Jumping Off Points for Deeper Nuance

Nuance is everything. I saw a very sweet 2×2 from Amy Edmondson while I was taking one of my rare peeks at Twitter. At first glance my reaction was “cool!”

Then the term psychological safety caught my eye because I have been wary of the term. Safety on whose terms? For whom? I have become cautious as I’ve increasingly realized that I have projected my sense of safety on others who have NOT experienced psychological safety at all in the “shared context.”

Here is the tweet, then some comments below.

Amy, I have penned this without reaching out to you to talk about it. If that would be helpful in any way, let me know. I understand that psychological safety is a core of your work, and that my knowledge in this area is experiential and probably peripheral. I have learned a lot from your work over the years. The observations and wonderings I offer here are mostly directed at myself along my learning path.

What I appreciated about Amy’s post is the recognition that learning (or doing, etc.) require us to being open to being challenged, that we need positive, creative abrasion to bring our best to a challenge. It was what she proposed as supporting that state that left me uneasy: the idea of lowering standards, and the perceptions (reality) of being wrapped in cotton wool. The words “apathy,” “anxiety” and “comfort” taking on what sort of judgement? Whose standards are we talking about? Whose perception of who is getting wrapped in cotton wool?

What in this 2X2 honors the individual humans, their identities, as well as the output of a team? What helps the group reveal what is working and what must change to get to “learning.” What values and lived experiences are behind the generalizations?

I am bothered that apathy is the term for “showing up with our hearts and minds elsewhere, choosing self protection over exertion.” At some point, how much do you ignore and when do you choose to self-protect? How is, for example, self protection against racism, ableism and sexism evidence of low performance standards? How much is this the individuals lack of psychological safety and how much is it evidence of an oppressive system? How are self- protection and exertion actually related?

If this were a self reflection tool, a nuance might be “how am I protecting myself through disengagement?” What is causing my disengagement? Who is causing it? What power do I have to change it? Example: how does this land for a woman of color in a male dominated tech meeting who is constantly disrespected or ignored. For a person in the room who is the only person doing primary care giving for a loved one and has a lot on both work and home lines and may appear distracted? For the person with no power in the group? For some, this may be the ongoing experience of white supremacy.

I realize here I may be conflating apathy with anxiety. Thus the simplification continues to break down my understanding… Who knows when most perceived apathy is actually expression of anxiety?

Then to Comfort Zone – what if this was Respect Zone? If we had sufficient understanding of ourselves and each other, then challenging the ideas going into the work or learning itself can be experienced in the space where assumptions about the individual are not subtext for the presence or absence of respect.

So how does the 2×2 help us understand and best choose our approaches and actions? How does it move beyond stereotype or generalization? NUANCE!

If the use of the 2×2 is a reflection by a manager on a member of the team or of the team as a whole, it could feel like judgement, unconscious or conscious bias or even harassment to team members. Or it could be the starting point of asking a new type of question to learn more, understand more deeply rather than judge about people’s experiences and behaviors.

If this is a starting point to reflect as a team about how we all can show up and explore what changes might be useful to the group, how do we do it without perpetuating more oppression and misunderstanding along the way? And if it is for the latter, how could the quadrants be more generative and less judgmental?

Even as I write this I think, whoa, there is so much going on here. How would I represent it in a different way? If we all stood on the same ground, we were homogeneous, shared values (and probably biases), it probably could be done. But in the diverse world we live in, a 2×2 won’t do it.

We could reexamine it from a different 2×2 approach like “Critical Uncertainties” and look at a pair of variables that are important to our work/learning and are out of our direct control. Then we could see what options we could take to get to the “Learning Quadrant” depending on how those variables played out. We would expose our assumptions and uncertainties rather than judge and compartmentalize. I am sketching something now to see if this idea might bear fruit. (Future post! Right now I’m still brainstorming the uncertainties)

So far I have been throwing my own wild generalizations. Probably not helpful. Eugene Eric Kim replied to my Tweet asking for an example of nuance that gets lost in this type of matrix. Good ask, Eugene, as always. Here goes. And I have not written here in my blog about working on my own racism and white supremacy, but that work informs this post – and I recognize I’m still learning and may not get this “right.” I also recognize I can take that risk. Ironic.

As a person who has in the past unconsciously facilitated the loss of nuance, particularly in terms of my privilege as a white person in the US (and even abroad), I will give an example on myself.

I prioritized my world view as a feminist and offered a suggestion to a woman of color with whom I was cofacilitating. We were talking about how men often ignored what women said in meetings. I suggested that mixing high status language with low status body language helped to get men to pay attention to the issue I was putting on the table, instead of being ignored. Some of this was classic self-effacement moves, use of humor to put the men at ease rather than feel intimidated by me.

Turns out this mixing of high/low status is a classic move in the Improv world. Turns out I have been unconsciously using this much of my professional life. AND it turns out it doesn’t work for everyone, particularly if they are the “other” in the room. What creates psychological safety for me may not for you.

My co-facilitator immediately shared that if she used the status mix, she would lose even more credibility as a woman of color. How she talked, how she dressed –everything was always being judged through the lens of the (mostly white) men in the room. So taking a risk with this mixed status approach could actually lower her status. This is not psychological safety from any point of view. While my use of it may launch me into that mythical upper right quadrant of the matrix, Learning, it may move someone else to feeling apathy or anxiety. My using such an approach as a facilitator, let alone as a participant, can (and has) done damage. What worked great for me, didn’t work for her. (By the way, this was a startlingly wonderful learning moment that came from my colleagues generosity and I still feel it cost her a lot to even engage with me about it that has NOTHING to do with apathy or anxiety. My learning cost her labor.)

The nuance of how we understand these quadrants, these words, let alone what psychological safety means and feels like for people different from us, is essential. Boiling it down looks cool. But without nuance, it could be damaging. (Just look at the figured in the image. They might be perceived as white males…)

Finding the Roots of Confusiasm

Over the years, the concept of “confusiasm” has become not only near and dear to my heart, but useful in so many ways that I never expected. It became a rallying cry for emergent, collaborative learning at a professional development project for professors at the University of Guadalajara (UdG Agora Project – confusiasmo! Translated!). It is a term that has been lovingly adopted by the Liberating Structures global network of practitioners. It has had its moments as a meme on Twitter.

Confusiasm is the happy coupling of confusion and enthusiasm. You know, that moment when something interesting is happening but you can’t quite understand it, but it feels really right. The verge of discovery. The hunch that in a messy, complex situation you are starting to see patterns that give you just enough confidence to keep moving forward and not give up.

Carl Jackson

Carl Jackson: the father of Confusiasm?

Because of the value it has accrued, I wanted to go back to my understanding of the roots of the word – when and where it was coined. My memory of it came from a game that emerged at one of the face-to-face gatherings of the KM4Dev (Knowledge management for development) community of practice, instigated by Carl Jackson, now of Westhill Knowledge in the UK. I think it was the 2006 Brighton gathering, but I’m not sure. It could have been Almada, Portugal in 2008. It starts showing up in websearches in 2008 so I suspect our play with the word was in 2006.

Carl has this uncanny ability to create portmanteaus, words. From Wikipedia: “a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words or their phonemes (sounds) are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog,[or motel, from motor and hotel.” All during the gathering he could coin them faster, and with a great deal more humor, than the rest of us. It was amazing!

So is that where confusiasm was born? I don’t really know. In the true spirit of Confusiasm, Carl wonders if it may have been our KM4Dev peer Ewen Le Borgne who coined the word at Almada. Ewen is that kind of human being too! So it is all possible. Ewen, what do you remember?

The earliest web reference to confusiasm I could find was actually a typo in a reference in a research paper, mispelling Confusianism with Confusiasm. (The paper was cited as Lim, C. and Lay, C.S. (2003) ”Confusiasm and the protestant work ethic”. Asia Europe Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 321-322. In the journal, the title is Confucianism and the Protestant Work Ethic)

Nowadays I see it in many places.

In today’s world, so much is messy and uncertain. Our ability to predict things is, well, paltry. But we have to keep going. So let’s marshal our confusiasm! Onward! And THANKS CARL!

Our inscrutable self-delusion

I’m cleaning up draft blog posts. Can you tell? Some are just terrific quotes worth posting and amplifying. This is one of them!

We understand ourselves in the first person, and because of this we address our remarks, actions and emotions not to the bodies of other people but to the words and looks that originate on the subjective horizon where they alone can stand.

This mysterious fact is reflected at every level in our language, and is at the root of many paradoxes. When I talk about myself in the first person, I utter propositions that I assert on no basis and about which, in a vast number of cases, I cannot be wrong. But I can be wholly mistaken about this human being who is doing the speaking. So how can I be sure that I am talking about that very human being? How do I know, for example, that I am Roger Scruton and not David Cameron suffering from delusions of grandeur?

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COMMENTS
To cut the story short: By speaking in the first person we can make statements about ourselves, answer questions, and engage in reasoning and advice in ways that bypass all the normal methods of discovery. As a result, we can participate in dialogues founded on the assurance that, when you and I both speak sincerely, what we say is trustworthy: We are “speaking our minds.” This is the heart of the I-You encounter.

Hence as persons we inhabit a life-world that is not reducible to the world of nature, any more than the life in a painting is reducible to the lines and pigments from which it is composed. If that is true, then there is something left for philosophy to do, by way of making sense of the human condition. Philosophy has the task of describing the world in which we live — not the world as science describes it, but the world as it is represented in our mutual dealings, a world organized by language, in which we meet one another I to I.

Source: If We Are Not Just Animals, What Are We? – The New York Times

Today’s before and after #Change11 MOOC Slides

I’m working on getting the chat – which was SUPER rich, but in the mean time, here are the “before and after” slides of our conversation for #Change11. We used the white board a lot!

It was really a stream of consciousness hour — not a presentation at all, where we played around with change (what, who), multiple-membership (the heaven and hell of many places/people to learn with and from) and the roles of “social artist” and “transversal.”

I confess full blown jet lag non-linearity. When I have the recording link, I’ll edit this post and put it in. To those present, what did you walk away with (beyond, perhaps, a headache!) 🙂

via #Change11 MOOC Session – October 31.

Follow-up from the Leadership Learning Community Webinar

Last Monday I was a guest of the Leadership Learning Community for an short online gathering. The description was pretty loose and they expected around 50 people to show up.

Communities, Networks and Engagement: Finding a Place for Action
We have so many online tools at our disposal to theoretically connect and activate engagement with others. But what happens when we say “we’re building an online community” but few engage? When is it worth the work and effort? What are our options? And if we build it, what are some starting points to help us work towards successful engagement?

We were using a GoToWebinar platform, which I’ll admit, I don’t like because it is really a broadcast tool, with no peer to peer interaction and all participant interaction funneled to one person (and there were four of us involved in producing the event, so lots of forwarding, etc.)  I decided to abandon a more formal presentation style to try and engage people from the start because after all, this was what the webinar was about! So we started with some polls, and then with my host, Grady McGonagill, we took questions during the presentation and Grady and I diverged into conversation as well. Consequently, I did not get through the material. So I promised to follow up with the slides, resources and answers to any outstanding questions we did not get to. Thus this blog post. Here we go…

Questions

  • Any tips or recommended resources for facilitating hybrid online/phone focus groups with smaller groups (5-15 max)? Also, any recommendations re: optimal group size for this sort of interaction? If the group is all online – you are lucky. The most challenging groups are mixed online and offline. For facilitating, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. 1) Think multi-modality. Audio alone doesn’t work well for a lot of us to stay engaged. Have a visual element – a shared Google doc or presentation, a wiki/chat room in Meetingwords.com or use the white board in a web meeting tool. Of course, this visual aspect needs to be relevant. I really like pairing chat rooms w/ audio (be it on phone, skype or whatever) where people can talk to each other without having to wait for audio “air time.” This does challenge some people who are less comfortable multitasking. You might consider methods like “the clock” both for phone and web meetings (see here and here). 2) Think 7 minute chunks. Break things up alternating content sharing with interacting, visual with audio. Remember, it is hard to pay attention when our bodies are not in the same place. 3) Group size issues are similar to those F2F. Once you get over 5 or 6 it is harder for everyone to have a chance to speak up. With some web tools, you can do break out rooms — just like F2F!
  • How do you balance “quality control” with network engagement/ participation/ responsibility? I was very intrigued by this question. It is probably helpful to figure out what we mean by quality control. I’ll take a guess and someone chime in if I get it wrong. I’m assuming this is about content — did a member give correct or useful advice. Was the data shared accurate, etc. My experience is that in communities where people care about what they are working with (the “domain”) they also care about quality and help weed out the “iffy” stuff. The key is to cultivate habits of critical thinking and useful practices to apply that thinking (which means civility!) If we are talking about “quality people” I’m assuming this means attracting people who know something about the domain. Again, if the learning matters, you will attract good people. It can feel, however, like a leap of faith. One word? LEAP!
  • We have persons in developing countries as well as in places where the internet is not an issue… this produces a big challenge to overcome to connect the majority of them. How do you engage them? How do you make them feel part of the community (normally they believe and put money, but not always participate). Again, I need to be careful in my interpretation of this question! When we work globally, we have both similarities and differences to account for. First, if there is clarity on shared domain (what the group is interested in an how it is concretely relevant to them today!) you are ahead of the game. Many global communities I’ve been involved with have very broad, generic domains. While no one could disagree with them, they were so broad everyone deprioritized their participation. A big tent may hold many people, but a big tent can also be empty. Consider focusing the domain in a way that carries relevance for people NOW. Then make the tent bigger later. Second, cultural diversity (linguistic, national, professional, gender, etc.) can be harder to detect online, but can trip us up faster. I find making these differences discuss-able little bit by little bit helps. Encourage people to share their ways of working and interacting. Compare and contrast a bit. This helps people find common ground and know when to “cut some slack” for others’ behaviors which they may not — ahem — love themselves! Finally, talk about participation — don’t assume it. Ask for small, doable things from people to build that sense of and experience of engagement. Don’t ask for TOO much — people are busy no matter where they live! Small bites are tasty! (See also the next two questions)
  • Do you have any recommendations for technology when your community is spread around the world? In my experience where bandwidth and electricity are limiting elements the most effective technology is email based technology. The use of text on mobile phones is the first technology that might unseat email. There are also community rhythm issues when you have people coming from diverse bandwidth contexts. For example, when you have a mix of folks who are “always online and reply quickly to messages AND people who are online once a week or every two weeks, you can get a lot of asymmetry in participation with those on less feeling left out and “late to the party.” If this happens to you, encourage the always-on folks to slow down. It’s good practice for us “fast fast fast” people!
  • What does diversity mean in this discussion?  How does class diversity and online access play a role?  How do multilingual networks connect and thrive?  What hosting platform handles multilingual groups best? Diversity means MANY things and some have different implications than others. Lets start with linguistic diversity. I have used platforms that have multilingual interfaces — and which one will work for you depends on what languages you need. But the user interface is just step one. That helps people get online. But the key is having a) critical mass within each linguistic group for ongoing interaction and b) “bridgers” who help summarize and translate. I’ve blogged a bit about this issue and you can read some of the articles here.
  • Can you repeat at some point how to access the wiki? I mentioned two wikis. One was my online facilitation resources wiki here. The other is the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit, a collaborative effort to capture a variety of online and offline methods.
  • CPsquare doesn’t give much on their initial website — any chance you all can give more guidance on how to connect to it? It is hard to get a sense of all the wonderful things that happen around CP2. First, it is important to know it is a membership community. You can see the blog for free, but ya gotta join, ok?  For example, there is the quarterly “Foundations of Communities of Practice” online workshop which is a deep dive into CoPs. John Smith, the community steward, told me to mention”help in real time” which is a discussion board for Q&A with fabulous people resources, the month telecon on “shadow the leader” where the community hears about the community leadership practices of one person over the arc of a year  (currently Marc Coenders on evolving his evolving business model), the R&D series on student projects where mostly PhD candidates support each other and then when drafts of work are ready, the community offers feedback. For more details, read CP2 blog for news and updates. My shorthand? CP2 is a place to engage with others who care about communities of practice!

Have other questions or thoughts? Chime in with a comment.
Slides: