Stephen Weed writes:
"Ben's posts to this list have been reflective of his "growth" this year.
There is a time and place for each of us to break out of another layer of
fear. There is enought savvy within this group to know when to take
discussions off-line."
And I've been quite reluctant to be as expressive as I have about my
personal growth. At times I've been so frustrated and embarrassed by what
I've said that I've thought about unsubscribing from the list. And then
there are times when I feel like what I have to say is important, and is
relevant to Learning-Orgs. And so I've stuck around, at times reluctantly,
and at times energetically, because I feel that the topic of discussion on
this list is extremely important.
Over the last year my beliefs about how organizations should function have
become more clear and more passionate. And most of what I have said, as I
look back on it, is expressive of that continual clarification.
Take for instance the thread on Personal Matery & Abuse. It generated some
wonderful messages. I wanted to express three main ideas with that thread:
First, that the pursuite of emotional maturity is often painful but always
possible. Emotional maturity grows out of the practice of personal
mastery. One's background, no matter how dysfunctional, does not have to
determine their future. We're the product of our choices, not a product of
our environment.
Second, I wanted to draw out the similarities between abuse in families
and abuse in organizations. The anger I felt at how I was treated by some
of my managers at Novell was no less poignant than the anger I felt
towards my parents for how they treated me. If we want to create lasting
and ever-growing organizations we need to take hard, practical steps
toward removing all forms of abuse from our management practices.
After I sent my original message I felt quite uncomfortable. Being so open
is a frightening thing, especially in such an open forum. However there
were many private messages that were so inspiring and/or touching that I
stuck around. And that is the magic , I think, of this list: The private
conversations that emerge can become far more rewarding and insightful
than the public exchanges.
I think I'll stick around for another year and see what it brings to me. .
.
-- Benjamin Compton DWS Computer Consultants "The GroupWise Integration Experts" E-Mail: bcompton@emailsolutions.com http://www.emailsolutions.comLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>