The Bamboo Project

The Power of Positive Peers

Although we don't discuss it much, one of the most powerful influences on our personal and professional development is our peer groups. The people with whom we engage in regular conversations and interactions shape the questions that we ask, the problems that we see, how we approach our work and our sense of identity as professionals.

One thing I've been paying more attention to in the past year is the quality of my peer circles and the impact that my professional colleagues have on me. I started noticing that some people were really energizing and inspiring to be around, while other people tended to pull me down into the suck. Some people exposed me to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new questions and a focus on the awesome, while others seemed to see only the same old problems and no real solutions. 

Since I started paying attention to my professional peer networks, I've started becoming more intentional about my connections. I've begun limiting the amount of time I spend engaging with people who can only focus on what sucks and have been actively seeking to expand my connections to people who want to work on creating what's awesome. This has had a profoundly positive influence on my work and my thinking.

What I've realized, though, is that if we are not consciously thinking about what is going on with our peer networks, it's very easy to be pulled into a negative orbit. This is especially problematic if we are in a negative workplace and the majority of our professional interactions are with our co-workers. It becomes mission critical for us to find and connect with people who have a more positive perspective--those who want to work on building the awesome. 

For me, connecting with positive peers has been a two-step process. First is noticing the influence that different people have on me. I pay attention to how I feel when I interact with them. Do I leave an interaction feeling excited and energized and ready to follow-up on something we've discussed? That's a person I want to connect to more. 

The second thing I've been doing is looking for new people who share the qualities of those people who are currently in my network that have proven to be positive influences. Typically this means people who are curious, creative, focused on positive questions rather than on "problems," and who want to make a real difference. If I see people like this in a LinkedIn Group or some other on-line network, I try to make a special effort to reach out to them. I'm also intentionally looking for these connections in face-to-face interactions and purposely seeking them out to connect. I even tell them WHY I want to connect--because I see and value these qualities, which automatically improves the connection. 

Throughout all of this, I've also tried to be more aware of how I am connecting to other people--am I being the change I'm looking for in my world? This shift has forced me to look at the ways in which I'm negative, problem-focused, uninspiring, etc. I have had to look at how I can shift my own habits of interaction to be a positive peer, rather than a negative one. 

This process of forming positive peer networks and looking at my own actions as a peer has been one of the more important professional development practices I've engaged in this year. 

How are you forming the connections that are going to be most supportive for you? And how are you looking at your own behavior in this process? 

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Feeling stuck? I'm running another 7-Day Getting Unstuck session starting February 27. Details and sign-up information are here.

 

"Take Yourself to Work Day"

For years, we've had "Take Your Child to Work Day." But lately, as I listen to people talk about the false selves they bring to jobs that feel pointless, I'm thinking that we need another day--"Take YOURSELF to Work Day." 

On this day, you would have the joy of bringing the real you to work. The day would be focused on discovering and sharing each other's gifts, removing our corporate masks and creating real conversations and connection with each other as human beings. 

We would start with individual greetings and being made to feel welcome as people coming into a new space. It would be clear that we were valuing each individual person for their individual selves. Anything that made it seem like we are interchangeable cogs in the machine would be strictly forbidden. 

I'm thinking this day would include some of Peter Block's great questions for the Gift's Conversation including:  

• What is the gift you currently hold in exile?
• What is it about you that no one knows about?
• What is the positive feedback you've received that still surprises you?
• What is the gift that you have that you do not fully acknowledge?

There would be no discussion of what we need to "fix" or "improve" in ourselves, no conversations about our deficiencies. Instead, we would celebrate each other's strengths and assets, the possibilities that are at the heart of who we are. 

We would also discuss the gifts we receive from our co-workers, including asking and answering questions like:

• What gift have you received from another in this room?
• What has someone in your group today done that has touched you, moved you or been of value to you?
• In what way did someone here enage you in a way that had meaning for you?

Each person, as he or she heard what is appreciated about him/her, would only be allowed to say "Thank you. I enjoyed hearing that." There would be no downplaying of their gifts, no "I couldn't have done it without you."Just a heartfelt "thank you." 

On this day, we would not be exhorted to be "professional," but would, instead, be required to be real and authentic, including sharing our emotions about the things that are important to us. We would be encouraged and supported in feeling joy, sorrow, confusion, and any other emotion that comes with being a fully engaged human being. The only emotion that wouldn't be allowed is apathy. 

Part of our day would be spent having conversations about the things that actually MATTER to us--the stuff that brings us joy and the stuff that keeps us up at night. Each of these conversations would be received with acceptance and curiosity, not judgement and criticism, because each is part of the real human experience. What matters to us is part of what defines who we are. 

We'd end the day by committing to bringing more of ourselves to the work we do. Not in the sense of pouring our every waking moment into work, but instead, bringing our own unique gifts and humanity to work with us every day.  This includes having the space to NOT work so that we were able to stay in touch with those gifts. And we'd commit to supporting our co-workers in the same endeavor. 

Of course, ideally, this wouldn't be confined to a single day. But even that one day could make a huge difference, don't you think? Frankly, a day structured like this is a day I would happily bring my daughters to, as well. 

Working with the Questions

Last week I wrote that one of the key 21st century skills I think we need is a more advanced capacity for questions. Questions are a topic I've explored frequently here and they are a skill I'm trying to develop in myself for both professionald and personal reasons. 

Tenneson Wolf has an excellent post on different types of questions that can be asked that I think provides us with some great fodder for conversation. This is his list of question types:

1. “Wait-a-minute” -- The ones that make us pause and realize there is more to discover. 

2. “Sit-on-it” -- Questions that can’t be answered when they are asked. They require some time to think, and perhaps even let go of for a time.

3. “Address-the-grand-assumption” -- Or as Hani, one of the participants challenged, address even the smaller assumptions. Karen, one participant from a team of county planners, asked this type of question regarding her work -- “well, when did we start believing that we needed to pave all of our roads?” She was thinking systemically, aware of the cost and resource implications of that assumption.

4. “Name-the-elephant” -- The unspoken that many people know and feel, and that if left unaddressed, renders the work less meaningful or real. 

5. “Still-cooking” -- The ones that keep us actively learning. Or even better, reaching, stretching, letting go, reorganizing, innovating. 

6. “Antenna-out” -- Yes, another variation of continuous learning and attention giving. But even further, an invitation to be learning on behalf of the whole. 

7. “Me/I” -- These shift responsibility back to fundamental accountability and relationship of us as individuals, rather than unintentionally being lost in the bigness of we or them questions. I’ve seen this shift many times. Me/I questions harvest what emerges in expansive thinking to give clarity and responsibility of first next steps of action.

All of these questions can be applied in a career/professional development context. For example, an "address-the-grand-assumption" question I frequently ask people is "Is working for a company (as opposed to working for yourself) the best way for you to find career satisfaction?" I find that many people think in terms of "jobs" and that they haven't considered the possibilities of working for themselves. 

A good "wait-a-minute" question is asking people to consider what would happen if they think about their current job as a home base, rather than as a prison. How does that shift their understanding of their situation and how they can use it to their advantage? 

One of the hardest types of questions to ask in a career context is the "name-the-elephant" question. For example, people may be reluctant to make a career change because they've assumed financial responsibility for their families. But what happens if they ask the "name-the-elephant"question about their partner (or other family members) assuming that role for awhile? 

And "Me-I" questions are critically important. One of the most crucial is "Are you the cause or the effect?" 

I'm constantly working on trying to find the great questions that will help me move my work forward. This framework can be a really helpful way to do that. 

What questions are you asking? How do these types of questions help you expand your questioning ability? How do they help you improve your work environment?

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I'm running an online career visioning session on January 17 to help using the awesome VisualsSpeak online Image Center. You can find more information and the link to register here. 

The Six 21st Century Skills You REALLY Need

Given the work that I do, I'm a sucker for skill lists. As our work worlds grow ever more complex and challenging, it seems that the skills themselves become more complex too. 

Increasingly, though, I've begun to believe that these lists are distracting us from the real skills of success. While working with big data, operating in virtual teams and"cognitive load management"all sound great, I think there are far more fundamental skills we should be developing first. 

My 21st Century Skills List

I think there are 6 fundamental skills we need to develop for success in this or any other century. I would also argue that we are not nearly as good at these skills as we think we are. 

In no particular order, my 6 21st Century skills are:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Asking Questions
3. Empathic Listening
4. Authentic Conversation
5. Reflection
6. Seeking and working with multiple perspectives

Let's take a closer look.

1. Self-Awareness

We humans can be amazingly robotic. And by that I mean responding to commands and conditions without really questioning what we are doing or why we are doing it. This habit of going through life without really being aware of our own internal motivations, mental and emotional habits, assumptions and belief systems is remarkably common and remarkably damaging. 

The first and most fundamental skill we need to develop is the ability to look inside to see how we respond to the external world. What are our values systems, assumptions and mental models? What strengths and gifts do we need to bring into the world? What are our habitual blind spots? What are our insecurities, vulnerabilities and sore points? 

All of these aspects of ourselves, when they are unexamined and unacknowledged, contribute in major ways to our ability to function in the world. The more aware we are of our own mental and emotional processes, the more skilled we will be in all other areas. 

2. Asking Questions

I agree with Seth Godin that as adults, it is often stunning how few questions we ask. I'm not sure why. Maybe we think we know the answers already. Or maybe we just lose our sense of curiosity and wonder about the world. 

What I do know is that our ability to ask good questions is critical to success, not only professionally but in our personal lives as well. And it's a skill we have to cultivate and refine, because the questions we ask will frame the solutions we find. 

We first need to re-learn the practice of questioning, period. Too often we accept what we are told, without going any further.

We also need to learn how to ask different kinds of questions--important questions, positive questions, reflective questions. We need to carefully cultivate and nurture our curiosity and use it to keep asking "why?," how?" and "what if?"

We need to look at how we ask questions, when we ask them and what kinds of questions we ask. Developing our ability to question, rather than to simply accept what is, is the foundation of growth and development. It is also at the heart of creativity and innovation. 

3. Empathic Listening

Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that we should "first seek to understand." He calls this empathic listening and it is the most difficult form of listening for us to cultivate.  It is not waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can relate your story.  It is not listening to find places where you agree or disagree. It is something much deeper than that: 

The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it's that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.

Empathic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. Communications experts estimate, in fact, that only 10% of our communication is represented by the words we say. Another 30 percent is represented by our sounds, and 60% by our body language. In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.

Raise your hand if you regularly engage in this form of listening. I know I don't, but that when I do, amazing things happen as a result. (See this excerpt for more on empathic listening) 

4. Authentic Conversation

Creating the space for authentic, meaningful conversations is one of the most valuable skills we can develop. Last week I wrote about moving from being a hero to being a host and when I talk about authentic conversation, I mean our ability to act as a host and participant in deep, authentic discussions.

Conversations are how we learn and how we do our work. They are how we identify and solve problems and how we build collaboration and community. The capacity to create and hold the space for authentic discussion is under-valued and much needed in work and in our personal lives. 

Self-awareness, questioning and empathic listening all contribute to our ability to engage in authentic, meaningful conversation. But there are other related skills and strategies we must employ. 

Our ability to host and engage in authentic discussions is critical for success in and out of work. 

5. Reflection

On one level, the ability to reflect on your actions and work could be considered part of self-awareness. However I see reflective practice as something related, but separate. Self-awareness is one thing we can develop through and as part of our reflective practices, but reflection also is a skill that can help us develop more technical expertise, too. 

Reflection is both an internal, introspective process, as well as a social one. Reflection can happen alone or in groups. It can happen while we are in the midst of action, as well as after the fact.

Reflective practice helps us learn from experience and use our failures and mistakes as fodder for development, rather than for self-flagellation and blame. Reflective practitioners know what they don't know and can devise experiments and activities to help them continue developing.

The ability to adapt to ever-changing and more complex environments is directly related to our capacity to effectively reflect on what we do and how we do it. 

6. Seeking and Working with Multiple Perspectives

Homophily--our human tendency to connect to people like ourselves--is both a blessing and a curse. It's important for us to find and connect to our tribes, yes. But we also benefit from our ability to seek out and work effectively with a diversity of perspectives and frames of reference. This is even more true in a global economy.

I've written before about combating homophily and even as I've become increasingly aware of the negative impact of connecting to only those people who share my perspectives, I still find it difficult to intentionally create space for working with multiple viewpoints. Like most people, I tend to see people who have a different worldview as being "others." I either want to convert them to my own viewpoint or ignore them, neither of which is beneficial. 

As a 21st century skill, I think we have to look at not only how we listen to and engage with people who see the world differently, we also need to look at the strategies we use to find and connect with them in the first place. How intentional are we about diversifying our networks? How effective are we? And more importantly, how willing are we to be shaped and influenced by these differences? 

 

From a career perspective, I think it is these 6 skills that offer the most "bang for your buck." They are the skills needed for success in all aspects of our lives (not just at work) and they are core to most other skillsets. 

As I think about 2012 and how I want to develop myself, it is these core areas that I will focus on. What do you think? How do these skills resonate with you? And what are you doing to develop them? 

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Are You the Cause or the Effect?

Accountabilty is the willingness to acknowledge that we have participated in creating, through comission or ommision, the conditions that we wish to see changed. Without this capacity to see ourselves as cause, our efforts become either coercive or wishfully dependent on the transformation of others. 

Community will be created the moment we decide to act as creators of what it can become. This requires us to believe that this organization, neighborhood, community is mine or ours to create. This will occur when we are willing to ask the question "How have I contributed to the current reality?" Confusion, blame and waiting for someone else to change are a defense against ownership and personal power. 

                    --Peter Block, Civic Engagment and the Restoration of Community

One of the most challenging practices I've been engaging in this year is asking myself "How have I contributed to the current reality?" Another way to ask the question is:

What have I done to contribute to the very thing I complain about or want to change? 

I've found that repeatedly trying to answer this question is both empowering and ego-threatening. It's also well worth continuing to ask. 

It's empowering because it puts the power for changing the situation into my own hands, rather than having it rely on getting someone else to change. It gives me another avenue into figuring out how I can create a new situation or dynamic. 

At the same time, it is ego-threatening because it invites me to consider the ways in which I am all the things I complain about the most. How am I apathetic or not present or too focused on problems or constantly complaining about what's wrong? How often am I critical, refusing to challenge my own world view, listening poorly and pushing my own agenda?  

When it comes to career and work life, I've found that too easily, I can embrace the idea that bad situations are created by other people. I am the victim or else the savior, riding in to save the day. Either way, I am on one side of the situation and everyone else is on the other side. This "me vs. them" dynamic can be very damaging.

Forcing myself to see how I co-create the very things I want to change, though, has given me another way to be.  It is teaching me to be more understanding and compassionate of where other people may be coming from. Not that I'm always able to feel this understanding, but when I can, it has shifted my interactions. 

More importantly, it consistently reminds me that I must be clear about what I want more of and that I must embody those things in my interactions with people and situations where I want to see change.  I can't control what other people do, but I can bring more of what I want to create change. 

For example, a few weeks ago, I asked where the meaningful conversations are at work. Since I asked that question, I've been looking at the ways that I have created situations where meaningless conversations continue. How much work do I put into crafting questions that help people go deeper? How am I expanding my skills and tools so that I create the space and opportunity for those kinds of conversations? How does my own inertia, sense of helplessness, difficulties with conflict and discomfort with being in a place where there are no clear answers contribute to these situations? 

This question--how am I contributing to the situation I want to change?--has been one of my most powerful tools in shifting my understanding of how I fit into any situation. Not only can I see the negative ways in which I contribute, I also become accountable for finding the positive strategies I can use to shift the conversations. 

This question is critical to my reflective practice. Although challenging to ask and answer, it's been well worth the effort. 

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Career Clarity Camp starts January 9. Info on the Camp and the sign-up form are here. 

Three Ways to Create Your Own Job

As we adapt to an ever-changing world, I've come to believe that a necessary career management skill is the ability to create your own job. Whether it's work you do for a company or work you do on your own, re-inventing yourself on a regular basis is going to become more and more important. 

How to re-invent yourself  is the question, of course. Via Angela Maiers comes a link to an interesting report on Jobs of the Future that suggests three strategies for creating new jobs:

1. Retrofitting--Adding new skills to an existing job.
2. Blending--Combining skills from different jobs or industries to create new specialties.
3. Problem-solving--Identifying key problems and then inventing jobs that will solve them. 

I want to talk about each of these in a little more detail.

Retrofitting for a New Job

This is probably the easiest strategy to employ and for many of us working for a company or organization, the clues to retrofitting may lie in that "other duties as assigned" clause of the job description.

Keep an eye out for ways in which you are being asked to stretch beyond your typical job duties. Is this something you could do more strategically? Watch what's happening with co-workers in similar jobs. Are there skills or duties they are developing that would be a good fit for you?

Another thing to watch is the the trends in your occupation that may indicate a need to develop new skills. How can you combine those skills with your current job to create something new? 

This is also where I think you look at your core strengths. What do you excel at? Is there a way to develop your current job into something that more closely matches those core strengths that in effect creates another job altogether? 

Blending Your Way to a New Job

This one is a little trickier, because it involves blending two different jobs or looking at two different industries. That means that you have to be much more willing to explore and be open to trends, skills and paradigms that occur outside of your particular industry and occupation. 

In the past few years, I've been blending skills in social media with my core career and professional development skills. This has opened up new opportunities for me in the industries where I work, but it has required me to be open to and active in what's going on outside of my core profession. I've had to continually look at what's happening across industries and then look at how to adapt the skills, tools and processes for the places where I'm doing work. 

If you're someone who's interested in and willing to expose yourself to a variety of industries and occupations, then blending your way to a new job can be a key strategy. I personally believe that this is also key to being innovative and creative in your work, but that's another post. 

Problem-Solving Your Way to a New Job

This strategy for creating new work may be the most difficult to do, but I think could also be the most rewarding and beneficial. There is no shortage of problems in our world and inventing work that solves those problems is a key way to make yourself indispensable. 

To do this, you need to start looking for problems that people need solved. This can be surprisingly hard to do, as it requires us to be on the lookout for questions, complaints, etc. It means we have to be great listeners, something that many of us aren't terribly good at doing. I've found it helpful to spend time just talking with people, finding out what frustrates them, where they feel like they need help. In those conversations are the first inklings of the problems, at least as they are understood by those who have them.  

Of course, once problems are identified, we also have to come up with solutions and find a way to turn that into a job. This is where it can be useful to be looking across industries and occupations and paying attention to trends. Often the seeds for solving a problem in one industry can be found in what's going on someplace else. 

The problem-solving approach to job creation is one you can apply to working for yourself or for someone else.  One thing I've heard repeatedly from companies and organizations is that they need people who are problem-solvers. If you can combine skills and approaches to address a need, then you will be able to find a job. 

This approach clearly lends itself to self-employment as well. It is the heart of enterprise, really, this ability to combine skills and talents to address specific problems. 

Although I think there can be value to understanding and responding to job trends in the market, I think that in the end, there may be greater security and growth in creating your own work, by applying one or more of these ideas throughout your career. These strategies are also a way to play to your core strengths and passions, which can provide greater happiness and satisfaction at work. 

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What Are the "Big" Career and Professional Development Questions We Need to Be Asking?

I think that every profession has it's "important questions"--the big questions that start to drive us in new directions, that ask us to reflect on what we are doing and why we are doing it. What are the questions that keep us up at night? 

For me, I'm thinking about the "big" questions when it comes to career and professional development. What do we need to be talking about? What are the ideas, trends, etc. that seem most pressing to work on and work out? 

Here are some that I think are important:

• One third of us are currently self-employed. Some have called it "The New Industrial Revolution." This is something I wrote about a few years ago and I see the trend continuing. How does this impact the kinds of professional and career development we do with ourselves? How do we keep ourselves current in an economy where we can't rely on a company to pay for or drive our development?  And if much of learning is social, how do we develop if we are a nation of freelancers? How do we learn from each other? How do we create "freelance" learning communities? 

• Even for those of us who are employed by corporations, evidence suggests that training and professional development are not high on the list of priorities for many companies.  (See here, here and here for more on this). Again, what does this mean for ongoing career management and professional development? How do we decide what skills to develop? Who pays for it? How do we keep learning? 

• As technology continues to change the nature and availability of work, what does this mean for our careers? If we follow the natural evolution of technology, we can see that more jobs will be eliminated and those jobs that remain will change substantially.  It's conceivable that jobs as we know them could become obsolete for many of us. If this is true, what does it mean for us? Should we be looking at building a different kind of economy? If we do, what role does work have for us? How do we redefine work? 

• A majority of US workers are disengaged from their work. I believe that workers in other countries feel similarly disillusioned. What does this mean? What, if anything, should we be doing about it? 

• One of the reasons I think we're disengaged is because so many of our workplaces are dysfunctional and toxic.  What can we as individuals do to start changing these dynamics? If so many of us are so unhappy, what can we do to change things? 

These are some of the questions that are running around my brain. What do you think are the most important career and professional development questions for us to be talking about? What big questions about your own career keep you up at night? 

Taking Risks, Celebrating Failure and Reflective Practice

Reflective Practice

View more presentations from Michele Martin

Earlier this week I was  honored to do an online presentation for educators in Australia on reflective practice as part of the Sidney Institute's online course, Designing for Flexibility. Their topic was "taking risks and celebrating failures" but it really ended up being a conversation about key aspects of the reflective process, as well as some ideas for strategies to try out.  I also set up a page of follow-up links here.  (EDITED 12/15/11--Here's the link to the actual presentation in Adobe Connect)

Serendipitously, yesterday Beth Kanter pointed me to an article in the Harvard Business Review,"Why I Hire People Who Fail." (Note--Beth is also curating a Scoop.it on Failure and Learning--great stuff!)

In the HBR article, Jeff Stibel shares one of the strategies he uses to encourage risk-taking and learning from failure in his company--a Failure Wall. 

. . . we started by collecting inspirational quotes about failure. Among my favorites:

• "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." – Winston Churchill
• "I have not failed, I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work." – Thomas Edison
• "Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life." – Sophia Loren

One random Thursday night, I returned to our corporate headquarters afterhours with a bottle of wine and a box of acrylic paints. My assistant and I used stencils to paint about three dozen such quotes onto a large white wall in our break room. As first time stencilers, this project itself seemed destined to end up a byline on the (slightly gloppy) failure wall until we gratefully accepted some much-needed painting assistance from my wife.

After we finished painting around 1:00AM, we fastened a dozen Sharpies to the wall alongside these simple instructions: (1) describe a time when you failed, (2) state what you learned, and (3) sign your name. To set the tone, I listed three of my own most memorable (and humbling) failures.

In the beginning, the wall was met with surprise, curiosity and a bit of trepidation. We didn't ask anyone to contribute and we didn't tell people why it was there, but the wall quickly filled up. Some of the entries are life lessons: "After 7 years of practicing, I quit playing violin in high school to fit in. Lesson learned — who cares what other people think." Some are financial mishaps: "I thought buying Yahoo at $485 a share was a good idea." Many are self-deprecating: "My successful failure is working in online marketing when I came to LA to work in showbiz." Some are more than a little amusing: "I thought it was spelled 'fale.'"

This is a powerful way to do public/collective reflection on a key theme. How awesome would it be if workplaces had a new wall, new theme every month? I also think that a Fail Wall would be a great addition to a FailFaire. 

One reason I enjoy doing presentations like this webinar on reflective practice is because the process of putting information together for an audience forces me to take another look at things, bring in new resources and then engage in conversation with people on what I share. The act of preparing and presenting becomes a form of reflection that's valuable to me. In fact, from that session, new ideas are bubbling to the surface that I think I can further develop and build upon. Stay tuned for those.

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Advocacy, Inquiry and Meaningful Conversation at Work

In a comment on last week's post about how to have meaningful conversations at work, Jean Tower points me to a post on her blog about the tension between advocacy and inquiry at work. In it, she points out that we can often become so entrenched in advocating for our own position, we fail to inquire into the positions of others. In addition to hindering our ability to find real solutions to problems, Jean mentions in her comment on my post that this also make it difficult for us to have meaningful work conversations. 

 I agree that this tension betwen advocacy and inquiry can be a major block to meaningful discussion. I find that when we are in "advocacy" mode, we are more likely to be defensive, to be focused on our next "argument" and to be trying to get other people to agree with us. 

For me, meaningful discussions have to be grounded in a spirit of inquiry, where we are trying to understand both our own position and the positions of other people we are talking with. Conversation is not debate and too often when we start to stray into touchier territory, we can end up trying to shore up our own view of the world, rather than trying to illuminate the issue we are discussiong. 

Partly this is because meaningful discussions are really about our values and what we believe is important in the world. These values are part of our identity, so a discussion about something meaningful can end up being a discussion about who we are and how we choose to live our lives. Your choices can somehow make me feel like my choices have been "wrong." 

Jean's advice for bringing a spirit of inquiry to the workplace is spot on and her suggested questions are wonderful:

• I know I’m passionate about this, can someone else jump in and play devil’s advocate?
• I know I have an opinion – I want to know how others feel (or what others think).
• What would you like to see happen next?

Sometimes, if I have presented an issue and a possible solution to my department, my questions or prompts are intended to invite dissension.

• OK guys, what am I overlooking?
• What could go wrong?
• Am I being too optimistic?
• Have we thrown something off the table too quickly?

Or, perhaps the whole group agrees on something, and they agree (a little) too quickly and vehemently? An echo chamber is as unhealthy as a one-sided meeting in which one person pushes their opinion relentlessly.

• OK, let’s put the brakes on and think about this?
• Are we rushing to an answer?
• Do we need to consult some others to check in on our plan?

Bringing inquiry to work is something we have to do intentionally. For most of us, the subconsious, preferred behavior we are most likely to turn to is advocacy for our own position. But we need inquiry to create a safe space for learning and for challenging our own sense of identity and understanding. I am far more likely to develop professionally when I approach conversation with a spirit of inquiry and learning than I am if I bring only my own advocacy to every discussion I'm in. 

Meaningful conversations require some sort of "advocacy" in that we need to try to illuminate our own positions and the values that underlie them. But they require us to do so with an inquiring mind, where we are open to the questions that our positions raise and the to the positions of those with whom we are talking. Even in our advocacy, we must still leave room for questions. 

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Want a chance to have some more meaningful conversations about work? We'll be talking about meaty stuff in Career Clarity Camp, starting January 9. Info on the Camp and the sign-up form are here. 

 

How to Have Meaningful Conversations at Work

Earlier this week,  I wrote about the need for us to have more meaningful conversations at and about work, digging deeper into the real issues that influence us. Today I want to share some thoughts on how we can start to move in the direction of having more meaningful discussions. I'm "thinking out loud" here, so bear with me. . . 

Ask Different Questions. 

 Conversations start with questions. It can be easy to get into a "tell" mode at work, where we are talking at each other, rather than with each other. We can also get into the habit of transactional questions--questions that are strictly about the transactional nature of our work. Where's the report? Who is going to be responsible for this task?

Asking different questions can start to move us toward more meaningful discussions. You can start small with questions like:

• Why do you think that happened?
• How are you feeling about what happened?
• What do you think we need to do about it? 
• What do you need from me? 

As we develop the questioning habit, we can go deeper. We can start to practice with positive questions , with debriefing questions and with looking for important questions in our work. We can ask questions that challenge the status quo or that are the questions we usually try to avoid. 

Our questions shape our discussions, so this is the place we have to start. 

Reveal Yourself

 We all wear masks to work. We all play roles. Both of these things tend to force us to act in accordance with those masks, keeping us on the shallow side of life.

To have REAL conversations, though, we have to go beneath our masks. We have to be willing to speak our truths as we feel them and to say the things that are on our minds. 

That means that sometimes we have to show the raw, vulnerable parts of ourselves that lie just beneath the surface. We have to share when something evokes an emotional response, be it pleasure or pain. I'm not talking about being a walking wound at work. I'm talking about sharing the human side, the part of you that feels unsure about a decision you've made or that sees that people are having a difficult time getting along and calls attention to it. Or the part that feels really grateful for a few co-workers and says so. 

Several years ago, I stopped in the middle of a facilitator training session that was going off the rails and said that I needed us to break for the day. We were clearly headed into bad territory and I needed to collect my thoughts on how to proceed. This was a MAJOR removal of my mask and I was scared to death to do it, but it turned out to be the best decision I ever made. It completely transformed the rest of the course. And we ended up having a very real discussion about how people's identities were being challenged and the fears and concerns they had as a result. 

Make it Safe For Others To Reveal Themselves

Of course, one of the main reasons we don't reveal ourselves is because we don't feel safe doing it. We can't control how others behave in the workplace, but we can control our own behavior. So if someone reveals themselves to us, we can make it safe for them to do so. We can keep their confidences. We can ask questions to draw them out. We can try to put aside any of our own defensiveness that may be getting in the way. In doing this, we start to create a safe space for others to come to us have more meaningful discussions. 

One strategy I use all the time is the "Vegas Rule"--what's said in Vegas, stays in Vegas. I've found that this is an excellent way to help people feel more comfortable about getting into meatier discussions. And it helps when I'm explicit about it. "This goes no further." 

Be Intentional

One thing I realized about our retreat was the fact that there was something about the intentional nature of it that allowed us to be more open with one another. We created a space specifically for people to talk and share. We came to the space knowing that we were going to have conversations that went deeper than the norm. 

In structuring things, I drew on the ideas in Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea's book, The Circle Way. There's a lot of great information in there on how to structure space to make it safe to have more meaningful discussions. I highly recommend it. Not only does it talk about the need to be intentional, it also has some valuable insights on the use of circles and how the physical structure of the discussion can be transformative. There's intention in having the discussion, but there's also intention in creating the right space for it to happen. 

Go with the Flow

So here's some advice that contradicts what I just said about being intentional.

Something I learned from two teenage daughters was that often the best conversations happened when I least expected it--in the car, walking through the mall, just before bedtime. I learned to pick up on the signals that told me that they wanted to talk. Often it was at a time when they didn't have to look me in the eye. Somehow it felt safer to talk without having to see my face. This has been true of work-related conversations, too. 

We have to be alert for the doorways that open up and be willing to go through them. Sometimes they don't appear when and where we expect them to or plan for them. We have to be willing to go with the flow and to ride it into something deeper than what we expected. 

Take a Chance

Ultimately, the biggest shift we have to make is in our willingness to take the risk on meaningful discussions. I'm acutely aware of the toll that anxiety and fear takes on many of us. When you're worried about your livelihood or spending your days putting out fires, it can be hard to see the space for any kind of meaningful discussion. 

But I would argue that fear and anxiety are actually clues that deeper conversations are necessary. It is precisely those emotions that tell us it's time to start getting real about what's going on. 

There are no guarantees that our first attempts, or even our second or third attempts will get us anywhere. We can keep trying, though, in small ways with a few discussions with a few trusted colleagues. And then maybe in bigger ways, speaking up in meetings or deliberately calling together a larger group of people. 

We are the only ones who can really make things happen. If we wait for someone else to do it, we could be waiting quite awhile. If we're feeling the need, then we need to take the leap, show others how to do it and bring them along with us. I know from experience that major shifts take place when we do. 

What else can we do to encourage and support meaningful conversations at and about work? 

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Want a chance to have some more meaningful conversations about work? We'll be talking about meaty stuff in Career Clarity Camp, starting January 9. Info on the Camp and the sign-up form are here.