Jim,
Your right trust is necessary to be able share enough to build a learning
or continuously improving organization. Truth is very hard to come by low
levels of communication reduce the possibility of finding it.
Trust can be built by developing the right behaviors between people and
the right behaviors in mangers. It is slow but an imperative. AME in
conjunction with Kelch, a manufacturing company, and their consultant
Patricia Johnson held a work shop to show how they built the necessary
trust between people with different backgrounds, including the abused. It
was an exciting concept.
Gene
At 10:42 PM 10/6/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Jim wrote,
>
>> I lead a team of about 90 people... and inevitably, I find that many
>> people with
>> unresolved family of origin issues find authentic dialogue extremely
>> difficult. It seems that dialogue requires a certain amount of courage,
>> self-confidence, and trust. All of those attributes were missing in my
>> life until I got some specific help with my family of origin issues.
>>
>> So, what does all that mean? If you have people in your organization with
>> unresolved family of origin issues, can you not create a learning
>> organization? How are others out there dealing with this issue?
>
>Much of the field of group dynamics deals with just such cases--and it
>doesn't just involve people who had abusive childhoods. Also helps to
>explain why going into a group or team and teaching them the
>forming-storming-norming processes we usually hear about simply doesn't
>work in the long run. Most of us tend to repeat our earliest group/social
>relationships--particularly our unconscious roles-- within new
>environments, unless we have become very conscious of how these earliest
>relationships (family) have played themselves out in our lives, and we've
>worked through them. Most of us don't recognize, I think, the extent to
>which "old baggage" like unhealthy family relationships impact our
>present way of being.
>
>The essence of the learning organization, or even more vital workplaces,
>is human development, adult development. Cultivating an LO is possible
>even with individuals who carry with them an abusive past, but only to the
>extent that we are really interested in cultivating an environment that is
>most conducive to growth and development. Part of that, of course, is to
>provide opportunity for people to become more conscious of themselves, to
>confront their assumptions, etc. Serious group dynamics work, rather than
>the surface kind of team-building we generally see, can help, I think.
>People interested in this whole area might look into areas of depth
>psychology or the work of the Tavistock Institute, among others.
>Terri A Deems
>tadeems@aol.com
Eugene Taurman
interLinx ilx@execpc.com http://www.execpc.com/~ilx
"What you see depends upon what you thought before you looked."
--Eugene Taurman <ilx@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>