When Someone Comes Out to You

Posted by Corey Jamison on January 26, 2012 None comments

Make no mistake. Coming out in America is still a high-risk venture.

Yes, public attitudes are changing substantially to be more supportive of LGBT people. But in many parts of the United States, LGBT people have little or no protection under the law. Outright hatred still exists; so do violent hate crimes. Even in the absence of violence, many people who come out find themselves being “tolerated” (in the way that getting a tooth pulled is tolerated), as if that were acceptable. Because of all this, coming out—particularly for people who haven’t done it, or have come out to just one or two people—can be intimidating if not downright terrifying. It is hard not to feel vulnerable or exposed.

When someone comes out to you, then, it is essential to respond in a way that creates a sense of safety and makes everyone involved BIG. You can, for instance:

Take a breath…and pause. Make space for the news to settle in. After all, what you are hearing is important: it is about nothing less than the person’s identity.  No matter what your personal views are, the news will almost surely make an impact on you. A moment’s pause allows you to refocus and respond from your best self.

Acknowledge the courage—and the gift. This person chose you as someone important to come out to. The level of trust and intimacy expressed in this choice is a priceless gift. Speak your thanks for that gift and the courage it took to give it.

Listen deeply, speak thoughtfully. Let the individual tell her or his story in her or his way—or not tell it at all. The person may have wanted simply to tell you with no
drama, fanfare, or explanation. After all, how often do heterosexuals feel compelled to tell the stories of how they discovered and shared their heterosexuality? So express interest, ask if the person wants to share more, but tread lightly.

Ask where the person has come out. In the workplace? At home? In the community? Has this individual been out for a while, or is this new for her or him? Knowing more about the person’s coming-out process will inform your role in helping her or him stay safe. It also affects the next point:

Be clear on confidentiality. Is this a secret for your ears only? If not, with whom can you share the news? On such a sensitive topic, gaining clarity on the person’s needs for confidentiality is essential for her or his safety.

Express your commitment to the relationship. Many people who come out fear rejection above all else.  Make it clear that you care about the person, welcome her or his presence, and will continue the relationship no matter what. Then follow through on that promise. In fact, this may be a good time to provide even more support, as the person may have lost others in her or his support network who have not reacted well.

How you approach these steps and others, of course, depends on the individual who is coming out, the type of relationship you have, and other factors. Whatever the specifics, your acceptance, your support, and your acknowledgment of her or his courage can provide a sense of safety that many LGBT people need in the process of coming out.

 

 

Technology and the Cherish Factor

Posted by Renee Reid on January 12, 2012 None comments

A close friend had some great news to share recently. I found out about it on Facebook.

I like social media. It’s valuable for entertainment purposes, staying in touch with far-flung friends and family, and improving certain elements of work. We can share daily details from our lives, swap funny stories, and make an observation or two.

But I think we’re getting carried away—by sharing way too much that is way too personal.  I have seen people announce the engagements of other people online. People fight and couples break up on Facebook. I have seen pregnant friends post sonograms of their fetus for the whole world to see.

You might not think that’s a particularly big deal. As I said, Facebook is valuable for sharing the details of our lives. But in sharing too much, I believe we’re losing something I call “the cherish factor”: the deep intimacy of sharing and cherishing the most important events in our lives with the most important people in our lives.

When my close friend recently got engaged, for instance, I wanted her to tell me privately. I wanted an intimate moment to celebrate together and cherish this wonderful news. Moments like this enrich our relationships and deepen our bonds. Because I read her news on Facebook, however, that moment of cherishing never had the chance to take place.

The cherish factor goes beyond big news as well. Imagine a night at home with your family: few experiences are more important to cherish and savor. Already, though, we have allowed technology to penetrate those sacred times. An intimate dinner or a walk in the woods with one’s children is so easily disrupted by the ring of a cell phone. Our iPhones chatter, our email distracts us, each of us watches her or his own TV. This will only become more of a challenge as advances in technology provide more ways to reach us.

It’s hard to set boundaries when the technology makes us so accessible, because people’s expectations change with technological advances. What if you don’t respond right away? Will people feel less valued because you’re not responding? Will they worry about your well-being?

There’s another issue here as well: I think we can talk about new technology in terms of addiction. The experience of the iPad and other gadgets is addictive in itself; so is the need we feel to be reachable at all times. We get sucked in before we know it.

Still, while setting boundaries is difficult, I think we have to do it. We need to respect the face-to-face, human interaction that allows us to cherish one another. We need a separation of technology and “real life.” Where we draw that line will depend on our individual circumstances, and that’s OK. But we must make a point of making the choice. Only then can we preserve and protect the cherishable parts of our lives—the parts that make us more deeply human.

 

Paying Attention—and Discovering New Partnerships

Posted by KJCG Webmaster on December 29, 2011 None comments

It is a small world after all. That makes the people in it—and the partnerships we build with them—incredibly important. If we foster those partnerships with care, they might spark all kinds of opportunities to make a difference.

Too often, however, we pay no attention to people around us. In the process, those opportunities are lost.

Have you ever walked past people with your head down, looking at your BlackBerry? Perhaps it was a particularly crazy day, with meeting booked on top of meeting, and you simply “didn’t have time to talk.” It happens to all of us. But what if the people you walked past are the exact people who, in collaborating with you, could co-create positive change in your workplace? What if they have a perspective that, when combined with yours, could lead to an entirely new level of performance? That collaboration could transform the course of your organization. The impact could be so great.

You are never going to know everything about the people who are in and around your life. On occasion, you literally can’t stop to talk at length. But if you take the minute to engage in a short conversation with them—even if it’s just hello—you open the door for a potential partnership. From there, the possibilities of what the two of you could do together are endless.

This isn’t just about the people you see every day, either. Keeping in touch with old friends, college professors, and peers, checking in with past colleagues and business partners…you never know where one of these encounters may lead.  So take a breath, look up, and connect. The world is small, and you may see—and need—those people again.

By Victoria Gammerman and Julie Bush

Lessons from the Theater

Posted by John Backman on December 15, 2011 None comments

It’s not like they were attacking her, it’s like they were degrading her because she was different. They felt like it was no big deal. I didn’t think the play would go there. They went way too far, and it was way too easy for them.  

With all the turmoil going on in the play, I felt that the detective mediated everything. He wasn’t for one side or the other, but he treated everybody the same, because they were all hoodlums.

I loved the Spanish in the play, because I could understand all of it. We live in a world where we speak so many languages, and it’s good to be able to understand.

They fell in love, just like everyone else. Back then, it was a man and a woman, one Latina and one Anglo. Now we’re talking gay marriage. They were the innovators of unconventional marriage.

When Anita kept saying, “But we’re in America,” it reminded me of growing up here. My mom wanted to keep the Colombian traditions and I would say, “But Mom, we’re in America.” Back then, I wanted to do everything my American friends were doing. Now I understand where my mom was coming from.

Both the play and our sessions take planning, training, execution, and a lot of behind-the-scenes effort. The passion with which the actors act is similar to the passion that people in the Firm have around their work.

It hurt to watch Anita become small during the play. At first she was all about relishing her new life in America.  She saw America as big, and she wanted to Be BIG in it. And yet, by the end of the play, circumstances left her singing “stick to your own kind”—a very small idea.

When did you know that “the play” in question was West Side Story?

You might not have recognized it at first. If you’ve seen it, chances are that you view it in a certain way and believe it’s about certain themes. Some of the thoughts above probably startled you.

They startled me. That is why, for me, seeing West Side Story with our Troy office was—more than anything else—about a Four Corners Breakthrough.

Four Corners Breakthrough has become a foundational idea at KJCG. Named after the police procedure of interviewing witnesses from every street corner of an accident scene, this approach brings together people with a broad range of differences and perspectives to convey their knowledge and ideas. By sharing information across departments, shifts, functions, sites, levels in the organization, and other differences, organizations can gain a 360-degree view of every issue and situation, enabling more breakthroughs and better decisions.

We didn’t have to make any decisions about West Side Story. But as I spoke with four people who attended the performance at Proctors in Schenectady—Julie Bush, Kamen Miller, Lixa Santana, and Tanya Zgorzelski, four people with differences of color, gender, skills, life experience, even familiarity with West Side Story —the differences in their perspectives allowed me to see the play with fresh eyes. More than that, they enriched my understanding not only of West Side Story but of our Firm: the values we hold to, the work we do, the way we do it. As a result, I can better align my work with the work of the Firm.  

Imagine if the play were an issue in our organization, and we needed to resolve it. How much closer to a breakthrough would we be, having heard all these perspectives?

That is the essence of Four Corners Breakthrough.  It is one thing to write about. It is quite another to have it happen around you—and feel its transformative power firsthand.

 

 

Note: This post would not have been possible without the insights and contributions of four people at KJCG: Julie Bush, Kamen Miller, Lixa Santana, and Tanya Zgorzelski. Thank you, one and all, for adding your street corners—and making the experience of West Side Story richer.

 

Inclusion in the Virtual World

Posted by Victoria Gammerman and Tia Wager on December 2, 2011 2 comments

When it comes to meetings, we know how to be inclusive of people who are in the room (through the 12 Inclusive Behaviors and the Inclusive Meeting Norms). We know how to be inclusive of people who are not in the room (by assigning them a buddy to fill them in on what was discussed, who said what, the feeling of the room, and the to-dos that came out of the conversation). 

 

What about people in a new, third category: people in the meeting but not in the room—because they’re attending via the Internet, from a remote location? What does it mean to include them?

 

This came up for us during a training class in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because some participants were physically in Charlotte, and others (like us) were taking the class remotely, the experience led us to think about inclusion in virtual learning environments.  The instructor did practice some Inclusive Behaviors: for instance, he had the participants introduce themselves and state their name, the name of their employer, and a hope for the day’s learning.  This reminded us very much of hellos and connecting questions—things we do at the beginning of every KJCG meeting, and within our client systems, as a part of our Inclusive Meeting Norms.

 

However, while giving us a moment to connect and share about ourselves was great, it was only the first step on the journey of inclusion.  What else could have been done to encourage a more inclusive learning environment?

 

First, the instructor needed to create a sense of safety in the larger “room”—both the classroom in Charlotte and the virtual “room” full of people in remote locations. To do so, he could have reminded us that we were all going to be learning: we would make mistakes, and generate ideas, and be excited and frustrated all at once, and it was OK to ask questions since this was a learning environment.

 

Also, the virtual meeting software could have been better designed for inclusion. It allowed us to see the instructor, but he couldn’t see us. We also weren’t able to communicate face to face with the other students. As a result, we lost a lot of opportunity for learning and growth.

 

How much opportunity did we lose? We were the only two individuals who took the class out of the training center in Albany, New York; there were about 15 people taking the class in total. That means we couldn’t interact with more than 85 percent of the participants. We didn’t get the 360 degrees of vision that happens when you include all the Right People at the Right Time. We were lucky if we got 45.

 

The point we want to leave you with is this: It’s not only about who is in the room or who is not in the room. It’s about how you interact with those people. Whether they are in the chair next to you or across the world, it is important to practice Inclusive Behaviors, be fully present in your interactions, and carefully consider how the tools in the meeting might help or hinder inclusion.

 

By Victoria Gammerman and Tia Wager

Bringing Yourself—All of Yourself—as Instrument

Posted by Corey Jamison on November 17, 2011 None comments

Every day, we strive to leverage our best selves as instruments to do our best work. That, of course, requires knowing what our best selves think.

Some years ago, I first heard about the idea of Self as Instrument from our partner Judith Katz. The framework calls us to be in tune with ourselves and others, doing our best together. It challenges us to imagine the unimaginable, to believe change is possible, to act on our vision of tomorrow. As instruments, we strive to Be BIG, owning our identity, our voice, our words and actions. In short, Self as Instrument is about being and bringing our best selves to every situation.

But how do you know what your best self is thinking? I believe we can use a KJCG technology—the Four Corners Breakthrough—to uncover that thinking.

The Four Corners Breakthrough, developed by Judith Katz and Fred Miller, is named after the police procedure of interviewing witnesses from all four street corners of an accident scene, knowing that each one has only a small part of the story. After gathering all the accounts, they assemble the data to put together a 360-degree view of the whole story—as accurate and complete a view as one could possibly get.

In organizations, this approach brings together people with a broad range of differences and perspectives to share their knowledge and ideas. By doing so, organizations can see each issue from all angles, making for better decisions and solutions.

What if we used Four Corners Breakthrough to check in with ourselves? For each situation where our best self is required, I would suggest taking in the view from four aspects of ourselves:

  1. Our brain—what’s the logic here? What effect flows from what cause? What are the root causes? What result might naturally follow from what is happening now?
  2. Our heart—what types of emotions does the situation stir up? Why? What insight can these emotional reactions provide that our logical faculties might miss?
  3. Our senses—what do we see, hear, and touch in this situation? Does it flow together seamlessly? Are there disconnects between, say, what our eyes tell us and what our ears hear? What are we hearing from others’ street corners? What are we sensing about the underlying issues?
  4. Our intuition—a.k.a. our “gut.” How does this seem on an intuitive level?

By checking in with our internal four street corners, we gain a 360-degree view of our internal vision. Out of this “full self” our best self emerges, and we can use it as an instrument to be the HOW: how change will happen, how we will be present in every situation.

We are far more than our logical faculties. Why not ask all aspects of ourselves to contribute their unique perspective?

This internal Four Corners Breakthrough is yet one more reason for taking a Moment of Focus when needed throughout the day. In that moment, which we often use at the beginning of meetings to ponder how we want to be present, we can take our internal inventory and see how our best self is responding to the situation. Then we can project that best self into the world—and join with others to do our best work together.

Stop the Bus! Inclusion in Feedback

Posted by Volk Bush Haldeman Kelly Ti on November 3, 2011 2 comments

What is all this about a bus?

No matter where we go these days, it is hard not to hear about the bus, and the reference is rarely good. When we betray people or disparage them, we throw them under the bus. When we go to the other extreme—taking responsibility that is not ours to take—we jump in front of the bus. People who receive non-constructive feedback often feel hit by the bus.

Perhaps we need to park the bus.

Consider the issue of feedback. All of us can use constructive, affirming feedback on our work performance. More than anything else, this kind of input helps us grow in our positions, develop our skills, and do our best work.

But many feedback sessions reach a point at which constructive feedback starts to morph into something else. Perhaps the comments turn subtly from evaluating the work to judging the person. Perhaps the tone of voice takes on an emotional edge. Maybe the point being discussed goes on one comment too long, or the room just goes quiet and the tension rises. In any event, the intended recipient of the input shifts from openness to defensiveness, and the situation suddenly becomes uncomfortable. Sometimes these shifts take place before anyone notices.

How can we notice the shifts when they happen? How can we stop the bus before it hits anyone? Inclusive Behaviors can help on both sides of the interaction. When we are givers of feedback, being fully engaged enables us to pick up on shifts in tone and the feeling in the room earlier than we normally would. By paying attention to other people’s cues—body language, tone of voice, reactions—we become more aware of the total environment, which enables us to ensure that it supports inclusion and stops the bus from rolling. By sharing our feedback as an ally (and listening as an ally after we share it), we place ourselves in a position of standing with the recipient, not against the recipient.

We can also use the Inclusive Behaviors as recipients of feedback. By speaking up when we feel hit by the bus (or sense that others have), we can address our misunderstandings and resolve our disagreements right away, instead of letting them fester and creating more momentum for the bus to roll on. KJCG’s Pinch Model can play a role here by providing a proven format for working through conflicts.

Moreover, separating the work from the person can remove the sting. If people perform badly at a task, it does not make them bad people: it simply means they were not at their best at that moment, doing that job. It turns the experience into a learning moment, which can help them continuously improve and ensure that the next time they complete the task they bring their best work. This may seem obvious, but it is difficult to remember in the midst of a conflict or crisis. The separation of person and task also reminds us that no work is the domain of any one individual: it is our work, our success, our failure.

If we start with these simple steps, we can get closer to fulfilling another Inclusive Behavior: creating a safe space for ourselves and others. That enables us to get on the bus—together—to “drive” it toward the common good and shared success.

When “Business as Usual” No Longer Works

Posted by Judith Katz on October 20, 2011 None comments

“When a paradigm shifts,” wrote Joel Barker, “everything goes back to zero”—individuals and organizations alike. Old ways of working, no matter how successful, have no bearing on the future, because the future demands entirely new ways of working.

Yet many people fear the new. How can organizations help them embrace it?

The answer to this question may determine whether organizations thrive or fail in the next few years. The paradigm shift—from the industrial era to one of more “open access and choice,” from regional scope to global marketplace, from simplicity to complexity—is already upon us, requiring a move FROM “business as usual” TO “business as uncertainty.” Many paradigm shifts are having a major impact on organizations today:

  • FROM one-way, top-down communications TO “everyone is heard”
  • FROM top-down decision making TO collaborative decisions
  • FROM rigorous control of information TO open access to information
  • FROM a view of people as “hands and feet”—not thinking, only doing as they are told—TO an environment in which people are valued in their entirety and expected to bring value  

In too many workplaces, people feel comfortable with their routine and may see little reason to make the FROM-TO leap. “What we have been doing has worked up until now,” they reason. “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?” This outlook shows up at all levels of organizations: senior leadership, middle management, and front lines.

What will it take to inspire people to embrace the new ways of working?

It will take courageous leaders who see the need for change and are willing to collaborate with the people of the organization to make change happen. These leaders will need to provide opportunities for everyone to gain new mindsets, behaviors, and skills. Above all, the organization will need to reinvent its most basic building block: the ways in which people interact. The goal is articulated in the following elements from KJCG’s definition of inclusion:

 an environment in which all people feel respected, valued, and seen for who they are; an organization in which collaboration includes all the right people needed to address an issue or opportunity; a workplace in which people at all levels and across divisions give one another supportive energy to do their best work.

Such a transformation, effected through Inclusion as the HOWSM, can motivate people to give more of their energy and extend themselves further for the organization. As they bring this energy into their collaborations, new perspectives arise, knowledge and best practices pass through the organization more quickly, and people build on one another’s ideas. Decisions and solutions become far better than anything that individuals or teams could come up with by staying in their silos.

Best of all, people see the value of these new ways of working—and embrace them.

Transformed in this way, drawing the best from all people, the organization is in the best possible position to succeed in today’s challenging times.

The Webforce of 2031: Danger Ahead

Posted by Renee Reid on October 6, 2011 1 comments

Can you imagine what the workplace might look like 20 years from now? On a recent retreat, I was asked to do just that. So I imagined. And what I saw—even with all its promise of a better, more efficient life—made me squirm.

It’s easy to predict that technology will only advance faster and become more pervasive. I can see a future in which there is no workplace in the way we think of it now: a physical space where people go to work. Instead of a workforce, we’ll have a webforce—people connected even more virtually than they are today.

For instance: In 2031, I imagine, our online experience won’t be limited to a screen. Thanks to advances in holography and virtual reality, we will attend virtual meetings in virtual rooms, where we see virtual representations of our colleagues. If we need a whiteboard, we’ll be able to produce one out of thin air, as it were.  The need to leave our homes to “go to work” will nearly disappear.

Education and training will change in similar ways, with profound effects. Online schooling will become even more common and cover more disciplines than ever. In my imagined scene, the time will come when, to become an architect, students will either spend years in college or simply master the information they can find on the Internet—again, without leaving their homes.

So why am I uncomfortable with all this? With the education piece, people who learn from the Internet will have a distinct competitive advantage over their college-trained counterparts:  they will absorb the available information more quickly and work at lower salaries because they won’t have student loans to repay. But who’s to say these people will have nearly the skill needed to excel in their chosen field? After all, they would be selecting their own sources of knowledge, rather than learning from a preset curriculum carefully designed to impart the necessary skills. That may lead to many people entering professional fields unprepared to serve their clients at the highest level. Industries and their customers could suffer as a result.

On a broader level, these changes may cause people to see education as more of a commodity than a cherished gift. There is something about the excitement and immediacy of a live class—the intellectual challenge of interacting with professors and peers in physical space—that brings home the value of education. When we lose that sense of value, we can easily start discounting the need for any education beyond technical training.

Similarly, the idea of webforce may well have many advantages. It could eliminate much of the waste that occurs in today’s workplace with its extensive travel and inefficient communication and duplication of effort.

But actually, I’m concerned that all the virtual reality will create more waste, not less. Every new technology sparks endless conversations about how to use it. That’s why we see so many articles on email etiquette and tips on being a good “netizen.” Those conversations will only multiply in the future—and leave us even less time to do our best work.

Even worse, the misunderstandings that arise because of different approaches to the technology will make people feel less valued. If you expect an immediate response to your email when it scrolls across my TV at 10:00 p.m., will you worry if I don’t respond? Will you wonder whether I am deliberately excluding your opinion or simply taking a night off to be with my family?

There’s a broader level to this aspect of the future too. As we connect more virtually, we may connect less in physical space. This is already happening with children who text and IM and game instead of playing outside with actual friends. If living exclusively in the “virtual bubble” isn’t good for kids, it surely isn’t good for the rest of us.

Of course, I don’t know that the future will look exactly like this. But my imaginings are simply projections from what is already happening, so they are not that far-fetched. And I don’t know how we can come to terms with such a future. But I do know that we should start asking the questions now—so we’re more prepared for tomorrow when it comes.

Why Diversity Just Isn’t Enough

Posted by Judith Katz and Fred Miller on September 22, 2011 None comments

Diversity training is so 20th century. We hear that from organizations on a regular basis. They have conducted the training; they have held “diversity and inclusion” programs. And although they understand that diverse perspectives are critical for business success, they often have no idea how to create the interactions that will enable people to bring their differences—differences of perspective, background, and experience—to solve problems more rapidly, create innovation, and achieve higher performance.

The problem is that diversity training can only get you so far.

The diversity training of the 1990s was an essential first step for most organizations. It opened individuals’ eyes to the ever-growing diversity of the world around them—and the need to embrace and leverage that diversity if they were to thrive in the next century. It sparked many efforts to develop workforces that spanned differences of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, background, nationality, age, and experience.

As a result, many of today’s organizations have a more diverse workforce, but no effective way to leverage it. The key to that leverage is to shift our mindset about diversity and inclusion to the how—the how of unleashing the creativity of the whole workforce.

This is where Inclusion as the HOWSM comes in.

As a mindset for addressing today’s marketplace, Inclusion as the HOWSM considers how people connect and interact with one another. By utilizing inclusive behaviors—forming new partnerships of people who hold a range of perspectives, urging them to speak up and be bold, honoring each person’s background as a contributor to organizational capability—Inclusion as the HOWSM fosters a safe environment in which to fully leverage the ideas and experiences of all people in the organization. This, in turn, creates a wide bandwidth for problem solving and innovation. For any given issue, it brings together the greatest number of the “right” people (i.e., the people affected by the issue) doing the right work at the right time, to solve problems more rapidly and accelerate results.

Inclusion as the HOWSM builds trust, and that trust is essential to speed. All too often, co-workers do not share information at all, or share only bits and pieces, due to mistrust. As people come together through Inclusion as the HOWSM, they discover how knowledge from one unit might help other units achieve their objectives. They see the potential that collaboration has for the whole organization. Motivated by such benefits, they begin to align with the new way of interacting. Cohesion grows across the organization, and that enables the flow of information and knowledge transfer that empowers the who1le organization to move more nimbly.

Diversity and inclusion has come a long way from the 1990s, when it was seen as a program peripheral to core business objectives. Now it ranks among the most important drivers of organizational performance. Inclusion as the HOWSM is the bridge from the old mindset to the new way of doing things, and one of the new means that organizations must adopt in order to succeed today.