw me back on my own deep beliefs that “empowerment,” however you wish to define that term, is best served not by shifting accountability, per se, but by sharing it and by defeating the underlying power dynamics and patterns that prevent genuine collaboration, particularly the belief systems surrounding risks and why people don’t take them. I believe Argyris may have missed the single, most crucial aspect of why people at every level of organizations do not take risks to bring up the problems they observe. This has to do with a particularly negative experience of exposure, shame, embarrassment, guilt, shunning and/or dismissal, the mother lode of personal isolation called “career suicide” that stands behind our avoidance. As I read the article, I thought to myself: what Argyris is asking employees to do is absorb this nightmare, which is very close to the experience of breaking — and paying for — a powerful societal taboo.

As civilized individualists, we tend to think we don’t have a system of taboos in our culture, but in fact we do, and we hold onto them at a very personal, often subconscious or at least “undiscussable,” level. Precisely because we are individualists, what we experience when we face breaking such a rule is incredibly powerful and “interior.” It is literally a cliff, and we don’t jump from it willy-nilly.

“A taboo is a strong social prohibition or ban relating to any area of human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.”

–New World Encyclopedia

The word, taboo, has Polynesian origins; comes from the old kapu system where making the wrong gesture results in death, and there are many wrong gestures.

The experience of breaking an American social taboo is what Argyris’ article lacked for me, and in this way loses its realism. In American business culture, there is a very strong taboo about communications that prevents such things as pointing out directly to leaders the problems caused by them, publicly embarrassing them or exposing them personally. Indirect communications — as in talking about leaders behind their backs — is the process by which we cope with this very strong taboo. Occasionally, the conversation in the background confirms a broadly shared group perception and results in the leader’s loss of credibility, and this can be so powerful as to cause the leader to be fired or be forced to resign. This is the other side of the taboo — the power given to the perceptions of those behind the scenes. As my mother used to tell me, “A person can be killed as effectively with words as with a knife.”

It’s important to understand just how powerful social taboos are and how devastating the consequences for breaking them. A far more serious penalty is involved than merely taking an “interpersonal risk” that doesn’t work out. The experience can come close to a kind of social death; at least death in the form of being discredited and separated and then left being to oneself with a nearly indelible internal stamp. Nevertheless we persist in believing — and I think Argyris perpetuates this — that it is fundamentally the employees who do not speak up who are the real barrier to their own empowerment. However, in my opinion, this is like asking for career suicide as a means of solving the dilemma.

It seems to me a better answer is in learning how to remove the power of the taboo. That comes, I believe, through the process of being cleansed of it. There is much to this process both from the side of the messenger and the side of the leader who receives information about his or her involvement in the organization’s problems. But perhaps I can give an analogy.

Recently, I was in Hawaii on the Big Island and visited The Place of Refuge, Pu’u Honua O Honaunau. In ancient Hawaiian society, if you broke the kapu and the penalty was death the only way to save yourself was to elude your pursuers and reach the nearest puuhonua, or place of refuge. This could mean a dangerous flight over treacherous lava fields or swimming with the sharks to get to the sacred place. There, the priests might cleanse and forgive you your crime. Once forgiven, you could then return to the community.

I’m not suggesting we establish “places of refuge” in organizations (I think some HR Departments have tried that and it doesn’t work). Rather, I believe we need to make the whole organization a kind of refuge. By this I mean that the organization really functions as a community so that each person loses the fear of the taboo. One of the most “leaderly” things a person can do is bring people into an environment that acknowledges we all need each others’ help, that we all make mistakes, and that we all have failings and raw parts of ourselves to keep working on. This seems simple enough at one level — that we all have things to work on — but it is also a complex vision precisely because it requires us to give up simple solutions and simple blame. What I’ve observed is that when people are given a chance to move into their own energy for growth and development and this is modeled by leaders, there is little need to be concerned about forcing accountability. People want and will take responsibility but it will be indistinguishable from the leaders themselves taking responsibility since it will be about the formation of a responsible community. People, no matter what their position, will engage in processes of self-examination when they can find both an outer and inner sanctuary. The challenge is finding them both — in our relationships with one another and within ourselves.

Technorati Tags: Healing

struggling to find the heart
many focusing on darkness won’t see
won’t wait for a tiny bud of light won’t see
how it gathers to itself shattering
the whole huge black pearl at once
how the sky explodes petal
upon irreducible petal a mandala
becomes a world a mirror a self

yet if just a few of us notice over time how
a makeshift center unfolds a perfect star
we then can tell and tell and the rare blossom then
is the whole of us and no one abandoned
reaches all hands both outward and inward and
our reflected being breathes itself together

into us this lovely most uncertain space this
universe and race our circles finally
themselves coming to consciousness
a grace only to see exactly what is
and the surrounding garden that holds us
so firm our living stem this us
having come so far and been so beautifully formed
from such unimaginable deeps

my god, who could possibly have known?

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Technorati Tags: Photographs, Reflections and Poems

Recently, a supervisor who had attended one of my courses sent me a short follow-up note on some of the work she is doing to manage conflict in her work unit. I replied, adding this thought: “learning happens out of love for the soul, not self-criticism.” You may infer from this that the supervisor’s note included some self-deprecation, but this would be only partially true. In truth, her note was straightforward; she had taken on a difficult situation and worked with it effectively.

So my statement, only partly relevant, was one of those lines that seems to emerge from time to time from some other source, a place that I know is more about teaching me than sharing an observation with someone else. It is my mirror. When I think I am reflecting something of wisdom back to another, sometimes it is only something that is meant for my own education. A beam behind me, swung by the crane of my own unconsciousness, hits me hard enough to take notice.

I had a dream not too long ago that is symbolic — aren’t they all? I was in a strange land, mysterious, magical in a threatening way. I was traveling with a young girl who was in my care. We reached a stopping point and night was coming on. I found a deserted, ancient room in an old ruin to stay for the night. The girl lay down to sleep, pulling her cloak over her. There was a dark cave in the wall above her and I was afraid of what might appear through that opening and the passageway behind it, but before long I became less worried and more interested in my need to create a place that seemed safe and protected even if in reality I could not do so.

The entire room seemed charred as if fire had flushed throughout it at some time in the long past. The walls, ceiling and floor were black with soot. Above me the ceiling was crowded with immense dangling knots of cobweb falling from fire-ruined beams where I could see insects crawling and vermin scuttling about.

I looked for something to clear the webs and found nothing except a charred length of wood maybe ten feet long. I gripped the soft, blackened pole in my hands and began to awkwardly brush away the webs. By mistake, the tip my charred club knocked against one of the walls of the room. Where it struck the soot fell away and suddenly a radiant filigree* of gold and silver appeared. Fascinated, I struck the wall several more times and with each blow soot fell away in irregular cloud shapes revealing new beautiful patterns of filigree hidden just beneath the surface. I understood then that the room was part of some ancient palace that was only thinly masked by the soot, and that all I had to do was hit the wall repeatedly to reveal its magical essence.

The context for this dream is that I have been working hard on chapters of a new book on leadership and consciousness. Yet, each time I sit down to write what I find is that I constantly must push through self-doubts and self-criticisms in order to write. Once I actually get into it, I’m alright, but the start-up consistently is a painful process, and I’ve been mystified by that. Feel free to add your interpretations but what does seem transparent about the dream is its insistence that it is only by hitting the wall that the soot falls away. The soot is not thick or impenetrable, but there’s a sense that the work begins in a very dark room with considerable danger; that I am there in part to protect a part of me that is vulnerable (and needs to rest); and that the effort to make things better is relatively simple but dirty work. I have to “hit the wall” repeatedly to reveal the awesome filigree beneath.

My interpretation is simple. The soot equals that difficulty getting started. I have to knock it away and keep knocking it away. The soot represents old voices and self-doubts, but this is not as important as the protection I offer or the effort to create a sense of comfort in an alien land. It seems so true to me that the soot is useless, and is something that has built up over time. That finding beauty in my work is a result of my effort to create a kind of home in a difficult place. That whatever I am learning through my work and is reported in my writing happens best out of love of soul than self-criticism. The gold and silver filigree exists just beneath the surface, waiting to be revealed.

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*filigree: ornamental work of fine (typically gold or silver) wire formed into delicate tracery. The origin of the word is Latin: filum (”thread”) plus granum (”seed”). To me these words point directly to soul.

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Technorati Tag: Radiance

I think Dick Richards has done in a few short lines about as well as anybody could do to summarize one of the important meanings of Barack Obama’s election. His notion that there is a connection between the shooting of John F. Kennedy and the election of Barack Obama expresses for me the nature of the particularly American wound that must be healed. I am grateful for Dick’s insight. It adds to the notion that this is pre-eminently a victory for racial equality. There’s something here that includes equality and goes deeply into the birthright of all Americans, our ideals and responsibilities, and that crosses many old social (and spiritual) boundary lines, not just one.

I remain deeply concerned about the divides of thought, feeling, and spirit that exist in our nation, and look for a new kind of leadership that helps change the game. What will it take to break down the allegiances to perspectives and values that pull us back toward the past, a past characterized by cynical responses, emotional and physical violence, mistrust, shallowness, and pain? This is a difficult question, and certainly one that no one person, no Barack Obama alone can answer. Obama distills our hopes and certainly and in very practical ways can help this country move to a new, very positive standpoint. Not long after the election was called for Obama, David Gergen on CNN stated that Obama had “opened a window on leadership” both in the United States and abroad. I cannot think of a finer compliment.

But the everyday part of the leadership required to make these changes is as much ours as his. And that, of course, has been the genius of his whole campaign. Like that twenty-six hundred year old homily from the Chinese sage Lao-Tsu: “When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’”

Obama is a brilliant man to make the victory ours, not just his.

Technorati Tag: Healing

This is an emotional time for Americans — what with the markets crashing and the waning days of the presidential campaigns. The airwaves are full of commentary into the meaning of every small move on either subject. And at every turn there is another saturating barrage of side-taking opinion. It is so apparent that our country has a great deal of work to do now to recover itself and to reclaim its stature as a nation that represents some kind of leadership. At one time the notion of this country leading meant something about our economic well-being, military strength, and, most importantly, our felt commitment to creating a better world. Perhaps there was arrogance in that notion of leadership, too, but I certainly grew up believing in the deeper intention.

In contrast, today it is so clear we are in a period of extraordinary “values crisis.” The sides are about even and are polarized and are fighting. The stakes in terms of national identity are extremely high. We don’t know who we are as a country — we do not have a unified, lived view — only separate sides defined by our values sets, conservative and progressive. The truth must be that the world is watching us as we really are, caught in this self-absorbed civil war. Perhaps it is not yet a “hot” one with violence in the streets, but if it gets to that, I don’t think anyone will be surprised, given the levels of anger surfacing in the campaigns. We are in a war with ourselves about the values that we hold most dear, that we believe will keep us from harm, that will offer a sustainable direction, that may even be a legacy.

Last weekend, I went for a long, quiet walk in one of Washington State’s most beautiful rain forests. Instead of the television and the competing voices all there was to hear was the sound of intermittent showers and in between them the sounds of creeks and the drip of water from leaves of the turning maple trees. In such a place, consciousness of the war went away for awhile, replaced by what is timeless and beautiful and profound. I was reminded how in the interstices of the world the heart grows, and how important it is to listen to that heart.

This a time in which it is imperative to feel and think for ourselves aside from all the chatter. What seems clear is that it is time to locate the raw earth of a newly unifying American identity. We have to cut through the current polarization the way the silence of the forest cuts through it — to see it for it is, simply an argument that neither side can win — to find out what we want to actually stand for. That process could take us forward to our own definition of what is a good country now. I have a feeling that if we all completed this exercise the common principles that would be articulated, such as justice and freedom, would be much the same as they have been since the Founders, but the “how to to get there” might be very, very different, particularly in our relationship with the rest of the globe.

In 2000, Ian Frazier published his exceptional book, On the Rez, about the Oglala Sioux and the Pine Ridge Reservation. Along the way, he makes this commentary, which in times like these I find comforting:

America is a leap of the imagination. From the beginning, people had only a persistent idea of what a good country should be. The idea involved freedom, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness; nowadays most of us probably could not describe it a lot more clearly than that. The truth is, it always has been a bit of a guess. No one has ever known for sure whether a country based on such an idea is really possible, but again and again, we have leaped toward the idea and hoped….The idea does not truly live unless it is expressed by an act; the country does not live unless we make the leap from our tribe or focus group or gated community or demographic, and land on the shaky platform of that idea of a good country which all kinds of different people share.

I believe deeply that this is a time for the next leap out of our “gated community or demographic” onto that “shaky platform.” Maybe that platform isn’t even about a “good country,” but more about a “good world.” We can’t go backwards to rely on old rules no matter how much we revere them. Instead we have to build on those rules and we have to decide for ourselves, defining a more authentic America that can be a realistic part of our actual interdependent community of nations, not some protectionist fantasy of belonging to a private, “gated” empire. I’m not suggesting a revolution, just an effort to get our heads out of the sand. When I look at the candidates, it seems such a clear decision between past and future. One of them seems to me to understand much better than the other how to create that bridge between our roots and the future we all have a responsibility to help define. I dearly hope you see things the same way.

Technorati Tag: Choices

Over at Whiskey River I found a stunning quotation from Thomas Merton’s book, New Seeds of Contemplation:

“The false self consists of all of the efforts we make to nurture a reputation for ourselves in the mind of others. In our culture, we have a compulsive need to be validated by external sources. But the true self is one that is wholly separate from this fragile image that we try to construct in the imagination of others. The true self is like a very shy wild animal that never appears at all whenever an alien presence is at hand, and comes out only when all is peaceful, when he is untroubled and alone. He cannot be lured by anyone or anything, because he responds to no lure except that of the divine freedom.”

The problem with the machinery of the false self is that it is so easily disturbed. Without our protective fantasies about who we are, we believe we will experience pure personal nothingness: the dark vacuum of empty inner spaces at absolute zero. Such is the nature of the false self that it is founded on the belief there is nothing beyond its carefully constructed mirages and hopes of external validation. Indeed, in relationships, we want that recognition: men often look for the validation of women and women often seek the validation of men. Children need the validation of their care-givers in order to know they are (and will be) okay and as the children grow up, those same care-givers may also ultimately look for their children’s approval. In organizations, both leaders and followers yearn to be “seen” and appreciated. We wear our costumes and carry out our roles, hoping at the end of the play there will be recognition, applause, good reviews. We base our stature on what we hope is our recognized contribution. Sometimes we are accurate about that legacy; sometimes it may be only as real as a fantasy of winning the lottery.

In Zen Buddhism there are many metaphors that trace the conditions for appearance of the true self. In phrases such as “jumping right down the tiger’s throat,” “finding the bottom of the river,” and “if you find the Buddha, kill him” there is encouragement to go experience that “nothingness” for yourself, and in doing so break the chains that bind us to falseness and external validation. As I read Merton, he’s calling forth in this image of the very shy, wild animal a vision of quite a humble creature — mostly in hiding it would seem — that nevertheless carries a seed of immeasurable strength.

I like this vision because it places our capacity to lead in the category of learning to get past a false self that is addicted to its blindspots. Sometimes we misinterpret with the thought that if only we can numb out our concerns for others and their perspectives, learn to demand, incorporate a certain ruthlessness into our character, then the true self can show up. Sometimes we misinterpret by failing to distinguish between our own problems and the problems of others. In both cases there is a denial of reality. This all seems to me to be the product of a culture that over-values individualism and inner disconnectedness, denying experience. It is the product of a culture that routinely misses the point that the strength of the True Self is in its complete awareness and sensitivity, not the loss of consciousness that is part of some inner emotional disconnection. In fact, it is that very sensitivity that drives enlightened action, not the reverse.

There’s a story about two travelers in a very impoverished country that come upon a very sick child alone by the side of the road. It’s evident that there is really nothing to be done. The child will soon perish — perhaps in only a matter of minutes. The child is begging for water. One of the travelers is ready to take out his water flask, but then quickly puts it away. “I will only prolong the child’s agony,” he says. “The humane thing to do is hurry death, I’m afraid.” The other traveler, however, drops to her knees and immediately gives the child some water. She nestles the child in her arms. She quietly sings to the child and holds the little one close for over an hour until death finally comes. The first traveler asks,”What good did you do prolonging the child’s misery? Now you and I are both delayed in our journeys.” “What good did you do as part of your own journey,” she replies, “by learning to deny this suffering?”

To deny suffering — in ourselves and in others — is to be frightened and to run, avoiding the very shy wild animal that goes by so many names. True Self is only one.

Technorati Tag: Consciousness

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.”

–Carl Rogers

There is so much hubbub around us about self-help and improvement that the key precondition of personal change — self-acceptance — often gets completely lost. I’m as guilty of this one as anybody, and maybe more than most. If you are interested, as I am, in all things self-actualized, you too may experience the dilemma. With all the books and tapes and learning groups out there, it is very easy to fall into the pit of constantly attending to the gap between the ideal and the real — what I should be rather than what I am. For me, a contributing factor is my consulting work in organizations specifically helping people recognize, understand, and work with leadership and organizational gaps. In the process I know I can easily “over-focus” on my own ideals, losing sight of the fact that human change is mostly not a linear journey, but an organic one that paradoxically begins with awareness and acceptance of the parts that are not changing.

For me, Rogers’ quotation points to the softest tissue of the soul. I attended a recent workshop at which I believe the leader, Jim Sorensen, beautifully modeled what Rogers’ self-acceptance actually means. Faced with a participant trying to convince Jim in front of the hundred or so people in the class that he should simply “love his stuff,” no matter what it is, Jim very honestly and vulnerably stated that no, there were parts of himself he could not yet love. In doing so he modeled a deep honesty. By what he said and how he said it, and perhaps without any special intention, Jim made it safe for everyone there to also acknowledge parts of themselves that make complete self-love difficult. And he demonstrated how, even without that final self-love, there can also be self-acceptance.

I can imagine a long argument here about the similarities and differences between love and acceptance, and I’d rather not fall into that semantic whirlpool. But I do want to reinforce the importance of Jim’s gift to the audience. With acceptance, I believe that love, maybe capital L kind of love, comes of its own accord and from “outside.” With acceptance comes grace, comes healing, comes change into our lives, and they come from someplace beyond ourselves and yet in a way that is completely intrinsic to who we are.

Dreamcatchers: Ethnic Fest ‘08, Tacoma WA

Last week, Karen Lynch of Vermont Diary sent me this compelling story of conversion and grace. While I do not identify myself as a Christian, and I certainly am not in any place to make a judgment about the meaning of Karen’s experience, what is undeniable is that somehow a door of transcendence opened for her in a single moment, as perhaps it can for any one of us. Maybe that moment is always happening, if only we have sufficient clarity to see its constant unfolding.

I believe what Rogers is talking about all the private, prayerful nuances of letting go, of finding the end, of simply being, of accepting — that things are okay, that I’m okay. Probably mostly this is an unconscious process of opening, of blossoming, where something redirects us and helps us regain our hold on our fundamental interconnectedness. The True Self. In my work I see leaders who attempt to substitute their hard work, achievements and intelligence for the serum of self-acceptance, leaders who are never enough to themselves yet refuse to go through the eye of the needle in order to experience something else. Truth be told, I identify with them. And yet I also see the possibilities of transcendence, which come from adversity and from questions that can’t be answered, only lived. When I am stopped cold by self-made pain, indeed it is then most frequently that the outlines of a new door begin to appear on an otherwise seamless inner wall.

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Technorati Tag: Healing

This one surely goes in the category of “leadership poems”. A friend passed it along to me and I’ve reposted from this site. Truly beautiful. A wonderful day to honor Nelson Mandela, feel and express gratitude. You can find out more about how this day is being celebrated in South Africa here.

[Addendum: 7/19/08: Miki Saxon of Leadership Turn and David Zinger of Slacker Manager point to a fine article about Mandela by Richard Stengel. It’s quite a powerful piece.]

One Love

Once there was a man, and he lived to sing the lion’s song
As he traveled on a road of hope
One Love is the light, shining over every mountain top
It will lead us to the higher ground
One day every heart will beat strong against the night
Let it be done right now

Once there was a man, and his words became a song of love
And his song became the golden dream
One Love is the light, shining over everyone that believes
It will lead us to the higher ground
One day every eye will see truth before the light
Let it be done right now

Some wait, so long
Because our love is strong
This hard road traveled on
Will lead us home, forever

Hear the lion’s song, voices cryin’ like a desert wind
Yeh he’s gone unto his father’s land
Afrika tonight, for we truly are one in our hearts
Colors woven in the golden dream

One day every eye will see truth before the light
Let it be done right now
One day every voice will speak strong against the night
Let us be one right now
So let it be

We are the children of a thousand days
We are the people of the hard rain
We are the children of a thousand days
We are the people of the hard rain
We are the people of the hard rain

Written by: Neil Geraldo & Myron Grombacher

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Technorati Tag: Reflections and Poems

There’s a well-known legend about two wolves:

A Cherokee elder was teaching his children about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to them.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too.”

The grandchildren thought about it and after a minute one of them asked, “Which wolf will win?”

The elder simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Photo Credit: All About Wolves

Similarly in organizations, there is a fight, visible as two competing worlds. One world is founded on human interaction as a contest between weak and strong; the other based on a community inspired by “transcendent values.”

We are all a party to that fight.

In most organizations I’ve known, leaders endeavor to speak from the world of transcendent values. And they believe in them. But they often also find that at some level they must deal with the other world, focused as it is on strength and weakness, on power without any particular moral code.

That war hurts us all. A friend in financial services, for example, was approached by a powerful client who wanted my friend to misrepresent the client firm’s performance in a way that broke the law. She had to decide whether to do the work or throw away a client who represented massive income, reputation, and opportunity. After some sleepless nights, her sense of integrity won out. There was no way she culd do what she was being asked. Predictably the client went away angry — as if he had a right to such service — and who was my friend anyway to deny him what he wanted?

But that’s an obvious case. The subtler ones don’t bring us to such clear decisiveness. For example, the executive who knows he has someone working for him that engages in artful retaliation, but who struggles with what to do about it since the business results keep coming in. The petty wars between leaders and their departments in a health care organization that ought to be focused on their common life-saving mission. The behind-the-scenes change efforts and the consultants hired to make the recommendations they’ve been told to make, reinforcing executives’ perceptions rather than challenging a destructive paradigm. These are more difficult skirmishes in the war, perhaps because they seem so minor. But they are, of course, exactly what keeps the war going.

This are why we need the elders.

I think it is unfortunate that nationally, when we look for those elders, positive ones, ones that know how to feed the world of transcendent values, we often come up short. Perhaps that will change with time. In the corporate world, it is sometimes hard to find the models because the apparent models turn out to be different than we imagined. They nourish the wrong wolf, endorse the wrong world. I think of this famous, purported leader and his suggestion that it’s a good idea to fire the “bottom” 10 percent of performers each year. And if a manager refuses or has a hard time with this assignment out of integrity, that manager should then also become part of the 10 percent that is terminated. This is tantamount to a gang environment. I’ve known a few managers who worked for him. Believe me, their stories have not been particularly laudatory of the organization or of the leader himself, but then, perhaps, they were part of that “bottom” 10%.

This is why we need the elders. Their presence personally reminds us which wolf to feed, which world to inhabit. They have that not-so-subtle thing called a moral vision, which is not to say a righteous one, but just an enlarged, human view that there is more to business and to life than being clever, strong, and “winning.” Instead, somehow they lift us to see the possibilities, believe in us, help us do incredible things together, even when the stress is high, and the time and the money are short. They convey the importance of learning and, especially, of doing the right thing, and they are willing to sort that out through conflict because “the right thing” is often not so easy to determine in a group. They help us understand that we are, after all, in only one world, share only one ship, and we choose together which one.

They don’t think for us. They think for themselves and they help us and encourage us to think for ourselves, too. They see our importance more than they see their own. In this way they engender that most precious quality called — respect.

Technorati Tag: Choices

Lately I’ve been doing more work than ever related to speaking up at work. Typically I use the book, The Courageous Messenger, that I co-wrote twelve years ago, as the hand-out for the class. I love teaching this material because it brings people together who are willing to acknowledge that they need some help and they take the risk to show up at the workshop. I admire them because they often bring deep feelings about their dilemmas at work (and at home, too) and they are universally willing to help one another with ideas and strategies and in-the-moment feedback. Usually I ask people to focus on a particular speaking up situation during our day together so the learning is often very personal. By the end of the day, people are willing to comment on their own “communications dilemmas” — the conditions of temperament and personality that interfere with sharing what they want and need to share at work. This makes the training more than “assertiveness” work. In fact, sometimes the dilemma is just the opposite, leaking too much aggression or blame. I like to think of the learning as finding a way for the soul to show up without the woundedness that we all have acquired along the way.

Telling stories from the class would be a violation of the rules of confidentiality that all class members and I agree to. So, instead, I’d like to talk about this in the context of who you are and the kinds of relationships you want in the workplace. But first, some background from Michael Meade, sociologist, regarding levels of reality as described in a short essay found in The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart:

“If the First Layer of human interaction is the common ground of manners, kind speech, polite greeting, and working agreements; if the Third Layer is the area of deeply shared humanity, the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all people, of the underlying, fundamental oneness of human love, justice, and peaceful coexistence; then the Second Layer is the territory of anger, hatred, wrath, rage, outrage, jealousy, envy, contempt, disgust, and acrimony. It is the Via Negativa, the field of Conflict, the plain of Discord, the hills of Turmoil. And, the Second Layer always exists between the First Layer the Third.”

“All three layers are necessary for a society to continue, for a relationship to endure, for an individual to endure.”

I believe Meade has it exactly right. We say we want to live in accord with those human universals found in the Third Layer, but mostly we have trouble — and have been conditioned to have trouble — making the passage through the Second Layer. And it gets worse, says Meade, not only do we have to make the passage if we want to live in tune with the universals, but the Third Layer “is constantly moving around its location; its not to be found today where it was yesterday…The Third Layer is mysterious, unpredictable, leaves no forwarding address.” Which, in essence means that the passage is never for all time, but only for right now and then inevitably we will need to go back for more — but perhaps having learned a thing or two. We learn we can trust the journey more than we thought we could.

The people who come to the workshop on speaking up are asking for passage through the Second Layer. “How can I tell my boss she needs to change,” someone might ask, “without actually ruining the relationship?” We muse together about the risks involved in opening the conversation, get clear on the message and the messenger’s motivation, work at accepting the receiver for who he or she is, and focus on specifics, including a specific request. “I’d like you to treat me with the same respect that I offer to you.” And so on. This is work without guarantees, and the messenger also has to focus on accepting the outcomes whatever they might be.

And so it is, to be a messenger is to take on an eminently heroic journey, filled as it is with scary creatures. Meade says, “The population of the Second Layer includes a high percentage of giants, hags, trolls, boxers, bars, street criminals, cops, vultures, gargoyles, streetwalkers, and outraged motorists. The sidewalks are cracked, the stores are closed, the lights don’t work, and there is no one who’ll listen to you.” He is explicitly not talking about the messenger’s outer world or the nature of the receiver to whom the message goes. He’s talking about the messenger’s private and subjective world that has to be faced internally in order to deal with the fear of repercussions externally. On the way to asking my boss to be included in an important meeting, perhaps I need to make a deal with the pathetic orphan I carry around inside of me, the orphan who is never included, always begging. Perhaps as I confront my co-worker about pulling his weight, I notice a lethal shape in my internal shadows ready to stab him in the back at the slightest provocation. This is why, of course, Meade calls this the Via Negativa, the dark way.

This is exactly what constitutes our heroism: the willingness to go into the dark spaces inside us that are called up by organizational or personal realities. We have to if we want to find that “fundamental oneness of human love.” Not a popular thing to talk about at work. Yet that is the direction, isn’t it, really, that we must go to create real understanding? Sometimes people are surprised when I open the class by suggesting to them that the problem of speaking up at work isn’t the problem of a situation that needs to be resolved so much as a true relationship between and within people that needs to be formed.

Too often, we protect ourselves, saying consciously or unconsciously “well, it wouldn’t do any good anyway,” and in fact there may be evidence for that. But essentially the cynical posture is a safe one and doesn’t give the soul what it keeps asking for. You can put on earplugs. You can muffle the sound coming out from under the door with a towel. But ultimately everybody knows it’s there and there’s only one way to find it and address it — which is to open the door.

Something else people discover from the workshop is that courage isn’t some thoughtless force or confidence, but comes from full awareness of the risks and the solid, conscious, self-knowledgeable choice to face them. That facing may lead to a decision to speak up or it may not. The path of integrity, the path of the soul, doesn’t actually care, but it does demand that we look right through the doorway, and having found what is waiting for us there say loudly and clearly, “yes, I will” or “no, I won’t.”

I like to think of this work, ultimately, in the way Wendell Berry describes the relationship with his wife in one of his most moving poems, The Country of Marriage:

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

If even a fabulous marriage requires us to enter the darkness, how much more the conflicts we experience in our daily work? But can we take the same opinion with us, can you, that “the dark [is] richer than the light and more blessed”? Do you have the strength to “stay brave enough to keep going in”?

I do believe the principles apply, if we are going to create a better marriage or a better, richer, more human and humane place for us to get our work done together.

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