Merlin had foreshadowed Arthur’s struggle when asked what was the most important thing in the world. “Truth,” he answered. “That’s the most important thing. When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.”

When we live the truth, we are truly alive. But when we live a lie, we kill everything around us. Many people are beginning to acknowledge that the systemic problems and limitations we are currently experiencing — in our organizations, our government, the environment — are the result of our continuing to live a lie rather than face the truth of our connectedness.

We are awakening from a lie that we have been brought up to believe — that the individual is but a cog in the wheel of a great machine called industrial progress — to the realization that ours has been a misguided dream. The myth that human relationships could be broken down into their constituent parts, like the parts of a machine, is being replaced by a growing appreciation for the integrity of the whole and the realization that we are all inter-connected with everything. If life is about a deep commitment to the truth, then the learning journey can be the awakening process.

Commitment to the Truth

How many of us feel that the commitment to truth can comfortably extend to include our work environment? How much honesty can we afford? We have come to fear the truth — and truth-telling — in our organizations, especially when it differs from the “company line.” We assume there must be a good reason for stifling the confrontations that would occur if everyone felt free to voice his or her own truth. We have a sense that chaos will take over — that order in our world will cease.

In a learning organization, the discipline of creating shared vision is rooted in personal mastery, and personal mastery is based on a commitment to the truth about current reality. That commitment provides us with a clear idea of where we are and what we believe and allows us to begin to build the creative tension that will propel us toward creating what we truly want (see “Creative Tension” diagram). In order to generate creative tension, we need both a compelling vision, and a clear understanding of our current reality. Without a vision, there is no real motivation to change. Without a clear understanding of where we are, we have no basis for effective action.

Only if we can tell ourselves the truth about the current reality in our organizations can we open ourselves up to new possibilities for innovation and improvement. Only through a commitment to the truth can a learning organization articulate a meaningful set of values that can guide it on its journey (see “Values of a Learning Organization” on p. 3).

When we are unclear about our own truth, we muddy the environment around us. When we clearly express our own truth and also our shared truth — our values — we contribute to the constantly generating field of energy we inhabit. In a “spirited” learning organization, the energy released with this kind of freedom is infectious. People like to come into this kind of space. When we do not have to censor what we really think and care about, we have more energy to devote to creating something that really matters to us.

Multiple “Truths”?

In this constantly changing world, a universe that seems to thrive on diversity and multiplicity and complexity, we can no longer afford to focus our attention on one view or one group of people. Learning organizations need the energy of all of their members, as well as the vision, the aspirations, and inspirations of everyone who is involved in them.

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, emphasizes that ongoing conversations about personal visions are vital to creating an organization’s shared vision. As important as building shared vision is, however, Senge notes that the hardest lesson for managers to accept is that “there is nothing you can do to get another person to enroll or commit” to a shared vision. “Enrollment and commitment require freedom of choice.”

In the new documentary about Noam Chomsky called “Manufacturing Consent,” the linguist challenges a young reporter who is condemning him for defending the rights of a professor in France who wrote a book claiming that the holocaust never happened. In reply, Chomsky said, “Free speech is not only for people you agree with. Stalin believed in that kind of free speech; Hitler believed in that kind of free speech. No, free speech is for those you don’t agree with.”

True democracy is based on a fundamental belief in the benefits of listening to as many varied, distinct, and disparate voices as can be heard. What holds people together is that belief in the freedom to speak, to disagree, to have a different view. When that freedom is absent, fragmentation, isolation, and hostility are the result.

“I wonder why we limit ourselves so quickly to one idea or one structure or one perception, or to the idea that ‘truth’ exists in objective form,” questions Margaret Wheatley in her book Leadership and the New Science. “Why would we stay locked in our belief that there is one right way to do something, or one correct interpretation to a situation, when the universe welcomes diversity and seems to thrive on a multiplicity of meanings? Why would we avoid participation and worry only about its risks, when we need more and more eyes to evoke reality?”

Studies of chaos have pointed to how sensitive the universe is, and how important each individual piece is to the shape of the whole. This suggests that we need to encourage differences, rather than smooth them over. Wheatley states, “self-organizing systems demonstrate new relationships between autonomy and control, showing how a large system is able to maintain its overall form and identity only because it tolerates great degrees of individual freedom.”

When we are unclear about our own truth, we muddy the environment around us. When we clearly express our own truth and also our shared truth — our values — we contribute to the constantly generating field of energy we inhabit. In a “spirited” learning organization, the energy released with this kind of freedom is infectious.

The Substance of Spirit

Leadership and the New Science offers some interesting insights into the role of space in an organization. The book explores the more recent teachings of “the new science” — those discoveries in biology, chemistry and physics that challenge us to reshape our world view. In particular, Margaret Wheatley’s study of quantum physics, self-organizing systems, and chaos theory makes some challenging connections between our physical world and the organizations we create.

From quantum physics, we have discovered that we and our world are mostly space (99.999% of an atom is empty space). Wheatley suggests that this vast and invisible thing we call space is actually a field, teeming with information and resources, that we participate in whether we are aware of it or not.

“If we have not bothered to create a field of vision that is coherent and sincere, people will encounter other fields, the ones we have created unintentionally or casually,” she explains. “As employees bump up against contradicting fields, their behavior mirrors those contradictions. We end up with what is common to many organizations, a jumble of behaviors and people going off in different directions, with no clear or identifiable pattern. What we lose when we fail to create consistent messages, when we fail to ‘walk our talk,’ is not just personal integrity. We lose the partnership of a field-rich space that can help bring form and order to the organization.”

If space is not empty, but full of images and messages that we continually feed via our thoughts, words, and actions, then the content of our inner lives — our values, thoughts and beliefs — has a powerful impact on the field of space, or spirit, within our organizations. The quality of that field characterizes the spirit of an organization. We create the field around us, whether it be one which inhibits individuals or encourages them to expand and participate. The field view of organizations suggests the importance of actively working to help shape the spirit of the learning organization.

Leadership

What is the role of the leader in creating this kind of space? The leader of an organization cannot be solely responsible for articulating the vision or spirit of an organization and disseminating it, because that spirit must come from the involvement of all individuals in the organization.

But leaders in learning organizations can help to foster these new ideas by “walking the talk,” demonstrating by their own example that this is not a new flight of fancy, or the management solution-of-the-month. Leaders cannot force a tolerance of diversity; however, they can practice and encourage the exchange of views, especially ones that differ from their own.

We can let go of control as the predominant leadership style and choose to move in sync with the natural universe, which allows for more autonomy among its individual members. More importantly, we can choose to become conscious of our beliefs and attitudes (see “Paradigm-Creating Loops” in Vol. 4, No. 2) and become more willing to see the effect they have on others in our organizations.

Communication, explains Wheatley, is key to this task. “In the past, we may have thought of ourselves as skilled crafters of organizations, assembling the pieces of an organization, exerting our energy on the painstaking creation of links between all those parts. Now we need to imagine ourselves as broadcasters, tall radio beacons of information, pulsing out messages everywhere…Field creation is not just a task for senior managers. Every employee has energy to contribute; in a field-filled space, there are no unimportant players.”

Systems thinking is a discipline that continually prods us to examine how our own actions create our reality and identify ways in which we can change our own behavior to make a difference. With the help of new science discoveries and Margaret Wheatley’s thoughts on their application to the way we view organizations, we have a new arena to explore — the unseen, frontier of field-rich space.

Through exploring the values, truths, and meaning we find in the world, we can contribute to the generative spirit of a learning organization by bringing those intangibles to bear in our everyday lives, consciously and intentionally.

Our unique contribution toward building learning organizations may lie in our ability to know intimately the space we inhabit and how we contribute to the overall spirit of the enterprise. Perhaps that is the secret of the Holy Grail — to know the truth about ourselves, in whatever field we inhabit.

Further reading: Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science (San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler, 1992). Margaret Wheatley was a keynote speaker at the 1993 Systems Thinking in Action Conference, November 8-10, sponsored by Pegasus Communications.

Daniel H. Kim is the publisher of The Systems Thinker and Director of the Learning Lab Research Project at the MIT Organizational Learning Center. Eileen Mullen is a freelance writer living in Somerville, MA.

The post The Spirit of the Learning Organization appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

In this changing world, it’s useful to think of leadership not as an immutable set of qualities but as an activity: the activity of engaging people to accomplish a common purpose. This process takes place within a particular social, political, economic, and technological environment — the features of which influence the effectiveness of certain styles and approaches to leadership. It is my contention that the environment has changed dramatically — in ways that I will describe more fully below — and that one of the new characteristics that leaders must adopt to be effective is that of vulnerability.

Vulnerability is not an attribute commonly associated with leadership. The word evokes images of weakness, fallibility, and defenselessness. Roget’s Interactive Thesaurus identifies nine synonyms for the word “vulnerability”: danger, dependence, exposure, infirmity, instability, jeopardy, liability, peril, and weakness. So why would anyone deliberately seek to be vulnerable? How can doing so possibly be necessary for leaders today? Isn’t living in the world dangerous and unstable enough without deliberately cultivating vulnerability? Before discussing these questions, let’s explore what I mean by “vulnerability” in the context of leadership.

The Discipline of Vulnerability

Pema Chödrön uses the metaphor of a room to describe how we often relate to the world. We create this room to suit us perfectly. It is the perfect temperature; the food is our favorite, as is the music. Only the people with whom we get along are allowed to enter this room. It is a wonderful environment, perfectly suited to us. But gradually the room turns into a prison as we become more and more afraid to venture out. The longer we stay in the room, the more threatening the outside So we take steps to for selves even more, padlocking the doors and shuttering the windows.

This is the position of too many leaders today. In a world full of perceived threats from all quarters, leaders tend to isolate themselves as they attempt to single-handedly eradicate all perils facing their organizations. In doing so, they cut themselves off from important sources of information and valuable relationships. In this new environment, the existing leadership paradigm — the “leader as hero” —  serves as a prison.

As Chödrön says, “Staying in this room is not productive of being a whole, healthy, sane, well-adjusted person. . . . It’s not productive of awe, wonder, curiosity, or inquisitiveness. It’s not productive of tolerance, and it breeds bigotry and racial hatred.” And then she adds, “Our life’s work is to learn to open the door.” Learning to open the door — for individuals, organizations, and even nations — involves cultivating vulnerability.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge writes: “Each of the five learning disciplines can be thought of on three distinct levels:

1. Practices, which are the things you do
2. Principles, which are guiding ideas and insights
3. Essences, which is the state of being of those with high levels of mastery in the discipline.”

Using this framework, and thinking of vulnerability as a discipline, its essence is a sense of unguardedness and willingness to be changed. Principles or guiding ideas that support the discipline of vulnerability might include openness, transparency, “not knowingness,” trust, and compassion. Openness is a sense of permeability, a receptivity to influences from outside “your room.” Transparency is essentially a willingness to invite scrutiny and critique. “Not knowingness” is a bit harder to describe. The Zen Buddhist phrase “beginner’s mind” captures this principle well, in that it encourages us to approach each situation with a spirit of curiosity combined with a lack of certainty. “Not knowingness” is another form of openness — the openness to new ideas and ways of seeing the world. Trust involves yet another kind of openness — the willingness to engage in relationship with the other.

“The other” can be parts of oneself, other people, a higher power, or a process. Finally, compassion entails an openness to the suffering of others and the desire to alleviate that suffering. Embracing vulnerability through the application of these principles can be strengthened through a myriad of practices, some of which will be described later in this article.

The Call for Change

Why is vulnerability particularly relevant as a leadership discipline now? First, people around the globe are increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of all existence. Even in the most isolated settings, developments in communications technology have made it possible for people to quickly and easily learn about events occurring in other parts of the world. Such awareness then influences what they consider to be their sphere of concern. At the same moment, I can be troubled by the performance of my local school system, the bombing of the U. N. headquarters in Iraq, and the continuing heat wave in Europe. Knowing about these events inevitably expands my consciousness.

The globalization of the economy also compels individuals and organizations to operate as part of a larger whole. Even remote areas feel the economic impact of events occurring in other regions. For example, some months following the bombing of the World Trade Center, my husband and I were riding in a taxi on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. The driver started talking about September 11th and what a terrible thing it had been. As an American, I assumed that he was expressing his condolences for the loss of life in the U. S. As it turned out, his primary concern was the effect on his local economy of the drop in air travel following the attacks. This incident is but a small example of the powerful web of economic interconnectedness that characterizes our time.

Additionally, we have become increasingly consciousness of the interconnectedness of systems that were once perceived and treated as substantially separate. For example, there is more and more evidence that the phenomenon of “urban sprawl” contributes to a diminished sense of community and environmental degradation. When people must get in their cars and drive in order to carry out their daily activities, they no longer

Although the “leader as hero” may never be completely replaced, we now have other models to guide our behavior.

casually encounter fellow community members and they contribute to environmental pollution. Other examples abound. It is too early to know whether our rising awareness in this area will lead to changes in practices, but further progress will certainly be aided by a stance of vulnerability.

A second condition that calls for leaders to adopt a stance of vulnerability is the tarnished credibility of many major institutions, including the media, the church, and the marketplace. This may be a “good news, bad news” occurrence, setting the stage for citizens to require their leaders to act with humility, transparency, and trustworthiness. At this writing, it is hard to know what direction society will take: a flurry of laws, litigation, reorganization, and regulations intended to prevent such violations from recurring, or a more fundamental revisiting of our basic expectations about social institutions and their leaders.

A third condition, which is a potentially positive development, is an emerging civic re-engagement movement that seems to be gaining momentum. One example is the powerful Internet-based citizen participation vehicle “Move On,” which aims to “bring ordinary people back into politics.” It currently has an international network of more than two million online activists, which has taken action on a variety of political and social issues since 1998. In addition, more and more opportunities exist for large numbers of citizens to engage in dialogue and offer their views on important public developments. One such example was the historic “Listening to the City” event held in July 2002, in which 5,000 New Yorkers offered comments on plans to redesign lower Manhattan, rebuild the World Trade Center, and create a memorial for the victims of the September 11th attacks.

As a facilitator of this session, I was profoundly impressed by both the skillfulness of the process and the quality of the results. This event required a stance of vulnerability from everyone involved. Those who commissioned the process remained open to being influenced and were willing to modify the outcome to reflect the needs expressed by participants during the day-long event. Those who attended the gathering demonstrated trust that their input would be taken seriously, even as they entered into the dialogue with self-described “New York cynicism.” Those who organized the process were flexible and willing to make changes in real time, for instance, when the majority of participants balked at taking part in one planned exercise. The gathering truly demonstrated the qualities of vulnerability described in this article and, indeed, had an impact on the course of the rebuilding process.

A final condition brings us back to the point made earlier: that desirable leadership attributes will be influenced by the environmental context. In order to help leaders to operate effectively in this complex, interdependent, and heterogeneous environment, scholars are articulating a new image of leadership. Recent books such as The Spirit of Leadership by Harrison Owen (Berrett Koehler, 1999), Leading Without Power by Max De Pree (Jossey-Bass, 1997), and Leading Quietly by Joseph Badaracco, Jr. (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002) emphasize the relational, subtle, and even spiritual elements of modern leadership. Increasingly, the inner work of leadership is being linked to outer actions. Although the “leader as hero” may never be completely replaced, we now have other models to guide our behavior.

Taking Off the Armor

“You become what you practice most.” — Unknown

It is difficult to expect leaders who have not embraced the discipline of vulnerability throughout their careers to do so when the stakes are high. Instead, leaders must consistently cultivate this approach over the long term. Pema Chödrön writes, “When I was about 12, I read a Life magazine series, ‘Religions of the World.’ The article on Confucius said something like: ‘By the time you’re 50, if you’ve spent your life up until then taking the armor off . . . then you’ve established a pattern of mind that for the rest of your life, you won’t be able to stop. You’ll just keep taking the armor off. But if by the time you’re 50 you’ve become really good at keeping

that armor on . . . it’s going to be very hard to change.”

Regardless of our age or position in our organization, how might we start to “take off the armor”? We can begin with the principles of vulnerability outlined above: openness, transparency, “not knowingness,” trust, and compassion. For each of these guiding ideas there are numerous practices that run the gamut from audits to Zen. Below are examples of some that might support each of the principles (also see “The Principles of Vulnerability”).

Openness. A number of years ago, I attended a barbecue hosted by a local police officer, along with mutual friends. This was the first time we had met most of the people at this party. Early in the evening, our host began railing against the Puerto Ricans who had moved into his community in recent years. He described them as having caused an increase in crime, poverty, and teen pregnancy in the town. My first instinct was to react to aggressively defend the people he was maligning — but we were his guests and it did not seem appropriate. I was greatly conflicted: I felt as though his beliefs, his perspective, would seep into me and become a part of my identity if I didn’t mount a defense. But as a guest and a stranger, I did not feel it was polite to argue with him.

Instead, I tried to be open to his perspective. When I actually allowed myself to take in his point of view, I realized that police officers regularly encounter people at their worst. Given that, why would he have a different perspective about Puerto Ricans? Once I became vulnerable and considered his perspective, it changed me.

At that point, I began to pay attention to the ways in which my fear of being “colonized” by “the other” was causing me to become rigidly defensive of my own views. I started exploring various practices that enhance individual and collective openness. The Buddhist practice of tonglen, which means “exchanging oneself for the other,” is a powerful personal discipline for cultivating compassion and a sense of connection with others. Tonglen entails the deliberate “breathing in” of someone’s pain, anger, sadness, and negative energy and “breathing out” light, warmth, and positive energy directed toward that individual. I have found it to be especially helpful in countering the tendency to defend my own beliefs and reject those of other people.

There are also numerous exercises that encourage taking different perspectives, including the exercise called “Multiple Perspectives” described in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. The exercise, which is useful for teams working on a real problem, involves identifying each of the stakeholders and rotating among roles in order to see the issue from as many vantage points as possible. This exercise can benefit individual participants as well the team as a whole.

The June 2003 issue of Fast Company magazine features an organizational example of the power of taking multiple perspectives. The Dofasco Steel Company of Hamilton, Ontario, has distinguished itself because of its emphasis on the “triple bottom line” (society, the economy, and the environment) as well as its consistent profitability, in an industry where neither are typical. Former CEO John May berry says, “These things all bleed into each other. How do you get happy shareholders? Start with satisfied customers. How do you get satisfied customers? Start with happy employees. How do you please employees? Try not to wreck the community they live in.” When faced with seemingly incompatible goals, such as reducing energy consumption while still producing high-quality steel, the company creates innovative solutions by “constantly examining problems from all perspectives as we try to solve them. And often, an improvement in one area that might initially look bad for another stakeholder actually pushes you to come up with solutions that are better all around.”

Transparency.

Individuals and groups alike can practice transparency, the openness to scrutiny or critique. On an individual level, we can invite friends, family members, and colleagues to offer feedback about our behavior and its impact on them. We can also make ongoing efforts to align our purpose, values, and goals to result in more consistent actions. If others know what our values are and can observe a pattern of behavior consistent with those values, then the reasons for our actions are clearer than they might have been if we behaved in inconsistent and unaccountable ways. Any effort to bring to consciousness our own mental models and assumptions, along with the willingness to make those public, is practicing transparency.

For organizations, one powerful way of practicing transparency is by inviting scrutiny — feedback — from outside parties through external evaluations and audits. Recently, the food industry, spearheaded by the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants, implemented an animal welfare initiative that is producing audits of eggs, milk, chicken, and pork producers and will eventually result in inspection of cattle and feed lots. In 1997, McDonald’s restaurant began a process that eventually required all of its meat producers to undergo animal welfare audits: In 2002, it conducted 50 such audits worldwide.

Other ways in which organizations can practice transparency include aligning vision, mission, values, goals, and practices and collectively uncovering assumptions and mental models. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and other resources describe a number of techniques for creating a shared vision and uncovering mental models. Although the techniques are well proven, they are most successful in environments in which there is already a fair amount of openness and trust.

For a variety of reasons, having the answers can be the most unhelpful thing a leader can do.

“Not Knowingness.” People in leadership roles are often expected to have all the answers. In fact, for a variety of reasons, having the answers can be the most unhelpful thing a leader can do: It allows others to avoid taking responsibility; it perpetuates the “leader-as-hero” myth; it suppresses creative thinking that can come from those on the margins; and it keeps others at a distance. “Not knowingness” requires especially rigorous practice because the pressure that leaders experience “to know” comes both from within and without.

Leaders who want to adopt this principle might find inspiration in the experiences of former Hewlett-Packard executive Greg Merton. In his article, “Leadership is Sourced by a Commitment to Personal Development” (Reflections, Fall 2002), he writes, “I am learning that a willingness to be vulnerable arises out of strength, not weakness. We protect ourselves out of fear, not confidence. And if we want those around us to learn, then we must be learning as well.”

The creation of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is an excellent example of “not knowingness.” Since the early 1980s, this bank has made a success of doing something no other bank has done: lending to the poor. In Reflections (Spring 2002), the leader of the bank, Muhammad Yunus, described its origins. Conditions in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s were horrific. As Yunus walked from his beautiful bungalow to the university where he was teaching economics, he would pass by people dying in the street. He realized that his economic theories were useless in the face of those conditions. He said, “I felt completely empty. . . . I realized I could help people as a human being, not an economist. So I decided to become a basic human being. I no longer carried any preconceived notions.”

Stimulated by this realization, he traveled into local villages to learn about poverty by listening to poor people themselves. He discovered that many of them earned a meager income by making things to sell but, in order to buy the raw materials, they had to borrow cash from a moneylender at high interest rates. Making these payments left them without enough money to live on. The people Yunus met were not victims or malingerers; they were motivated entrepreneurs who lacked resources. This learning became the foundation of the creation of Grameen Bank, which has grown to be an international model for microcredit banks, lending money to people with no collateral.

Trust. “Not knowingness” also involves a willingness to trust an unfolding process and to have a kind of faith, whether it is faith in other people, in oneself, in a deity, or merely in the integrity of the outcome. In A Path with Heart (Bantam Books, 1993), Jack Kornfield includes a wonderful story about Vinoba Bhave, who was Gandhi’s closest disciple and heir apparent. After Gandhi’s death, his followers tried to convince Vinoba to lead a nationwide convention to decide how to continue Gandhi’s work. With serious reservations, Vinoba agreed, but only on the condition that the conference be postponed for six months so he could walk there on foot, halfway across India.

In his travels, Vinoba discovered the same scenario in village after village: The people were poor and were unable to grow their own food because they owned no land. At first, he promised to talk to Prime Minister Nehru about passing a law to give land to the poor villagers. Upon reflection, he realized that such a law would be ineffective in addressing the problem because it would take years to pass and when it was finally put into place, corrupt governmental officials would siphon the land grants away before they ever reached the people. Sadly, he gathered a group of villagers together and told them his conclusion.

In response, one rich villager pledged to give some of his land to 16 families, each of whom needed five acres. This generous offer prompted others to follow suit in village after village as Vinoba traveled to the conference. During his journey, he stimulated the transfer of more than 2,200 acres of land to poor families. As a result, others joined the effort, which became known as the great Indian Land Reform Movement.

Kornfield writes, “All of this began from a spirit of listening, a caring for truth, and a compassionate beginner’s mind brought to an old and difficult situation.” I would add that it also came from a trust in an unfolding process. If Vinoba had proceeded with an agenda, clear goals, and a decisive vision of the future of the Gandhian movement, would the Indian Land Reform Movement ever have happened?

Compassion. Compassion is defined as “deep feeling for or understanding of misery and suffering and a desire to promote its alleviation.” It results from the act of “opening the door” discussed earlier in this article. The spiritual practice of tonglen is deliberately aimed at cultivating compassion.

Whether we use a spiritual or cognitive route to expand our perception of the interconnectedness of elements within systems, we cannot fail to experience a strengthened relationship with the other parts of that system: individuals, work groups, organizations, cultures, nature, and so on. Awareness of this relationship creates the groundwork for a compassionate response to the other. Peter Senge quotes Einstein on this topic:

“[The human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

The practice of systems thinking can enable us to see the interconnection between elements that had previously been perceived as separate. Systems diagrams can be a useful tool for cultivating this type of thinking. In a leadership course I was teaching for people with mental retardation and their workers, we used a rudimentary systems diagram to describe the relationship between the behavior of staff and clients in a group home. One of the residents understood the connection immediately: “So when staff yell at me, then I feel ashamed and that makes me mad and I yell back. The staff think I’m acting out and then they restrain me.” Through the practice of systems thinking, this participant, who had previously viewed interactions entirely from her own perspective, was able to take the perspective of others. This stimulated a thoughtful discussion about the ways in which the behavior of the staff and residents influenced each other, which helped to break down barriers between people in those two roles.

Perhaps a case study will be useful at this point. What follows is a real situation.

In the mid-1990s, a small town in a rural state experienced a series of violent events that challenged the community’s capacity to act compassionately toward individuals with mental illness. The incidents also challenged the state mental health department to operate with a stance of vulnerability rather than the usual defensive posture that is so prevalent in response to scandal. First, a man with a history of mental illness attacked members of a local religious order; two of these women subsequently died. The man knew these individuals and had grown up in the community. Several months later, another murder took place in the town; the alleged perpetrator was on a waiting list for mental health services. During the same year, in a nearby town, a resident of one of the state-run psychiatric facilities was murdered by her boyfriend.

Any one of these tragic events might have provoked a serious backlash against the mental health department and the people it served. The coincidence of three violent crimes happening within a short timeframe was a recipe for disaster. It would not have been surprising to find the system’s leaders engaging in defensive practices such as scapegoating, retreating, and retaliating. Instead, leaders within the system chose to stay focused on the circumstances of the people they served and the well-being of the community at large, a focus that necessitated a different set of responses than the conventional ones.

What did the department actually do? In the instance of the nuns’ murder, the department reached out to those people who had a stake in the unfolding events. First, officials asked themselves, “Who is going to be most affected by this horrible incident and its potential implications?” They contacted the head of the local chapter of AMI, a national education and advocacy group for people with psychiatric disabilities and their families. They also got in touch with the leader of the local mental patients’ advocacy movement, the mayor of the community, the head of the agency that served the perpetrator, and the Catholic diocese. This group of people from the community got together and said, “Our community has a reputation as a caring community, and we need to let people know we are not going to scapegoat people with mental illness or let this become a witch hunt. That’s not what this community is all about.”

Although the event and its aftermath were tragic and painful, the behavior of this community group, supported by leaders within the mental health department, prevented worse consequences. In fact, a reporter who had grown up in the community returned to his hometown shortly after the attack to see what the effects had been. Fully expecting a severe backlash against people with mental illness, what he found was very different. Four days after the incident, 1,000 citizens crowded into a church just down the street from the convent for a public prayer service. The town’s mayor urged them to pray for the family of the perpetrator. The state legislature later called for improved treatment of mental patients living in local communities. The nuns continued to pray for the man who had killed two of their own.

How does this example illustrate the discipline of vulnerability? Instead of padlocking the door, turning off the phones, and hunkering down in their “room,” the department heads acknowledged that they needed to work with other key stakeholders. They recognized that they were but one element of a larger system, and possibly not even the central or most relevant one. Instead of protecting and defending itself, the department reached out to others. Its message was, “We need you; we can’t do this alone.” Given that department leaders were besieged by lawsuits and attacks in the newspaper, actions that often lead people to feel defensive, it is all the more remarkable that they chose to respond in this way.

Further, the department proceeded with a sense of not knowing, a courageous stance for an institution expected to wield power, expertise, and accountability. Leaders focused on creating an expansive, long-term agenda, rather than on merely reacting to the crisis. This approach enabled the broader group of stakeholders to establish common ground. It would have been impossible for them to do so if the emphasis had been on defending the stakeholders’ individual actions regarding the specific incident. Instead of fortifying their “room,” these courageous folks opened the door and went out into the world, vulnerable and open to influence. This is a clear example of the discipline of vulnerability at work.

A Fresh Approach

I have attempted to describe some current conditions that call for a stance of vulnerability and to describe why vulnerability is a core leadership discipline for these times. Although it may not be the most accurate term for what I have tried to describe, it does have the advantage of freshness. Using “vulnerability” as a positive term, a condition to which leaders might aspire rather than eschew, invites reflection upon our existing assumptions about leadership. Because I also wanted to include some practical elements, I have attempted to touch on some of the ways in which an individual or collective might cultivate vulnerability. Anyone interested in further pursuing these practices will find ample information else-where. My main hope in writing this article is that it might contribute to our individual and collective capacity to “open the door” and venture out into the world.

The post Embracing Vulnerability:A Core Leadership Discipline for Our Times appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Karen suspected that these conflicting styles had a lot to do with personality differences. She had once taken a survey that showed she was a “Feeler,” and she was pretty sure that Jenny was a “Thinker.” Knowing this, though, didn’t change the frustration she felt when problems arose.

Because the challenges with Jenny seemed so minor, Karen thought they should be easy to fix. It was obvious that Jenny shared Karen’s passion for their work. Plus, Jenny had brilliant ideas that often led to breakthroughs on tough issues. Karen only wished that Jenny weren’t so cold and distant.

Although they may seem trivial, the personal differences that Karen experienced in her relationship with Jenny had a significant impact on their working relationship. Fortunately, while these opposing styles may generate conflict, they also offer great richness in tackling complex issues. But in order to get out of counterproductive patterns of interaction that have created problems in the past, Karen needs a new way of viewing differences: one that enables her to live with the tensions differences generate, create a rich vision of what she wants to create, and be flexible in the pursuit of her vision. Otherwise, Karen’s current way of thinking will continue to limit her ability to respond constructively to Jenny and others.

No doubt you, too, are aware of differences between you and others in your organization. How can you deal with these differences in productive ways? And how can you use them to build your own self-knowledge and interpersonal skills? One promising approach stems from a school of thought known as “Dilemma Theory.”

A dilemma is a choice between two options, both of which are attractive but appear to be mutually exclusive: an “either/or” scenario.

Dilemma Theory

Differences have always been a basis for learning. When people travel, they find themselves stimulated by the cultural differences they encounter, often returning home with new understanding and appreciation of themselves and their communities. But differences can also serve as the basis for intractable conflict and struggle. When we encounter someone whose worldview is diametrically opposed to our own, we often fall into an “us” versus “them” and “good” versus “bad” dynamic.

Dilemma Theory, based on the work of researchers Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars, seeks to help us overcome these barriers and learn from differences. Hampden-Turner summarizes the philosophy as follows: “We can never grow to become great business leaders until we actively strive to embrace the behaviors and attitudes that feel most uncomfortable to us. The most effective management practices are those that gently force engineers, managers, and employees to embrace the unthinkable.” Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars focus primarily on cultural differences, but the concepts they developed can help to explain the dynamics associated with any kind of differences.

As they point out, a dilemma is a choice between two options, both of which are attractive but appear to be mutually exclusive: an “either/or” scenario. You face dilemmas every day: whether to work on a project alone or with others; whether to give attention to details or focus on the “big picture”; whether to confront someone’s inappropriate behavior or pass over it; whether to stay with what you know or try something new.

While such dilemmas may seem straightforward, they are rich with dynamic complexity. The dynamism stems not from the simple choice that a dilemma presents, but from the mechanisms that people and societies develop for making such decisions. How we become skilled at handling dilemmas has an enormous impact on the outcome. In this context, being skilled means competently performing a task without needing to consciously focus on it. When we repeatedly do something, we eventually reach the point when we no longer need to call to mind the steps it requires; we just do them. I have become skilled in the use of computer keyboards, so as I type, I do not have to deliberately hunt for the right keys to make words. I think of the word I want and my fingers make it happen without any apparent thought on my part.

Just as we become skilled at physical tasks such as typing, we gain mastery in handling dilemmas. If we repeatedly resolve dilemmas by choosing one option over the other, the option we choose becomes an unconscious preference. Over time, we stop being aware that we are making a choice — we simply assume it is the best course of action. These deeply internalized preferences become values that shape the decisions we make and the actions we take.

Many people believe that their way of dealing with something is obviously superior, even when they encounter others who routinely make the opposite choice. In this situation, it is easy to characterize different choices as absurd or based on ignorance. For Karen, the rightness of working collegially and expressing her emotions was something she felt from deep within and found hard to put into words. Little wonder she found it perplexing when Jenny worked in a contradictory way.

Personality differences also play an important role in the formation of values. We are each born with innate characteristics that shape our preferences and interests (Sandra Seagal and David Horne’s work on Human Dynamics is one framework for understanding variations). So both nature and nurture give rise to the differences we encounter.

Universal Dilemmas

Just as people develop a set of values based on the cumulative effect of the choices they make, so do communities. All communities encounter dilemmas, and some dilemmas are universal. Universal dilemmas include:

• Whether (a) rules should apply to everyone or (b) exceptions should be made depending on who is involved.
• Whether status should be awarded (a) on the basis of one’s position in the community or (b) on the basis of what one has achieved.
• Whether (a) the needs of the community should outweigh the rights of individual members or (b) vice versa.

While these dilemmas are universal, the ways in which communities resolve them are not. Each society will develop its own pattern of values, perhaps putting (a) ahead of (b) with one dilemma but (b) ahead of (a) with another.

What determines which values develop in a particular community? It depends on the conditions that exist when the community first encounters a dilemma. All manner of variables have an effect. The personality dynamics of influential community leaders — the “core group,” to use the term coined by Art Kleiner — play a key role. The history of the community and its present needs all shape how it resolves a dilemma. When a community repeatedly resolves an issue by giving priority to one option, what was once a conscious choice becomes an unconsciously held value.

We generally don’t examine taken-for-granted ways of doing things until we encounter someone who does things differently.

Values are self-perpetuating. For example, if we value achievement — rewarding people for what they accomplish rather than who they are — we are naturally interested in how we can measure it. Having established a way of measuring achievement, we start to do so. In this way, we create an infrastructure to support a value that started off as a preference for one way of acting over another. As we use the infrastructure, we reinforce the value and strengthen our preference for it.

On an individual level, when children grow up, they take for granted that the way their family operates is the norm — how they celebrate holidays, deal with money, resolve conflicts, and so on. In the same way, people do not usually question the values of the community in which they live. We generally don’t examine taken-for-granted ways of doing things until we encounter someone who does things differently, whether at an individual or group level.

Dynamics of Difference

What happens when people with opposite values — such as Jenny and Karen — interact? The outcome is typically not what we would hope. Because a dilemma involves options, both of which are advantageous, the values represented in the dilemma are also complementary. The more one of the values is expressed, the greater the need for the other becomes. Jenny and Karen have the potential to balance one another, making up for each other’s shortcomings and supporting each other’s strengths, and we might hope that they would find ways to capitalize on their complementary skills. But two phenomena often prevent that from happening: skilled incompetence and schismogenesis.

Skilled Incompetence. The reason a dilemma is challenging is that both options are attractive: Each provides real — though different — advantages. In our story, Karen benefits from being expressive, and Jenny benefits from keeping her emotions in check. But when one option becomes an unconscious preference, it is at the expense of the other. So the more that Karen pursues the value she derives from acting expressively, the more she misses out on the advantages of objectivity.

While Karen values subjectivity, she isn’t blind. She can see that Jenny benefits from her objectivity. She may think, “I wish I was more like Jenny,” and decide to change in that direction. But despite her determination, Karen may still operate off an unconscious preference for subjectivity. For this reason, she may say one thing while at the same time do the opposite and not be aware of the discrepancy. Chris Argyris coined the term “skilled incompetence” to describe the mismatch between what people say and what they do.

This pattern of behavior can also happen at an organizational level. Companies may publish lists of values, but these often express qualities that people think are needed rather than ones that the organization actually possesses. In all probability, a quality will make it onto the list of “corporate values” because it is something the organization does not value!

Schismogenesis. Another dynamic that occurs when opposites interact is what anthropologist Gregory Bateson termed “schismogenesis”: the splitting apart of complementary values. Schismogenesis happens when an initially small difference gets progressively bigger. Imagine that Karen has come up with a breakthrough on a project that she wants to share with Jenny. She goes to Jenny’s office and excitedly blurts out that she has news. Jenny is overwhelmed by Karen’s energy, thinks Karen should calm down, and tries to encourage her to do so by lowering her own voice and speaking slowly. Karen thinks Jenny doesn’t understand the importance of the message, so she ramps up her level of enthusiasm. Jenny gets quieter and calmer. Karen gets louder and more excited. What started off as a small difference has become enormous through the course of the interaction.

Something else has happened, too. Karen and Jenny have become polarized, with a distorted view of what their values represent. How so? When seen through the lens of Dilemma Theory, a value is a preference for acting one way rather than another. This difference also depends on who else is involved. Karen values expressiveness because this term describes the difference she sees between herself and others she interacts with. But in many communities throughout the world, Karen would be viewed as the least expressive person.

Nevertheless, Karen has come to consider expressiveness as something that defines who she is. She doesn’t think, “I have a stronger preference for expressing and acting on my feelings than Jenny.” Rather, she says to herself, “I am a Feeler.” Thinking of herself in this way makes a tremendous difference to the repertoire of actions that Karen allows herself to use. Viewing her own and Jenny’s values as permanent characteristics, Karen feels compelled to act in harmony with her values. She shuns the alternative way of acting.

How will this pattern of behavior affect Karen when it comes to learning and personal mastery? Our values influence what we are ready to learn. Karen is attracted to forms of learning that support her preference for emotional expressiveness. She may reject opportunities to learn what she does not value, such as the use of rigorous analytical decision-making tools. She is not naturally interested, and it just feels wrong somehow.

By bounding the scope of her inquiry, Karen limits her capacity to create what is really important to her. Her values push her to learn some things and neglect others. While she may be aware of her need to gain competency in those other areas, what she sees as personal characteristics play a crucial role in shaping how much effort she invests in her learning efforts. This process represents a “Success to the Successful” archetypal structure, in which Karen reinforces the values she already has and neglects areas in which she could benefit from growth (see “From Preference to Value”).

Reconciliation

To reap the benefits from diversity, Dilemma Theory encourages people to look for ways of reconciling the conflicting values they encounter. While the dynamics of culture and personality often lead people to value one option and neglect the other, a dilemma is a dilemma because both of the options are important and needed. Reconciliation involves understanding the circularity of the relationship between values. The two options involved in a dilemma — the potential values — are complementary. The more we do one, the more we need to do the other. We could diagram the relationship as shown in “Complementary Values”.

Schismogenesis is a process that disrupts the connection between the two values. Reconciliation does the opposite; it strengthens the connection. Rather than encouraging one or other of the values to be expressed, it encourages the flow of movement between the values so either or both can be expressed, depending on what the situation demands.

COMPLEMENTARY VALUES

The two options involved in a dilemma the potential values—are complementary. The more we do one, the more we need to do the other. Reconciliation involves understanding the circularity of the relationship between values.

Imagine what would happen to the relationship between Karen and Jenny if they reframed their values in ways that still indicated their individual preferences, but showed an appreciation for both parts of the dilemma. Karen might move from thinking “I’m a Feeler” to “Before making a decision, I like to test ideas by experiencing how they affect my emotions.” By reframing her image of herself in this way, Karen recognizes that if she exercises her capacity for feeling, she can improve the quality of her own and others’ thinking. And improving the quality of thinking has a positive impact on the emotional environment in which she works.

Jenny might move from the stance “I’m a Thinker” to “I prefer to articulate thoughts in ways that enable people to examine and express their feelings and opinions.” Jenny recognizes that her capacity for thinking enables her to invite others to express their feelings in productive ways. Doing so stimulates and challenges her to increase the quality of her thinking.

In this way, while Karen and Jenny retain their own preferences, they can design a way of working together that they both find satisfying. Imagine we were to watch them at work. While they were getting used to this new way of framing their values, we might see rather deliberate shifts between thinking and feeling. They might verbalize the need to move from one mode of operation to another:, “Perhaps we should generate some new thoughts based on what we’ve heard” or “Let’s take some time to check out our feelings about what’s been said.”

Over time, Jenny and Karen would likely become more skilled at managing the movement between thoughts and emotions. We would observe a fluidity in their work together, with each bringing feelings and thoughts into play as required. When they have truly reconciled the dilemma, we would be hard pressed to classify aspects of their work as expressions of one or other of the original values.

Many of the challenges we face are socially complex: The people affected are diverse and the array of values is wide. Each situation might involve several pairs of opposing values. As we learn to honor all the values pertinent to a dilemma, we increase our capacity for acting in ways that are sustainable within the system. But what behaviors help us to reconcile values?

Changing Patterns

A number of techniques can give you insight into the dynamics of the differences you encounter. These can prompt you to look at conflict in new ways.

Be Aware. A key to achieving reconciliation is awareness of one’s own thinking and behavior. Schismogenesis can seem normal in an environment in which people are rewarded for living at the extreme of one value. A community may reward those members who are “ideologically pure,” focused on one value to the exclusion of all others. But personal, organizational, and social health require the reconciliation of a range of values. If you concentrate your effort around just one value, you are likely going to mobilize people with other values to become more extreme in their opposition to you. Schismogenesis is fueled by unconscious actions; becoming aware of your actions is the basis for reconciliation.

Look for the Whole. People become polarized when they can see only the good in what they value and only the evil in the values of those who oppose them. As we have discussed, values arise because of dilemmas, and in a dilemma, both options offer something attractive. It follows that there will also be a downside to any value. If a person pursues a value in a single-minded way, then he or she is neglecting a complementary value, and undesirable consequences will likely follow. Practice seeing the whole picture by noticing the gains to be made by pursuing each value represented in a dilemma. Then list the disadvantages of each: what will be lost if you pursue each of the values to an extreme.

SEQUENCE OF ACTIONS

This causal loop diagram shows how you might move through a sequence of actions that give priority to one value and then another, and so on. In this case, reflection improves our actions, and actions provide new data for reflection.

Bring Values to the Surface.Values often lie hidden beneath the surface, making reconciliation difficult. In a meeting, participants may arrive ready to advocate for the action they believe needs to be taken, based on their underlying values. They will likely push for a variety of actions, and some will be diametrically opposed to others. By asking questions such as “What will we gain from that action?” and “What is it you are interested in?” the group begins to see the values behind the different activities. In addition, teams often make progress by (a) noticing the various actions being advocated, (b) noticing the interests behind each of the actions, (c) consciously scrapping the actions first suggested, and (d) asking “What new action could we design that would address the values that are important to us all?”

Practice Sequencing. Reconciliation involves seeing the relationships between complementary values. We want to create a fluid movement between different ways of acting. To see how this movement might take place, create causal loop diagrams that express how you might move through a sequence of actions that give priority to one value and then another, then back to the original and so on (see “Sequence of Actions”). Practice your sequencing skills on the common dilemmas shown in “Common Dilemmas.”

The Journey of Dilemmas

Imagine we could go forward in time to revisit Karen and Jenny, who have worked hard to reconcile the collision between different personal styles that was such a challenge to their working relationship. What will we find? Having dealt with this challenge, will they have freed themselves from all dilemmas? Will conflict be a thing of the past?

Hardly. A dilemma can arise around any difference. Karen and Jenny are unique individuals; they differ from one another in myriad ways. Expressiveness and objectivity were the most prominent differences at the time we became interested in their story. When they resolve that dilemma, new ones will surface. Their work is dynamic, too. It keeps changing, throwing up new situations that bring new dilemmas to the surface. We could say that Karen and Jenny —  both individually and in their relationship — are on a journey in which they regularly encounter opportunities to learn from dilemmas.

Does this mean that Dilemma Theory offers nothing but a legacy of ongoing conflict and frustration? No. It doesn’t produce a constant stream of challenges and problems; life does that. And for Karen and Jenny, the outcome is not bleak. Insight into the dynamics of dilemmas has enabled them to view their differences as opportunities to learn, both collectively and individually.

As a result, they no longer have to treat their differences as something to be feared. They have learned that, with careful attention, they can reconcile their dilemmas. They have developed a practice of “thoughtful sensitivity” (or “sensitive thoughtfulness”) that can help them face new challenges. And they appreciate each other’s contribution, knowing that they complement one another in important ways.

When you encounter differences, be resolved to seek ways in which you and others can reconcile apparently conflicting values.

At an individual level, both Jenny and Karen are now able to suspend their values, observing how these influence their reactions and attitudes. Each has gained a deep insight into who she is, an insight she can take with her into her relationships with other people. Each has a greater repertoire for thinking and acting, no longer limited by an unconscious preference. Both are thankful they have learned from the mutual relevance of difference.

When you encounter differences, be resolved to seek ways in which you and others can reconcile apparently conflicting values. Building your capacity in this vital area is the basis for both successful collaboration with others and ongoing development while on your own learning journey.

Phil Ramsey teaches organizational learning at Massey University in New Zealand. He is a regular presenter at Systems Thinking in Action® Conferences and is the author of the Billibonk series of systems stories, published by Pegasus Communications.

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The question that stands before us now is not who can take part in the cultural transformation needed to address these complex problems, but how shall we stand together to do so? Will we simply try to fix the problems we now face with the same mindsets that created them or will we learn to be together in new ways?

Fortunately, every person can participate in and contribute to the creation of a new global ethos of partnership and peace. In fact, we do so each time we choose:

• discernment instead of judgment
• appreciation over criticism
• generosity in place of self-interest
• reconciliation over retaliation

A culture of partnership is one that supports our full humanity and helps us reach our highest human potential. Whether we build this culture depends on the choices we make, from the seemingly insignificant to the most exalted. By understanding our options, we can make wise decisions.

Reframing the Conversation

Through two decades of research, Riane Eisler (one of the authors of this article) found a fundamental difference in how human societies evolved (for a detailed discussion, see The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Harper Collins Publishing, 1987). She documented that, from the beginning, some cultures oriented more to what she termed a dominator system and others to a partnership system — and that gender roles and relations are structured very differently in each (see “Dominator-Partnership Continuum” on p. 10). In dominator systems, social ranking begins with our most fundamental human difference—the difference between female and male. The male and what is stereotypically considered masculine is valued over the female and the stereotypically feminine. This foundational ranking of one gender over the other sets in place a pattern of social rankings based on other differences, such as ethnicity, race, religion, and so on.

In partnership systems, societies value both halves of humanity equally and recognize that humans are social animals with a unique wisdom and capacity to work and live together. Here, stereotypically feminine traits and activities such as caring, nonviolence, and caregiving are highly valued — whether they reside in women or men. This orientation profoundly affects the society’s guiding system of values in all institutions, including business, government, and economics. For example, using the lenses of these social categories makes it possible to see that caring for people, starting in childhood, and for the Earth are important in human and environmental terms.

Toward the dominator end of the spectrum, social systems organize relationships at all levels according to a hierarchy of control, status, and privilege. They routinely extend rights and freedoms to those on top and deny them to those on the bottom. Such rankings lead to thinking limited to two dimensions: superior or inferior; dominating or dominated. Since there is no awareness of the partnership alternative, both parties live in fear. Those on top fear loss of power and control while those on the bottom perpetually seek to gain it. This ranking structure then leads to conflicts — sometimes over trivial issues — that escalate, often leading to cycles of violence, resentment, and retaliation. Such conditions do not generally contribute to growth, learning, or peace.

Social systems toward the partnership end of the spectrum are characterized by more egalitarian organizational structures in which both genders are seen as equal yet different, each capable of unique manifestations of value. A hierarchy of roles may exist, but delegation tends to be based on competency, rather than rankings by gender or other arbitrary groupings. Each group is capable of appreciating the unique value of the other. Differences are seen as opportunities for learning, and both individuals and groups organize through mutual accountability and individual responsibility. Empowerment stems from one’s unique contributions, and connections are made at the level of values, rather than by gender, ethnicity, and other social categories.

In her most recent book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics (Berrett-Koehler, 2007), Riane provides extensive evidence of how caring business policies that result from partnership values are actually more profitable than those that stem from dominator values. Economists tell us that building “high-quality human capital” is essential for the postindustrial, knowledge economy. Nations that invest in caring for children are doing just that—while those that do not will dearly pay for this failure.

Learning Conversations

In a global society, we see all shades in the spectrum between dominator and partnership systems. But the necessity to make headway on our intractable challenges requires that we accelerate the movement toward the partnership side of the continuum. A simple way to contribute to designing the future we desire is conversation. Conversation costs nothing but time and can include everyone. Conversations are one of the cornerstones of civic engagement. For millennia, they have served as a means to explore, defend, persuade, connect, and heal. Conversations become the threads of the social fabric of our lives, contributing to communal beliefs, expectations, and judgments about the structures and relationships underlying our families, tribes, communities, institutions, and nations. Conversations are so powerful that in an effort to control their subjects, despots and dictators often limit what topics can be discussed and how or if conversations are allowed.

DOMINATOR-PARTNERSHIP CONTINUUM

The necessity to make headway on our intractable challenges requires that we accelerate the movement toward the partnership side of the continuum.

Modern social science and psychological research has found that the what and how of conversations often lead to defining moments. The what of conversations are the topics we choose to discuss, and the how includes ideas for holding conversations from which we can learn and grow, rather than persuade, coerce, or intimidate. The purpose of holding conversations about our fundamental differences is, therefore, not to blame or judge each other or ourselves. Conversations are held in order to learn what still binds us to the dominator dynamic and to allow us to see each other and our world more clearly.

To understand what divides us, we must look honestly and earnestly at our differences. We must make an effort to understand the other’s point of view and to share our own. The best way to have a powerful conversation about what separates us is to simply listen, become aware of the meaning we may be making for ourselves from what we hear, and recognize that what the other person is saying is true for her or him.

At first, it may be difficult to hold neutral conversations due to the learned meanings we draw from words, phrases, and even tone of voice. Even if you hold your heart for humanity deeply, you are likely to carry some biases based on the tacit meanings that come from your experiences in life related to your own gender. To truly understand the other, you will want to consider what it is like to be in the other’s shoes, to have their beliefs, points of view, and experiences. The “Learning Practice of Leadership” may serve as a helpful reminder for how we can lead ourselves through the controversial waters of gender conversations (see “Learning Practice of Leadership” on p. 11).

Tips for Partnership Conversations

Below are tips for holding partnership conversations and some sample questions to get you started. These tools will be particularly useful in dealing with emotionally charged issues.

1. Convene the conversation in circle so that everyone holds an equal position.
2. Take time to allow people to get settled and leave their work and other concerns behind. Prepare a question that allows people to get introduced and learn a little about why they have joined this conversation.
3. Allow each person to speak when they are ready. There is no need to pressure anyone to talk. People will learn both from listening and speaking.
4. Allow each person who wishes to speak adequate time to do so without interruption.
5. Select a question to start the gender conversation. Several are included in the bulleted list below.
6. As you explore the conversation more deeply, use open questions. Open questions are questions to which there is no “yes” or “no” answer. They are not intended to lead to a specific outcome. Open questions come from a genuine place of curiosity. They often begin with words like “how,”, “what,” “when,” and “why.”
7. Be mindful of your intention when asking any question. If you have a judgment behind your question, it will likely show through., “Why” questions are particularly tricky as they sometimes sound accusatory, such as “Why do you believe that?”
8. Be transparent by stating your personal experiences in relating a position or asking a question.
9. Listen and try to put your judgments aside.
10. Resist the temptation to voice either your own affirmation or your disagreement with another person’s point of view. Allow each speaker to be accountable for their own words.
11. If you find you are having a strong reaction to someone’s comment, good or bad, make a note for later reflection. Ask yourself, what is creating this reaction?
12. In these conversations, it is not important to convince or draw conclusions, but to listen and learn. Have something to write on. Jot down what you notice. And when time allows, journal about what you notice about what you notice. See where a deeper inquiry leads without trying to find the “right answer.”
13. When the conversation has concluded, take time to record notes about what you’ve learned.
14. Reflect on new questions you may have as result of the conversation and new options for relating with others.

Examples: Gender Topic Questions

• What is the first memory you recall in which gender played an important role?
• What happened?
• Do you recall any conclusions you may have drawn as a result of this experience?
• Did the experience make you feel more satisfied to be your gender or less? More empowered or less?
• How do people in your church, work, or community express gender equality and gender rankings?
• What evidence do you find that men are more valued than women?
• What evidence do you find that women are more valued than men?
• What do males and females have in common when it comes to personal values?
• What do you believe about the expression of gender in living species that influences your attitudes about gender differences in humans?
• Think of a major historical event in your lifetime. If you were a different gender, how would your interpretation of that event be changed?
• How do the perceptions we hold about gender influence our attitudes toward power and money?
• What would be different if you had been born a different sex?
• How would the sexes have to change to live more closely aligned with the partnership model?
• What would be the impact to government, business, and other social systems?

Not Just a “Women’s Issue”

Exploring the issues that divide us by examining how we are influenced by our experience of gender can be powerful. It may lead to further inquiry to uncover how gender differences impact your family, community, work, and institutional relationships. In turn, these explorations may give rise to questions about how culture and nations impact each other through our policies, markets, and impact on the planet.

Beginning with our most fundamental human difference, the difference between male and female, it is now time to understand deeply how our gender privileges, limitations, and experiences have shaped and continue to influence us, not only as individual women and men but as members of a world that has inherited a system of values that is heavily influenced by dominator valuations.

One of the most interesting, and important, outcomes of open-ended conversations about gender is a new understanding of what it means to be human for both women and men — and that gender is not “just a women’s issue” but is a key issue for whether we move to a more peaceful and equitable world. As more of us talk openly about these matters, we become participants in the cultural transformation from domination to partnership — not only in gender relations but in all relations. We also help create more effective, humane, and sustainable business practices and government policies when we bring these unconscious impediments out into the open.

Note: References to behavior resulting from the ranking and hierarchy of roles in dominator and partnership systems were adapted from the work of Virginia Satir and the Satir Institute of the Pacific.

Riane Eisler is a social scientist, attorney, consultant, and author best known for her bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, now published in 23 languages. Her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking” and by Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” proposes a new paradigm for economic systems. Riane keynotes at conferences worldwide, teaches transformative leadership at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is president of the Center for Partnership Studies (www.partnershipway.org).

Lucy E. Garrick is an organizational leadership consultant, speaker, artist, and founder of Million Ideas for Peace, a public project designed to help individuals connect their personal and social passions to peacemaking (www.millionideas4peace.com). Lucy consults with corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and public groups to improve individual and group leadership and performance. She holds a masters degree in Whole Systems Design, is chair of the OSR Alumni Association board of directors, and is principle consultant at NorthShore Consulting Group in Seattle, WA (www.northshoregroup.net).

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How do you define politics? The quick answer is “power.” Merriam Webster defines it as “competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership.” People who use political relationships in the workplace often wield power that is either disproportionate to their position or enhances their power beyond the position they hold. But where does this power come from? How is it that some people can exert tremendous influence, while others can’t even lay claim to the power that comes with their title? Is political power always exploitative, or can it be moral and constructive?

At its core, political power comes from the ability to understand what other people fear or desire, and to use that understanding to influence their behavior. The possibility of this power being misused is obvious even without the cautionary tales of corporate fraud and corruption that have plagued the news over past decades. Yet some of the most morally powerful leaders in recent history had a very strong grasp of this power and used it widely.

The Dalai Lama, for example, wields tremendous political influence. As the deposed leader of an occupied country, he has very little positional power, but because of his reputation as a compassionate, humble, and moral spiritual leader, he often speaks on the world stage to influence international political policy. He advises heads of state and is the spiritual leader of millions. The Dalai Lama uses his deep understanding of the struggles of humanity to foster compassion and moral responsibility on a global level. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. used their understanding of the human condition and our fears and desires to motivate people to make tremendous sacrifices, and advanced the moral and political development of their nations.

So how do we differentiate between using political power for good or ill? I propose that there are three levels to political power: immoral, amoral, and moral (see “The Political Sphere”). The key factor in deciding which is in use is self-awareness.

• Amoral Political Power Unconsciously understanding and manipulating others with no awareness of your own motivating fears and desires.
• Immoral Political Power Consciously understanding and influencing others without examining and understanding your own motivations.
• Moral Political Power Consciously examining, understanding, and evaluating your own motivation, fears, and desires before using your understanding of others to influence them.

It may be hard to differentiate between the results of amoral and immoral use of political power; in both cases, wielders do not taking moral responsibility for their actions because they do not recognize their own motivation. The difference is that the immoral person consciously and knowingly manipulates others, and therefore carries greater moral responsibility for the results. Consider these examples:

A COO tries to amass power by keeping his peers and subordinates in the dark about client expectations and organizational processes. He prohibits managers from collaborating to solve problems, or even from having management status meetings. He does not support employee development or conduct performance reviews, and he criticizes managers in front of each other and their subordinates. Unconsciously unable to accept that success in others is not a personal threat, he tries to maintain an image of superiority while actively tearing down the reputations of other leaders and managers. He is unaware that his fear of being seen as incompetent is inhibiting organizational growth, causing high turnover in management and poor efficiency and morale. While these tactics may make him seem more competent in the short term, in the long run he is costing the company money through attrition and lost efficiency, and limiting the quality of customer service. This pattern of behavior is ultimately self-defeating.

A manager furthers her career by skillfully using the cultural language of her company to promote an appearance of strong leadership skills to her superiors, while actively removing more experienced and productive employees from her team. Recognizing her employees’ ambition for advancement, she uses flattery and favoritism to mine for personal information and gossip, using it as informational currency to bargain for other information or discredit those she perceives as a threat. She negates the experience and skills of her employees while covering up her own deficiencies. She does not recognize that her fear of incompetence is motivating her to either control or remove others who may recognize it. Consciously, her loyalty to leadership is strong, but she often changes alliances with peers and has no sense of obligation to her employees. While she has been able to maintain a close relationship with leadership, the attrition rate, reputation, and productivity of her team has suffered, and her superiors are beginning to ask questions.

A director is hired to manage a team that has had issues with productivity, efficiency, and morale. She takes time to get to know each of her employees personally, learning their strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions. She spends part of a day with each employee letting them “train” her on their jobs, so she can understand their day-to-day challenges. She quickly promotes experienced employees to line manager roles and publicly credits team members’ important successes. She forms cross-departmental alliances that benefit her team and improve the quality of work for the whole department. Her team becomes more efficient, happier and better at solving problems and working cooperatively with clients.

Were you able to recognize which story corresponded with which type of political power? The first person did not understand how fear and insecurity motivated him to sabotage his managers. While this is obviously a destructively shortsighted behavior, his total lack of awareness puts this example in the amoral political power category.

The second manager purposely sought out information and alliances that would allow her to promote her own reputation while actively damaging those of her employees. She clearly understands how cultivating personal relationships can be used to mine for valuable and potentially damaging information on others. However, she has not examined her own motivations, which stem from territorialism, competition, and fear or distrust of employees who might “show her up.” This makes her an immoral user of political power.

The final manager cultivated interdependent relationships with her employees and colleagues, taking extra steps to educate herself about the nature of the work, a necessary step in building credibility and trust. She used this trust to heal relationships between team members, establish clear expectations, and change their status in the organization. Since she is aware of her own ignorance of process as a new manager and fosters trust through transparency, she seems to be using her power in a moral fashion.

Cultivating Moral Power

So how do we cultivate moral political power? How do we influence others without corrupting our own values? The answer lies in self-awareness. Most people strive for self-awareness in some way. We may talk to our friends or a trusted counselor about our problems. We may take time for quiet reflection, prayer, or meditation.

These techniques are excellent ways to take a deeper look at our own motivations and evaluate our actions. Here is an exercise designed to help you recognize and evaluate your motivations and then make ethical choices in the workplace:

Ethical Awareness Exercises

Exercise 1 This exercise gives you a baseline, or mental checklist, against which to evaluate your motivations when making decisions at work.

At work I desire… (choose all that apply) public recognition, advancement, increased compensation respect, independence, collaboration, companionship, friendship, status, influence, control, stability, (add any additional items from your own experience)

At work I fear… (choose all that apply) losing my job, being seen as incompetent, not being liked, not being respected, being the last to know important news, the ambitions of others, the power of others, being deceived, getting caught, making a mistake, lack of control, instability, being shown up, competition (add any additional items from your own experience)

My most important values at work are…

Honesty, Integrity, Creativity, Trust, Success, Kindness, Respect, Loyalty (add any additional items from your own experience)

Choose your top two answers from each question and write them out.

The responses to the first two items describe areas in which you may unconsciously be influencing others, or ways that others might be influencing you. The last response describes your core working values.

Example:

At work I desire respect and stability.

At work I fear losing my job and getting caught making a mistake.

My most important values at work are honesty and respect.

Exercise 2 This exercise helps you recognize when you are not acting in accordance with your core working values. It also helps you identify alternative ways to approach situations that play on your desires or fears.

Think of a situation where any of your core fears and desires may have affected your behavior. Identify the motivating fears and/or desires, and then compare them to your core values. What was the positive and negative outcome of the described situation? (see example below)

Situation: I made a minor mistake on a team report, but convinced myself and my boss that it was the fault of a junior team member.

Fear: making mistakes

Desire: respect

Values in use: dishonesty and disrespect

Comparison: My fear of making mistakes and looking bad caused me to go against my core working values and use my senior status to blame someone else for my mistake.

Outcome: While I didn’t have to admit I’d made a mistake to my boss, I damaged the possibility of having a positive relationship with my junior coworker, and I provided him with an example of unethical behavior in senior employees.

Imagine a way you could have dealt with the situation without violating your core working values. What might have been the outcome?

Example: I could have admitted my mistake openly and given the junior team member public credit for his accurate work.

Outcome: I would have built personal credibility and trust through honesty and integrity. In addition, I would have set a positive example for the junior team member, possibly increasing his loyalty and creating the opportunity to provide mentorship.

These exercises can help you recognize when your behavior is values-driven and when you’re tempted to act based on fear or desire. Keep in mind that everyone acts unconsciously sometimes. Ethical growth is only possible when we can take an honest look at our behavior and learn from our mistakes.

The Price of Power

The power to influence others comes with a price; the responsibility to act ethically. Selfish use of political power is ultimately self-defeating, as it erodes trust, commitment, and loyalty in its victims. Ethical use of political power can motivate people to work together to accomplish goals that benefit everyone. Taking an honest look at your own motivations is a first step toward building and using political power constructively and ethically.

Michelann Quimby is CEO of DiaMind Consulting in Austin, Texas.

The post Organizational Politics: Using Your Power for Good appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

The board of directors charged the CEO with bringing this vision into reality. The Emerge! team initiated a plan to prepare the organization for systemic change and long-term success.

Building an Innovative Values-Based Culture

The agency carefully recruited leaders with extensive domestic abuse expertise, a passion for large-scale systemic change, a willingness to embrace calculated risk, and a vision for individualized holistic services. Knowing that a strong culture was essential for long-term success, the newly formed team worked to create an organization prepared to engage and embrace change. While the team redesigned the domestic abuse service delivery process, they also dedicated financial resources and substantial time to building a values-based culture.

During a diligent three-month hiring and training process, the agency selected staff based on alignment with the agency culture, strategy, vision, and readiness to roll out the new service model. Over the course of several weeks, all employees engaged in identifying the agency’s values, behavioral indicators, and expectations. As a result, everyone was invested in the outcomes. Through intensive organizational development and systems thinking training, management staff became highly qualified to drive innovative programs, creative thinking, and strategic planning guided by the newly identified values.

Each month, agency employees study the values through interactive, experiential, and reflective exercises. They use tools such as the World Café, the five disciplines of organizational learning, and experiential learning principles to ensure not only cognitive understanding of the values but also a deep personal integration.

The leadership staff spends one day a month using values-based leadership tools to make certain that all decisions, actions, strategies, and processes are in line with the stated values and culture. The leadership team members also actively utilize the Enneagram personality/motivation inventory as a tool to strengthen individual learning and increase personal insight. Each leader works directly with an Enneagram coach to identify potential blind spots that might undermine success of the team or organization. In these ways, management has created a culture of growth, certainty, and collective strategic vision in which staff teams work interdependently to achieve success.

Fourteen months after the implementation of a “purposeful” values-based culture, employee and board successes include:

• Foundation of a staff-driven philanthropy committee (93 percent of staff members contribute)
• 100 percent board member contribution rate
• 75 percent attendance rate at board meetings
• Less than 10 percent staff turnover rate

Staff members integrate the agency’s values into their work and commit to creating a healthy culture. They know that “values are meant to be lived, not just be a poster on the wall.” Staff recruitment efforts include values-based job descriptions and a complex written application and interview process to assess expertise and fit with our cultural values (see “Values-Based Screening and Interviewing”). With the dynamic organizational structure, interdependent staff roles, excellent benefits, and employee recognition and retention programs, the agency has experienced little turnover. As a testament to this work, Emerge! was a finalist in the 2010 Workplace Excellence Awards–Greater Tucson.

Revolutionizing Service Delivery

In addition, Emerge! has revolutionized the 30-year old field of domestic abuse service delivery with a focus on individualized healing services instead of the “one size fits all” model traditionally used in the field. The new domestic violence service model was designed over the course of 12 months. During that time, the team researched best practices from multiple disciplines, evaluated potential unintended consequences, and envisioned outcome-based results. Team members kept the end user (individuals impacted by domestic abuse) at the center of the design process. They utilized extensive design thinking principles and refrained from evaluating cost or financial implications throughout the design process. Doing so allowed them to maximize creativity, knowing that it is easier to scale back the scope of a project if necessary than to truly think outside the box.

The new individualized holistic model includes master’s level clinicians, art therapy, dance/movement therapy, yoga, pet therapy, and a dental program for individuals with compromised dental health due to abuse. With the focus on outcomes, Emerge! has seen the following results:

• The average length of stay at a shelter has doubled (the goal is to have it triple to ensure that clients experience long-term, sustainable life changes).
• Client participation in an employment training program has increased, with 93 percent of participants securing job placements.
• Client self esteem has improved, children’s services have increased, and clinical and life skills group sessions are held more frequently with increased attendance.
• In addition, the organization has designed and implemented a robust data collection system and uses paperless records to capture and analyze all data and outcomes. Doing so has allowed the organization to monitor and sustain the program successes and adjust the program or data collection immediately.

While rolling out a more robust service model, Emerge! realized a savings of $450,000 through a comprehensive revision of all positions. Emerge! team members are certain that if they had initiated visioning with the goal of saving money, the outcome would have been a reduction in service effectiveness and delivery instead of an expansion. Using the design thinking model and beginning with the end vision in mind allowed for creativity and improvement while simultaneously reducing costs.

Additional benefits include:

• • Ten facilities were integrated into seven, all of which are bilingual (an expansion of 10 beds in a bilingual facility to 120).
  • Shelter costs decreased from $110/night/person to $67/night/person.
  • Funders are pleased that the agency has combined services and is providing them more efficiently.
  • Emerge! has positioned itself to apply for funding in a more competitive manner than before.
  • The organization has leveraged new funding streams and earned the trust of key foundations, including the Kresge Foundation and other private foundations that are pleased with Emerge!’s proven business acumen.
  • Additionally, the organization was selected as a quarter finalist for the prestigious national Collaboration Prize, awarded for excellence in innovative and effective response to challenges or opportunities while maximizing resources.

The organization has recruited and hired a high-caliber staff and faced challenges with excitement and humor. Administrative overhead savings exceeded $300,000, and innovative roles allow staff to both implement a groundbreaking long-term strategy and effectively manage daily operations. Throughout the process, management consistently paid attention to timely, transparent, and thorough communication with all agency stakeholders.

One year after the roll-out of the new design, staff members are actively engaged in taking the service model to the next level. The team continues to improve, enhance, and evaluate service delivery.

Lori Bryant was chair of the board of directors for Emerge! during the merger. She is CEO of ScriptSave and is responsible for the company’s strategic leadership, growth initiatives, and brand positioning. Lori previously held the position of chief operations officer and senior vice president of HealthPartners Health Plan.

Sarah Jones is CEO of Emerge! Center Against Domestic Abuse and is the owner of Design Thinking Solutions. She has more than 20 years of leadership experience in nonprofit and healthcare settings. Sarah’s Design Thinking Solutions work has been utilized for the past 14 years in a wide variety of healthcare and nonprofit settings.

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