Inspire Me

Diversity and Values

Despite Freud's revelatory discoveries over thirty years ago, and subsequent popularisation of psychology, most of us are still largely unaware of the make-up of our belief systems, not to mention how our beliefs came to be. No surprise then that when we encounter and seek to collaborate with members of other cultures we sometimes hit barriers to communication and understanding. Recent work we've been doing on diversity and cross-cultural relations highlights the value both of delving within and clarifying our own belief systems, and taking pains to understand and appreciate others'. Also highlighted is the close relationship between feeling valued, and feeling potent and effective in the world.

A short leap then to seeing that if we recognise and respect others' values, we are helping them to feel good about themselves and therefore more able to contribute and play their part.

Positive Reinforcement

Our emphasis on identifying strengths and then building on those continues to produce remarkable results. 'The feeding power of attention' (Assagioli) means that if we put our attention on something we magnify its importance and can even make it grow. So emphasising strengths is more productive than emphasising weaknesses - not to mention a lot more enjoyable and encouraging. There's a lot of mileage in finding ways to apply strengths in new ways and new areas. For example, many of our clients find they have skills they use at home that could be applied at work, and vice versa.

Delayed Gratification

One of our clients wanted to decide how to roll out a successful management development programme. He felt that the views of at least sixteen people, representing line and functional departments, needed to be taken into account, and asked me to facilitate a Group Enquiry Session. The clients organisational culture is outcome focussed, so when I asked the assembled group to resist the need to find a solution, and keep exploring ideas and options, there was much resistance. However, we managed to hold off for long enough to allow intuition and felt senses to come to the fore. People accessed depths of sensitivity normally reserved for their personal lives, and discovered an elegant and sustainable solution. The lesson learned by all is that holding off from settling on a solution too quickly can lead to a far better outcome.

The Bold Transformers

We've just completed a two year Humanistic Change Leadership Programme with Ron Whatford, Director of Group Operations at Lloyds TSB, and three of his senior colleagues. The guys decided to develop their humanistic skills, to help them achieve a more sustainable outcome from the significant changes they needed to make. Each month we all got together and explored a chosen change leadership theme, and how that theme related to actual issues and tasks at hand. Apart from a gradual and sustainable enhancement of the guys general leadership approach and impact at work, several key initiatives and policy changes were implemented as a result of the integration of previously existing and newly developing approaches, such as ...

• a new approach to reorganisation that minimises redundancies, maximises re-allocation of staff, and minimises cost
• a new approach to inter-divisional working that maximises co-operation, initiative, creativity and speed of problem solving whilst minimising wastage and rework costs
• a new approach to large scale conferences and events that increases participation, ownership and fun while reducing the one way Powerpoint barrage people were accustomed to One of the more subtle effects of their work is a change in gender relations - many of the female executives now feel more able to be themselves, and find their unique contribution as women is more readily appreciated, while pressures to compete by being more of a man than the men are almost a thing of the past.

Three months after the programme completion the guys made a presentation to their top 200 managers, describing their learning, and opening up the game for everyone else to join in, in a variety of different ways. The assembled group was especially impressed by the degree of open self-disclosure displayed by their bosses.

Change at the Top Facilitates Greater Initiative and Authenticity Downline

nuff said, I think .....