Author: CrescaAdmin

 

 A good traveler has no fixed plans

And is not intent upon arriving

A good artist lets his intuition

Lead him wherever it wants

Lao Tzu

My doctoral work has been a big part of my life in the past year and 2016 has started with a desire to give greater intentionality and purpose to my research. Being grounded in the action research tradition, my doctoral work is not on people but with people, not in intellectual construct and theory alone but in actively researching something that matters to me and, hopefully, to the world at large, through the process of actively engaging in the world with my inquiry. This past year has just shown me what a big ask that is and it has evoked a mixed bag of tremendous positive energy and moments of feeling this is quite an impossible ask, especially since one has to be willing to abandon one’s original research idea and keep fine-tuning the purpose of one’s inquiry, based on what is emerging in one’s research process. So this process feels akin to holding on and letting go at the same, to be truly willing to use myself as a primary instrument of my inquiry – to be open in a way that might feel risky and vulnerable and yet hold the seeds for precious insight and personal growth.

The focus of my inquiry is currently around bridging inner and outer worlds. While my work in the past ten years has been primarily on the inside (myself and those of my clients), I am now keenly interested to see the intersection between these two worlds in a way that is seamless, connected and giving life to each other. This takes me to many intersections in my work – between psychology and philosophy, between business and behavior, process and people and between being and doing. I believe that inner reflective work needs to be brought into the mainstream of leadership and life and not be something we “do” in isolation of our work in the world or de-contextualised from our business or leadership deliberations. If reflective practices can enable a mindful way of being, in leaders and beyond, can we then hope to find greater congruence in life – between who we are and what we do – a congruence in the being and doing, versus either being a standalone? I am interested in how these are intricately connected, co-dependent and enabling of each other. These are some of my starting assumptions that I hope to explore through my research process.

A key aspect of a doctoral that is action research based is that it is deeply situated in one’s own inquiry with the self. The topic has to have personal meaning for me and be a very much live and active inquiry in my life. Hence, this inquiry and research is as much about how I bridge my own inner and outer worlds.

One of the ways we are actively encouraged to write about our research and our experiences in the world is through other forms of knowing, especially presentational forms such as art, dance, poetry etc. These artful ways of interpreting experience might give greater texture and perspective beyond my primarily intellectual ways of knowing the world. Now, I don’t feel like I have an artistic bone in my body, so when I heard this gentle prodding from my doctoral supervisor, over the past many months, I thought it impossible and ran from the idea!

But this past week, I have had a number of intense experiences over a program that I was a part of. A program where many new experimentation’s were made, which asked of me to access parts of myself I never knew existed, as a way to bridge the inner and outer worlds of the participants I was working with. And as I have been carrying my inquiry into my life, an intention to write differently and to discover artful ways of knowing, I sat to write about my experiences and out flowed some poetry. To all the seasoned poets out there, this is untainted and straight without editing or having any inkling of what makes for poetic craft. So here goes:

Voices

 The inner voice and the inner noise

Both chiming in, disturbing any poise

Stilling it down doesn’t seem to work

But listening to it is equally hard work!

The chatter inside, non-stop and true

To make ample sense of the outer views

And yet the inner, has no place

Without the outer, giving it grace

The outer, in turn, grand and strong

Shows up in ways that feel right and wrong

The inner says “hey, come back in”

And we can have a chat about what is under your skin

So I honor both as I step into life

Trying to fight the man-made divide

As I act to reflect and reflect to act

Can I find that elusive balancing act?

 

Over this past week I have been contending with a myriad of emotions while attempting to write my inquiry proposal for my doctoral studies, which I have recently commenced. The highs of being on a beautiful campus in the UK (Ashridge) in what felt like a carefree learning environment, with a group of very like minded souls, evoked the curious child in me. And yet, my flight touching down in Singapore signified a broader landing into, what felt like, a completely new planet. As I am in the very early days of figuring out the norms and rules of this new doctoral planet, the adult in me shoved the child aside urging me into the realities of “performing” towards an inquiry proposal that is soon due.  Much as I would like to “trust the process” completely, I find self-doubt creeping up in good measure as I get in touch with my own inadequacies, with somehow not being able to do something “valid” through this doctoral process. I also saw myself scampering to look for some kind of “model” that would somehow contain all this anxiety and give me a frame to work with. Something, anything that I could just get on with.

So I find myself thinking about re-framing my current state as one of “not knowing”. Allowing this state of not knowing to play havoc within me is proving an experience by itself. It is, in many ways, forcing me to suspend judgment, attributions and drawing any conclusions for much longer than I normally would. This is enabling me to hold several possibilities simultaneously and, in some ways, eases the pressure of any premature conclusions. I am entertaining the possibility that this state of “not knowing” is perhaps a very essential part of my process towards discovering some kind of new knowing. Won’t I always be in this state of “not knowing” something and how do I not let it cripple me, but keep me engaged in creating new knowledge?  While it feels messy, destabilizing and completely intangible, it is forcing me to examine my own learning history and patterns and to immerse myself fully in experiencing the mess, the confusion, the endless doubts and the joys of discovery.

One way I experience my life unfolding is as a continuous and simultaneous cycle of knowing and not knowing, that comes from many different terrains. A lot of it feels primarily anchored in a place of belief, intuition and sensing (among many other foundations), And yet, I find, very often, that this knowing sits alongside an intellectual and academic curiosity, in a manner that the two do converge. My doctoral program forces exactly this in a very intentional way – to focus on an inquiry that really resonates at a very personal level within identified academic territories. While my reading list lurks in the background, I am finding myself drawn towards exploring and expressing a knowing that primarily comes from within. Even before judging the sensibilities of my own writing, I am finding myself deeply intrigued by the very nature of truth, change and knowledge. After all, how do we know?

I did end up writing a first draft this week, which felt sloppy, amateurish and all over the place, like a beginner again. This is helping me connect with the emotional dilemmas of many of my clients, who often find themselves at the crossroads of pursuing their passion versus practicalities (bank balance, social status and “commitments”). It feels like standing at the crossroads of the known (and sometimes outgrown) and the new and undefined, with a compulsory stopover in land of the unknown. It is both daunting and exciting to be in that space of letting go of the old while not knowing what the new feels, looks, smells and sounds like. And yet, I feel drawn into this journey, which feels right in so many ways, enabling me to find expression to the forming, unfinished and ever-changing nature of my own being, forcing me to ask, in the words of Carl Rogers, “Am I living in a way that is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?”

Groups and teams provide an important phenomena for understanding our innate need to belong and yet be separate. This paradox, which seems fairly universal, might speak to our simultaneous need for containment (which a group provides) and for independence and free expression, which a group might cripple. In a way, the question that this key paradox carries is “How can I exist within boundaries and not lose my voice?”

The term “containment” stems from Bion (1970) and is closely associated with the concept of early infant-mother communication and is a critical basis for the development of reflective capacity. In organisational life, this containment becomes imperative when there is a breakdown to task or one’s role. The funny thing about containment is that it’s absence is felt far more than it’s presence, which can often be taken for granted.

This need to belong and remain independent shows up in many ways in groups – anxieties, fears, over-focus on task, rules and projections, among others. I am finding that in my work with groups, I end up providing containment through clarity of roles, task, physical boundaries and schedules. While all this, in some ways, takes group members away from being independent and having to follow some “standard”, it appears to be a critical part in containing anxiety especially in transient groups and teams, which otherwise do not have a strong group identity and in which group members question their own competence and “success” in the group. This further appears to manage one’s own questions and doubts of the other aspects of group dynamics that invariably emerge – role, power and authority among others. This commonness perhaps also provides for the “belonging” as the group would then appear to have a common set of norms, agenda and common things “to do.”

Once this containment is provided for, it appears that group members slowly transition to finding their voice within a group. The artifacts of containment become a safe and bounded place in which I can belong and yet assert and express my individuality. This dual need of ours to belong and not belong surfaces in all kinds of anxieties and frustrations, the chief one being a dance between belonging and a fear that this belonging will compromise one’s independence. This is further complicated by group members needs for any kind of affiliation being very different, often governed by their early experiences and attachments to their own family structures. Group members having a high need for affiliation or acceptance might appear to “belong” more easily and yet take much longer to find their own voice. Those not having this need as strongly might come across as being anti-group, when in fact, they might be navigating and defining their own definition and equilibrium between belonging in a way that does not compromise their independence.

As each group member navigates this very personal inner battle and yet remains engaged in the group through what might feel like a messy inside, the courage of group members for authentic dialogue becomes critical. It’s the courage to connect with what parts of the self the group evokes, with one’s own frailties and humanness. And in the confines of this authentic dialogue, we start experiencing the subtle shift in group life, from a collection of people coming together for a supposed task to a sense of team where each one starts holding a part of the other in themselves; where my anxieties are held by the group and a greater psychological holding emerges and where trust, compassion, courage and acceptance become the dominant currency of authentic exchange.

While all this can evoke a wide range of emotions and behaviours for group members, from  indifference, anxiety, frustration, tentativeness, “testing waters” to very magical group energy which can be personally transformational. This journey from potential suspicion of the group to hope and belonging is organic in nature and cannot be pre-determined or defined. An essential quality for groups to be a harbinger of change and personal growth for individual members seems to be a willingness to engage fully with one’s own narrative, without necessarily knowing where it is all going. Herein, we come back to the essential and yet paradoxical nature of groups – the task or project providing containment and boundaries to explore the more unbounded parts of our Being in groups.

But beneath this paradox that plays out in perhaps all of us, I wonder if there is a more basic question we carry and that is around a search for ones own significance.

It’s been a very intense month and, in a completely unplanned way, taken me to the land of working with a systems psychodynamics approach. Systems psychodynamics is “a term used to refer to the collective psychological behavior” (Neumann, 1999, p. 57) within and between groups and organisations. I first spend two weeks at Tavistock’s well regarded Leicester Conference in the UK. Landed back in Singapore buzzing and barely “landed” in a broader sense and was once again off to using the approach in a work context. So, it has felt like being in a turbo charged, amplified play with the unconscious which is exhausting and yet feels good – akin to a good workout. I often describe the experience as a paradox of messy confusion and yet immense clarity.

There are many approaches and lenses to understanding leadership and very often we learn in the role of a consultant – either through reading books by well known authors, exploring leadership models or from the leadership experience of others. The Leicester Conference provides an opportunity to have a completely first person experience to explore one’s own relationship with authority, power, roles and boundaries. There are no “presenters” and one is given a series of opportunities in different forms of groups, to explore hypotheses and experiment with new behaviours. It can be very intense and the meaning making is largely left to the individual, which, at times, can feel stressful.

A big theme of this past month of working with a systems psychodynamic approach as a learner and then in an application role with a client has been to experience how little we authorise ourselves. A lot of leaders I work with are in their early 40’s and beyond and a common pattern seems to be a view of authority being outside of us… in a boss, in organisational norms, in parents (depending on cultural context), in religious bodies, communities or in an expert. This is, in part, has to do with the socio-psychological factors of our generation, where there was a focus on pleasing authority – be it a parent, teacher, professor, boss etc. There is in implicit power equation and hierarchy in these ways of relating to authority and doesn’t necessarily put the self as an equal author of the relationship with one’s own authority. So, there is often a waiting to be authorised, akin to waiting for an invitation to show up to life.

In my early days of experimenting with this new found authorising of myself, I am becoming suddenly conscious of places that I feel authorised and de-authroised. We all know the experience of feeling de-authorisation at some stage/s in our life: where we are given a role to do something and yet don’t feel fully allowed to express that role in the manner that is ours. This shows up in all aspects of life – leadership, parenting etc. Equally, I am beginning to notice places where I may not be enabling others to authorise themselves and end up de-authorsing them, for e.g., when I get into micro-managing my children or interfere with my husband’s parenting style, I could end up de-authorising them and set in motion the very same patterns that I am trying to get rid of! We can also feel extremely de-authroised by complicated matrix structures in organisations, an over-controlling boss, lack of systems and processes or even a culture that does not allow for creative expression

I am finding, in my own experience and in those of my clients, the power of authorising the self…. it is game changing and places the mandate of authority within us versus outside of us. It empowers the self greatly and decisions become a function of exercising ones own authority versus on vested authority of a parent, boss, spiritual guru, health expert or even social norms dictated from outside the self. This is not say these experts don’t have a place. The question is more our relationship with these sources of authority and power and whether we enable them to authorise ourselves or get into a dependency mode which then weakens our connection with our innate intuition and power.

A self-authorising way of living has a healthy regard for different ways of being and seeing, with an understanding of the nuances and subtleties of one’s own values, likes, dislikes, which are dictated by what one truly feels versus what one ought to feel. The self-authorising being can of course come across as narcissist and being petty about these differences. However, there are leaders who self-authorise in a manner that is transforming for the self and for others; in a way that makes him/her an instrument of change. This level of self-authorising comes from a deeper level of knowing and from transcending differences to a place that truly informs one’s own way of being, which is ever changing and emerging.

As Kegan (1994) pointed out:

“When the socialised mind dominates our meaning making, what we should feel is what we do feel, what we should value is what we do value and what we should want is what we do want”

Authorising the self requires tremendous courage in the context of social expectations and testing boundaries. It is a willingness to own our own authority; requires being connected with this innate understanding of the self and a willingness to act on this understanding versus the sanction or validation of others. It’s displays self-love and self-care and a courage to stand in one’s full glory. And the way we show up to life and leadership changes drastically when we authorise ourselves – it changes from a permisson-seeking “may I?” to a “here I am!”