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Working Better - Together

Transforming ourselves and our organizations.

Hard work area ahead – Find some great music!

The areas of: thinking, emotions, mindsets, beliefs and behavior have often been given a misleading name in the business world.  Naming these areas as “soft” skills was a way of dismissing their importance in relation to the dominant view of more ”measurable”  areas like those of  accounting and production. From a whole systems perspective, we are invited to see the interconnectedness of everything. And naming any distinct skill as hard or soft is more deceptive than helpful.  The hard work ahead is to see and practice all leadership skills as an integral whole.

Developing and integrating a full spectrum of leadership skills is one of the greatest challenges we face in organizations. As a seasoned consultant shared with me the other day, we are not seeing a plethora of great leadership in most organizations. Doing “more of the same” in regards to process and training will get us – “more of the same” results. Leadership training as an individual and collective practice will have to change to meet the new demands of our global economy.  And if you are inclined to agree with Gary Hamel, we will need to co-create organizations that are “as flexible and adaptive as change itself.”

This will not be a “soft” change. It will be the hard work of transformation. This kind of change is going to be from: the inside out, bottom up, the head to the heart, local to global, competitive to collaborative, mine to ours, and selfish to sustainable for all. It is not for the faint of heart and wannabe leaders, or as the kids might language it – posers. This is a transformational call. It is going to ask each of us to move out of our individual comfort zone/ego, and work better together, for the benefit of all.

When I was young, my mother was a single parent with four children. The cleaning and upkeep of our home, to my mother’s Belgian/Lithuanian standards, was hard work. However, when it comes to hard work, I did learn a few important lessons. It is always easier to do with others than just by yourself.  I think that lesson is applicable here. I also learned that it is more enjoyable to work hard to great music. Hit the play button and let’s get this transformation started!

No Comments by Kevin Buck on August 13, 2010
filed in Leadership, Personal Development

What if we were all connected?

Years ago, I was invited to be the main speaker for a family retreat in Santa Barbara. They wanted me to address family systems theory for the group. At the time, I was teaching family systems theory for Pepperdine University at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP). This seemed like a very simple request for someone with my background and expertise. The zinger, and you know there was one coming, was that my audience would be anywhere from – seven to seventy. Wow!

Personally, I love challenges to do things differently. Well, this was a wonderful opportunity. I knew I had to keep it simple and I had to engage the younger audience right away. So, I asked for six to eight children to come up front and help me with a demonstration. The young folks came forward and were happy to “play” with me in the front of the room. I asked each of them to engage in a physical activity that could be done in the space we had available. The variety of activity included: running in place, spinning clockwise, spinning counterclockwise, walking back and forth across the space both diagonally and side to side, and standing still. At my instruction, they would begin their physical activity and then I would ask them to stop. They were ready and the room was filled with curiosity and anticipation.

I signaled them to begin and the chaotic activity and fun began. After about thirty seconds, I asked them to stop. The audience still did not “get” what I was trying to do. For the second part of the exercise, I asked everyone to do the same exact thing as before, except with one minor modification – they had to be holding hands. Once they were all connected, I asked them to repeat their activity. It was priceless as the chaos and laughter of the group ensued. Now they got it! In family systems theory the belief is that we are all connected. We are all influenced by each other in the system. This worked so well at the family retreat; I adopted it for graduate school!

From a systems and/or ecosystem perspective, we are all connected. We see it in nature, politics, business, our communities and our families. So often, we have thought and acted as if we weren’t, with very terrible intended and unintended consequences. I think that we are beginning to realize what the children realized when they held hands: we are all connected and therefore I cannot pretend what I do/we do, does not impact everyone. We are not separate from the rest. We are all part of a whole. As Albert Einstein said, it is “an optical delusion of consciousness’ to think otherwise.

No Comments by Kevin Buck on August 4, 2010
filed in Collaboration, Leadership

A Sustainable Relationship with Time

“If you fight with time, time always wins. Better to befriend it, because time is inseparable from yourself.”    Lama Surya Das, New Dharma Talks

So, how conscious are you of your relationship with time? What is the relationship that you currently have? What would you like to co-create together going forward?

When I was younger I was relatively unconscious of my relationship with time. So, I had a tendency to over commit myself. Upon reflection, I think this was influenced by a few things.

First of all, I thought I had an unlimited amount of time, because I felt like I had unlimited energy. One of the great gifts of youth is such an abundance of energy. As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, we learn that time and energy are not infinite resources. They are finite and we must honor them in a way that allows us our own sustainability.

Another influence on my relationship with time was that I was single. My time was my time. I would often say to clients, when I was a therapist that if you want to always do what you want to do, that it might be best to be alone.  When I am sharing part of my time with another, then my time is shared with your time and we must co-create our time. Now what this really means is that I have less time for just me and more time for us. That is sometimes an adjustment for folks!

A deeper insight into my youth was that being busy, and being of service to other people was important to my self-esteem. Therefore, I had a tendency to overextend myself. Based on my desire to be helpful to others, in order to be seen as a person of service (ego), I took on more than I had time for. The unconscious part of this was that time was not the problem, my desire to be liked as a person of service was. Once I figured this out through the help of spiritual direction, I was able to consciously choose a different relationship with time. Quite simply, I learned to say no to things. And to my surprise, the world did not come to an end!

As my relationship with time matured, I learned to pay more attention to how I was doing the relationship. As Surya Das says, “Better to befriend it, because time is inseparable from yourself.” Instead of blaming time as the problem, I came to see that how I managed my relationship with time was the key. If you think about it, we always have the same amount of time, everyday. The amount of time never really changes. How we manage our relationship with time is what changes. And how we see time is what changes us.

No Comments by Kevin Buck on July 28, 2010
filed in Motivating Change, Personal Development

Seeking Rhythm in the Dance of Life

I have been a long time fan of the poet, David Whyte, since I met him in 1992. In his latest work, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, he addresses the disconnected dualism of the modern conundrum of work-life balance, and instead offers a trinity of relationships – work, self and relationship/other. To borrow a concept from Trinitarian theology, he frames the three relationships as – distinct, but not separate. They all are mutually supportive conversations that co-create each other.

I have never liked the language of work –life balance. It is a dualistic view that creates an ongoing battle that is never won. Balance is commonly defined as a state of equilibrium. In the complexity of life, where change is the constant, finding a state of equilibrium is elusive at best and horribly frustrating, most of the time. I agree with David Whyte that we need to reimagine it. Work-life balance as a concept does not work. Let it go and make space for something more helpful.

A bigger and more connected picture is to view these three relationships in their complexity and wholeness. Finding the rhythm amongst them  is learning to dance the subtleties of their interaction with each other.  It is here, in this space of movement and pauses, that they are re-imagined as a collective whole seeking rhythm with one another in the dance of life – your life. I encourage you to read the book and allow the reimagining to begin. Enjoy the wholeness of who you are.

No Comments by Kevin Buck on July 16, 2010
filed in Personal Development

Stop, there is something to see here!

I was having an energizing and engaging conversation with a friend and colleague the other day.  We were talking about how so many folks seem to be operating out of fear, and are looking at their life through a very narrow and constricted lens.  It is as if you want to be the” broader perspective police” and instruct folks, “Stop, step away from the curb, there is more to be seen here!” Thanks Dan!

When we are caught in fear and anxiety, we have a tendency to narrow our focus and lose perspective. This is a legacy gift from our ancestral past, when fear and anxiety were stimulated by threats that could be life ending.  Most of what we experience today does not come with such profound potential.  So, the instinctual responses of freeze, fight or flight, do not help with our more complex concerns. Being reactive is less helpful when complexity is knocking at the door of your concerns.

A more helpful choice is to respond, not react, by pausing for a moment and taking a good look around the entirety of the situation.  Instead of reacting to what is immediately in front of us, pause and look around to assess a broader perspective.  The benefits being that we see ourselves more systemically – connected to the whole. We are not just our isolated selves in the midst of some random chaos. We are connected to a larger whole of relationships with others.  And what I choose to do in response to my concerns, effects all my connections in the environment – intended or unintended.

There is not only the issue of what we have to give to the broader system; there is what we can receive. Take a broader perspective and see who and what is available to you – what do “we” have to offer you. All of this reminds me of and African proverb. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  Let’s go far together.  It is the only way we will be able to sustainably solve the complex and systemic problems we face together in the world, our work, and our relationships.

Stop! There is something to see here – it is us connected. Our innate connection to the whole gives me hope.

1 Comment by Kevin Buck on July 9, 2010
filed in Collaboration, Leadership, Personal Development

Can we talk?

The other day I was having lunch with a friend who works in the technology industry,  and he said something that has really been working me.  He was talking about how the mobile device industry is headed to a place where we will have one separate device that interfaces, or talks with, with all of our other electronics. I think most of us would not see this as startling news. Our current “cell phones” are already there in a lot of ways.  It was his next statement that caught my ear the most.  He said, “Since the devices need to talk with each other, the people who make them need to be able to talk with each other. “

One never knows where the lesson around collaboration may come from. Since our mobile devices need the ability to talk with each other, it would be helpful if we facilitated “their” need to communicate with each other, by having the humans talk with each other.  Ok.  As a former therapist, when folks would come to visit me around the need for change, I learned to go through any open door they were willing to give me. If the open door for better communication and collaboration in the workplace is driven by our devices need to talk with each other – I am in.

I just find it interesting that machines are inspiring this new collaboration. And in some ways this is not new. One of the best examples of workplace collaboration is the building of the international space station. Having worked with folks in the aerospace industry, I have heard great stories about what it takes to communicate and collaborate across so many countries and industries. When we find a reason to do so, we humans can figure out how to communicate in order to align and integrate our efforts.

So, we seem to have the ability to communicate and collaborate about how to build things together. It appears that we could leverage this skill in other areas also if we chose to do so. I have a few global concerns that could use this skill set and I imagine that you do also. Can we talk?

1 Comment by Kevin Buck on June 28, 2010
filed in Collaboration, Dialogue Skills

Living in the Land of And

I was recently in Greenville, South Carolina providing training on the art and skill of facilitation for a major international corporation. They had wisely decided that prior to implementing a lean process improvement initiative; their folks needed specific training around facilitating process, if a process improvement initiative was going to be successful. Having seen other organizations just “roll out” similar performance processes, without facilitation training, and therefore experiencing subsequent lack of traction and ultimately failure, I was impressed with the wisdom of this leadership decision.

During the facilitation training, in the process of debriefing a recent exercise, one of the participants asked how the facilitator decides between two different ideas being suggested in a given group. I responded by saying that it is not within the role of the facilitator to make that decision. Actually, the facilitator would do best to facilitate that decision amongst the group.  As a facilitator of a group process, it is important not to get caught in deciding the either/ or. When we are in the role of being a facilitator, it is best if we live in the Land of And, and not the either/or.

The group just chuckled at the idea of “the Land of And”.  It became a pivotal idea and fun mantra for the rest of the training. One of the participants said that I should write a blog about it. Thank you for the idea and here you go.

In business and in politics, we live in a culture of debate.  In debate, one makes arguments for, or against, a particular proposition, in order to prevail against the other team.  I remember this from being on the high school debate team. As a logical practice, debate was intended to explore both sides of any given proposition, in order to facilitate greater understanding of the proposition. However, I don’t experience it being used that way in our culture. Debate seems to have taken on more of the trappings of competition, than greater understanding. I am right or you are wrong. I win or you lose.  It is either/ or thinking to the extreme, and it polarizes people.

Living in the Land of And is more inclusive. It makes room for all of us to be part of the conversation, and not the debate.  If you want to engage folks in the process of improving performance, or anything for that matter, then we need to intentionally co-create the space for conversation that is more akin to dialogue than debate.  We can help folks to work better – together by facilitating conversations about them, with them.  When we invite folks to join us in the Land of And, they become our partners and not our competition.  And in these challenging times, I welcome partners.

No Comments by Kevin Buck on June 7, 2010
filed in Collaboration, Dialogue Skills, Facilitation, Quality Improvement

Do you see what I don’t see?

Even though I had the reputation of being very quiet and not very talkative in my youth, teachers and fellow students thought I would be good at speaking. This was perplexing to me. What did they see that I didn’t see?

So, here I am in my fifties and I have been speaking to groups since I was a teenager. They, the community, seemed to see something in me that I would have never seen in myself. I never would have volunteered to be a speaker. And I was open to the invitation, mostly out of curiosity.

I am imagining that you have had the experience of being asked to do something that you would have never imagined for yourself, or by yourself. Maybe it was to be a part of a team or group, to do an activity that stretched you, or to take on a leadership role. The invitation came from others, you thought about it, and then said yes. They saw something in you that you could not see on your own, and now you could not imagine it being otherwise. What a gift!

I believe that one of the reasons it is important to be in collaboration with others, to be in community with others, is because we need others to call forth in us what we might not see in ourselves. There is no place for playing small, when we open our hearts and minds to being of service to the call of a community that needs us, and needs us to bring the wholeness of who we are, not just our own limited view.

I get it. I know that in order to lean into the wholeness of who I am – I need others. We are not meant to be on the journey alone.  Lama Surya Das and I have joined together to co-create the community, metaWisdom, where ourselves and others will engage in dialogues that call forth enlightened leadership and compassionate action. I hope that you will join us.

No Comments by Kevin Buck on May 6, 2010
filed in Collaboration, Personal Development, metaWisdom

Collaborating for a change

There is a paradigm shift at play with a dominant cultural story of the hero. Heroes may make great story telling for their individual glory, but in reality they do the community a disservice. If I am waiting for the hero to save the day, then I do not have to own my part for what is not working. It may be a great fantasy for children and the narcissistic ego of adults who do not want to grow up, but it has not served the development of teams, organizations and communities, both local and global. We do not need the individual hero. We need collaboration for a change.

We have had countless examples of the interconnectedness of the global community over the last few years, from the economic meltdown to the most recent natural occurrence of the Icelandic volcano. We can no longer truly believe that we can live and play in our own little sandbox and not have it impact others. It would be a delusion to think so at this point. Listen to the wisdom of Albert Einstein:

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking, if humankind is to survive.”

We do require a substantially new way of thinking. It involves tapping the wisdom of the community and not just the one. Collaborative thinking invites us to a process that is always widening the circle. Who else needs to be involved? Who else is this impacting? Whose voice is not being heard?

Widening our circle of compassion begins with our desire to collaborate for a change with our own thinking, so that we might free ourselves to live and love more fully with all of creation. As we let go of the story of the lone hero, we begin to liberate ourselves from that lonely cell of separateness because we see we are connected, and we need to collaborate, if humankind is to survive.

No Comments by Kevin Buck on April 25, 2010
filed in Collaboration, Motivating Change

Metacogntion: Thinking about our thinking

“The most challenging part of being in a relationship is coming to realize the other person is not you.” Kevin Buck

In the process of thinking about our thinking, we may come to realize that others think differently than ourselves. For most of us, we are more bewildered than curious about how this might be. I may be completely baffled as to how and why you think and act differently than me. When our only lens is our lens, then others do seem pretty strange. They are indeed strangers to the self referencing that I have grown accustomed to for me.

A rite of passage for most of us is the first time we spend the night at a friend’s house. Unbeknownst to us, we have wandered into a seemingly familiar territory that can end up being oh so foreign. I must have been about eight years old when I slept over at a neighbor’s house across the street. Now everything seemed pretty normal till we went downstairs for breakfast.

I had smelled the wonderful aroma of pancakes wafting from the kitchen downstairs into the bedroom upstairs. I love pancakes! As I made my way downstairs to the kitchen I was filled with desirous anticipation and hunger. Mrs. Anderson was making pancakes on the griddle and cooking up sausages in a pan on the stove. I saw her pouring the batter onto the griddle and was all of a sudden stunned. The pancake she was making was tiny! Yikes! In my house that meant only one thing – we were out of batter. I was so perplexed, how could she be out of batter before we even started? Then to my utter disbelief, she poured another tiny pancake and then another. Why was she doing this?

My lens for pancakes was that my mother poured “honkin” sized pancakes that filled an entire plate. You could only eat a couple. With this new experience of pancakes I had to recalculate. How many of these tiny little pancakes would I need to eat? Why would anyone do it this way? Why would you make ten or twelve tiny little pancakes when you could get the job done with a lot less “honkin” pancakes? These people are strange!

As I reflect back on this experience, I see how much my family experience had influenced what was “right” about making pancakes, along with a million other self –referenced biases. The neighbors were strange compared to my home grown experience of pancakes. However, it was a turning point for me. It created an unquenchable curiosity for me about other people and why they might be different than me. Thanks Mrs. Anderson!

No Comments by Kevin Buck on February 9, 2010
filed in Personal Development
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