Does this sound like your world?
· Changes are coming at you at an ever increasing pace.
· Your solid problem solving skills sometimes don’t seem to work so well.
· Just when you think you’ve go things figured out, the situation changes.
Often the very idea of giving or getting feedback puts our brains into defensive mode. Most of the feedback we get/give is some version of “You should do X instead of Y.” While it can be useful to get suggestions for improvement, there is another kind of feedback that we rarely get that’s even more helpful.
Seems like the subject of trust is in the air. Maybe it’s the unsettled feeling in the political climate. Maybe it’s what my ears are tuned to. But I’m hearing it a lot.
Clients are asking me what they can do to create an environment where team members will acknowledge their mistakes or gaps in their expertise. Others are dealing with the emotional overload of supporting staff members who face serious life challenges and want to provide that support but aren’t sure how.
Dis as in disequilibrium and discomfort.
When we act outside of our habitual patterns, our system says, “Hey wait. That’s not how I do that.” We can respond to this disequilibrium and discomfort in a variety of ways. Simply put, our response usually boils down to either “Whoa Nellie” or “Bring it on!”
Much of the research and advice for leading in complexity suggests how to shift the organization – safe to fail experiments, adaptive planning, amplifying weak signals, etc.
In my work with executives (and more recently with goats), it has become clear to me both that these strategies are important AND that by themselves, they aren’t enough. Necessary but not sufficient. We must also work differently with ourselves.