Diversity: When Comfort Leaks Ignorance

As we prepare to conduct our first conversations with various groups in the Pacific Northwest, I have been observing the behaviour of Forest Service employees in other regions and in other programs. I have recently noticed some dynamics and I am curious about the underlying structures in our system which produce these behavioural outcomes.

A group of middle managers were together for the third session of a six month leadership development course. They had been face to face together for three one-week sessions and felt a strong sense of rapport. During a discussion about the ladder of inference, the group explored the assumption that "all the good jobs in the agency are wired," meaning that a number of hiring officials had engaged in pre-selection.

During the course of the conversation, meant to illustrate the power of making assumptions, the group circled around to a cultural belief that there are diversity quotas and that sometimes the most skilled candidate is overlooked in favor of what's referred to as "the diversity candidate." There are really two interesting dynamics which became apparent to me as I observed the discussion.

First, the group's comments demonstrate a shared belief that there is a difference between the most skilled candidate and the diversity candidate. This implies that collectively we don't believe that the most diverse individual may also be the most skilled individual. When I frame it thus, the logical mind rejects the thought. Of course there are highly skilled individuals in every race! Therefore, I submit that the individuals in the room were not cognizant that their behaviour demonstrated an illogical prejudice.

Second, of the nearly 40 people in the room, all were caucasian but one. It seemed as if those individuals contributing to the group conversation had no awareness that there was a person of color in the room who may have felt discomfort. (Unlike the others, this man may have noticed the assumption which was exposed in my first point.) Maybe they felt so comfortable together that they did not view the man of color as anything apart from themselves? In fact, that idea by itself is beautiful - why should a group of friends view the one man as anything different from how they view themselves?

The two notions together create an interesting tension in our cultural beliefs (writen in a perspective which may represent the majority of our employees): the people with whom I am friendly are just like me, but the people with whom I must compete for employment are different and less skilled.

As I probe the possibilities in this thought experiement, it occurs to me that employment satisfies our most basic needs for food and shelter. Food and shelter are fundamental to our ability to survive. Competition for a job, then, is very closely assosciated with competition for survival. We could say that these two drives are parallel.

So, then, if the drive to compete for employment is parallel to the drive to compete for survival, then is it possible that while under the influence of these tandem drives, an individual may experience amygdala hijacking? This question deserves a whole new blog post. But for now, this is certainly something on which to chew.

Diversity: Crafting the Questions

In order to conduct a thorough exploration of the Civil Rights System in the Pacific Northwest Region of the US Forest Service, we will be hosting a number of focus groups and dialogue circles. The success of each conversation, and ultimately the project at large, begins with identifying just the right questions to ask.

I propose the following Four Levels of Listening, from Otto Scharmer, as a model which can steer our project team both in the development of questions and in providing us with a shared language to use when planning the process for our focus groups and dialogue circles. Also, this model can help us to assess the depth of the information gleened in each session.

According to Otto Scharmer's work, Theory U, there are four levels of listening. At level one listening I hear you through the filters of my own attitudes and beliefs. As I listen I compare what you are saying with what I already think. I seek to either accept or reject your words based on whether or not they confirm my own judgements. At level one listening, what you say to me does not fit in with what I already believe, I will reject your words and I may even reject you.

At level two listening I have stopped my internal thinking and am simply hearing what you say. Because your words aren't passing through the filter of my own attitudes, I am willing to change my mind based on what you've said. That's why Scharmer calls it the "Open Mind" phase.

At level three listening I have become emotionally hooked on what you are saying. Some how during the course of conversation I experienced an empathetic connection to the words. Now I'm not only listening with an open mind, but an open heart as well. When you're chatting with co-workers at the water cooler, and the conversation switches from football to someone's recent cancer diagnosis, the listening leaps from levels one and two to level three. You can feel the shift in the room. You'll notice that when an entire group shifts to level three, some people will even place their hands on their hearts for a moment.

Level four happens the least frequently but provides the most memorable experience of conversation and connection. When I am in a group and we are all engaged at this depth, I feel like the very forces of creativity and innovation are passing through us. I find that the words which move through me in these moments represent completely new ideas. I'm often startled at the clarity afforded in these moments of being "in the flow" with others.

As we craft our key questions we'll need some questions which specifically target each level. Here's an example:

If we trust the model and agree that the greatest learning occurs at deeper levels of listening, then it becomes strategically important to drive the group toward conflict and debate (level two) in order to reach levels three and four.

What do you think? What are the really hard questions? What sorts of debates stand between our intention and our collective learning?

Diversity: An Invitation to Dive Deep

I have recently been invited to apply my systems thinking and mapping skills to the area of Civil Rights and Diversity. The Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6) of the US Forest Service has a new civil rights director. She has been involved in the application of systems thinking to the exploration of the agency's safety culture. That work, lead by Dialogos, has touched many employees in a very significant way. As a result, systems thinking and mapping is gaining in noteriety in the agency.

My role, which is only just beginning, will be to sit in circle, hold deep conversations, quietly notice the patterns and dynamics, and then draw a map of the complexity.

In preparation for our very first meeting, which is next week, the director asked us to ponder what the project means to us. This was a very difficult question to answer. Perhaps because a core aspect of my role is to be present while groups of people co-create meaning and understanding, and I can't possibly anticipate what meaning I will participate in creating.

I feel as if I'm arriving at a beautiful and serene lake. In my approach I can see the brilliant blue surface reflecting the light of the sun. I have no idea how deep the water is or what lies beneath the surface. I only know that in order to be safe I must tread gently. As I prepare for this deep dive, of which I will dedicate one week per month for the next six months, I review what I have learned about myself and diversity thus far. I scan my herstory for clues as to what the exploration might reveal.

My scan reveals to me a tenderness, a vulnerable place within my core. There is only one thing of which I am certain: this exploration will expose me to aspects of my thinking which are subconscious or perhaps even unconscious. How do I know that? Because I too was socialized into a system of disparity and oppression. The simple act of growing up in a small town in Oklahoma has exposed me to generations of misinformation, fear, and even hatred. Within the boundaries of my awareness I have been thoughtful and even an activist. But in order to stretch the boundaries of awareness I must dive into this lake.

On more than one occassion I have observed the appearance of a thought in my mind which is ugly and shameful. I'm grateful to have even noticed. When this happens it gives me pause and I explore what lies beneath the thought. In most cases I realize that the thought is a judgement with which I am not actually in agreement in the present moment. So how is it that I have thoughts with which I don't agree?

The way I explain this to myself is that a great deal of my thinking was programmed in as I participated in society. I have seen a black man, for example, and had the thought "Be careful." Then paused and challenged the thought and saw it as ridiculous. Why be any more careful around a man simply because of his skin tone? It has nothing to do with the man before me. It has everything to do with the messages which saturate the world in which I live. It is the voice of my college roommate, a jewish girl from Philadelphia, who cautioned me against getting gas on Broward Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale one night because every patron was African American. It is the voice of my great Aunt who hissed obscenities. It is the voice of some ancient ancestor who perhaps felt he had to compete with people of color in order to have enough food for his family.

As I circle the lake and climb over the boulders which represent that which I have already learned about diversity I can't help but wonder what lurks beneath the surface. What thoughts are yet so unconscious that I've never glimpsed them? I set the intention to be gentle with myself and my ancestors, I draw in a deep breath, and I slide my left food along the sun baked boulder and into the cool water.

Labor Begins

Everyone seemed to feel last nights school meeting was very productive. It was the 4 founding families, although all were invited. We agreed to put up our booth at the farmer's market on Saturday, agreed that of the two possible free locations for the school we preferred the old school house on Trace Ridge Road because it would require less construction (and there's only 8 weeks until school starts).

The bulk of the meeting was a discussion of the finances. I shared a simple equation to help us begin to finalize the projected income and expenses so that we can finalize the strategic plan in order to file for non-profit status. The equation is this:

Tuition = total expenses / # of student days per week

We began with the assumption that tuition was $10 per day and then determined which expenses were optional and which were absolutely necessary. Those deemed necessary included utilities, insurance, salary, facilities maintenance, and supplies. We assigned relatively solid estimates to each and discovered that there was a shortfall of about $80 per week.

We then identified several ways to fill in that gap:

• Seek more students (we need 8 more student days, so either 8 students who select one day a week or some combination of students who select 2-3 days per week)
• Rather than have a paid teacher for all 3 days a week, shift the strategy so that the paid employee does all coordination in 1 or 2 days and rely more upon the other parents to share the teaching.
• Plan more fund raising activities
• Plan to compensate the teacher with both dollars and goods or services.

The last option involves a great deal of administrative burden. The acceptable goods and services must be identified up front with a dollar value assigned to each. They would also be considered part of the taxable income and so there would still be some dollars associated for state and federal taxes.

There are still a number of questions to be answered, but I was personally proud and surprised that we are facing the uncertainties and working through the complexity together. I was also fairly surprised that no one suggested we forget about applying for non-profit status. That is certainly something to celebrate because in my mind that was the most often re-visited decision over the past 2 years. We really have come a long way!

Eight weeks of hard labor to go!

The Quickening

Apparently this baby wants to be born! Today our teacher got a call from a woman who has agreed to donate to us a location for our school! I for one had been discouraged by how much time had lapsed since the initial contact, but it turns out that once again I'm uselessly impatient!

The news appears to have given everyone a burst of energy and drive. A fund raising opportunity for this Saturday which had been cancelled is now on again!

I also had the opportunity to do some processing with a couple of the members of our group. It was good to know that people were willing to express having felt slighted and even angry in response to what I shared at our last meeting. It is so absolutely necessary to group cohesion that we learn how to work through conflict. And even though we talked about it conceptually at various points throughout our planning process, up until now we haven't gone there together.

I'm so pleased with our progress. We really have come a long way. I met these people at a local Summer Solstice celebration in 2006. At the same Summer Solstice party in 2007 we had the idea to form a school. Now, at this years Summer Solstice, only 2 years later, we'll be celebrating the fact that we have a location and three more families have joined our coop.

This is the Quickening. This is the time when the baby turns in the womb and is in position to be born. The labor is about to begin!

For the Good of the Order

Last night we had another school meeting and I got the opportunity to share the news which I described in my last post. In short: I shared that putting my own kid in public school for kindegarten this August would allow me to better serve the development of the school.

We were out there at the park with our 8 kids running amok until 10 pm because we had two new families at the meeting and I wanted to wait until after they left to share the news. I didn't think it would be fair to "stir the pot" with brand new families in the mix.

The news was jarring and it took time to process. I feel exhausted this morning. I keep replaying the night and wondering if I really did the best I can do. I felt like I was talking loud and emphatically, and that speech pattern makes me wonder if I was being fanatical and arrogant. And as the group rehashed some of the last meeting's conversation it occurred to me that I'd had a very different experience of the conversation than the others had. Of course, that is always the case... but it highlighted to me that having my own son on the enrollment list amplified my drive and pushiness for some of the specific details of the strategic plan. Having my own son's needs in the equation limited my ability to really hear the needs of the emerging order.

I believe that people can realize their dreams if they are willing to face their fears and work hard. I've proven this to myself numerous times. My husband and I are persistent, we know that success requires a willingness to fail frequently until you get it right. None of us have ever formed a school. For me there is great beauty and great learning in the trying, in the trials.

I like to think that I have organizational skills for a reason and that my Purpose has to do with helping people realize their dreams by organizing group efforts. Forest is a bright kid and he's going to learn no matter where he spends his days. Now that he's "taken care of" for this school year I can be clear about acting for the good of the order rather than acting out of self interest. I feel emboldened to lead the process. I feel like the gap between the present and August 24th will close quickly and there's much work to do. I'm already forming action items and lists in my mind, and now I'm comfortable playing manager and bringing more accountability to the picture. This is what the emerging school requires and I have the skills to play the part. For the good of the order.

Feedback and Resistance

I'm playing in several systems right now. In some cases the systems are 100 years old and I'm analyzing and intervening in service to a larger cause, such as various US Forest Service units at the national, regional, and Forest levels. In other cases I'm co-creating entirely new systems such as a cooperative elementary school and a new Forest Service Enterprise Unit called Organizational Development Experts (ODE).

In doing so the concepts of feedback and resistance come up frequently. First let me clarify that I'm using the term feedback from the Systems Dynamics perspective: feedback is an iterative process which generates the form of the system.

I left our last school meeting feeling angry and frustrated. I wanted to just let go of the entire effort. It seemed to me that the other people in the group were unable or unwilling to accept my donation of money for start-up costs such as filing the 501-3c (non-profit) paperwork. In my anger I realized it was futile to create a school based on fund raising and donations if the people who comprise the school are not able to accept or even ask for gifts of money. I took it as feedback that the group was just not ready to realize its dream.

Due to time and circumstances, I didn't get the chance to communicate any of this to anyone else in the group. And that's surely a blessing because as it percolated into my flesh I gained several more understandings. First, as the anger wore off I felt devastated and sad. I work hard to make positive changes in the world. In exchange for working hard I receive a salary which more than covers our basic needs. The earnings, then, afford me the opportunity to create even more good in the world by engaging in various activities such as switching to renewable resources and supporting the local economy and community. I felt like it was all a waste and that the effort was worthless if I couldn't share my abundance in our efforts to provide children and families with an excellent educational opportunity. For several days I grieved over this.

The grief turned to bargaining and I began to grope for ways of realizing this dream. As the facilitator of the strategic planning process, I feel like its my role to help the group take the steps needed to implement the vision and mission which we created over potlucks and amidst the din of laughing children. I thought of things I could say or do in order to nudge or even push people beyond their growth edges.

Finally, I've found acceptance, and here is what that looks like today. I've accepted that the group is not ready to realize the dream we created over the past two years. More importantly I've realized that they've been trying to tell me this for the past six months and I couldn't hear it because I was in denial. The truth is that the rest of the group is quite comfortable reaching for a smaller version of the dream, taking baby steps toward the larger dream. The truth is that we never really did lock in on one solid vision. My family came to the group with different needs and experiences than the other three families. Our central value for our kids education is that they need socialization, and so we were originally leaning toward public school. The other three families had always leaned toward home schooling for reasons of their own.

My husband and I have decided that this fall our son will start kindegarten at public school. Now that we've taken our kids out of the equation I can re-align myself with the needs of this group. I'm still dedicated to helping them realize their dream. I'm still dedicated to helping each and every person who is part of the cooperative achieve their best and highest purpose. And now more than ever I'm available to be present to the fact that being a servant to these people and their dreams means allowing it to emerge and unfold at its own pace.

It turns out that this time I was the resistance, and so I surrender in service to the greatest good.

Eureka! I did it!

Tonight I filed the name Leslie Creative Learning Cooperative, Inc. with the Arkansas Secretary of State. It was quite easy. Then I decided to check out their form for the "Articles of Incorporation." Low and behold it was a really simple form (how often does that happen in government?)! So, I filed that too. Then I completed the IRS form SS-4 to request our employer identification number. That one pager was also pretty easy since I filled one out about 4 years ago when we hired a nanny for our baby boy. (Funny, both times it has been about my kids!)

I could have faxed in the SS-4 right away, but I need my husband to sign it and he's already gone to bed.

Tomorrow we have our first public information meeting. I'm eager to find out how many people will attend. We posted an add in the Marshall Mountain Wave (our local paper). We also posted flyers around the county.

The idea for this school was born on 6/21/07 at a local Summer Solstice celebration. The four founding families have been meeting monthly ever since. I've played the role as facilitator, including leading the meetings. Laura Daly, the teacher/administrator, and I drafted the strategic plan and the bylaws. Both are still in draft form. We recently elected my husband, Steven Newby, to be the director and Jason Morriss to be treasurer. We have not yet filled the position of secretary, so I am acting in this role. I cannot assume the role permanently because I feel it is a conflict of interest to have two officers in one family. As soon as we expand to include new families we will have a more diverse pool of candidates for the final role.

I'm grateful and excited about how far we have come. The fact that these first 3 forms are completed is a HUGE deal to me. I also got pretty far into the f1023 which is the form to request designation from the IRS as a non-profit organization. The book I've been using as a guide said that the 1023 would take a minimum of 10 hours. At present I think that might be much less. Perhaps it's because we've already gotten so far in the strategic plan and bylaws. Some of the attachments to the form will be copied straight from passages in these two texts.

The book I'm using is great. It's called How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation.

The Transpiral Model of Development

Many organizations, when faced with making large changes, focus on the objective aspects of the system such as process, policy and procedure. Leaders and consultants alike frequently underestimate the importance of the human experience of change. Successful organizations recognize the importance of engaging employees as whole people rather than merely a pair of hands. The Transpiral Model provides a framework for assessing, understanding, and supporting the needs of people as crucial elements to the success of an organization.

Today’s knowledge workers switch employers frequently to actualize their fullest career potential. Organizations which do not value employees as whole individuals do not retain expertise. In order for an organization to maximize its fullest potential, it must support individuals in maximizing their fullest potentials. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described a Hierarchy of Needs (the bottom triangle in the diagram on left) or steps which an individual must take in order to achieve self actualization. The Transpiral Model builds on Maslow’s work and addresses the steps needed to achieve group and organizational actualization.

According to Maslow (1999), an individual addresses his or her needs in order of priority, beginning with basic physiological needs. Before an individual can achieve a great work, such as painting a masterpiece, he or she must have adequately addressed the needs for food, shelter, developed nurturing relationships, and must have positive self-esteem. Maslow reminds us that self actualization is not a static state, but rather something toward which one strives throughout life. Professionals in today’s labor market have achieved some degree of self actualization in order to have graduated from higher learning institutions.

Tuckman (1965) identified the popular model for the formation of groups in organizations: forming-storming-norming-performing. The Transpiral Model (shown on the upper left) combines Maslow’s Heirarchy with Tuckman’s developmental sequence (middle triangle) and then adds steps toward group actualization (top triangle). More than the ability to work together, group actualization is a state of high performance.

In order for a group such as a team, and organization, a business, or a community to actualize its fullest potential, it must meet the requirements defined in the top triangle of the model. The group must have financial accountability and be fiscally solvent in order to achieve its fullest potential. The group must be secure, meaning that there are no threats to individual safety or to the safety of the group. This security could be physical or psychological. Psychological security of the group blends into the next level of group actualization, respect. Respect is important especially during decision making. Respect leads to trust. Groups frequently function without perfect trust, but in order for a group to achieve its fullest potential, trust is crucial.

When a group is financially stable, when all the members are physically and psychologically safe, when there is enough respect to facilitate effective communication and decision making, and when the level of trust is such that individuals may act on behalf of the group without taking time to ask permission; only then is it possible for a group to achieve its maximum potential. As with self actualization, group actualization is not a static end state. Rather its reached in peak moments. Peak moments provide the group with feedback on how to strengthen the preceding steps to actualization in order to sustain actualization for longer and longer periods.

The Transpiral Model is my original work and it earned me a Master of Arts from Prescott College in 2005. It is my intention to make this work available to anyone who is interested. In addition to periodic blogs I will explore both traditional and non-traditional venues for publication. You may contact me to request a free ebook of The Transpiral Model of Social Change.