Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. -Franklin P. Jones
My friend, Sam, is an extraordinarily gifted facilitator and coach. He helps corporations have hard conversations. Let’s face it, organizations are no better than individuals at having difficult conversations. They avoid, deny, pretend, and justify just like the rest of us.
Sam was working with a multinational corporation: people in power suits sitting around a larger-than-life, acres-long, mahogany and oak boardroom table employing every avoidance strategy in their arsenal (blackberries and cell phones are fantastic tools for avoidance), maintaining their aura of “professional.” In exasperation, Sam slid ever-so-slowly out of his leather power chair and underneath the table. In the shocked silence that followed, Sam watched all the legs fidget until one curious face looked beneath the table. Sam waved and motioned for that person to join him. Then another face looked. Sam and his new ally waved and motioned and that person slid under the table to be with them. One by one, all of the power suits slid under the table and joined Sam. When they were all “under the table,” Sam said, “now that we’re all together, can we finally begin talking about what’s really going on in this organization?” They had a very difficult and honest conversation and began to address the real issues.
When Sam slid under the table, his work became experiential, he neutralized all the roles being played, removed the status games so that his clients could reach beyond the abstract and reveal what was personal and relevant about their challenges. Most trainings or interventions are designed to raise awareness about an issue; the underlying assumption is that behavior will change when awareness is heightened. It’s a flawed assumption. Think about it, if raising awareness were enough to change behavior then there wouldn’t be a single cigarette smoker on the face of the planet.
Language, talking about issues (and around issues), is inadequate when significant change is needed. We act when we identify, when the required change becomes personal, when the need reaches beyond the abstract and engages the feelings of each individual. The word, “experiential” in experiential learning is not about games or movement or manufactured experiences, it is about connecting to each participant’s personal experiences. Perhaps the most significant reason, the “bottom-line” reason for business is this: abstract knowledge is not accessible in a difficult moment.
Companies feel the need to protect themselves against all the “isms’ that happen in the workplace, all the potential missteps that happen in an “edge” moment and consequently become a crisis. Knowledge and rules are available before or after the fact. Regardless of our belief to the contrary, people are not rational nor are they objective when feeling threatened. Choices only become more available in “hot” situations if, in training, they’ve already had the physical experience of what they actually do when they come to an edge – it is different than what they think they do.
Our belief is that most people want to do the right thing and will choose not to react from an “ism” if they recognize that there is a choice, if they’ve been to an edge before and have learned to react by slowing down, paying attention to their thoughts, and suspending judgments.
-David Robinson
Comments