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?
In cases like this you can't really know everybody's background, but you
certainly have made a huge step in recognizing that differences of this
sort exist and that you are aware of them. As an LO practitioner don't
get sucked into a pitfall of over analyzing each person's actions
(sometimes people are just having bad days so they fight everything).
Also you can't solve their problems, nor should you try, instead lead by
example. Nurture a familial atmosphere @ work for this team. You may by
virtue of developing a familial working environment, or "community",
replace a part of their lives that was previously missing. This new
perspective will allow those who lacked a loving familiy background to
understand that there is something else out there where they can be an
active part. As the leader, and LO practitioner, it is up to you to
somehow develop the group's understanding (You must do this implicitly not
explicitly, this is the office not a therapy session) that it is OK to
discuss the undiscussable issues of the organization. What this means is
that you may have to take the first step (risk) to gain their trust & to
show that you have the courage to "commit to the truth" yourself. I
highly reccommend an extremely skilled facilitator for this exercise.
This first step will surely raise some violent disagreements on a personal
level, but by teaching the group that there is a nothing wrong with
disagreement you validate everyone's opinions, raise the acceptance level,
and slowly but surely trust may creep into the group. This is a community
of practice forum disguised as a facilitated meeting ( you are practicing
building trust, community and some level of personal mastery), but as you
said authentic dialogue requires, trust, self-confidence (hence the
facilitator, you don't want shy people to be overshadowed by the more
agressive), and courage. Don't be fooled. This meeting could take days
with such a large group. True dialogue requires that precious balance
between advocay and inquiry and most people prefer to advocate rather than
inquire. Be careful. Emotions are tricky and 1 misstep can obliterate
months of work. Ground rules are important and professional facilitators
are good at developing these and keeping them an active visible part of
the forum.
My experience tells me that using LO vocabulary alienates most people from
the techniques. Too scientology. For this group you want to determine
the goals and then set to working towards them. As the practitioner, you
want the group to commit to the truth and get out all the competing
assumptions so you understand all of the issues up front, build trust and
work toward a common goal, all while balancing creative tension and
developing a community of practice and dialogue skills. You just don't
have to put it that way. Good luck.
Adam Condo
Morgan Stanley
acondo@ms.com
True learning is the realization that you aren't as smart as you think you
are.
--"Adam Condo"<acondo@ms.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>