“The vision, relational being, seeks to recognize a world that is not within persons but within their relationships, and that ultimately erases the traditional boundaries of separation.”  (Relational Being: Beyond self and Community , Kenneth Gergen)

Today I had the privilege of journeying with two executives in thickening the story of how they as peers can work together after their relationship with one another was quite stuck when we met for the first time.

Sometimes we are called upon to manage and resolve the conflict between peers in an organizational team. The call you receive is clothed with a kind of heaviness and dread that leaves you feeling that this case would be impossible to solve. The caller then rings off with a kind of good- luck-handshake and reassures you that all you can do is your best.

So often we think of “conflict resolution” within selves that are fixed and need to compromise to move forward. When we remain within the traditional boundaries of self that is separated and set up against the other we invite conversations that opens up constructions of winners and losers, or a compromise that would leave someone feeling displeased.

However, within the understanding of our relatedness we see “conflict” as a relationship between people stuck in a problem story about one another. We do not go on the hunt for the problem in the person but start exploring the problem story of conflict within the relatedness of these two human beings.

In this kind of conversation the possibility opens up to see related human beings teaming up against the problem, challenging society’s taken-for-granted ideas about their own stuckness that the construction and ideas of conflict might bring and opens up their relationship to now foster possibilities of openness, and sincerity. What a privilege to then witness two relational beings living into their becoming within this new constructed relationship as colleagues and allies at work.

Out of a so-called stuck relationship, a beautiful new story of togetherness emerged. Within this newly constructed relationship we find thinking, remembering, experiencing and feeling as coordinated actions within relationship. At the end of our conversation knowledge about what the relationship brings to their executive peers emerged from the process of co-action and that again opens up new possibilities of becoming.

I have been reading Kenneth Gergen’s newest book, Relational Being: Beyond self and Community and found it such a reawakening experience. Even though I have already been introduced to this kind of thinking about self and the possibility of a multiplicity of selves many years ago, I realised how easy it is to be invited into the story of the alienated bounded self/being who is constantly comparing itself to others with the possibility of being judged inferior. These bounded ideas about self have become part of our lives in such a manner that we do not question why we constantly evaluate ourselves against the other, how what we consider our “self-esteem” constantly hangs in the balance and where the possibility to fail and be judged continuously lurks behind the next corner. This certainty of a bounded self sets us up against one another as human beings so that we are sometimes unable to step beyond and connect in meaningful ways.

Gergen proposes that we live in a world of “co-constitution” were we are always already “emerging from relationship.” This emergence makes it impossible to step out of relationship even in our most “private moments” we can never be alone. How would we therefore differently construct our workplaces if we were aware that relationships and the construction thereof are always with us?  The jury is already out as research has shown that a high level of relatedness opens the possibility for high performing teams to take companies to the next level. Humanizing the workplace through relational confluence will break down the boundaries around the self and invite re-connectedness to humanity in the spaces where we spend a vast amount of our lives.

May 7^th

In the corporate and NGO field I so often hear different levels of management talk about the concept of “burnout.” As a Western culture we have come to some common understanding of what we mean when we talk about this profound event in somebody’s life. A simple explanation of this concept talks about people getting tired due to overwork.  Although Western culture has accepted burnout as a fact I have seen how colleagues and communities often stand in judgement of people that have burned out as if they did not know when to stop or how to apply “self-leadership” or “self-care” or even have some inherent deficiency. As a society we locate the problem in the person and that renders us blind to see how we as a society feed into and support the ideas that create burnout.   In a world were globalization is part of our story we are most probably going to export this condition to some other developing countries.

In his key note address titled Becoming resilient - Overturning Common sense Alan Jenkins mentioned that burnout implies that a person had to be on fire and that we are talking about a person with burning desires!  If we therefore assume that the fire has burned out, the not-yet- said implies that there had to be a fire for the burnout to be possible. This raises some questions like: What did the fire speak about or represent? When we look into the fire, what do we see?

In the stories of burnout that I have heard, resilience is so often also present. Alan Jenkins told how somebody explained that resilience is when people say: “We are the bamboo” which implies that we are flexible when the stormy winds come, we are not broken because we can just bounce back. As a result we can ask: What is the resilience producing?

I believe me must engage in ethical ways with these things that we take for granted and ask different kinds of questions that can reconnect people with their fire and resilience as they try to make meaning through the landscape of a culture that focuses on deficiencies, weaknesses and normalcy. Let us come alongside people to raise suspicion of these taken for granted ideas and invite them into the majesty of the human experience.

May 6^th

Today I had the privilege to attend the first day of the 9th Narrative Therapeutic Conversations in Vancouver (http://therapeuticconversations.com/).  I was again reminded in the workshop Stephan Madigan presented that we as citizens continuously engage with internalizing conversations in which we put ourselves down and trade the rights of the authorship of our own stories to our culture allowing experts and those in power to dictate how we tell and live the story of self. The things that people then talk to themselves about might be: “I do not fit in; What am I doing here?”  We therefore don’t come to the stories of failure and deficiencies that we tell about ourselves on our own, but the story we perform are culturally informed. This was such a reminder of what Stephan call the “internal chitter chatter” that everybody has but we do not talk about as we buy into self surveillance in the hope to measure up to what our culture expects of us.

Stephan Madigan, 9th Narrative Therapeutic Conversations, Narrative therapy, Foucault

May 2^nd

This morning I had the privilege to facilitate a session with some members of A Small Group (http://www.asmallgroup.net/) and Women writing for A Change (http://www.womenwriting.org/ ) in Cincinnati. We all reflected on “What is the story that Americans are telling about being an American” and “How does this telling(s) influence your own life story”. Being the curious South African that I am I could not resist to indulge myself in learning how some Americans make meaning of their current experiences in this country.  What struck me in these conversations was that we so often do not make or take the time to think where we stand in the stories that we are telling about our countries. The conversation birthed metaphors such as pivotal point, knife edge, death, life, mystic life flowing through and many more. For a group of these participants America is at the point of death of the dream and already birthing new ways of being where people are writing a new and alternative story for this country with less ego and more eco, more citizenship and less consumerism. Thank you so much for all the gifts that I received in the sharing of your honest and deeply felt story of a nation in transition.

May 1^st

What an amazing learning journey Cincinnati has been. Seeing community members of all walks of life owning the 6 Conversations that matter and applying it to their own lives in various capacities have been such a privilege.  Today I had the opportunity to share with these compassionate community builders a short version of the practices, assumptions and biases of the Narrative approach and also give them an opportunity to experience two questions in this approach. What struck me about the experience was how necessary and important the naming of our story is and also how necessary and important the re-naming of our story is. These journeys with strangers in a country that I have never visited have also been part of the re-writing of my own life narrative and a wonderful opportunity to live into the possibility thereof.

29 April 2010

Today was a wonderful learning opportunity where I could clearly see how the Narrative approach to consulting merge and speak to the collaborative practices of the Flawless Consulting processes. The steps of contracting allows for clients and consultants to openly and authentically explain what they are thinking about the upcoming working relationship. In the Narrative approach we are always aware that we must deconstruct our power so that the so-called “client’s” voice is also allowed and valued in the conversation. The consulting bodies of knowledge co-created by Peter Block and his associates have now given me the methodological tools to see what I do more clearly and refine what I have always intuitively applied.  In a collaborative relationship between a client and consultant the whole process of engagement is a modelling process where the way the contracting and discovery is negotiated sets the tone for a collaborative relationship between client and consultant. After these workshops a new addition to my approach is that the consultant also has needs and values wherein they prefer to work and communicating these clearly is a very important practice.

28 April 2010

On day two of the Flawless Consulting workshop we were confronted with our own freedom and invited to express what we do not want from certain individuals that share our life/work journey with us. What initially sounded like a simple instruction turned out to be one of the most difficult challenges I have ever faced. Saying “no” is indeed the pathway to explore all that we are saying “yes” to.

Who I am is a commitment; it is undeniably something that we can choose. In the freedom to construct who we choose in our commitment we negotiate identity. So often we are stuck with what we perceive to be our essential self deeply steeped in the idea of weakness as opposed to strengths and gifts.

I thank the community of women with whom I shared the space in the re-telling of my story for the gift of seeing myself and my journey in a new and richer way.

27 April

Today was the first day of a 2-day workshop called Flawless Consulting facilitated by Phil Grosnick and Peter Block.  I am sitting in my hotel room on the third floor of the Molly Pitcher Inn in Redbank, New Jersey and the wind is howling, making me feel so at home. In a strange and wonderful way I feel like I am home, somewhere between Port Elizabeth and Knysna in my beautiful homeland South Africa. Today I had to tell my story to people not familiar with my country and history in the way that I know it and I felt like the “Other”, struggling to find the words that would adequately explain “who I am” and “what impact I am making” through the work that I am engaged in. This is all very important questions that invite a new and richer meaning in the telling to a community that do not know you or understand where you are coming from.

Today has been a very personal journey for me where I was confronted with questions like: “How do you use your presence in the world?; “What is the intention you would like to live in the world?” ; How can you show up in a powerful way;” “ How can I show up as an equal in the world?” - these are all questions that I would like to reflect on in this learning journey away for what I perceive as home .

In a strange and beautiful way I had the sense that my existence in this world has been confirmed in this “Other” world today and I thank Peter and the participants in Redbank for this wonderful gift.

Today I experienced the hospitality of New York and Redbank. My flight landed an hour late, and I had to go through rows and rows of citizens from various countries at US customs and as a result missed my shuttle to take me to Newark airport. Just as I put the phone down the driver turns the shuttle around and at 9h30 I leave JFK airport. At 10h45 I meet Peter at the Delta baggage claim and so the conversations around transforming the communal narrative continue.  Tonight I am dead tired, will write some more tomorrow.