Empowerment: #7 of Eight Disciplines for Planned Change
Empowerment 
We all have the power needed to create and manage change within the systems (personal and organizational) of which we are members. However, many of us constrain our energy and power through antithetical belief systems. Often, we simply don’t believe that we have choices available to achieve the changes we desire. At times, our concept of what we want to change is too vague to be useful. Or, our energies are too dispersed to be effective. Regardless of the reason why not, what is needed is to empower ourselves. Unfortunately, others cannot do it for us–though they can support us in our self-empowerment.
Here is the definition we use for empowerment: Supporting self and others toward self-discovering their inherent ability to choose their behavior, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs on behalf of fully engaging themselves toward accomplishing their personal goals and those of their systems.
General Thoughts about Making Empowerment Work
1. Believe in your/their inherent excellence, our/their intrinsic worthiness.
2. Find a wider range of choices beyond “damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
3. Focus on the present rather than the past or the future.
4. Beware problem-solving. Empowerment “teaches someone to fish;” problem-solving “gives a fish.”
5. Offer suggestions only to ensure that all options are being explored.
6. Ask, “How would you find out?” when “I don’t know” statements occur.
7. Support the other person, not our own ideas, experiences, or egos.
Specific Steps to Support the Empowerment of Others
1. Clarify goals.
2. Identify what is in the way of accomplishing the goal.
3. Check that one is operating from sound and current data.
4. Identify beliefs and conflicting thoughts that may be preventing goal attainment.
5. Keep the focus on empowerment rather than the obstacles and other players.
6. Offer suggestions to choose from.
7. Identify the decisions that need to be made among the available choices.
8. Identify the support system needed.
9. Identify a path forward of concrete next steps of time and place.
10. Check to see if the person has confidence in the path forward.
11. Offer encouragement. You’re done!
Marianne Williamson’s poem speaks to the essence of empowerment.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
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Learning from Differences: #6 of Eight Disciplines for Planned Change
Learning from Differences
Differences are the only sources of learning we have. Now, that’s a bold statement! Think about it. Can you think of something you’ve learned that didn’t come from something different? Some people think that I’m rather brilliant; however, if you put me in a room full of clones of me, there is nothing I can learn from any of them. I already know everything they know. I could learn from you though, simply because you are different from me in thoughts, beliefs, life experience, etc. If you can come up with something other than differences that we might learn from, please share in the “Comments” areas below!
For the moment, let’s go with the notion that differences really are the only source of learning we have. When used for learning, differences become the precursor of synergy, wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; creativity, where something new is brought into the world; and the new productivity that can come from both synergy and creativity. Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline wrote of “The Learning Organization” which became a popular goal that has only rarely been achieved. Why has such a worthy goal been so difficult to accomplish? Too often, however, differences are used too finitely to determine who wins and who loses. Without thinking too much, who wins if it’s more vs. less, top vs. bottom, or fast vs. slow? Who traditionally wins if we focus on white vs. black or male vs. female?
When stuck in a win/lose mode, differences are the source of wasteful power struggles or creativity-deadening conformity aimed at avoiding power struggles. Too often, organizations overvalue conformity—those with critical information or new or differing ideas are warned not to “rock-the-boat” making sound and current data a rare commodity. The Bay of Pigs and Challenger disasters are but two highly dramatic examples of this phenomenon. New, differing, and needed ideas are too often stifled by our need to be safe within finite organizational cultures.
The ability to learn from differences is a critical use-of-self and use-of-group skill for leaders and other change agents. It will support them in maintaining the systemic, non-judgmental perspective necessary to use the differences within their systems for the learning and synergy needed to collaboratively invent an effective change process. Given our socialized propensity toward operating from the finite perspective, this is more easily said than done. The infinite perspective helps as it allows change managers the support of strong and long-lasting partnerships and teams. Such support is doubly critical when the stress of change has moves us swiftly back to the traditional, conformity-oriented way of operating. With support a speedy return to learning from differences can then be provided as needed.
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Infinite Power: #5 of Eight Disciplines for Planned Change
INFINITE POWER
Traditional change management approaches often call for identifying the person or people who are not in accord with a change project and fixing or replacing them with people who are. This process typically leads to a series of finite, win/lose power struggles that change little and waste much systemic energy on non-productive activities. Noting that win/lose processes will, in the long run, always generate lose/lose results, an alternative approach would be to focus on infinite, win/win change goals and strategies.
An important aspect of playing infinitely is to focus on changing the quality of relationships within the target system rather than trying to change or fix members who do not seem in accord with a proposed change. This is directly related to the processes of conflict management and team-building mentioned in previous sections.
Focusing on changing the quality of relationships rather than trying to fix or change people or groups of people minimizes the need for power struggles. When open, collaborative decision-making processes are used, most individual needs can be met while focusing on developing strategies and tactics aimed at the change goals.
I remember a situation in a high-value, light manufacturing company. The head of manufacturing was upset with the head of sales for bringing in an order that she couldn’t fulfill by the date promised with the personnel to which she was limited by a budget crunch. The sales manager insisted that that was what the customer wanted and that he was under pressure to increase revenue flow. Their boss, the general manager, gave me the job of helping them resolve their issues. I asked the boss if either of the constraints could be eased. He said, “No,” very politely, but firmly. I interviewed both parties to help get them into a listening mode by my listening extensively to them, so that both were feeling heard before meeting together. It took awhile for them to get past their self-righteousness and figure out that if they worked together they could short-circuit the issues they had with each other. The detail of “working together” was interesting: They decided to do monthly forecasts together and that a manufacturing representative would go along on customer meetings involving potential sales over a certain amount. Yes, it took three hours including lunch to work all of this out, and we created a process through which both could win in addition to the organization winning! With persistence, patience, and enough passion, infinite solutions are most always available!
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Feedback: #4 of Eight Disciplines for Planned Change
Feedback is needed for effective and efficient goal attainment. That should make it important to us and something that we would want to seek out on a regular basis. To the contrary, feedback in human systems seems to have a particularly bad reputation. What goes through your mind when someone says to you, “Can I give you some feedback?” Time to duck? Regardless of its unpopularity we use it all the time. When driving somewhere in your car you use landmarks as feedback that tells you that you are headed in the right direction. Unusual noises in your car are feedback that tells you that something may be wrong and that it’s time to take it to the mechanic. Those are just two of many, many ways that feedback is important to us. It seems to be feedback from other people that we often find problematic. We think that such unpopularity comes from our misunderstanding of it. So let’s set the record straight.
Feedback is information from our environment about how it is responding to us. With that information, we can judge if we are on target or off target toward whatever goals we may have within that environment. It is sound and current data that is available to us at all times, though we are often paying insufficient attention to notice it. Feedback allows us to evaluate to what extent the impact of our behavior is congruent with our intentions. The more we can fine-tune our behavior to be in sync with our intentions the greater will be our effectiveness.
People often attempt to use feedback as a direct means of changing someone’s behavior. In fact, it is not very good at that. Feedback offered from that intention is often heard as criticism, which, as often as not, generates defensiveness and resistance rather than the desired change. Hence, when someone says to you, “May I give you some feedback?” Duck!
As important as feedback is, managing it effectively calls for understanding three principles:
- Feedback always says something about the giver, not necessarily anything about the receiver. Consequently, let your initial response be curiosity about what’s going on with the giver, then decide what your next course of action might be.
- What is done with feedback is solely in the hands of the receiver. Consequently, be curious about why you are choosing to react the way you are, and then choose a response that might more effectively get you what you want.
- Feedback related the goals of the receiver is more likely to be accepted than feedback related to the goals the giver has for the receiver.
Kurt Lewin offered the formula: Behavior is a function of people in an environment Bf(P+E). Too often we attempt to manage our behavior solely on data from our internal belief systems (ignoring feedback from our environment) only to find ourselves with results we neither wanted nor intended. Effective goal achievement and change management call for paying close attention to the feedback from our environment (including of course the people in it) so that we can adjust our behavior to get the response we wish from those around us.
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Sound and Current Data: #3 of Eight Disciplines for Planned Change
An efficient and successful change process needs good information for effective planning and decision-making. Such a principle, though obvious, is sorely needed as a reminder against mistaking our assumptions for accurate information. Our needs for being “right,” being seen as “smart,“ for not wanting to rock the boat or upset the boss often overwhelm our need for sound and current data. Accordingly, many change efforts suffer from insufficient and inaccurate information while others fall prey to power struggles having to do with whose information is right and whose is wrong. A related pitfall occurs when the need for conformity inhibits needed information from coming to the surface.
An environment of openness, straight-talk, truth, and honesty can be built from effective conflict management and team-building processes. In these ways a safe environment can be created which is the only environment in which sound and current data can openly exist.
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