Quality & Equality

Continuing from last weeks post concerning the self as an impactful and powerful instrument.

Presence means the persona that we carry and involves having an attractive aura without necessarily being charismatic. This type of radiating aura is not something we can put on and off like a piece of clothing, it is something that radiates out from within. It is very much the dividend from our persistent inner work and our cumulative life experiences, not to mention the mental models we carry about the world and people. We know someone has presence when they walk into a room, not only do people notice them but they also feel safer and encouraged – something in these people make others feel the world is a better place – it is so intangible but real.

If someone is integrated, then their boundary maintenance work will be an outcome, because they won’t “merge” themselves to those whom they want approval from and lose who they are; neither would they “split” and fragment themselves from others disproportionally just to define who they are. They do not need to do that, they will respect others as they respect themselves for who they are. Their ability to differentiate themselves from others without being judgemental is a key sign of their mature way of managing boundaries between themselves and others.
Having done sufficient work on self, they will not be “hooked” easily by others nor will they be reactive to issues that others throw at them. This is the meaning of “centering” because they will exercise the choice they have in their reaction day by day to people or things that they work with.

Finally, these people do guard against overload and ‘burn out’ as they take “self care” seriously. They will be the people who monitor their fuel tank – are they running half full or are they running on empty? In fact, they will not allow themselves to ever get to the point of running on empty. They are the type of individual who professor Gratton describes as able to “ignite their latent energy” and glow consistently.

When I finally understood the implication of cultivating personal referent power many years ago, I was hit very hard between the eyes. I realised three things if I want to be impactful and powerful; (1) It is really up to me, not up to anyone else. I will need to start doing “self work” seriously. I crave all those six things I mentioned above and know without working through some of the unresolved issues in my life, I would not be impactful, no matter how watchful and intentional I am about my behaviour and my action. (2) I have to start my relationships with people with a critical level of respect that will enable me to be influential. I will need to own which parts of any relationship are my responsibility. What makes people attracte to me or distanced from me is really down to who I am and not so much who they are. (3) The quality of my relationship with people is very much down to whether I know who I am and how I go about the world viewing people from my perceptual lens which is very much shaped by what I want, what I need, what I fear, what I have lost…etc. All of a sudden power play is not a shallow game that people play, it is a significant personal stretch (life work) if I want to play power “constructively”.

I wish I could tell you that after working on all the above for over 25 years I have achieved these things. No I have not. Only two days ago, my husband said to me “oh dear, you have allowed your neurosis to triumph over your rationality once again.” That is a raw reminder about how much further I still need to go. The only thing I can say is that I have started the journey, in the beginning not intentionally to pursue power and influence in my work. It was the combination of personal pain and critical circumstance that got me going in this journey because I knew back then if I did not start working with this instrument, sorting out all the messy stuff within me, and start taking care of myself through these circumstances, I will not be able to survive and offer my family and those people whom I work with and for any value.
Through time, I have stopped pursuing more tools and techniques even though I am still fascinated by the various tools that other OD practitioners offer. However, ultimately I know that to be effective in our trade, it is the self work that holds the key and in going deep within – we end up going deep without.  So power and politics are really the by product of self work……interesting thoughts.

Last week when Bob Marshak and I were running the ‘Diagnosis with Impact’ Module of the NTL OD certificate programme, we found there was a lot of interest in the “impact” aspect of that module title. Being or becoming a competent diagnostician – I guess – is not a big issue for most delegates as many of them know what constitutes effective diagnoses, plus they are comfortable about the various techniques in collecting data. I think the issue that many of us are concerned with is more along our ability to influence clients to take the data we have collected seriously and therefore own the data in such a way that the client will act on it.

So the concern therefore is having a personal impact on the client system as we go about scoping out the project, diagnosing the system, and weighing out the options that are presented to the clients for action. Bob and I were very encouraged by this concern because we are both from the school of thought that believes; without being interested in power and politics, OD practitioners will not be effective.

What is power and what is politic? Both terms are needed to help us know how to go about being impactful. You will notice that I use the terms power, powerful, impactful, influential interchangeably – that is because they are all pointing to the same outcome – so whichever terms are more comfortable to you, use them.
Power is the potential ability to influence behaviour, to change the course of events, to manage resistance, and to get people to do things that they would not otherwise do. The word “potential” is the key word because not many of us, by ourselves, feel powerful and influential. This is because the arena for power and influence most of the time takes place in the relationship arena (other than the extreme form of power eg. dictatorial and terrorist situations). Therefore the word ‘politic’ offers this second half of the puzzle. Politics means the channel through which power can be exercised to achieve results. This will include the processes, actions, and the behaviour we use to achieve the influence we desire.

So once we understand that, we need to move on to ask two questions; “What is in my goodies bag that could give me my power base?” and “What are the processes and power strategies that I need to deploy to channel that power base for results?” In this week’s blog, I will mainly focus on the first question of power base and pick up the power strategies question later on.

Power bases are composed of unique resources over which we have control. The amazing thing is that our power bases are dynamic. They can be developed, expanded or eroded depending on what is going on in our lives. When I do not take care of myself and run on empty, my power base will be diminished. Grief, physical illness, unresolved issues in our lives….can all erode our power base. This gives a new meaning to those of us who are not very good about self-care. Without adequate self-care, our power base can be diminished overnight.
What are some of the common power bases we have as consultants? They are our; areas of expertise, knowledge of human dynamics, credibility in designing processes that help the client achieve what they want to achieve with their team, department and their organisation. Also our reputation in the market place based on our professional credibility is crucial as it will often be the basis on which we are invited into the organisation.

There are other forms of power base such as; attractive personality, charisma, empathy, political access etc. However, for me, none of the above are as critical as the highest form of power base which is “personal referent power” – i.e. by being who we are we attract others and we become their “referent others”. For OD practitioners, I think “Personal referent power” is the highest form of power base because of the critical concept of “self as an instrument” and therefore pursuing it should be one of our life long goals. When being who we are – we become the source of intervention – with or without using other methodology or techniques – to create impact and results in our helping relationship. That is where the magic of OD happens. For most of us, this will not happen overnight – it will happen only when we invest in developing this instrument (self) through intentional development. That is why OD is a different field from any other technical consultancy field.

While the expert model of consultancy can be achieved through our competency and our techniques, OD cannot. Operating purely from acquired and intellectual levels will only get us so far in a field that focuses on human dynamics and system dynamics. We need to learn and then practice operating from a deeper, more instinctive level within ourselves . This is the basic difference between DOING versus BEING.

In order to move towards having ‘personal referent power’ in our development journey we must pay attention to six areas – which are by no means exhaustive, but they are critical.
1. Achieving levels of congruence

2. Developing a strong presence

3. The ability to stay centered

4. Managing boundaries

5. Working on living a “choiceful” life

6. Paying attention to self care

These six are huge areas and I do not want to give the impression that I will cover them all, but I want to raise them as headlines for you to explore further yourself:
Congruence basically means having all aspects of our lives snap together and working well for us. This will require us having a clear sense of ‘who I am’ as well as being in touch with ‘how I feel and act’. Congruence also means achieving integration.

So for me, I must understand what it means to be born an Asian woman, birth order number eight, from a strong Germanic Basel tradition, mission-minded religious background, gaining a PhD, setting up business, losing two children, and currently being chronically ill. From the interaction of all the above, what happens to my dreams, my motivation, my desire? How does all the above shape my mindset, my paradigm, my approach to life, people, suffering and career? While perfect congruence is impossible, our sense of well being is very much based upon our ability to accept who we are and work with it in an integrated fashion. This way we won’t be yearning for what we think we are missing.

Continued next week….

I belonged to a consultants’ action learning group for over 5 years. Two years ago during one of our meetings, the subject of the role of OD practitioners came up. I then said, “the OD practitioner’s role is one of a helper” – along the lines that Warner Burke (1982:345) and Ed Schein put it

• “the primary though not exclusive function of OD consultants is to help clients learn how to help themselves more effectively.” Burke (1982:345)

• “it is of prime importance that the process consultant be expert in how to diagnose and how to establish effective helping relationships with clients. Effective (process consultation) involves the passing on both of these skills.” Schein (1969:8)

Upon hearing what I said, one of the action learning set members spoke with contempt, “Helper – what a ridiculous role!! A role trapped with danger.” At the time, I was both annoyed and hurt – annoyed because I thought he was too cynical and irreverent to our profession, and hurt because he touched on one of the key motivational levers of why I and many entered the field.

This week we are fortunate to have Professor Ed Schein with us in London – spending time with the NTL OD certificate graduates as well as talking to 280 people in a public lecture. His public lecture topic is “Why leaders need to be a humble inquirer” which is based on the key concepts from his most recent book, HELPING. Having read the book, I was taken straight back to that conversation two years ago – especially the “trapped with danger in helping” utterance. So in this first blog I’d like to share with you about the importance of caring and helping in our profession, while reflecting on how to improve doing the helping by paying attention to those areas that do pose dangers.

Many of us went into HR or OD for different reasons, but if you talk to enough of us, somehow our motivation will always end up including: to make an impact, to be of value to others, to support people and organisations through change, to help people and organisations to become all that they can be, etc. It always comes back to being a “helper”. I am now even more convinced that our role is that of a helper, but I have also become wiser to accept some of the dangers that are inherent in the helping relationship are real and we should do better in managing them. I want to share 5 specific dangers that are personal to me. You may want to create your own “danger” list as we are all different in how we approach the helping relationship.

The first danger is the possibility that we engage in the act of helping in order to satisfy our own needs – to feel “significant”, to make us a “worthy” object, an object to be valued and appreciated by clients, fulfilling our own needs to be needed. These reasons are important and they are an inherent part of our own humanity, however; if we are not aware of and not managing how these dynamics lurk behind our actions, then we will be less effective in controlling what we do and why we do it – and therefore less clear about whether we are acting in ways that are truly of value to clients or to ourselves. During my early training as an OD practitioner, I was always warned of the possibility of working out my own needs through clients’ work, and this question has stuck with me till now. I think this first danger is very real for all of us.

Second, there is danger in the imbalance (therefore precarious) dynamics in the helping relationship. As Schein pointed out (2009:31), “…helping situations are intrinsically unbalanced and role-ambiguous.” Those who ask for help are putting themselves “one down”. On the other hand, in the role of helper, one gains power and status – hence achieves the “one up-ness”. This imbalance often creates interesting dynamics that consultants are required to manage. In order to support the client not to feel the “downness” we often need to work hard to equalise that with our “upness” to prevent the client from slipping into defensive mode when diagnostic data are presented. The clients should also pay attention and resist doing all sort of things to stop themselves feeling the vulnerability of being one down. In this sense, the dynamics are full of danger and need us to pay detailed attention and develop strategies to manage it. It is worthwhile to point out also that in this context, the expert model of consulting is much more “problematic” than the OD process of consulting. In OD, we believe that the clients often have the wisdom to solve their own problems and therefore our role is to provide support to help set up processes for them to achieve exactly that. In that way, they will own not only their diagnosis, but also the implementation, thus making the solution much more sustainable – not to mention emerging from the helping relationship with a real “levelling” experience.

Another trap for consultants in the helping relationship is for us to move too quickly to solutions, or to provide advice and help prematurely because the seduction of having the clients look up to us to solve their problems is often too great to resist. When we do that, we bypass robust inquiry and diagnosis and hence lose the opportunity to learn what the real problem might be. When we swing into the mode of dispensing wisdom prematurely, we will end up in a lose-lose situation – clients lose because their real problem doesn’t get investigated; helpers lose because once we fall into this trap, we tend to dig our heels in further by insisting that we are right and the clients have not got the guts to own what we have discovered. This danger is very real for us, especially when we are low in self care and self awareness, which leaves us less “centered” and unfocused.

Fourth, it is very hard for client to see the helper in a neutral way. The helping relationship is often fertile ground for projection and transference of perception (positive and negative). The danger (as Schein indicated) is that the client may then calibrate everything the helper does against their expectations around their projection. If the helper is not aware, we can also reinforce this by counter transference – locking the relationship into some sort of quasi dependence state.

Fifth, by wanting to give help and support – especially in the form of giving assurance to clients, we might miss the opportunity to challenge a client to venture to places that they need to reach but may not automatically want to go. I have never forgotten the feedback I had from Weisbord: “Mee-yan, one of your greatest liabilities is your empathy!” I was stunned – how could that be true? He explained, “By being indiscriminately empathetic, you rob the chance of your client group to stick through tough situations and work things out for themselves.” In Schein’s terms, we lock ourselves out from “confrontational inquiry” or even robust diagnostic inquiry. Also, our excessive care and support may contribute to create conditions in which the client develops over dependence on the helpers as we become the key source of warmth and support for them in a fast-changing environment.

There are other traps in the helping relationship that may be uniquely yours that you want to add to this list. By paying attention to these dangers, we will work to keep the helping relationship pure and not “polluted”.
So what are some of the things we can do to start to keep the helping relationship effective? Here are some of the things I can think of and I am sure you will have some other approaches; if so, please share your thoughts on the community forum or in comments below:

a) Aim to stay clear about why we want to help and how we go about providing support that will genuinely benefit the client community rather than meeting our personal and ego needs. Whatever we want to do, stop for a moment and ask “Will this benefit the client system or just make me feel better?”

b) Stay aware of our own motives and our own emotional make up when entering into a longer-term helping relationship – so to maintain healthy boundaries. Find someone (shadow consultant or coach) who will help us to discern whether we are merging into the client system, or undergoing too much fragmentation from certain clients, and to reflect whether our current relationships with key stakeholders within the client system are healthy and robust?

c) Remain a “humble inquirer” – instead of covering up our ignorance, access our ignorance through genuine inquiry so that we don’t fall into the trap of being an expert diagnostician stereotyping every situation prematurely.

d) Continue to develop our skills as effective inquirer and diagnostician. To be helpful, we need to know what real issues the client systems are struggling with. In order to support them to own and work through those issues, we need to work together with the client to jointly inquire and identify the real reasons for change. This bring us back to the key theme of Schein’s new book – if we want to be an effective inquirer we will need to engage in as much pure inquiry as possible. The goal of pure inquiry is not to structure how the client tells the story, but to encourage full disclosure of their perspective.

I still firmly believe that the OD practitioner’s role is that of a helper and many of us have wonderful experiences in providing genuine, effective, and high quality help to client systems. May we continue to do that, and by paying attention to some of the potential dangers I am sure we will create even greater impact. I have been reminded not to dismiss comments and reactions which are hurtful – the fact it hurts probably means they have touched an important nerve which is worth exploring.