Integrative Complexity

Monitoring your internal condition

So, the green track this week is to understand a bit more about Scharmer’s model by reading a short post on it. And to use that understanding to try and monitor your internal condition in your next meeting.

Use a timer to check inside yourself every few minutes, and just make a note of whether you feel open, closed or in the middle, and what may have made you that way. Then deliberately try and reset yourself to ‘open’ and see if you can maintain it.

Monitoring their internal condition

Before you attempt to use monitoring internal condition with your team, try to build up your own ability to maintain awareness of internal condition. Both your own, and the overall climate of the meeting at any point.

Develop your own practical understanding of what is happening within yourself and in the climate of the meeting. What shifts it one way or another. And what are the consequences of either state in terms of achieving the purpose of the meeting and the team.

Monitoring our internal condition

If you are up to it. Introduce the idea of Scharmer’s work to your team. Talk about your observations from the Blue track in a way that people can remain open to it. Avoiding anything that might put individuals on the defensive.

And see how the team feels about trying it out for themselves.

If they are ‘up for it’, pause the meeting at regular points (perhaps every 15minutes, or when the climate shifts perceptibly) and invite people to silently check their own inner condition, and to think about the overall climate at that point.

And then lead a discussion or exploration regarding how the dynamics developed, and what we can all do differently.

You will know you are going in the right direction when you find the language creeping in to the meeting itself, and people willing to be open about their own part in ‘getting it wrong’.

This meta-level monitoring of ourselves and the meeting can make meetings many more times more efficient and effective.

Bring back the flipchart

Flipcharts were a wonderful mechanism. They made the conversation, and the patterns of insight visible. People could see their contribution to an emerging conclusion. And the consensus of opinion was more explicit.

But as meetings have moved online, their use has declined, and their digital alternatives not been quite as convenient. As a result, if you look back over your meetings of the last year, your may see that some of these benefits have been lost.

So the green track this week is to choose to redress the balance a bit – to bring the flipchart back into your next meeting. You could do it physically if you have space and the right lighting/webcam. Or on a shared whiteboard if everyone is comfortable with that.

Or, if you are feeling a bit more adventurous, try out the Virtual Flipchart in the blue track.

But the goal is to actively use a flipchart to pose a question, and to draw out the perspectives onto it – like we used to.

Even if that is only for the check in: What are you feeling today?

The flipchart enabled webcam

Over the past month, I have been working on a virtual flipchart. Something simple, easy and instant, that can be used conveniently in more meetings for more situations. So the blue track this week is simply to try it out in a few meetings (see how to download it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/virtual-flipcharts-how-add-them-your-webcam-mike-clargo and to see what emerges.

Improving your flipchart skills

Like most meeting tools – it is not how the people work on the flipchart, but how the flipchart works on the people that is important. The product of a meeting is not what people put on to the pages, but what those pages put into the people – insights, understanding, alignment, confidence, cohesion, commitment, …
So the red track is about revisiting the real potential of flipcharts, and to choose to become more masterful in their use. To help you in this, you may find the following useful paper on flipcharts.

Empathy Walk

Making deeper, meaningful connections with people is increasingly important for all of us. There is an old adage – before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes. The point is that doing so will help you better understand their situation, and help you find more constructive means to improve the relationship and what you both get from it.

But why wait for something to go wrong? Walking a mile in their shoes can help you also see new opportunities. So the green track is doing exactly that.

Think around your network and find someone whose situation you do not fully appreciate, and determine to plan 30 minutes just to get to know them better as a person. This exercise is not entirely unlike Walk and Listen, except it is more focused on their work context (and you don’t have to walk).
Here are some questions that may help you to get things underway:

• For you, what are the good bits about where our work overlaps?
• And what are the bits that are not so good for you? And why?
• Can you share with me a bit about what happens at your end? What it would be like for me if we were to end up in each others shoes for a moment?
• If I could do anything different to help you play your part in a better, more enjoyable way, what might that be?
• Are there any questions you have about what goes on at my end?

That is a really good question.

There is a wonderful listening technique within counselling that not only helps you to understand someone’s situation better, it helps them understand their own situation better too.

It works by seeking to create a picture of what is going on in another person’s mind in your own, and to do so solely by asking questions. For the listener, their goal is to only put into their mind what the other person has said, until they reach a point where they can anticipate what the other person would do in a particular situation and why. It is an act of systematic curiosity.

And it has this amazing effect around situations where the other person finds themselves stuck. As you try and construct the ‘stuck’ picture in your own head, in trying to fully understand the ‘stuckness’ you end up unearthing the blind spots and ask questions that the other person not only hadn’t considered, but hadn’t even recognised as a question.

So the blue track is to have this conversation with someone who is stuck. But it is absolutely key that your goal is NOT to help the other person to solve their problem – that will lead to suggestions and assumptions, which derail the technique. Your goal is solely to understand their thinking, and you do this purely with questions.

Sticking to open questions and questions of clarification is fine, but avoid any question that is a veiled attempt to propose a solution.

Trust in the technique – if you are determined to do you part in understanding well, they will eventually find the next steps for themselves – if only to find the answer to your question. For more on this, take a look at the steps to listening part of the Walk and Talk post

Breaking out of the Echo Chamber

The Red Track is basically somewhere where you probably don’t want to go. It is about listening intently and respectfully to views you disagree with at a pretty fundamental level.

We are all becoming more aware of the echo chamber effect, and we can see its impact on groups of people who are developing increasingly radical perspectives. As a result their views appear to become more polarised and reflect less and less that we can engage with.

What we may be less aware of is our own echo chamber. As opposing views become more polarised, we find that it is easier to recognise and exclude them. As a result we too are hearing less and less of what might otherwise maintain balance.

So the red track is a real challenge. It is about deliberately spending time in an echo chamber that is not your own, and trying to see things from that perspective.

To help you, I have included two important resources in the pack section.