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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
The perfect resource for consultants, updated for a transformed and rapidly evolving market In the newly revised second edition of the Flawless Consulting Fieldbook, best-selling author and consultant Peter Block delivers an invaluable companion to the fourth edition of his popular Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Understanding Your Expertise. In the book, you'll find an expansive toolkit you can draw on for information and guidance in the midst of your next consulting engagement. It's a just-in-time literary aid that you can read from front-to-back, or one you can grab and skip to a specific thread or theme you need to read about right now. In the book, you'll discover: * How the flawless consulting skills are being applied in a wide variety of situations by people with unique and different ways of bringing their gifts in the world. Just like you. * How to act on what you know to use a variety of approaches to create experiences aligned with your intent and strategy * How to view resistance as an ally instead of a problem to be solved or overcome. An invaluable collection of resources for consultants everywhere, Flawless Consulting Fieldbook, 2nd edition will rapidly become your most used and dog-eared reference for everyday consulting engagements.
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Seitenzahl: 451
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contributors
Welcome
A FRIEND INDEED
FIELDBOOK AND GUIDE
SEEING MORE IN WHAT WE DO
MOVING ON
The Icons
1 No Fast and Easy Way
Chapter 1: Flawless
Chapter 2: Transformation Is Slow, Small, and Low Cost
COMMUNITY THROUGH “HOUSES”
THE FIRST OPEN SPACE MEETING
MORNING CIRCLES: CHECKING IN
MENTORING ADMINISTRATORS AND TEACHERS
THE ADVANTAGES OF RESTORATIVE PRACTICES
THE BENEFIT OF DESIGN
YOU’RE INVITED TO A PRO ACTION CAFÉ
REDUCING DISCIPLINARY REFERRALS AND EXPULSIONS
DESIGNED TO SUCCEED
Chapter 3: Risk Is Where You Find It
NO PAIN, NO PAIN
THE RISKS WE FEAR
VULNERABILITY IS A SIGN OF LIFE
Chapter 4: Consultant, Flawed
2 The Complexity of Advice
Chapter 5: Partners for Possibility
AN ENCOURAGED PRINCIPAL
PETER BLOCK AND COMMUNITY BUILDING WORKSHOPS
DINOKENG SCENARIOS
WALKING TOGETHER IN EDUCATION
PILOTING AN IDEA AT A PRIMARY SCHOOL
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT THROUGH IMMERSION AND SERVICE
SOUTH AFRICA: ALIVE WITH POSSIBILITY
PARTNERS FOR POSSIBILITY
REFLECTING ON THIRTEEN YEARS OF IMPACT
Chapter 6: Changing Focus
FLAWLESS CONTRACTING
CHANGE: NOW AND FUTURE
Chapter 7: Be Careful Who You Ask
FROM MYTH AND HISTORY
THE EDUCATED EXPERT
PARTNERSHIP: THE PROMISE AND PERILS
MINING THE EXPERT WITHIN
Chapter 8: Dealing with Resistance
REVEALING RESISTANCE
FOUR GUIDELINES FOR EXPOSING CONTENT AND EMOTIONS
TAKING THE RISK
3 The Power of the Question
Chapter 9: Flawless Goes to Parliament
CONSULTING IN PARLIAMENT
PARTNERSHIP AND TRANSPARENCY
INTRODUCING PROCESS CHECKS
OPENING UP THE ROOM
A LEGISLATIVE VICTORY
A DECENTRALIZED BANK
RESEARCH SCIENTISTS EMBRACE CONSULTING
Chapter 10: A Cautionary Tale
A BRIEF HISTORY
TODAY’S REALITY
CONSULTING METHODOLOGY IN TODAY’S WORLD
CONSULTANT AS PERTURBER
PURPOSE OF AN INTERVENTION
THE ALIGNMENT MODEL
Chapter 11: Change Is in the Details
THE ANGEL IN THE DETAILS
KNOWING A GOOD QUESTION WHEN YOU HEAR ONE
Chapter 12: Talk Is Walk
LEADERSHIP TALK
ANXIETY AND COURAGE
STRENGTH AT THE BROKEN PLACES
THE CONSTRUCTIVE USES OF ANXIETY
Chapter 13: So, What’s Working Here?
ENGAGEMENT BEGINS WITH DISCOVERY
SURFACING THE POSITIVE
HOPE IN A HOLOGRAPHIC WORLD
4 Emotions and the Personal
Chapter 14: From Organization Development to Making Music
Chapter 15: One Woman’s Wisdom
THE LABOR IS THE CLIENT’S
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING SEEN AND HEARD
THE WISDOM OF THE NEXT SMALL STEP
RELATIONSHIP MATTERS—AND KNOW WHEN TO LET GO
WORK AND FAMILY INHABIT THE SAME LIFE
WOMEN TEACHING WOMEN
“POWERFUL,” “FEMALE,” AND “PRESENCE” GO TOGETHER
IN CLOSING
Chapter 16: Sneaking the Spirit In
DOING THE REAL WORK
WITNESS TO THE SPIRIT
BE AN EVOCATOR
FREEDOM IS MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER WORD
5 Valuing Capacities
Chapter 17: Consultant for the Classroom
PERFORMANCE OVER LEARNING
TEACHER AS LEARNER
HUMANITY AND GIFTS
CONTRACTING WITH STUDENTS
THE TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C.
CHOICE MATTERS
Chapter 18: Talking with Sled Dogs
TEST RIDE
THE PLAN
RELATIONSHIPS
THE JUMP TO ACTION
REVIEW OF THE EVENT
LEARNINGS
Chapter 19: Investing in Our Humanity
CONNECTION/INCLUSION
SAMENESS/DIFFERENCE
POWER/COMPETITION
PROJECTION/SCAPEGOATING
ONGOING REFLECTIONS AND HOPE
6 Integrating Strategy and Experience
Chapter 20: The Engagement Paradigm
THE OLD CHANGE MANAGEMENT PARADIGM
THE ENGAGEMENT PARADIGM: THE CONFERENCE MODEL
Chapter 21: Unleashing the Magic in Organizations
ONE-BRAIN, ONE-HEART BELIEFS
WHAT SPARKS THE MAGIC
THE TACO CABANA INTERVENTION
Chapter 22: Nancy’s Advice
Chapter 23: Anonymous Interviews?
THE APPEAL OF ANONYMITY
WHEN AND WHEN NOT TO COLLECT DATA ANONYMOUSLY
Chapter 24: Community
ONCE UPON A TIME
LEAVING THE OLD, EMBRACING THE NEW
THE COMMUNITY’S VISION
FROM IDEAS TO ACTION
Chapter 25: How Is Who Doing?
SPOTLIGHT ON PARTICIPANTS
HOW WE EVALUATE CARRIES A MESSAGE
HIGH-ACCOUNTABILITY EVALUATION
NOW IS THE HOUR
CONFRONTING THE WISH TO BE PASSIVE
7 No Masks, No Bargains
Chapter 26: Proximal Health
Chapter 27: My Worst Consulting Nightmare
THE LESSONS
NEXT TIME
Chapter 28: Seven Questions
Postscript
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contributors
Welcome
The Icons
Begin Reading
Postscript
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
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Founded by Peter Block in 1980, Designed Learning was established to offer workshops based on the ideas in his books, including his most well-known works, Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used and Community: The Structure of Belonging. Since then, the team at Designed Learning has delivered training to thousands of people in 35 countries and five languages, internally for global companies and in public, open enrollment workshops.
At Designed Learning, our vision is to create workplaces and communities that work for the common good of all through conversations to consult, convene, and empower. We do so by believing in an alternative narrative that values individual choice, accountability, co-creation, and the power of invitation over mandate.
In partnering with our clients, we help develop new skills to engage teams, invite collaboration, overcome isolation, and deepen connection, especially in a virtual environment. We design structured learning experiences that awaken a sense of purpose to create organizations that people believe in and will thrive in—individually and collectively. Through our highly experiential in-person and virtual workshops, consulting, and coaching, we invite opportunities to move toward a more human culture of relatedness and connection where people learn how to build trusting relationships, get their expertise used, feel a greater sense of belonging, and accept freedom as a pathway to accountability.
If you share our vision, we invite you to visit our website or email us directly to explore the possibilities or be added to our rapidly growing community of individuals who want to become architects of the world they want to live in.
Website: www.designedlearning.com
Email: [email protected]
Also by Peter Block
Activating the Common Good: Reclaiming Control of Our Collective Well-Being
Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging, coauthored with Peter Koestenbaum
An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture, coauthored with Walter Brueggemann and John McKnight
The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, coauthored with John McKnight
Community: The Structure of Belonging
The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters
Freedom and Accountability at Work: Applying Philosophic Insight to the Real World, coauthored with Peter Koestenbaum
Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest
The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work
Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
2ND EDITION
the flawless consulting
FIELDBOOK & COMPANION
A GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR EXPERTISE
PETER BLOCK
AND 29 FLAWLESS CONSULTANTS
Copyright © 2024 by Peter Block, Inc., All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781394205721 (Paperback)ISBN 9781394205745 (ePub)ISBN 9781394205776 (ePDF)
Cover Design: Paul McCarthyCover Art: Courtesy Of Marie Carija
To Jennifer and Heather
Blessings beyond measure and even more so.
Contributors
Dick and Emily Axelrod
Rosemarie Barbeau
Neale W. Clapp
Kathleen D. Dannemiller
Patrick Dolan
Phil Grosnick
Sylvia James
Jill E. Janov
Dan Joyner
Amy J. Katz
Peter Koestenbaum
Joe Maalouf
Ward Mailliard
Andrea M. Markowitz
Samuel P. McGill
Elizabeth McGrath
Kenneth F. Murphy
Liz Clapp O’Connor
Nancy Sanchez
John P. Schuster
David and Carole Schwinn
Paul D. Tolchinsky
Paul Uhlig
Louise van Rhyn
Nancy Voss
Marvin R. Weisbord
Margaret J. Wheatley
Welcome
In this time of distributed work, emptying offices, virtual everything, and permanent uncertainty, living with little direct control is all of our condition.
In this sense, consulting describes everyone’s job.
A FRIEND INDEED
This fieldbook is meant as a companion to people who are doing consulting—that is, anyone attempting to help others effect a change in their lives or work. It is also meant for those who use consultants, for the more we know about the theory and practice of consulting, the better the chance we will get what we bargained for. A consultant can be a partner on a project or someone employed to be of service. The best ones are friends, too.
A consultant or companion can do at least two things for us. First, they affirm the integrity of our experience. When life is difficult, they remind us that it is life that is difficult; it is not that we are particularly wrong, unskilled, or incapable. They tell us the truth about ourselves that we can get no other way, and underneath their feedback lies an affection that heals more than any advice or suggestion they might offer.
Second, companions can help us change our minds. They give us a deeper way of thinking about our experience. Artists, visual and literary, give us a different perspective, for they see aspects of the world that we are blind to. They interpret elements of the culture that we swim in, elements that were previously felt but not understood or made explicit. Philosophers are also nice to have around, for they give us a wider view, forcing us to shift our focus outward.
So the intent of this book is to be a companion:
To support the integrity of your experience
To change your mind about how you interpret your own consulting experience
To broaden your way of thinking
To bring a manageable dose of therapy, art, philosophy, and literature into your thoughts about consulting
To remind you that things do not always go well
To do it all in a comforting and simple way
Another intent of this book is to explore how consulting touches on the more profound aspects of life and how our service is to translate these insights into our work and the consciousness of our clients, even those who work for us and those we report to. Questions of authenticity, risk, loyalty, and intimacy are themes that some might label more “philosophical” than “real world,” yet they are the stuff that we talk about with true friends.
FIELDBOOK AND GUIDE
We have also framed this book as a fieldbook to go along with Flawless Consulting, first published in 1981 and recently updated and expanded.
A fieldbook is something you pull out for information and guidance in the midst of action. Walking in the woods, you see a flower you can’t identify, so you pull out your fieldbook to learn what it is. In the world of work, you bounce off a difficult business problem, and with time running out, you reach for your favorite fieldbook and get an idea about what to do—a just-in-time literary aid. You can read it from front to back, or jump around to follow a particular thread or theme depending on your mood, or simply dip into it at random.
SEEING MORE IN WHAT WE DO
Every consulting project is a human encounter, even if the content is highly technical. Even in a world of automated interactions and electronic connections, there is always a human being on both ends of every transaction. The human condition sits squarely in the middle of every computer, every platform and reality perhaps wisely called virtual.
The essence of consulting is still about relationship. No matter how technical or commercial our work might become, getting our expertise used will ultimately depend on the level of trust and emotional confidence the consultant and client share with each other. After the discussion of new change models, business processes, or strategy, we finally end up in conversation with a client, and it is what we bring to that conversation that will be decisive.
Consulting as Contracting
The core skill in consulting is how to contract with your clients, and this is the heart of Flawless Consulting. Contracting is about building and renegotiating relationships. Exchanging wants with our clients. Treating the relationship as central. The hope is that if we can contract well with the client, this will, by example, help them improve their contracts with others they work with.
For this to occur we all need to know how to deal with resistance, and most of the wisdom about resistance comes from the discipline of therapy. It is from the therapeutic encounter that we learn that resistance is a sign that the client is finally taking us seriously. Resistance and learning are constant companions, and if learning is the goal of your work, then resistance to your ideas will be your constant companion, too. Seeing resistance as a natural occurrence, not taking it personally, and learning to simply name the resistance and then be quiet—these are relational skills that will save many of your days. They give resistance its rightful due and do not treat it as something to be “overcome.” The wish to overcome resistance is a thinly disguised desire for control. To overcome another is to be convinced that you are right and they are wrong.
In this context, we view resistance as a quality in the client that holds the person intact. It needs to be understood and affirmed, especially in the workplace. Much of the resistance we see in the workplace is in response to coercion. The resolution is to stop treating people as if they don’t want change and to work with them in the spirit of invitation. Then their objections will be seen in the context of learning instead of as a way to give us a hard time.
Consultant as Philosopher
There is also a philosophical underpinning to the process of consulting that gives context and meaning to what we do. The ideological questions leading to the skills and steps in the original book are really about the mental state and sociology of consulting. How to contract with a client. How to engage them in feedback and give them a clear picture of their situation. How to help them see how they operate together. What kind of culture they are producing. How to think about implementation. These are action and relationship focused. The consultant’s relationship with clients feeding into the clients’ relationships with one another. These all are in play, requested or not.
All this needs to be enhanced by philosophic insight about our work. We need to understand our purpose, and we need to help our clients understand their purpose, how this moment fits with some larger and more profound intention, and how the moment is grounded in the experience of being human.
This larger view is what is required for authentic, genuine healing. Seeing the larger story or drama that is taking place through the current event gives us the capacity to then take what we learn at the moment and bring it into every aspect of our lives. Transformation happens when the specific becomes universal. When the crisis gets reframed into a dimension characteristic of all others who are facing the same reality.
For example, we benefit when we can see the present situation as an example of the paradoxical nature of human existence, which calls attention to the fact that we and those around us are expressions of our own free will. That we always have a choice to make, regardless of the chains that seem to bind us, and that the choice is always complicated. There is a crossroads in every moment. Both paths in front of us are true; whatever we choose will carry with it some anxiety and guilt, and that is just the way it is. As consultants, we have a constant task to confront our clients with the choice facing them and to help them see the choice, to make the choice (even if the choice is to do nothing), and to live with its consequences. The insight that this dynamic is inevitable and life-giving comes from the philosopher.
Just because we begin to think philosophically does not mean that we veer away from the concrete and the practical. It means that the concrete and practical become luminescent and more profound. It is the experience of deepening and taking our work more seriously and assigning it greater consequence than simply solving today’s problem. Work is not just one darn thing after another; it is one darn thing threading its way through all others.
The Images That Save Us
It is difficult, being limited by our own experience, to know what is possible, or even to know what meaning to give to our own behavior or the events in our lives. We always need to look outside ourselves for clues about what to make of it. This is where other people’s words can serve us—even save us. We hear a short quotation and, despite all the noise of life we are exposed to, it stays with us. An example for me is a statement of Carl Jung’s: “What was true in the morning is a lie in the afternoon.” I take this to mean that all that I pursued in the first half of my life—ambition, marriage, kids, becoming somebody, acquiring things—will not have the same meaning for me in my later years. The second half of life is about something different. Jung’s wisdom allows me to accept a radical shift in my later years—without feeling regret for my younger days, or thinking that my early pursuits were a mistake, or having qualms about leaving behind what was once so important. The idea that the “afternoon is a lie” embodies the inevitability and forgiveness for changes I am drawn toward without really knowing why.
This is how we are served by art, texts, and literature. Insight about the larger story is also one of the gifts of religion. In addition to testimony about the existence of God or the absence of god, sacred texts impact our lives by the stories, parables, and images that have endured over time. The text of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert lets us know that there will be times in our lives when we are lost, filled with doubt, faced with attractive but false temptations, thirsty beyond belief. Knowing this is part of every person’s story gives us strength to endure these times.
To serve those we consult to, we need our own saving images as part of the way we can have influence. The point is not that these are the particular “saving images” that consultants should be using, but that the wisdom embodied in the arts has to be included in the practical, engineering mindset that drives most of our consulting.
MOVING ON
I hope the book is useful to you. May you find the new friends you meet interesting, if sometimes confusing and challenging, and always present with sincere intent, because their writing is as much an effort to understand their own practice as it is to share what they have learned. I also hope you enjoy this book, let it accompany you into your field, and use it as encouragement for writing your own story, which may be the point of it all.
The Icons
Books carry their message through their look and feel as much as through their content. Marie Carija has designed a strong and mythic series of images that reinforce the book’s themes, and she has done it with grace and sensitivity, which is who she is.
Here are Marie’s thoughts about the symbolism of the images.
Welcome: The Portal
This is a doorway with the sun beyond. When you walk through the door, are you stepping inside or outside? This image refers to the “light within,” within this book, within these writers, within each person. And it also refers to an opening outward to new ideas and experience.
No Fast and Easy Way: The Labyrinth
A labyrinth deliberately slows down the journey. Progressing along its path requires attention and allows for reflection. It might be seen as an unnecessary complication. But those who have given themselves to the experience over the centuries describe disproportionate rewards: new insight, catharsis, awareness. This image is about doing what you do consciously, always returning to where you began, but at a deeper level.
The Complexity of Advice: The Nautilus
The many-chambered shell is structured in the most amazing way. Its complexity is elegant, ideal. The image is an abstraction of complexity at its best. The spiral also comes into play, referring to the dance-like shifting of perspectives that takes place in an ongoing client-consultant relationship. It is also a living creature unchanged since the beginning.
The Power of the Question: The Python
The celebrated Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece was preceded by a dragon called Python who guarded an even more ancient oracle. These oracles exerted a powerful influence over public affairs and personal destinies. The image of the python evokes the mysterious power of the questions addressed to the oracle (and their resulting answers). It is also reminiscent of a question mark. The snake also sheds its skin, which is the classic image of rebirth.
Emotions and the Personal: The Lyre
The lyre refers to a story that resonates in the heart. It is the Greek myth of the musician Orpheus, who followed his beloved into the underworld, where he succeeded in gaining her release by charming Hades with his divine music. Orpheus promised not to look at Eurydice on their way back to earth, but his longing made him look, and she disappeared. Grief-stricken, he scorned the women of Thrace, his home, and they tore him apart. The pieces were gathered by the Muses and buried near Mount Olympus, where a nightingale sings over his grave.
Integrating Strategy and Experience: The Eagle
An “eagle eye” is a keen one. It sees very clearly, and from a height where the big picture spreads out below like a chessboard. Strategy requires this kind of perspective and vision. The eagle also connotes power and authority, qualities achieved as a result of experience.
Valuing Capacities: The Box
The box within a box within a box is nested, safely packed. The square is the symbol of wholeness, completion. It is a space, a container with volume that can hold everything. It has capacity. The image also reminds me of the Abstract Impressionist painter Josef Albers’s reverberating homages to squares of different colors, thereby adding the dimension of the value and conceptual capacities of art. The center box also represents the Inner Kingdom, where the soul resides.
No Masks, No Bargains: The Moon
This moon speaks to the mystery of the night sky and the power of poetry and the feminine. It is irreducible.
1No Fast and Easy Way
Flawless | M. J. Wheatley
Transformation: Slow, Small, and Low Cost | Dan Joyner
Risk Is Where You Find It | Peter Block
Consultant, Flawed: A Story of Eternal Internal Triangles | Ken Murphy
We live in a one-minute culture where speed is God and time is the devil. Our food is fast, freeze-dried, and microwaved. Our learning is anytime, anywhere; we read executive summaries instead of books and reports; and we want the answer now. And we also want the answer in simple, easy-to-use steps. No pain, big gain. The instinct for speed and simplicity, while useful for mail and information, is an obstacle to wisdom and the reflection required for real change.
In fact, for much of our consulting work, speed becomes a defense against change. To be in a great hurry is to defend against the confusion, doubt, and complexity necessary to create a future that is different from our past. Change is always destabilizing and therefore it always creates anxiety. Our capacity to serve our clients, then, is always dependent on our ability to deal with anxiety in all its many forms. The emotional cost of doing consulting is to entertain a long-term relationship with anxiety and its unpredictable effects.
Anxiety comes in two forms: anxiety in ourselves and anxiety in others. My anxiety leads me to think that my own toolbox and my own capacities are perpetually incomplete. I travel with five times the number of notes and amount of electronic gear than is necessary. When I plan a meeting I squeeze four hours of content into two hours of time. I think I have to structure the world, anticipate the resistance, and on it goes. All of these responses to my anxiety interfere with learning and change.
I also have to think carefully about how I respond to anxiety in others. Their anxiety may come in the form of withholding or anger, or the most common form: confusion. The questions “Where are we, what are we doing, where are we headed, what do you mean?” are ways clients have of asking us to take responsibility for their experience. If I can develop the faith that their anxiety is a sign that we are touching something close to home, and that touching is essential for real change, then I need to act to deepen their anxiety—treat it as a doorway instead of a blind alley. Give it support and reflect on it. As philosophers, we see the anxiety as a response to the burden of choice, of a life that is ours to choose, a recognition that we are not immortal and time is running out. Our response is to acknowledge and find meaning in its legitimacy.
As therapists, we can see the anxiety as a symptom of feelings that are waiting to be spoken. The feelings born of our own history, unfinished history brought into the present. The moment giving rise to the anxiety may be associated with other people or events, or the tension may arise from relationships with those in the room. Much of our most critical consulting work is helping clients in their relationships with each other—helping them tell the truth to each other, support each other, forgive each other, choose to create a future with each other. Team building in its general meaning is the work of the therapist-consultant.
The artist in us is needed to fully see the client’s story, the drama of institutional life. The artist needs anxiety for the story to have meaning. Without a crisis there can be no synthesis, no conflict, no resolution. The artist gives vivid form to the human drama. It is not that the consultant is going write a story about the client, but that the consultant sees larger, archetypal stories being lived out in the client.
If you want to understand archetypes, you get familiar with Carl Jung. You recognize that literature and movies gain their strength from touching archetypal, universal themes. We need to identify with the archetypal images. We have to realize that Icarus let his ambition fly him too close to the sun and melted him. That Orpheus lost faith in his destiny and looked back to see that Eurydice was still there and thereby lost her. That Ulysses had to return home to where he began and then, on the eve of venturing out into the world, listened to a dream that instructed him to eventually go inward as the final journey of his life. We have to accept that the hero’s journey demands refusal and failure before it can be completed. Each of us is Icarus, Orpheus, and Ulysses. We place modesty aside and accept that our journey, and our client’s journey, is that of a hero.
Chapter 1Flawless
M. J. Wheatley
For far too many years
I have wanted to be flawless,
Perfecting my pursuits,
I bargained all for love.
For all those many years
I made masks of my own doing,
Pursuing my perfection,
I found I was pursued.
And then
one day
I fell
sprawled
flattened
on the fertile
ground of self.
Naked in dirt
no mask
no bargains
I raised my soiled face
and there
you were.
I struggled to stand.
Dirt from my body fell
in your eyes.
Your hand reached for me.
Blinded,
your hand reached
me.
There is, in all of us, the place of pure perfection.
We discover its geography together.
Meg Wheatley’s poetic reconciliation of organizational and scientific principles became the basis for the ground-breaking and award-winning bestseller Leadership and the New Science. She has written ten books and been honored for her pathfinding work by many professional associations, universities, and organizations.
Chapter 2Transformation Is Slow, Small, and Low Cost
Dan Joyner
WHERE IT IS WORKING: PUBLIC SCHOOL
These ideas of how to have influence when you have no control are especially useful in the public and government sectors, where most do not feel they have much direct authority to tell people what to do. Dan Joyner consults in these worlds and has a way of keeping the attention on the structure and design of how people come together, rather than on the expertise and insight and wisdom of the consultant. He is very successful in that endeavor, which gives some hope for us all. Here is a story of where an alternative future is occurring in the unlikely place of public education. And it is happening without the intervention of the school board or state legislature.
COMMUNITY THROUGH “HOUSES”
The story of Finneytown Local School District near Cincinnati puts into practice how intentional contracting with people who are open to change can have a big impact. This story of transformation in public education started in 2017. The secondary campus leadership of Finneytown School District decided they wanted to implement something called a “house system.” They had been talking with other schools who had gone in this direction, and several of the team attended an institute on the house system.
The house system organizes the student body into “houses” rather than just by grade level and age. Finneytown Secondary Campus now has six houses, one named Pringle House because the person who created those potato chips attended Finneytown. Membership in a house offers more interaction between grade levels, and a greater sense of belonging. “Siblings” stay together in the same house for their entire high school experience. The impact is that belonging to a house builds community, kinship, relationships, and thereby better learning. Kids in grades seven through twelve participate, although seventh and eighth graders are in a separate area of the building due to differences in maturity. Every house has mentor groups consisting of ten or twelve kids. Mentor groups help the students develop socially and academically using something called “circle practice.”
THE FIRST OPEN SPACE MEETING
Finneytown’s high school administration wanted to implement the house system, but they hadn’t involved the rest of the staff in the idea. That’s when they called me. They wanted to do some participatory leadership to engage people in this conversation and move acceptance of the house system forward, but they weren’t sure how. Claire Blankemeyer, who was with the Mayerson Foundation at the time, recommended me. We had done some work together, so she was familiar with Open Space Technology, a large-group meeting process where the people who come create the agenda. She was aware of my ability to help, so she made the introduction.
On a handshake, I began my first work with the school district. We talked about Open Space Technology and all its benefits. Jen Dinan was the principal then and she was uneasy about how the meeting would go. She called me on Sunday before our first Open Space meeting and said, “I’m calling you to ask if you are sure that people will get up and interact.” Jen had doubts that they would. In Open Space, there’s this moment after you finish the planning and setup that you worry nobody’s going to participate. I have that feeling all the time.
As a first step, we came up with a theme: “How can we be more than a school?” It was shortened to “More than a School,” and they still use that. It’s one of their taglines. That was the first time I introduced the idea of inviting a cross section of the system’s members to gather in one room—not just teachers, but students and parents.
They all showed up, we shared our theme, “How can we be more than a school?” We then asked if they would be willing to convene in small groups around a subject that they wanted to talk about or learn about—something they had passion or responsibility for. Each group was instructed to write the topic they chose on a piece of paper and post it up on a wall.
Once the topics were posted on the wall, the participants got up and each decided which group they wanted to go to. I don’t remember how many topics there were, maybe a dozen or fifteen topics. There were about seventy to eighty people in attendance, and the day went really well. People broke out into groups and then we ended with a commitment conversation. I introduced one of Peter Block’s Six Conversations, and we closed with a period of reflection, small group conversations, and a commitment to something each person would be willing to do.
Individuals wrote down their commitments on Post-it Notes and we created a gallery. After that first meeting, people got interested. They embraced the Open Space idea, and what I had to offer. They scraped together money to hire me, and over the years our relationship grew, as did the scope of my involvement.
MORNING CIRCLES: CHECKING IN
We shared ideas about how we could help skeptical teachers with mentor groups. Once the house system and mentor groups began, teachers were faced with sitting in a circle to start the day in their classrooms. Initially, the administration pressed for teachers to form these circles and engage students by doing activities. The choice, in the end, was left to the teacher.
The first person to use mentor groups was Tammy Dietz. Ms. Dietz is now the restorative practices coordinator, but she was a twelfth-grade math teacher at the time—one of six teachers who were initially chosen to be house deans. There were two teacher leaders per house, a dean and a co-dean. So she had some leadership responsibility over her house and her mentor group. Tammy Dietz also saw the benefit of the circle in her math class.
First, she rewrote her syllabus using a different narrative. Her original syllabus focused on her and what she wanted to teach. The new syllabus was more of an invitation—a partnership with math. In addition, she rearranged her classroom into circles. In the large circle, she did check-ins and reflections about math. The smaller circles around the room’s perimeter were teaching centers. Every so often I would stop in and sit in a circle with her. She would have questions for the students so they could get connected to each other as a way of learning math, questions like “What’s your favorite soup?” as well as other more reflective questions such as “What are you good at?”
MENTORING ADMINISTRATORS AND TEACHERS
My relationship was primarily with the high school administrative team. I spent time with them in meetings, consulting and talking. One of my first experiences was working with two teachers. One was a young, relatively new teacher who was having issues managing the students. She would only break into circles when I was there. She used me to control the kids, but when I wasn’t there she wouldn’t exercise control. I became a little assertive with her and said, “Look, let’s plan it.” We did that a few times. Afterward, I wanted to reflect with her. I bugged her, “Why don’t you call me? Let’s get together.” She just went off on me, “I don’t have time for this. I don’t do that.” So I just left her alone—she didn’t want it.
In a very different scenario, another math teacher, Dave Backer, invited me into his class because he was also having trouble controlling his kids. Dave Backer is an ex-college football player—he’s a big guy. But he had trouble managing African American boys in his class. They gave me a bit of a hard time, too. At that time mentor groups only lasted fifteen minutes, so even if teachers wanted to do them, they weren’t given much time. Plus the day-to-day schedule in high school is tight.
I was invited into Dave’s classroom for fifteen minutes whenever I could come—once or twice a week. I would put kids in a circle and have them talk to each other about something other than math. I took the opportunity to try more personal conversations and small-group processes with them. I initiated fifteen-minute open spaces, in which the kids chose the topics then broke out and talked, and then I presented a small-group conversation about possibilities and gifts.
My mentoring was helpful to Dave. Afterward, he wrote me an email which said, “You’ve changed my life.” He gave me credit for changing his life because now he had a way to deal with the kids, something that was a struggle prior to my modeling it for him. He found the self-confidence he needed to handle the kids.
The other day I was in a class with twenty-one fourth graders. We facilitated four rounds of small-group conversations. Mike Kennedy and Mike Rosa are partners in this work with the fourth-grade class. They crafted the questions—appreciative questions, like “Tell about a time when …” They used gifts-oriented questions. For example, tell a story about a time when you helped somebody out.
System-wide ripples occurred over time with a mentor group here and a mentor group there. At the beginning, not many teachers asked for my help. I’m getting more requests now than ever, but it’s through Mike and Mike engaging me and getting other teachers to engage. When you begin to develop relationships of trust and improvement, the word gets around.
My relationship went to another level when, through these conversations with the high school leadership team, it became apparent that restorative practices (RP) could be beneficial to them. So I introduced them to the “Green Book” (Restorative Practices in Schools: Building Community and Enhancing Learning, by Bob Costello), one of two restorative practices books for teachers. Restorative practices is an alternative to traditional school discipline. It involves teachers, students, and parents in a structured narrative process, focusing on accountability, listening, resolving conflict, and healing relationships. It encourages positive and respectful behavior. If kids are getting in trouble in class or acting out, instead of suspending them or punishing them, they’re brought into a conversation about how to work it out.
THE ADVANTAGES OF RESTORATIVE PRACTICES
The building and district administrators went to a “train the trainer” seminar. They decided they were going to train the whole district, starting with the high school. They created a team, about sixteen of us, to train all the high school teachers. A year or so later, the elementary school teachers received training. Now everyone has been trained in restorative practices, including bus drivers and building maintenance staff. It recognizes that every person in the building is a part of the student learning experience. The elementary school is using a process called “responsive classroom,” which is similar.
The first time I saw responsive classrooms in action, I was in a second-grade class. Everyone was in small groups, and we were doing story sharing. As we were reflecting, some of the kids became noisy. I heard the teacher start a cadence to which the students responded, “Eyes on you.” One, two, eyes on you. All the kids’ heads popped up at once. It reminded me of prairie dogs poking their heads out of the ground. I quickly learned the response. One, two, eyes on you. Mike Kennedy knows a lot of those little cadences, and they work well with the kids.
Eventually, the whole district was trained in restorative practices. The superintendent at the time took part and was very supportive. So these relationship practices have taken hold. Probably 50 percent of the teachers use them. There’s a range of reasons why some don’t, but 50 percent is pretty darn good.
THE BENEFIT OF DESIGN
The district has begun using check-ins and checkouts (reflections) as standard practice for most meetings run by administrators. In the middle of the meeting, they’ll ask, “Are you getting what you came for? What doubts do you have about how this meeting’s going?” A certain segment of the leadership team enjoys facilitating this way as a normal course of business: Eric Muchmore, Jen Dinan, and Laurie Banks, the superintendent.
Rather than focusing on the relationship between bosses and subordinates, the circle is about people in the room being with each other. That’s what the circle represents, versus the triangle, which has the leader at the top and workers, students, or others below. Design is a key element in the district leadership team meetings. The design elements include:
Divergence: staying in small-group conversations until new and shared ideas emerge. It has space for chaos and needs time.
Convergence: whole group conversations where key points are summarized and decisions are made. It’s more linear, goal oriented, and can take less time.
The design begins with a teaching or presentation to the large group, then breaking into small groups for dialogue, for processing, or getting clarity. The groups alternate between convergent and divergent processes, so that’s built into meetings. It promotes participatory leadership, engaging the whole system. The district leadership team really believes in the idea, Jen Dinan in particular. She frequently tells the community that we are enough. Now the district sees itself as having everything it needs.
YOU’RE INVITED TO A PRO ACTION CAFÉ
I recently coined a phrase: “Finneytown’s local school district is the center of a 4.2-square-mile circle.” This school district sees itself as the center of this 4.2-square-mile community of Finneytown. They’re the center because of how they are connecting this community. They are the connector even though they don’t use that term.
Here’s an example. A couple of nights ago we did what’s called a Pro Action Café (https://artofhosting.org/), a two-hour community meeting that we hold once a month, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This past Monday we probably had forty people show up—parents, neighbors, students, teachers, administrators, all in that room.
It’s based on the Open Space concept in part—having passion and responsibility for topics or projects that you’re interested in and posting them on a wall. It’s an invitation. We create a breakout space for you, and your responsibility is to host a conversation for whoever shows up. From there we treat it like a café, and we give everyone twenty-five minutes or so to talk about the quest behind their topic or project. Then I announce, “Let’s change groups,” and topic owners talk about what’s missing from their topic or project.
That day we had five topics and five topic owners. At the end, the group of topic owners sit by themselves and form an affinity group. The other thirty-five of us engage in a social time, standing around eating, talking, and connecting. Then we pull everybody back together, and we hear from the topic owners. The group questions were: What did you learn about yourself from this conversation? What are your next steps? What help do you need? The topic owners share their reflections from the meeting with the rest of the group.
Finally, we all do a checkout. On Monday our checkout was “What are your ahas, apologies, and appreciations?” Some grade-school kids have attended, and they love it. Two eighth graders who came were absolutely amazing. One of them, Anthony, posted a topic. He’s an African American kid, and his father comes with him every time. This dad is young. He’s got a youthful look—the loose sweatsuit with his hat on backward and Timberlands. He loves being there with us.
Laurie Banks, the district superintendent, committed early in the year to having more contact with students on the ground. Being in this Pro Action Café around the community and students really fulfills this desire of hers. She’s finding the topics really helpful. The last two cafés she posted topics, including one about policies on bullying. People circled around her and engaged in productive conversations.
Another participant, Eric, had a great experience. He hosted a different conversation on bullying with a different group. It was interesting because at the end he said to me, “What I learned from my conversations with the other administrators is that we need to have a restorative practice training for parents.” So he wants to take restorative practices to another level. All this goes back to us being the center and conveners of community.
REDUCING DISCIPLINARY REFERRALS AND EXPULSIONS
Restorative practices has had a positive impact on expulsions, suspensions, and referrals to the office. RP cut referrals in half in the first year it was implemented and that reduction has stayed pretty constant, and now there aren’t nearly as many disciplinary referrals.
Expulsion hearings have also changed. Jen Dinan and Eric Muchmore are expulsion officers. They joke about being called “officers” because they don’t like anything associated with that power. But they’ve changed the way they do those expulsion hearings. Previously they would sit in a conference room at a rectangular table across from each other—parents and student on one side, expulsion officers and the complaining teacher or administrator on the other side. They realized there was something wrong with that, and now they conduct their expulsion hearings in a circle. Surprise!
They shared a story about one kid in particular named Steven, who really had some issues. Nobody liked him. He was on probation, so he was in trouble with the juvenile justice system. But the administration, the people dealing with his disciplinary issues in school, found a way to love him. They saw Steven’s potential, so they warded off any exclusionary interventions. It wasn’t easy, but they kept Steven in school. His parents would join disciplinary meetings at a circular table. After one of these, Steven’s dad literally hugged the expulsion officers and said he couldn’t believe that this kind of a meeting could feel so good. Stephen is an African American kid, as are most students here, and it is powerful that these kids can be treated with the kind of dignity that reinforces everyone’s self-esteem when they’re working out problems like this. It’s just amazing. But that’s what these restorative practices do.
DESIGNED TO SUCCEED
I was invited to a meeting concerning the tenth-grade class on the success rates for certification and graduation. In order to make sure everyone is on track to graduate, the school wanted to do a large, whole-scale, tenth-grade gathering. The administration was just being kind in asking me to participate; they know how to do this. Together we planned a full day with the tenth-grade class. In the past, they would have asked me, “Hey, can you lead us through this?” Now they invite me in as a participant. I contribute what I can, but I’m not in charge, and they don’t need me to be in charge.
Some teachers were complaining about the house deans and pressuring the deans about the aggravation of having to do a mentor group every day. As the lead consultant, Tammy took them through the whole design process: deciding what tangible and intangible outcomes they want and which small-group meeting technology would be best.
Again, they used small groups and large groups, as well as some other methodologies, like liberating structures. Liberating structures is a whole list of different processes (https://www.liberatingstructures.com/). They have one they call “1, 2, 4, all.” Tammy designed a way for deans and teachers to come together in a constructive fashion.
Mike Kennedy and all the administrators view themselves as consultants and use the Flawless Consulting models. Tammy Dietz and the restorative practices facilitators also practice Flawless Consulting. Tammy is particularly good at dealing with resistance.
