I sure hope I get current with this list soon; theres much to gain fro
it.
First of all, welcome back to the list Ben. To the other members of the
list, from the posts I have seen on this subject, you are all a class act.
I have also seen first hand what abuse did to my own biological family and
spent several years piecing my life back together. Part of healing for me
was realizing our existing mental models follow us to the workplace. What
we find there is that all the workplace is filled with people who have
histories and proclivities for recreating their own childhoods.
I read Bens post all through his "dark days. While it is easy to focus
on what we have done to cause us to loose a particular job, it is wise to
remember that the workplace is indeed a system of its own. I had the
opportunity to see an abusive family system recreated with a recent
employer. The players included a top manager who managed by fiat, other
managers and support staff who led by placating, and myself, a cock-sure,
itinerant trainer not willing to subjugate his ideas. Obviously, when push
came to shove, fear led to "abuse". Indeed, it was nothing more than a
systmic response that might easily have occur in an abusive family.
Fritjof Capra suggests that Gestalt psychology was one of the first
disciplines take a systemic approach. I cant personally vouch for that
but I do remember a book titled the Dysfunctional Workplace was enjoying
good sales in the 1980s when I was sorting out my family of origins
issues.
Everyone is part of multiple systems simultaneously: workplace systems,
anatomical systems, family systems, cultural systems. The strength of
systems thinking for me is that it provides an somewhat objective
framework for getting to the goal that I want for myself and for the
organizations I work with.
regards,
steve weed
sweed@easystreet.com
--Stephen Weed <sweed@easystreet.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>