The Extraordinary Challenge of Wanting to Create Change, Part 2: Beyond the Personal

by Miki Kashtan

Last week I wrote about how we can approach individuals when we want to see change in their behavior. I ended with an exploration of relating to children, which can serve as a possible entryway into exploring change within organizations, the original context that started me thinking about this rich and difficult topic. The similarity between the context of organizations and the context of parenting has been striking to me. In particular, in both settings the power difference is vivid and clear, as is the expectation, common to both relationships, that the one with power is the one who knows what’s best.

Supporting Culture Change within Organizations

My recent work with organizations has been the direct catalyst of this entire line of inquiry. My intense inner engagement with the general question of how change comes about was precipitated by some challenging experiences I’ve had with one client recently. Specifically, I noticed that within one organization, where my charge is quite limited, the work I am doing is making more ripples, whereas in another organization, where I have been doing a much larger project, there have been significant obstacles. 

In both cases I am engaged with the CEO, the leadership team, and some other teams within the organization. In one case, the smaller project, I came in knowing that I was going to work within the existing paradigm of power. This is a service organization that has a fair amount of bureaucracy and established procedures for everything they do. When I meet with the leadership team, I am following their lead in terms of what they want, my only limit being my personal integrity, which has on occasion led me to express what I see and want to see happen in ways that have earned me a reputation within that organization of someone who is willing to speak truth. Within these constraints, I have managed to shift the internal dynamics within the teams I work with such that the administrative staff now participates in meetings rather than just observing and recording meeting notes. I have supported the creation of conditions that now allow for more conversation and trust within the leadership team, and I hear from the team that they are able to apply in other circumstances what they learn in the meetings I facilitate. There is more trust, and more collaboration is beginning, laterally and vertically. It’s a slow process, and yet I often leave my meetings almost elated, whether with one of the teams I support or with the CEO. I see change happening.

Basic Pitfalls of Using NVC

by Miki Kashtan

When many people first learn NVC, they become so enthusiastic about the possibilities they see unfolding, that they immediately try to put it to use everywhere. Often enough, the results can be disastrous, such that other people become deeply suspicious of NVC. Here is a sample of what people often hear from others in such circumstances:

• “It’s like I’ve got a complete stranger staying in my house.”
• “Don’t use this NVC thing on me.” 
• “What happened to you? Can’t you speak normal?”
• “You sound so clinical.”
• “Why can’t you just be honest with me and tell me what’s really going on with you?”

The fundamental issue happening here, as I see it, is that people fall in love with what NVC can bring to their lives and to the world, while attributing that miracle to the language used rather than to the consciousness shift that precedes the choice of words. As a result, they use the language in their interactions with others instead of seeing it as a practice tool designed to support integration of principles and to facilitate navigation of difficult moments with mutual consent. Because of how challenging that distinction between the language and the underlying consciousness is, I want to carefully unpack this paradox.

From Mistrust to Collaboration

by Miki Kashtan
Lately, I have been invited to support managers at different levels who attempt to embrace a collaborative approach to management within their organizations. Despite their clear intentions and strong commitment, I have seen a pattern arise that slows down and sometimes even subverts their efforts. The good news is that tips exist for addressing the factors that interact to create this tragic consequence.

Residual Habits

Our intentions are rarely sufficient by themselves to change long-seated habits. Since hardly any of us were raised with models of collaboration, we have learned to retreat or charge, give up or attempt to impose, direct others or follow their lead. For many managers this shows up as frequent bursts of anger. Even when managers embrace the intention to collaborate, without the existence of role models they are likely to revert to anger when they are not happy with someone’s choices. This occurs even if they are deeply committed to honoring everyone and creating a culture of experimentation where choices are never penalized.

Tip: Transforming patterns of angry behavior takes ongoing effort and commitment. Two key practices are willingness to show up vulnerably in our full unprotected humanity when things aren’t how we like them, and the deep work of embracing uncertainty and letting go of making things be exactly what we want.

Unrealistic Expectations

After some years of working in various settings, I have come to believe that many people have very, very little faith that anything can change. They go to their workplace day in and day out bracing themselves for what they don’t like in the environment, especially in terms of relationships with bosses. Even when they care deeply about the actual work they do, they still protect themselves on the relational level. Initially, what took me by surprise was seeing how the longing for respect and care don’t disappear, they just go underground. Once I start doing anything with the management, employees have a small surge of hope which unfortunately lacks any resilience. One city government I worked in, for example, I met first with management and then with the workers separately. I received a unanimous request from the workers to train the management first. Management agreed, and the workers were satisfied with this choice. Then, when I came to meet them again a few weeks later, the workers were entirely demoralized, because they expected to see change happen overnight in order to be able to hold on to any sense of hope that change could happen at all. Given that change of this kind takes consistent effort to integrate and make visible, this is a particularly tragic stumbling block in shifting to a culture of collaboration. 

Tip: One way to address unrealistic expectations for immediate change is to acknowledge the expectations explicitly. For a manager to make such an acknowledgment is consistent with the willingness to show up as fully human. That willingness can offer reassurance to employees that the work and the manager’s commitment are sincere. Managers can also ask for feedback on  their ability to create the shift to collaboration, which sends the message to  workers that their voice counts and that their input may be taken seriously.

Disempowerment

Managers are not the only ones with deeply ingrained habits. Time and again I see situations where the person in the position of power is seriously committed to transformation while others continue to respond in a disempowered manner. They withhold their opinions even when asked; they say “yes” when they would rather not do something; they don’t ask for support when they need it; or they put up with behavior that distresses them without ever providing feedback. The net result is that the manager is left too much to their own devices for creating change that in any event is high stakes and difficult to integrate.

Tip: If we are truly committed to creating  change, one thing we can do is to take on employees’ mistrust and go out of our way to support their empowerment to meet us collaboratively. This goes hand in hand with all the other practices. We are called to invite feedback and express gratitude even when it hurts, so that we can continue to learn and  employees have a sense of mattering. We are also called to appreciate people when they say “no” to us so that they can increase their sense of freedom and choice, without which collaboration is meaningless. When organizational norms, often not of our own doing, interfere with more options for collaboration, we can be transparent about what is or isn’t possible, and a focus on facing the reality of the situation collaboratively.

Signs of Hope

The cultural context in which we all operate is not set up for collaboration, leaving us without models to emulate. Most of us grew up in an environment of enforcement and authority, and have likely internalized an either/or perspective that makes it challenging to engage collaboratively when there are differences in perspective or wishes, especially when those are compounded by power relations. Nonetheless, we can move towards greater and greater collaboration through understanding these patterns and embracing the willingness to stay the course for transformation, even in small ways. Change can come from unexpected places, too. As soon as even one employee becomes empowered to tell the truth and work collaboratively with the manager, others can see and learn, and the entire atmosphere can change. Wherever we are within an organization, if we plant seeds of change and water them patiently over time, we can harvest the sweet fruit of collaboration.    

What Makes Collaboration Work? - Part 2

by Miki Kashtan

This piece is a continuation of yesterday’s post.

Telling the Truth with Care

The founder of a start-up company brought to the workshop the challenge he had about having a sales person whose judgment calls he doesn’t always trust. What can he do to move towards a collaborative experience with this employee?

Sometimes the most important thing about collaborating is truth telling. Often enough we avoid telling the truth because of fear of hurting other people. This is because we’ve been trained to believe that truth and care are mutually exclusive. Instead, I aim for truth with care. In order to find a way to shift the dynamics with the employee, I invited everyone at the workshop to imagine themselves being that employee, and what they would want to hear from the founder in such a situation. Within moments we came up with several ways to present the truth. One example: “I have some concerns about how you respond to some situations. I want us to work together well, and I want to support you in being successful in this job. Are you open to reviewing a few situations together so we can get more alignment around our priorities?”

More generally, whenever we have a difficult message to deliver, we can imagine being the other person, really and truly stepping into their proverbial shoes. From within that perspective we can often feel directly what would register as care, what’s necessary to say or highlight to make room for the truth to be digestible. It’s never about compromising the truth; it’s only about framing it in a context of collaboration.

Shared Ownership of Outcome

One young facilitator in a hi-tech area brought forward the challenge of having very acrimonious meetings, full of arguments and without any clear resolution. She was daunted by the prospect of navigating such a meeting to a collaborative spirit.

In polarized situations one key skill is particularly helpful – the ability to hear the dream, vision, value, need, or goal that is hidden behind the different opinions. For example, let’s say that we are in a meeting to evaluate two different software platforms, and someone says: “This product sucks. They haven’t been supporting it for years.” What I hear is that what’s important to this person is reliability in terms of tech support. Or if someone says: “It’s so boring, there’s nothing to it,” I hear that they want a product that’s innovative or has complex functionality. Why is this capacity important? Because moving towards something has more potential for getting people together than arguing about what’s not working.

Once we verify with each person that we got clearly what’s important to them, the next step is to generate one list with all that’s important. This, then, becomes the list of criteria to use to evaluate the product in this case, or to evaluate any proposal that’s on the table more generally. Key to the success of this approach is to create one list with the core qualities that are sought without any reference to the specific product, direction, or strategy that’s being discussed. What then happens is that the group can move to shared ownership of the list, an act which gradually de-polarizes the group and shifts it into an orientation of finding, together, a solution that meets as many of the criteria as possible. In that way we support collaboration even in a charged context.

Learning to Collaborate

Most of us have been raised to work alone and in competition with others. I have a lot of compassion and tenderness for our efforts to collaborate without having all the necessary tools, and I feel passionate about providing these tools. I can only do so much online through this blog. To move more clearly towards transforming our work lives and making collaboration be the norm in our society, I am collaborating with a group of other NVC trainers to create the Making Collaboration Real retreat and optional yearlong program that’s starting next month.

As part of our vision, we want to transform the way businesses deal with money, and we are committed to modeling this transformation in our own practice around money. Now that the curriculum for the program is ready, I am itching to make this unique opportunity available to more people. If you are drawn to participate in this retreat or program and cost is the only reason you would not attend, please read our brief philosophy about money, and contact us to talk about how to make attendance at this program possible for you.

The depth and level of detail of the curriculum leave me in awe about how much is needed in order to make collaboration work. I am so excited to have a coherent and systematic way that collaboration can be taught, experienced, and practiced. I have confidence that with focus and dedication we can all master the art of collaboration at all levels.

What Makes Collaboration Work?

by Miki Kashtan

Why is collaboration so difficult and tenuous for so many people? Since we are so clearly social animals, wouldn’t we naturally know how to collaborate?

In the last several weeks I have been deeply immersed in learning and teaching about collaboration. I participated in planning and leading the Making Collaboration Real conference, and noticed the immense hunger people had for more tips about how to do collaboration. I attended the Social Venture Network gathering, where I led a breakout session about collaboration, I led one other workshop on collaboration at the Hub SoMa, and I have worked with people struggling to collaborate effectively.

I heard the entire gamut of challenges: from performance reviews to decision making, from interpersonal relationships to leadership styles, from online relationships to in-person group meetings, and from innermost experience to how systems are set up. I now can say more clearly than ever that in today’s workplace effective collaboration is an accomplishment rather than a given. Here are some snippets from my recent weeks with some tips you can use to increase your chances of collaborating successfully.

Full Responsibility

I often hear from people something to the effect that they can’t collaborate with someone because of that person’s actions, choices, or communication. For myself, I hold that if I want to collaborate with someone the responsibility is on me to make that collaboration work. In tough moments I remind myself that I am the one who wants to collaborate, and therefore I want to take the responsibility for making it happen. The less willingness another person has, the more presence, skill, and commitment are required from me. Expecting fairness interferes with the possibility of collaboration. Instead of thinking about what’s fair, I think about what’s possible in any situation given the level of skill and interest that all the players have. Sometimes this may be more than I want to do, in which case I may choose not to collaborate. I still know that it’s my choice, and not the other person’s limitations, which end the collaboration. This orientation has helped me tremendously to the point of carrying no resentment to speak of even in situations that break down.

Making Use of Input

In one of the workshops a senior program officer in a high-profile non-profit organization talked about dreading the experience of bringing her ideas to her team. The reason? They usually don’t like what she says, then she sits and endures their input despite the pain without saying anything to them, and finally she thanks them for the input and makes whatever decision she makes.

One way of transforming such a challenge is to be proactive about the kind of input that we want. For example, when she proposes a plan, she can start by saying that she wants to hear a few people express only what they like about the proposal. Providing specific positive comments supports her in relaxing, and supports the others in connecting more with the reason the proposal is there in the first place. Then she can ask the team to name those areas that they don’t like and for which they have concrete suggestions for improvement. This builds a sense of movement and possibility. Finally, she can ask for any additional concerns for which people may not have a solution. By then enough goodwill gets generated that the group can look at those concerns together and brainstorm suggestions with her. She is then not alone and overwhelmed with so much input without solutions. And everyone has the experience that their input is valued. In that way she leads them to collaborate.

I plan to post the 2^nd part of this post tomorrow, with two more tips: how to tell the truth with care, and how to create shared ownership of the outcome.

The Power of Collaboration

by Miki Kashtan

Everything that at some point is in the future eventually becomes the present and then the past. I know this is not major news for anyone, and yet the experience of it continues to amaze me each time. For some months now I had been inviting people to come to the Making Collaboration Real conference that took place this past weekend. Now that this conference is in the past, I want to share some of my highlights and what comes next.

Collaboration has become more and more of a stated goal or practice in many places. One of the things that became apparent to me during this conference is just how much we need to learn in order to achieve true collaboration. Perhaps counter-intuitively, in order to collaborate well we need to learn how to engage in conflict in a productive way. Sometimes when we are uncomfortable with conflict we end up acting indirectly, which may result in more pain and discomfort for others, sometimes even for ourselves, rather than face the discomfort directly. For example, today I heard from a friend about a former employee who is very dedicated to nonviolence and collaboration, and yet since this person left she has engaged in actions that stir up conflict and may result in punitive action directed at a former co-worker instead of coming to her supervisor to attempt a resolution. What would it take for all of us to learn to walk towards conflict so that we can find ways of working with those who are different from us or whose actions are upsetting to us?

Collaboration means learning more about power, and engaging effectively across power differences. One theme that showed up repeatedly is the isolation of people at the top of organizations, especially those who run the most traditional of them. Because others are afraid, those at the top don’t get full information; they hear more often than not an inauthentic “yes”; they are not challenged enough; and they are seen as the “enemy” which means that actual co-creation is less available to them. Ulrich Nettesheim presented a series of insights and practices for making the focus on human needs relevant to people who work at the top. All in all, I became even more aware than I was before how essential it is to relate to the goals, vision, and perspective of the person at the top in order to establish sufficient trust to get any openness to the power of connection and collaboration.

We also explored power from a different angle, when Edmundo Norte challenged us to look at our unconscious assumptions and perceptions about people different from us. We learned how being positions of power and privilege makes us less able to see the effects of our actions, and how essential it is to learn to engage others and invite their insights and wisdom, because they can see what we cannot. And when we are in a position of less privilege, how important and vital for the whole is our capacity to find courage to speak up. True collaboration appears to require both love and courage, speaking and listening, and changing our habitual ways of acting in the world so we can see and show more of what’s going on.

I was delighted to see how much of the conversation during the conference focused on systemic considerations, beyond looking only at individual needs. I have had a sense for some time now that the community of people who have been studying Nonviolent Communication have not been sufficiently informed about the organizational level, and I am delighted the word is now out for many that when humans form an organization something else is going on. Marie Miyashiro, organizational consultant, discussed her distillation of the needs and conditions that are essential for any organization to thrive: identity, life affirming purpose, direction, expression, and energy/resources. Gregg Kendrick, former business owner, inspired us with his personal story of how he applied the principles of Nonviolent Communication in his own business, and how he now supports other organizations in shifting into a paradigm of true collaboration using a combination of Nonviolent Communication and Dynamic Self-Governance. I was inspired and intrigued by his firm commitment to work only with those who are consciously ready to embrace the cultural transformation.

We also heard about two ongoing experiments with introducing Nonviolent Communication into large scale organizations that are only minimally committed to such change at the highest levels. While the trainings of people who work at the organizations are showing powerful results in terms of a variety of measures, the question of how to translate the successes into a shift in the structures of decision-making remains open. Whether internal to the organization, as Wes Taylor is, or an external consultant/trainer as Dian Killian is with her team of trainers, I am left with a great deal of curiosity about how far change can proceed without the explicit blessing of the person in charge, which loops back to the question about how connection with the person at the top can be made. I am glad that Jane Connor who works with Dian is conducting scientific research on their work at a Fortune 500 company.

Over the course of the conferences many people expressed a tremendous hunger for practical how-to’s that they could apply back in their own organizations. Two of the sessions we presented were more practical. Martha Lasley led us through a preliminary practice of coaching skills using the tools of Nonviolent Communication, and I modeled a decision-making process based on the principle of maximizing willingness, a way of making collaborative decisions that everyone can live with.

I am deeply committed to integrity between what we teach and what we practice. Because of that, my biggest personal celebration is the degree of collaboration that I experienced among the presenters. Some of us had never been in a room together, and yet we worked together to make this conference a success. We met every morning to reflect on how things are going and how we might adapt the flow of the conference to respond to feedback. We had several conversations in which we explored some differences in our approaches to the work, and I found our trust deepening as a result of these explorations, reaffirming my faith in the power of dialogue to metabolize and make use of differences. I know that it’s only through deep collaboration that we can truly rise to the challenge of the immense need we are facing on a global scale. I can’t wait to see how this collaboration will continue to unfold in the coming months and years.

If you are interested in seeing how you can learn about more collaboration in your workplace or consulting practice, come to our next informational call for the MCR yearlong program that starts in May.