Replying to LO24761 --
Dear Learners,
Summary
A case history. Direct response to Lon's experience of a woman exhibiting
symptomatic distress in an organisationally loosely coupled scenario.
Tonal harmony throughout is perhaps darkly rich with a smattering of
sardonic humour that might just pass as wit.
> I remember meeting a prominent American philanthropist once in Norfolk.
> The lunchtime conversation was monopolized by a woman who had too much to
> drink and I spent an uncomfortable two hours trying hard to be patient
> with her silliness instead of enjoying a conversation with a true
> renaissance man.
>
> I feel that way about this list from time to time. But it is my inability
> to moderate the things I find offensive that is the issue, not someone
> else's silliness. Does anyone remember such a story from their past?
> Lon Badgett
Hi Lon,
Yes, a very interesting account of your experiences...
I too had a choice last night; to attend a meeting by a prominent English
Business guru ( not my term) called a 'MasterClass' Usual format, he talks
we listen then we all get to ask questions...., I am prepared to name this
prominent person, Sir John Harvey-Jones (late of ICI), a man of immense
charm, grace, wit and more than a little in depth 'practice and theory' of
organisation structure and change OR be with a young man, seventeen who
briefly stated to me -" I hope I don't come over as stupid, I am taking
tranquillisers for stress.."- What sort of tranquillisers?" "Well, I don't
know but they are supposed to stop me from worrying so much and help me to
take the pressure when I get confused at work" "At work?" "Yes, we are
under so much pressure to do things and and I am so scared I am not going
to be able to do it properly" (He works for the one of the largest Banks
in the UK as a 'trainee manager' -though precious little training appears
to be taking place).
So, I have a seventeen year old young man, in most respects bright, able
and fit. (He plays several sports) but he is on a tranquilliser 'regime'.
My learning from this place among others allowed to to place the 'eye of
his storm' in a 'lack of ability to apply beneficial
(autopoeitic)self-control.' My intervention was this though abbreviated
here, " It seems that no-one in your organisation is attending to your
real need, because you are too frightened to communicate it can it not
only get worse?" Affirmed. " So now you have hit a limit of coping and you
have been to the doctor and he has given you something to cure the
discomfort and anxiety you feel?" Affirmed. "-So what have been the
advantages so far?" "- My pool playing is a lot better;-)" "And things at
work?" " Same pressures just don't feel them so much, though they seem to
be returning, which is why we are talking?" "Maybe ***** all you need to
do is take some form of control outside of work? Maybe you might begin to
think of yourself as a system upon which a pressure is being applied and
the aplicator of that pressure doesn't care or chooses to avoid the
consequences to you and the real you is getting proressively diminished,
you retreat, don't ask for help from your colleagues, line manager or
managers...so in the end that system grows sort of all over you and you
the you inside keeps getting smaller, and smaller and smaller?" Affirmed.
I advised him to forget the non training post he was being slotted into as
what seemed to me a mere by-product of a branch slimming down exercise, fo
to evening classes, get skilled in IT, come and talk to me about
creativity, or one of my LO colleagues and become a 'happy millionaire'
like the young MIT millionaires Terry Waite ( Ex Hostage in Lebanon) was
working with not so long ago who funnily enough Lon were also listening to
a wise old man from the desert, a Rabbi who spoke to them of the need for
wisdom and compassion....(must be a growing industry for 'wisdom'?) toward
those in our real whole 'company', the existential present tense, among
us, you know (?), those derelicts, those drunks, those junkies, those air
heads, ...those people we are told will always be among us;-(, the
disabled, cripples, snip. What an opportunity you lost that day Lon. You
should have taken a leaf out of another guru's book and sought your wisdom
not from the anthropologist but from what was in perhaps a different
context his pure subject matter, people being people. Perhaps he didn't go
to LO to learn how to become a philanthropic speaker but maybe he closely
studied the complex systems via the by-ways as well as the highways in
which people become the people we see but may not be. If only
tempo-rari-ly. (Mmmm a poem there somewhere;-) Please some-one tell
Andrew, which American President's wife was a confessed alcoholic and
redeemed herself through a life long devotion to the care of people with
symptoms of that disease.
For precision then, if your quote 'inability to moderate the things I find
offensive that is the issue,' I can and will willingly and sensitively
send yo u the details of how to approach the AA or the Samaritans for the
exercise of your wisdom thus far on the 'mastery' of listening.
Oh, yes, what was the title that the prominent sponsoring bank (what a gift
eh?) gave to the talk, wait a minute folks, I have the invitation before
me..."Business for everyone....succeed or die." Does anyone see the 'hitch?'
Does anyone need a 'left hand column' approach to work it out?
Varela's approach would I think have been to connect with the lady for the
learning, bring her in to your special sanity Lon, and leave the
philanthropist to just 'be' with the others. A sort of impulsive creative
collapse on your part. What Charles H calls 'Proper Selfishness'
I look forward to all your thoughts,
Epiphanal thought ~~~ maybe the drunk woman was the guru's mother;-)
The lad wil be ok, I am working 'for' him.
Best wishes,
Andrew
Ps How did his philanthropic largesse extend to the woman?
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