Items tagged "Interviews":
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Interview with Ann Caton: Culture and Session DesignListen to my conversation with Ann Caton, consultant in organization development and partner at Potomac Group, talking about culture and session design.
As many of you know, Ann and I lead Potomac Group together. This day she was busy working in her office on the second floor of our house overlooking the backyard and a school playground. I interrupted her to ask what new ideas were on her mind. I’m glad I did. In this interview, Ann shares her thinking on how culture impacts session design and implementation. She suggests that those interested in learning more on cultural dimensions and how they impact our work and lives read Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner’s book “Riding the Waves of Culture.” Ann goes a step further in talking not just about cultural dimensions between countries, but also how to apply this thinking to understand cultural differences within and between organizations we work with everyday.
Cultural Dimensions…
In their book Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner outline six dimensions that assist individuals and organizations of any size to understand and appreciate conflicting values. Each of these could easily be placed on a Polarity Map to clearly demonstrate that each dimension, when pursued to the neglect of the other, leads to the downside of that pole. Here are a few of those dimensions:
Universalism & Particularism
Is there a focus more on rules/laws (universalism) or exceptions and special circumstances (particularism)?
Individualism & Communitarianism
Is the bias more toward personal freedoms/human rights (individualism) or social responsibility and cooperation (communitarianism)?Achieved Status & Ascribed Status
Is it more important what you’ve done, your track record (achieved status) or who you are, your potential and connections (ascribed status)?Tags
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- patrickod-blog
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- 14
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 5:11:00 (2 months ago)
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Interview with Barry Johnson: Polarities, Dilemmas, and How to Manage Them In OrganizationsBarry and I had been having breakfast at my favorite B & B in Cleveland, when we took a few moments to talk about Polarity Management. He has been working on the phenomenon of interdependency for over 30 years. In this interview he talks about what polarity management is and the new terminology of “infinity factor.”
Barry shares a story from an organization he worked with that had a high value for autonomy in their employees and programs. However, this was leading the isolation and competition between them. They had a new desire to move toward greater integration. But, they used a typical gap analysis and treated the move toward integration as a solution to their problem, rather than a polarity to manage (meaning the polarity between autonomy and integration). This resulted in failed attempts to move toward integration until they began using a polarity management approach. Find out more about Barry’s work at: Polarity Management Associates.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 23
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 5:10:00 (2 months ago)
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Interview with Herb Stevenson on the Cycle of ExperienceThis interview was part of a series done on a cool Friday morning at Herb’s Ranch in Ohio. We were sitting in his library, enjoying some coffee when I asked him about Gestalt’s concept of the Cycle of Experience.
The cycle is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Understanding it can help in both individual change work and organizational. In many of the groups I work with they get a sensation then jumping straight to action…in the process they short-circuit awareness building anddon’t understand why they can’t mobilize their collective energy or get their intended results. Awareness building and mobilizing energy are not optional, they are required for effective action taking. Herb points out this is a “ready, fire, aim” approach that decreases the effectiveness of our efforts.
In community based work, like community organizing, effective campaign efforts spend considerable time and money in the stages of awareness building and mobilization of energy, before moving to action. We can enhance and improve our work by bringing this lesson into the inner workings of our organizations.
Think about the projects you might have been a part of that go from great idea to mediocre results. Was there a step in the cycle that was not properly attended to?
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 20
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 5:05:00 (2 months ago)
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Herb Stevenson talking about becoming more of who we are and the Paradoxical Theory of Change
On an absolutely beautiful morning, Herb and I were talking at his Pebble Ledge Ranch in Novelty, Ohio. I asked him about the Paradoxical Theory of Change. The concept is from Arnold Beisser, M.D. While the article Beisser wrote was short, just a couple of pages, it has become one of the most cited works in Gestalt Therapy. Simply put it states, “that change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not.”What does this mean when we are trying to create change in organizations, individuals, or ourselves? It means that it is most effective to start with awareness building. Raising awareness of the current state creates the possibility for change to take place. When we deny parts of ourselves or our organizations, the change we seek is undermined by our own lack of perception. At an individual level, I’ve seen this approach support clients trying to make difficult changes in their lives. It can lift a real burden when we stop trying to be different, and start trying to be more of ourselves or the best us that we can be without denying any part of selves.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 30
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 4:55:00 (2 months ago)
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Lewin’s Influence on Leadership
This recorded talk is the first of a four part series from a great evening I had a few weeks ago at a forum pulled together by the Lewin Center for Research and Social Justice. About 25 individuals came together at the home of Lennox Joseph, Ph.D. to hear a talk given by Earl Braxton, Ph.D. and facilitated by Brenda Jones, Ph.D. The food, the company, and the conversation was just what I needed as I moved into the New Year.
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and was the first person to use the term group dynamics. His work has a wide ranging impact on everything from psychology to social justice movements. For instance, Michael Jacoby Brown, in his book points out that the field of community organizing draws heavily on Lewin’s work, “who revolutionized the theory and practices of building groups…and had a wide interest in racial and ethnic justice.”
In this first installment, you will hear Earl talking about Lewin’s interest in unions, understanding systems and systemic change approaches, and field theory. Earl then touches on organizations in trauma, an issue he has written about and says is sometimes kept “quiet.” Influenced by Lewin, Earl sees these broken systems not in terms of their fallacies and dysfunction, but rather as entities with a temporary wound.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 6
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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Interview with Herb Stevenson talking about resistance to changeI’ve gained a lot from my relationship with this man since first meeting him in Austin at the Organization Development Network conference in 2008. This is one of the first interviews of a series done at his Pebble Ledge Ranch in Ohio that he shares with his wife, Jackie Stevenson. We were sitting between rows and rows of books in his library and a window looking out over a pasture with grazing horses.
In this interview, I ask Herb how he thinks about resistance to change. He offers a historical view of how the concept of resistance has moved from understanding resistance as a defense mechanism to understanding resistance as contact styles. Herb believes that using the term and the frame of contact styles is more productive and expansive. For instance, it is not necessarily that I have “resistance” to an idea or a person, but rather this is my way of making contact with that idea or person.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 25
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Polarities and Paradoxes
This is the 3rd installment of a 4 part series on Kurt Lewin’s influence on understanding leadership.
In this 3-minute piece Earl Braxton takes a look at polarities. For those of you who follow my posts and the work on this subject, you might find it interesting how he defines and addresses polarities: “What seems like two separate and opposite phenomenon, are separate manifestations of the same continuum.” Examples include love and hate, up and down, individual and group, strong and weak, hot and cold.
Earl thinks of polarities as gifts from the universe. However, one of the risks contained within this gift is that we can “…get sucked in one or the other and lose track of the other.” We might forget that we have choices that include the full range on the continuum. For example, Earl argues that when you are angry or hurt, that is a choice and there are other options sitting there, waiting for us. We might get so focused on hate, that we forget we have a choice and can embrace the other side of the polarity, which is love.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 8
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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Never Enough Time
This is the second part of a four part series on Kurt Lewin’s (1890-1947) influence on our understanding of leadership. Many consider him to be the founder of social psychology, group dynamics, and organization development. As a professor at MIT, he was the first person to coin the term “action research.”
In this 4-minute piece Early Braxton, Ph.D. continues his talk on Lewin and about how the speed of complexity and change is increasing at a rate that outpaces the capacity of our brains. He states, “So, when you hear so many people talking about how stressed out they are, how tired they are, how fatigued, and how much they keep doing…if you listen to people in organizations saying there isn’t enough time, they aren’t lying. There isn’t, there just isn’t.”
He argues that to deny this is to decrease our effectiveness and our capacity to see. To accept this means then that we need to change how we do our work. This includes 1) slowing down the pace 2) creating spaces for reflection and 3) avoid trying to fix something before understanding it.
In one analogy he gives, Earl points out that if a car is going 90mph, what you see outside that window is different than when the car is going 40mph. It is too late to see and understand the landscape once you pass it. If you keep going at that speed you will accumulate the things you don’t know that much faster.
Earl is a psychologist specializing in transformational thinking and the management of change in high risk / high stress organizations. He briefly outlines a process for leaders to assist in this world of increased complexity and change. At the top of that list is that if you are to lead others, you must first know how to lead yourself.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 6
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Groups and Leaders Under Stress
Organizations and leaders under stress tend to find fixes for the moment and focus on momentary survival. This 5-minute segment is the last of a four part series. Earl Braxton, Ph.D. shares his thinking on leadership and Kurt Lewin’s influence on our understanding of it. I’m here to tell you, I think this man knows what he’s talking about.
Common characteristics of groups under stress:
- An insistence on maintaining past comfortable positions and defending against new ideas or experiences.
- Becoming overly organized and rigidly defensive of their historical position. The rigidity will prevent new data from entering the system.
Common characteristics of managers (or leaders by other names) under stress:
- Selectively perceiving information and only seeing what confirms their earlier biases.
- Becoming very intolerant of ambiguity and demanding only “right” answers.
- Fixating on a single approach to a problem.
- Overestimating how fast time is passing. Hence they often feel rushed.
- Adopting short-term perspective or crisis mentality and ceasing to consider long-term implications.
- Decreasing ability to consult with and listen to others.
- Having less ability to make fine distinctions in problems so that complexity and nuances are missed.
Earl also shares what leaders or consultants need to provide in order to support those under stress:
- Provide conditions of safety.
- Be available psychologically, emotionally, and physically to the group.
- Be neither intrusive nor abandoning.
- Be able to take criticism and use it productively.
- Have good boundary management skills.
Thank you to Earl Braxton for his thoughtful analysis, to Joseph Lennox for hosting, Brenda Jones for facilitating and to the Lewin Center for Research and Social Justice that convened this forum and is doing important work in the world.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 10
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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Interview with Herb Stevenson: Gestalt Approaches to Leadership, Change, and New Development in the FieldThis is the first interview I did with Herb. We were in a breakout room, just outside of the library of the big ol’ Tudor home that houses the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. Herb gives an introduction to Gestalt and it’s impact. Herb runs the Cleveland Consulting Group and is a lead faculty member at the Institute.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 19
- date:
- Mar 3, 2012 (a Saturday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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New Trend: “Infinity Factor” used to describe the energy system within interdependencies and Polarity Management
Listen to my interview with Dana Wilcox on the story of and genesis of “infinity factor.”I was sitting with Dana at the end of a week in Chicago where we had been participating in a learning community that has been meeting for over 15 years around issues of Realtime Strategic Change and Polarity Management. I asked her about the term infinity factor and where it started. The interview was in front of a large window looking out on a busy Chicago street and happened to be just a few feet way from where she had been the moment the phrase came into existence.
The term, “Infinity Factor” in part, highlights that there is a natural dynamic or energy system that is present in human systems. This energy system is represented by the infinity loop wrapped around interdependent pairs. This new language emphasizes the energy system is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is there to tap. The infinity factor can help to illuminate and help us more effectively use other models in OD like Appreciative Inquiry, Real Time Strategic Change, Gap Analysis, or even Bion and Basic Assumption groups. On the other hand, the “Polarity Map” is a useful way to help systems and groups tap the enegery system and manage the tension in dilemmas we face.
The management or tapping of the underlying energy system can be a purposeful and choiceful one - meaning that awareness of the polarities and infinity factor theory expand the choices available to us. If we are unaware of the energy system, it is still going on, we just have fewer choices that could otherwise ease our conflicts and support our individual or group development.Tags
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 20
- date:
- Nov 6, 2009 (a Friday)
- time:
- 3:00:00 (2 years ago)
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Interview With Libero Della Piana: Trends in Tech Impacting Gov. & Community Groups While in NYC talking to prospective clients, I took a break to have lunch with Libero and tour his office before jumping on the train to head back to DC. It was the first time I had seen him in maybe 10 years. I asked Libero to talk about open source and how these trends are impacting government and community groups. Libero has been working for a number a years on technology and it’s impact to culture, politics, and the building of movements. Check out Libero’s twitter page here: Libero’s Twitter Page.
Libero suggests that those interested in learning more on this topic read David Bollier book called Viral Spiral. The book is available in stores or free online. The publisher and author agreed to sell hardcopies and give it for free using a creative commons license. Download the book: Viral Spiral.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 17
- date:
- Oct 31, 2009 (a Saturday)
- time:
- 4:59:00 (2 years ago)
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