Posts Tagged ‘belonging’
Lost at an Open Space event
Cindy Hoong comments that at Open Space events, we wander around feeling lost and pretending we aren’t so that we fit in with the geeks.
Mmm . . . . yes, I did remember that feeling as I cast around looking for landmarks to orient myself. We do like a measure of order in our lives and plenty of control for ourselves.
The first stage of group formation, anyway, reminds leaders that we are totally dependent on them to answer the question in our minds, “Do I belong here?”
Landmarks help people move from dependence to independence. Social landmarks help us feel included.
What can we do when we feel lost at an Open Space event?
One of the most important features of an open space event is that everyone takes part – even if it is only to demonstrate how to make a cup of coffee.
If the event is half-half – then I would fall back on the open source principles. Think of something you like to do and volunteer to do it. Offer to staff the reception area. Offer to make the coffee. Set yourself up as official photographer or blogger. Do something inanane ~ match people in green sweaters to people in green sweaters.
But do something. Preferably something you like to do. Preferably something you are good at. Preferably something that achieves a goal important to you.
Then your mindset changes. You want to know where the signing up board is. You want to grab a room. You want to get to know the other participants so you can tailor your presentation.
Get into the flow. Join the river. Become a player.
Hope that helps!
Core theory shouldn’t mean that some people can become “too big for their boots”
The core and the essence of the organization
I learned about Art Kleiner’s core theory this week. Organizations revolve around the ‘interests’ of a core group of people. And so they should, because there is always a core who provide the organization with its very essence.
Recognize the core, protect the core, but don’t ‘spoil it’
Sadly though, organizations are often corrupt. The organization isn’t protecting and nourishing the core that gives it is essence. It is simply allowing a handful of people to claim ‘protection’ money.
All organization theory is an exercise in limiting moral hazard
All organization theory is really an exercise in limiting ‘moral hazard’. We don’t want people being so privileged that their personal privilege insulates them from the realities in the world.
So without diminishing the essence of the core, which is also the essence of the organization, we don’t allow our core to become “too big for their boots”. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for us.
Building an organization that nourishes the core and involves us too
Here are 5 “wicked” ideas and questions that we use to help people understand their organization in healthy terms.
1. We make the company every day by what we do.
2. Together we act out a story.
3. There is more than one story we could tell.
4. Why do I have to speak for you? What can’t everyone speak for themselves?
5. What does the story we have chosen say about our relationships with each other and are we willing to talk about why we have chosen this set of relationships?
Why have we chosen this set of relationships?
This is the wicked question and test whether the feet and boots fit, so to speak.
Are people able to explain why the relationships in the organization as they are? Are they able to say these things aloud and is what they say acceptable and motivating?
Why have we chosen this set of relationships?
You don’t even need an answer. You just have to watch whether people are willing to ask the question and answer the question.
When this is an acceptable conversation, you are in healthy place.
When this conversation is taboo, it is time to look for better company (or take over and lead the organization yourself).
If our words for happiness and sadness were different, we wouldn’t feel muddled
Posted on: February 4, 2010
I want to follow up Gaye’s comment
“ I’ve not seen happiness or sadness as fixed points. My own experience told me long ago that both come and go. While I’m not that good at going with the flow, I remind myself of that old Quaker saying “this too shall pass”.
However, I find it hard to be so accepting of grief and hurt and sadness and pain, and I am surprised at the anger I feel in the cold-blooded way that many casually brush all those feelings aside with this quote from Gibran, as if one compensated for the other. Contrast yes, but compensate no.”
I don’t disagree with Gaye. I would like to extend the thinking.
Empathy
Discussions about happiness become complicated when we are entangle questions about the nature of happiness and sadness with our ability to understand the happiness and sadness of others.
We vary a lot in our ability to empathize with others. We are also more empathetic in some situations and less in others. I suspect that we find it easier to be empathetic when we have been in a similar situation to the one we are observing.
Quite often we look for empathy from people who are simply don’t understand. They are out of their depth.
Belonging
If someone does not have experience to understand our distress, it does not really matter. What matters is that guiding them may be an extra task when we are already strained.
What really matters is when they are in power in some way. Their lack of empathy denies our reality and we experience rejection on top of grief. In theory, the two together could be sufficient to spin us out of the natural butterfly loop of life and out of the natural recovery from grief as time passes.
Appreciation
Almost in contradiction, but not completely so, close relationships such as marriage are more likely to flourish when one partner helps the other partner elaborate good times. Yes, listening in bad times is important. But of more importance is drawing out positive stories in positive times. Recounting good stories deepens our understanding of how good things work and our capacity to come back into the butterfly loop of flourishing when we have spun out of the orbit is widened.
In plain language, when we are struggling with the awfulness of life, we need the good times as a map to find our way back into the natural cycle of happiness and sadness. Becoming trapped in either is illness.
Semantics of happiness
The real issue is the ‘theory’ that we brought to the discussion. When we define happiness and sadness as separate and different, then we ask how much of one should we have and how much of the other should we have.
If we had a word in English to define happiness and sadness and the seasons of our life as one thing, stretching in a straight line or in that looping butterfly shape, we would ask different questions.
If someone is sad, then we act accordingly knowing that there will also be a time when they are happy and we will act accordingly them too.
I like Khalil Gibran’s words because he illustrated this notion of oneness. We find it hard to grasp the idea because of the words that we begin with.
If we had started with a different kind of word, we would have a totally different understanding. What that word should be, I don’t know, but flourishing and thriving are good starts. Languishing is the opposite of flourishing.
Suspicious of poetry
As a young psychologist, I bought into the notion that psychology must tell us something that is not common sense. Many leading psychologists still think this way. I don’t think it is right. The profession is setting itself apart from the world, above the world, beyond the world. It is now other worldly.
We should be more like management scientists. You know those tough guys who schedule the plans and manage the electricity grid so an airport never has more planes and people than it can cope with and the national grid doesn’t fall over when we all make supper at the same time?
Hard core scientists don’t set themselves up against common sense. They support common sense. Maybe they also read poetry.
Bridging the divide between poetry and management
That being said, maybe we need some prose to help people take the first steps. Writing coach, Joanna Young, tweeted this Lao Tzu quote today.
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
The core of contemporary management thinking
Sounds soppy, but these words from 1500 years ago are the core of modern management thinking.
Kindness in words creates belonging and the possibility of collective efficacy.
Kindness in thinking leads to creativity and strategic clarity and hence provides the bedrock of common action.
Kindness in giving creates the common ties that allow resilience and flexibility.
Some time on Google Scholar and you will drown in academic references.
Leadership, management, human resource management
Leadership: who are we journeying with and why are they essential to our journey?
Management: which way are we going and what can each of us do to help?
Human Resource Management: who feels secure with us and will be with us tomorrow?
Too Much Weekend
I’ll like my week better for a tidy room
A golden rose cheerfully in a crystal tube
But with a day spent alone
Working on streams distant from the streams of others
I yearn for the strains of the world outside
If I had a TV, I would switch it on
I’m glad I don’t
It would not give me what I want
The compulsive tug of collective movement
People going somewhere, maybe nowhere
Do I mind our destination when we move together?
I’m ready to join the surging throngs of people in the morning
Dissolve your recession blues with 3 questions (and a Posterous blog & camera)
Posted on: December 2, 2009
The mark of a good businessman is that he can succeed in bad times
Anyone can do well in a rising market. When an economy is doing well, people trade with each other. I make bread and I swap it for your milk. While I am making bread, you plough my field.
In a sophisticated economy, we make the exchange process easier by swapping goods & services for money. It’s easier all round. And the sovereign ~ the king, queen, president or government ~ demands their share. That’s called taxes.
In good times, we simply slot into the system. Its easy. Somebody wants something done. We do it. We get some money. Our options improve.
In bad times, everyone tries to do everything for themselves. It is harder to specialize because no one wants to trade their speciality for yours?
Is it? Why is it so hard?
Why not just walk up to the person who has what you want and make an offer. I can do this for you if you do that for me?
Why haven’t you just done that?
Some where along the line we’ve lost our ability to think for ourselves
If we intend to be successful, in bad times and good, we have to be a little clearer about what we offer.
Here are 3 questions to ask and answer.
#1 What do I really enjoy doing?
Think about when you experience ‘flow’, that wonderful feeling when you are so engrossed that you loose track of time (and are late for the next think.) Young people often experience flow in sport. Where else have you experienced flow?
Now commit yourself to doing more of that. Commit yourself to remembering when you experience flow. Commit yourself to experiencing more flow, more often, and very frequently (every hour?).
Good. Now we are enjoying ourselves we help others enjoy their lives!
#2 When do I bring the light to other people’s eyes?
When you are in flow, it’s unlikely that you are looking in the mirror. If you were, it is likely you would see a magnificently radiant and happy person. You eyes will be alive and dancing.
Everyone wants to feel like this. When do people around you feel flow? When do their eyes light up?
What is that you do that brings the light to other people’s eyes? Which things do you love to do and which of these make other people so happy that their eyes sparkle with pleasure?
Where does your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet?
It’s a humbling experience to think of these sweet spots, isn’t it? We don’t feel bold and brazen. We feel shy. We feel hesitant. We feel gentle. We feel calm. We know that this is our mission. This is what we have been called to do in the ‘family of things’.
#3 Why do their eyes light up?
But we aren’t sure how to begin. How do we grow this sweet spot where we are bringing a light to other people’s eyes? We ask “why?” When their eyes light up, what story are we helping them live? What “flow” are they experiencing at that moment? Who are they at that moment? What is their purpose?
What essential information did we provide in that moment that helped their story come true?
We need to tell their story. We need to take a photo and write a blog post. Day-to-day, let’s document the place where we made someone’s story true.
That’s the point where we have something to trade
And to return from the poetic to commerce, it is at this point that we have something to trade. We understand what we love to do. We know when our pleasures are pleasures for others. We understand their stories and we able to make them come true. We can walk into someone’s shop or business and say to them, “I can do this for you. Would you be able to do this for me in exchange?”
Capture those micro-moments when someone in your life lit up!
Now get on with it! Opening a Posterous blog will take you a few minutes. Getting out your camera will take even less. And send me your link! I want to see you capture those micro-moments when someone in your life lit up!
Trials more difficult than ours
I don’t know this soldier. I don’t know the details of his story. I also don’t want to ‘use’ his story in ways that he doesn’t approve. He used a phrase, though, that struck a cord with me. He said that even though he was injured, he was still part of a team.
Belonging is so important to our well being
For a long while, I’ve believed that belonging is one of the most important factors in well being, in productivity, in thriving and indeed any form of flourishing.
When we belong, we at least are saved from worrying about not belonging.
This soldier shows that belonging is more. When we belong, we are concerned for the wellbeing of others and we trust them to take care of ours.
Am I over-interpreting his story? Is he a fool to want to belong? Is it too hard to create belonging?
Or is the promotion of belonging our first task. To help us belong ~ so that we can thrive and flourish?
flowing motion 
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