Making Omelets for Cooperative Groups

As a process consultant, most times my work with a client involves putting out a fire. To be sure, I'm often asked to teach how to prevent fires as well, but most times there's one already burning before I get the call.

Sometimes, in the process of extinguishing one blaze I uncover another and there's not time to handle both. Several months ago that happened to me and I made the choice to keep my focus on the problem I was asked to address, letting the new fire smoulder while I attended to the original one. 

In the final hour of my time with that group, we were headed toward a solid conclusion—where the fire was coming under control—when suddenly someone in the group unexpectedly tossed a gas can into the meeting, a couple folks got badly burned (I'm still speaking metaphorically) and stomped out of the room, leaving me to pick over the charred remains, and tend to the wounded as best I could. It was not the ending I or anyone else was looking for.

The group was frustrated at not getting a happy ending, and the people at risk from the new fire (the one I uncovered and didn't address) were doubly disappointed because now there were two fires and I was going home.

While I tried to set up a fire brigade for the new blaze (a plan for how it would be dealt with as a priority after my departure), and I pointed out that knowledge of the new fire was itself product (because it's much better knowing there's a fire and its location then mistakenly thinking there isn't one), those offerings brought scant joy. In consequence, there is a significant fraction of the group that came away from the weekend with the feeling that they were burned by me, and want no part of my working with the group again.

While that's sad for me, it goes with the territory, and that's what I want to focus on in this blog. 

While I'm brave enough (or foolish enough) to always think I can help a group in trouble, the truth is my work is not always effective. Perhaps I don't learn enough about the full dimensions of the problem ahead of time; perhaps I don't find a way to connect with all the stakeholders; perhaps I make a poor choice about how to proceed, or misinterpret a key statement; perhaps I underestimate how long it will take to clean the wound, apply the salve, and bandage the patient.

In any event, my souffles don't always rise; sometimes they fall flat. What I don't do is play it safe. If I was hired to put out a fire, then I'll do my best to extinguish that sucker, which almost always means working close to the heat and under pressure from the clock.

Completing the transition to a cooking metaphor, I'm reminded of the famous Harry Truman quote, If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. As a process consultant I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, trying to turn grease fires into tasty meals. With the group I mentioned above, the dinner party was naturally disappointed by the food displayed at the end of the weekend: charred on the outside and undercooked in the middle. 

On the one hand, it makes sense to not bring back a guest chef who didn't produce a delectable meal the last time. On the other, I was asked to work in a kitchen that no one else wanted to enter, to demonstrate how it was possible to produce good food (unifying agreements) without building a new kitchen (switching to a different decision-making process), or firing some of the kitchen staff (asking some challenging folks to leave the community).

In a hot kitchen, I work deliberately and with purpose. While I try not to rush, I meet people head on, making sure I've heard what they have to tell me, letting them know how that fits (or doesn't fit) with what others have said, what I'm doing with all that I've heard, and what the plan is.

Not everyone responds well to my directness. Not everyone likes it when I share news from others that they don't want to hear. I don't always make a good choice in how I share hard information. There is always room for me to improve; ways in which I can learn to be less triggering and more compassionate. In short, I can always be a better short order cook, and it's on me to find the lessons when meals I prepare go uneaten.

All of that said, if someone wants an omelet, it will necessarily mean breaking eggs. Even though there may later be remorse over the unborn chickens or the lost beauty of whole eggs—for which I can have genuine sympathy—I will always break the eggs once an omelet has been ordered. Even when the customer tells me after the fact that they didn't really want an omelet, it's my job to hear that with as much grace as possible… and then prepare myself to go back into the kitchen.

If you need clients to like what you cook every time, I agree with our 33rd President: stay out of the kitchen.

In Defense of Imbalance

For those who have been keeping up with the serial drama of my marriage, Ma'ikwe and I saw a couples counselor Monday and had a positive experience—good enough that we're going back next Tuesday for more. Ma'ikwe has taken a step back from the brink to give this a try and I am very grateful.

To be sure, there remains gobs of work to do, and it will likely be messy, but she's willing to try again, which is a huge energy shift and essential for us to have a chance. Whew!

• • •

OK, that's the news bulletin update. I received an outpouring of sympathetic responses to my previous posting (for which I thank all those who wrote), where I characterized my partnership as being on the edge of a precipice, and I want to say more about what my marriage blogs are—and what they aren't—so people don't have a mistaken idea about what I'm portraying.

For the most part (and this was certainly true of last Sunday's posting) I write about how Ma'ikwe sees me and how those observations land with me. Or, more accurately, I write about how I understand that she sees me. While sometimes that includes complimentary reflections, mostly I focus on what's problematic. This is intentional. In consequence, my depictions are not balanced at all. They are not a balanced description of how Ma'ikwe sees me, nor are they a balanced description of our relationship challenges. 

I don't do this because I enjoy high drama or self-flagellation in public. I do it because:

a) Articulating Ma'ikwe's concerns forces me to be clear about what her issues are. I focus on the problems because that's where the heavy lifting is done, and I don't want to dilute their significance with sugar coating. I have a strong sense of self, and believe in my ability to solve problems and build healthy relationships. In order for that to work well it's important that my aura of self-confidence not become a protective armor that repulses feedback, thus dedicated myself to being transparent about what I hear.

b) Articulating Ma'ikwe's issues (if I do it well) demonstrates that I'm listening and at least have gotten off to a good start on the road to resolution (the point being that if you don't understand accurately what your partner is saying, it seriously undercuts your ability to have a productive response).

c) I am highly suspicious of relying solely on my own judgment in assessing what weight to give criticism of my actions and patterns. By sharing the criticism with a wider audience, I get the benefit of other perspectives on my not-so-great tendencies.




d) Dark corners are less scary when you shine the light on them. By openly admitting how bad issues can be, they become more tractable.

e) It generally works much better if I can prioritize understanding ahead of being understood. I'll still get my chance to say what's bothering me, or the ways in which I think Ma'ikwe criticisms are unfair or off base. First though, let's make sure I've heard them right.
 
f) Even though Ma'ikwe often feels that I hear her criticisms as more extreme than she means them, my aim is to lay them out as they landed with me. If I've overamped it, fine, let's dial it back. In my experience this is a lesser problem than the danger of underplaying the criticism. To be clear, I don't strive for exaggeration—I strive for energetic accuracy (articulating how Ma'ikwe's statements have landed with me). If I've missed the import (blowing it out of proportion), this gives us the chance to make the correction in real time.
 
g) Talking about the ways in which I get into trouble tends to be far more useful to readers than my writing about my relationship successes. Not only does it make me more human, but it's easier for people to connect with me. While I am loathe to make shit up for this purpose, it turns out I don't have to—I get into hot water often enough that I'm sufficiently illuminating and entertaining just reporting on the Best of Potholes as I stumble into them.

h) While it may well be interesting and instructive if I also wrote about my issues with Ma'ikwe (the other side of the story, as it were), I have a standard of not writing critically of others in my blog unless I have their express permission, and that definitely includes my wife (I first articulated this in my April 19, 2010 blog, Writing About My Life, But Not My Wife). While I sometimes choose to intentionally obscure attribution when I want to write about others critically, that is hardly a viable option when talking about my marriage ("I was in a conversation with one of my wives the other day…" would not mask anyone's identity).

i) I believe one of the greatest challenges to personal growth and robust relationships is our inability to welcome and hear accurately critical feedback. By focusing in my blog solely on the ways in which I'm perceived to be contributing to the problem—while resisting the urge to slop tar on others at the same time as a salve to my ego—I am trying to witness my ongoing efforts to handle feedback better.


In Defense of Imbalance
In working through tough issues it is my style to first probe criticisms to understand their underpinnings and the context in which they are experienced. If I'm having a significant reaction to receiving the information (which, luckily, doesn't happen every time, yet is always a possibility), there is a danger of my jumping into this probing step too abruptly—before admitting (either to myself or the other person) how their criticism is landing. This can come across as brittleness in my voice or a sharpness (lack of grace?) to my questions, which can then take on an inquisitional tone. At its worst, I can be flat out defensive, essentially punishing the speaker for their "temerity" in voicing concerns. When this happens the whole exchange goes south in a hurry.

Next I tend to go through a period of catastrophizing, where I imagine the worst and feel through the awful things that may ensue if the analysis is correct and I don't address it. While I don't tend to stay in this dark place for long and it helps me gain perspective on what's at stake and how my behaviors may be inadvertently damaging relationships, it can be awful for Ma'ikwe to witness my transit through this phase, which tends to include double doses of self-incrimination and remorse for bad things, many of which have not happened yet and probably never will. Ma'ikwe, I think, finds this a colossal waste of energy and painful to observe, yet it's part of how I get to center, how I demonstrate that I'm taking criticisms seriously, and how I prepare myself to respond without shying away from touching the tender spots.

Fortunately, Ma'ikwe and I have made considerable progress over the years in navigating this step better together: I indulge less in beating myself up, and move through this phase more quickly (sometimes minutes instead of days); in turn, Ma'ikwe has learned to give me room to go through this, trusting that I'll come out the other end, where we can begin constructive problem solving. 

The keys here are that I know I'm not being balanced, that I take full responsibility for my reactions, and that I then reengage with open ears and an open heart. Essentially, I am reporting here just my end of the work of tending the garden of our marriage. Ma'ikwe has her part in this as well. If she wants to write about that, that's her business.

The Dynamics of Doorknob Feedback

Two weeks ago, Ma'ikwe and I had a student reach the flash point at the end of the first weekend (of eight) of our facilitation training. After meeting each other for the first time Thursday evening—and apparently getting off to a hopeful start—everything unraveled for this woman over the course of the next 70 hours, to the point that she boiled over in a rant in the final hour Sunday afternoon. It was the first expression that Ma'ikwe and I had of her distress with the training, and by then it was essentially too late to do anything about it other than to listen. Essentially, she was giving us a devastating analysis with one hand on the doorknob, about to exit our lives. Yuck!

While it never feels good when someone is in pain—and it's extra hard when they're lashing out in the process—it was nonetheless important to know her upset and to try to glean what we could about where things had gone wrong. (While it's an valuable part of our training that the students get to witness how the trainers handle raw feedback, that doesn't mean we look forward to the experience.)

There were a number of factors that contributed to what happened:
—This woman had had no prior experience with intentional community and had trouble understanding the culture and norms of the host. We need to pay much more attention to orienting people who are unfamiliar with intentional community (which is almost always where the training weekends take place), so that the environment itself is more accessible (less mysterious) and not overwhelming. There's plenty of new stuff in the training and we don't need to compound the challenge of absorbing what's happening by making the students function in a foreign world without translation.

—The trainers (Ma'ikwe and I) need to be more diligent about explaining what we're doing at each step. That is, we need to lay out when we're modeling a behavior, when we're trying to make a teaching point, when we want the students to ask questions, when there are options about how we'll focus our time, when we want the students to take initiative, etc. While all of this gets easier as the class builds its own culture and rhythm, we are starting with a blank slate and need to road map very clearly to avoid confusion. Especially during Weekend I.

—The trainers need to explicitly protect space for students to approach them if they're having reactions to what's going on, or reactions to the trainers (alas, in the case that precipitated this essay, both were occurring). If the student isn't assured that this is available, things can slide downhill quite quickly. Poignantly, Ma'ikwe and I had explicitly checked with this struggling woman Saturday afternoon and offered her time to meet with us that evening. She turned us down, thinking we were only offering to discuss preparation for a facilitation assignment she had the next day; she didn't understand that our offer could also be used to discuss how she was struggling. Having interpreted our offer as inappropriate to her needs, it became another piece of evidence of our obliviousness, rather than a ray of hope. (I'm telling you, the fall from grace can be hard and swift.)

The point here is not to assign blame for what went wrong; it's to better grok how easily misunderstandings can cause minor rifts (Luke, there's a disturbance in the Force) to erode into unbridgeable chasms. As the trainers, it is ultimately our responsibility to make sure the students know that feedback offer is there.

In this particular incident, the woman chose to express her upset and then exit. She'd had a very hard weekend, didn't feel taken care of, lost any confidence she had in the competency of the trainers, and didn't want to continue. Things had gotten bad enough that by the time she spoke up, she was burning the bridges. After stating her piece, she made it clear she wasn't available for working on the issues she raised; she was only interested in hearing how her feedback landed. Honoring her request, several people reflected back what we'd heard, starting with Ma'ikwe and me. She reported having felt heard and then left.

Later that evening, she accepted an invitation to meet one-on-two with Ma'ikwe and me (in the presence of a neutral third party), where she gave us additional criticisms. Though these were not delivered in anger, her evening comments were more highly negative assessments and she cut short our attempts to respond. That is, she was still not interested in working the issues; she just wanted a second opportunity to tell us more fully of our failings.

I tell this story because this is as unsatisfying as it gets. The Sunday conversations with this woman were all one way, and by the time she spoke it was too late to attempt to repair the damage. And yet, this woman had every right to her feelings and to her choice to exit. As unpleasant as it was to sit through, and as disrespected and misunderstood as I felt about what was said (and how it was delivered), it does me no good whatsoever to attempt to protect myself from hearing it.

The distinction I'm making here is that I can be sad and frustrated that anyone relates to me this way, and yet it's absolutely in my interest to hear it if that's what's true for them. I need to keep the feedback channels to me as clear as possible in order to have accurate information about how I'm perceived. And that expressly means being as available as I can for raw feedback. While no fun, prohibiting it is just not smart. If I insist that feedback only be delivered in a pretty package ("I" statements only, please) then I am choking the feedback channels and run the risk of seriously distorting or insulating myself from valuable information.

To be sure, I'm not obliged to agree with the feedback—it's a complex matter deciding what weight to give criticism and whether you want to consider behavior changes in light of what you hear—I'm only making the point that it's never in your best interest to place barriers in the way of hearing it.

Working with Critical Feedback

People work with information in an amazing variety of ways. Understanding this on a practical level is one of the key insights into how to help groups function well. Often, when a person works differently than you, there's a tendency to jump to the conclusion that they either didn't hear correctly, or that they're ignoring what was just passed along if they're not responding in the way that you would with the same circumstances. While either of those interpretations may be correct, there is a profound third option: they process information differently than you do. And it may take a while to tell which of the three it is.

While this dynamic goes on all the time—people handling information differently—it's especially potent in the context of how people work with critical feedback. As you can imagine, this territory is tricky enough in the context of intimate relationships; it's exponentially more challenging with a bunch more people added into the equation, none of whom you may know as well as you do your partner.

Having just been on the receiving end of a serious load of critical feedback [see my previous blog, Tough Love from a Close Friend], I thought I'd share today how I labor with feedback—which may bear no relationship at all with how others handle it.

1. My initial work is to check for an emotional response. If the comments are surprising (that is, if I'm hearing the criticism for the first time—note that this is not necessarily the same as being told it for the first time) or are especially close to the bone (by which I mean reflections about how I'm not acting in alignment with my core identity) then I'm more apt I to respond emotionally and defensively. If for some reason I don't have a strong emotional response, then I can skip this step.

But let's suppose I do have an emotional response. If I'm out of control (always a possibility), I simply blurt out my response and we're off to the races. It's a knife fight on the plenary floor. There's no thinking involved; it's pure reaction.

However, there's a subtler version of this that's sometimes in play, and toward which I try to steer things. Sometimes I can feel the emotions welling up and resist acting on them as a survival imperative. Sometimes, my reptilian brain does not take control. In these situations, I make a decision that is situation specific. I look inward to identify the feelings and then assess my prospects that the audience in front of me can handle my expressing those feelings. In most groups, for example, my expressing fear, sadness, or despair has decent prospects for being heard well. In contrast with that, my expressing anger, irritation, or outrage may have no chance of leading to anything other than a thermonuclear exchange. Mind you, I'm projecting possibilities onto the field while in a state of distress, so there's no telling how accurately I'm seeing the situation; I'm just telling you how I've learned to cope.

Sometimes it works for me to come back at a later time and report on my emotional responses when I'm no longer in my feelings, and that can be less incendiary. (The point being that remembered anger stands a better chance than fulminating anger of being received as insightful, rather than incitement.) This is not simple stuff, and I'm making a delicate assessment about whether it will ultimately go better if I take off the gloves and let 'er rip, or set aside my emotional response until I can figure out a way to better package it for digestibility without sacrificing authenticity. (If that sounds confusing, think about how often sadness or fear underlay anger. Where you can find this link and skip the step where you express the anger, it may help your audience bridge to your experience without saying anything false.) Hint: my assessment about what's possible with my audience is strongly affected by whether we have an agreement about how to handle strong feelings as they occur, and whether we the skill to back that up.

2. Next I ask clarifying questions (which don't land neutrally if the queries are loaded with unacknowledged emotional affect), in an effort to make sure I understand fully what's been said and how that was rooted in the observer's experience of me.

3. If I can find evidence within myself that there's truth to the observations or I care enough about my relationship with the observer (note that I said "or" not "and"), then I go through a "catastrophizing" phase where I dwell in a personal hell of all the bad things that this can mean if fully true. This includes the ways in which I'm failing in my responsibilities, the ways in which I'm destructive of relationship, and the ways in which I'm venal and out of integrity. This is a very dark process and I try to conduct this phase in as isolated a setting as possible. (Take my word for it, you don't want to be in the room.) After nailing myself to the cross, it typically takes me about three days to rise again—which I reckon is the usual recovery time from crucifixions.

The point of this is that I completely mistrust my own ability to put a good spin on events (all the way up to denying that the sun rises in the East) and fail to take advantage of how others are reporting a noticeable gap between my words and actions. While the truth (such as we can know it) is rarely as bad as I can imagine it to be, it is also probably worse than I'll admit on the first pass. Thus, I've learned to go through this purgatory step as a way to better balance my ultimate response.

While in this phase, I inventory my conscious experience, looking carefully for evidence that the accusations are true at least some of the time. I approach this work as dispassionately as possible, so as not to miss the chance to validate the observer's comments.

4. Where I can find evidence that validates the criticism (sometimes it is enough that there's overwhelming plausibility, by which I mean that it makes no sense to me that I would have been completely oblivious to a thing, even though I have no conscious memory of awareness), my next step is to let go of my knee-jerk story of innocence (or significantly reduced culpability), and embrace that I actually did the ugly thing I'm accused of. (The beauty of this process is that you can back away from the trap of insisting on knowing the Truth about what you did or didn't do; so long as you can imagine that you might have done the bad thing, it's generally better all around if you just accept that you did it, and shift your focus to constructive responses.)

5. Next I develop a picture of what kinds of behavior change are called for and practicable. In essence, I'm trying to figure out what am I willing to do differently. Putting these changes into effect generally means a lot of conscious focus and discipline. While it tends to be challenging, it is nonetheless possible.

6. Finally, I report to the observer(s) what I've been able to accept about their criticism and what I'm prepared to do about it as a prophylactic against repetition. To the extent possible, I try to offer attempted behavior changes unilaterally, rather than as part of a quid pro quo.

Often, I'll have requests of the observers of two kinds:
a) What things can I do that will help you believe that I'm taking your feedback seriously and genuinely working to repair the damage to our relationship? While I may be unable or unwilling to attempt everything I get in response to this request, there will generally be things I can embrace.

b) Are you willing to give me reflections (especially in the near term, when my proposed behavior changes are not yet well-formed as new patterns) on how I'm either doing better or not doing better with respect to the dynamics in question?

• • •

Personal growth work is, not surprisingly, very personal. While I'm pleased to share with readers this outline of how I approach it and why, I'm pretty humble about this and make no claims about superiority. It's just what I do. Not only is personal work a matter of different strokes for different folks, but a good many never put their oar in the water. And it's understandable: personal growth hard work with uncertain results.

I laughed when a good friend sent me an email after reading my previous blog, which ended with the pithy assessment, "Personal growth sucks." She was right of course, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyway.